OSHA to Create New Regional Office, Merge Two Regions
On May 8, OSHA announced planned changes to its regional operations, including the creation of a new regional office in Birmingham, Alabama, which will oversee OSHA operations in that state as well as in Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and the Florida panhandle. According to the agency, the new Birmingham Region is intended to address the area’s growing worker population and its needs in industries like food processing, construction, heavy manufacturing, and chemical processing. The agency will also merge two other regions and rename all its regions to associate them by geography instead of by assigned numbers. OSHA plans to implement this new regional structure later in fiscal year 2024.
The creation of the Birmingham Region will change the composition of a couple of OSHA’s regions. For example, OSHA plans to rename Region 4 as the Atlanta Region with jurisdiction over Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida—excluding the state’s panhandle. Region 6, which currently includes Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas, will become the Dallas Region and cover New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas.
Regions 9 and 10 will be merged into a new San Francisco Region to help OSHA improve operations and reduce operating costs. OSHA Region 9 currently includes American Samoa, Arizona, California, Guam, Hawaii, Nevada, and the Northern Mariana Islands, and the states of Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington currently make up Region 10.
OSHA’s new regional designations will be the Boston Region, the New York City Region, the Philadelphia Region, the Atlanta Region, the Chicago Region, the Dallas Region, the Kansas City Region, the Denver Region, the San Francisco Region, and the Birmingham Region. A table in the agency’s news release and a map from the OSHA website outline the new regional structure and boundaries.