President Trump last week nominated David Keeling to be the next administrator of OSHA. According to his LinkedIn profile, Keeling was director of road and transportation safety at Amazon.com from 2021 to 2023, and he served in numerous safety positions at UPS since 1985.

The president also nominated Amanda Wood Laihow to serve as OSHA deputy administrator. Laihow previously was director of labor policy and employment at the National Association of Manufacturers, and she served as a member of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission from 2021 to 2023.

“While the new Trump administration has moved quickly in less than a month to scale back and eliminate federal regulations and reduce the size of the federal workforce, the president’s nominees for OSHA appear more inclined to follow the first Trump administration’s path of vigorous enforcement of existing OSHA regulations and standards, but with little appetite for promulgating new ones,” said ILMA CEO Holly Alfano.

The Keeling and Laihow nominations are subject to Senate confirmation. The Senate also is expected to soon take up confirmation of President Trump’s nominee for Labor Secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Both Keeling and Chavez-DeRemer’s nominations are supported by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Keeling has ties with the Teamsters, because the union represents workers at UPS and Amazon facilities.

If confirmed by the Senate, Keeling will have to decide whether to proceed with the Biden administration’s proposed heat injury and illness standard and whether to reverse OSHA’s recently revised walkaround rule that enables third parties, such as union representatives, employee-side attorneys, and advocates to participate in OSHA walkaround inspections of worksites, including non-union sites. Court challenges to the revised walkaround rule are pending in federal court.

As the political deputy at OSHA, Laihow will work alongside Scott Ketcham, a career employee who was recently named as the second deputy administrator of the agency. Ketcham previously headed OSHA’s enforcement directorate.

“Even with the Trump administration’s funding reductions and a freeze on proposed regulations, ILMA members should expect to see OSHA enforce workplace hazards that do not fall under an existing standard through its General Duty Clause authority from the Occupational Safety and Health Act,” said ILMA General Counsel Jeff Leiter.

Keeling’s nomination largely has received praise from the business community, while worker and public safety advocates had feared a less qualified choice by the president. Some of the worker advocacy groups have highlighted that both UPS and Amazon have had numerous enforcement matters with OSHA while Keeling was employed at the companies. Amazon, for example, recently agreed to institute new ergonomic safety procedures at its facilities nationwide as part of settlement of multiple OSHA violations dating back to 2022.

President Trump did not make an exception for OSHA compliance health and safety officers in his federal hiring freeze. OSHA’s website says that the agency currently has 1,850 enforcement officers to inspect more than eight million workplaces.