Keeling Nomination Heads to Full Senate
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) has voted to send President Trump’s nomination of David Keeling as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health to the full Senate for confirmation.
Keeling was Amazon’s director of global road and transportation safety from July 2022 to May 2023. Before that, he served as vice president of global health and safety at UPS from 2018 to 2021.
At a HELP Committee hearing on June 5, Keeling testified that his passion for occupational safety and health stems from the death of an uncle, Lonny Crouch, in a farming accident. Crouch was 17 at the time. Though Keeling never knew Crouch, his grandparents kept an empty chair at their dinner table in Crouch’s memory, Keeling said.
“In my time as a safety professional . . . I came to understand that nothing is more beneficial than collaboration between employers and employees,” Keeling said in prepared remarks (PDF). “I have had both the opportunity and the responsibility to walk on far more concrete than carpet in my career. I have learned that the best source of safety improvements originates with the people who perform the job every day.”
In response to a question from Democratic Senator Angela Alsobrooks about protections for firefighters, Keeling said he thought OSHA’s proposed standard for emergency response would need to be revised, citing concerns about the rule from volunteer fire departments. Asked by Alsobrooks whether he would commit to supporting a revised standard that addresses these concerns, Keeling said, “I will commit, Senator, that that will be one of the first conversations I’ll have with the career team [at OSHA] if I’m confirmed.” The proposed rule would replace OSHA’s fire brigades standard (29 CFR 1910.156), which was promulgated in 1980.
Alsobrooks next asked whether Keeling believes mental health issues like stress are an occupational hazard.
“Absolutely, I do,” Keeling said. “There’s a number of workplaces out there where the stress needs to be considered.”
Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski expressed concern about the effects that staffing cuts at NIOSH will have on research that the agency produces. “I don’t know whether you can speak to whether we have a plan on how we fill the data and information gap if NIOSH is unable to produce what we need in terms of timely data and recommendations as you work to inform rulemaking,” Murkowski said.
“I think through using the professional groups that are out there and through using some private resources, there are ways to fill the gap,” Keeling said. “Not necessarily easily, but there are ways.”
A video recording of the hearing is available from the Senate HELP Committee webpage. Keeling’s nomination is one of more than a hundred currently on the Senate executive calendar.
