As we reported at the beginning of the year, President Biden has been making environmental justice one of his priorities since long before he took office. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently took a step to add some teeth to the Biden Administration’s commitment to increase environmental enforcement in communities disproportionally impacted by

Below in an excerpt from an article authored by Robinson+Cole Manufacturing Industry team lawyers Edward J. Heath and Kevin Daly with Sasha Glassman, assistant general counsel for global materials manufacturing company Rogers Corporation, that was published on ACCDocket.com.

On June 1, 2020, the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a

Welcome to 2020! As always, we at the Manufacturing Law Blog are starting the year with our annual forecasts of hot topics. We start the series with our Environmental, Health & Safety outlook.

PFAS

We highlighted per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, as a hot topic in last year’s 2019 outlook post, saying, “If you

Over the summer, EPA published a policy document to enhance cooperation between it and the many state agencies that enforce federal environmental programs. The document formalizes a long-standing priority of this administration to, as we previously reported, “rebalance the power between Washington and the states to create tangible environmental results for the American people.”

I want to begin by celebrating the fifth anniversary of our Manufacturing Law Blog. We are passionate about providing you with legal updates that are relevant to your manufacturing business and are honored that you are here. With over 20,000 visits over the course of our blog’s relatively short life, we are proud of the

As I have commented in this space multiple times, under the Obama Administration, government agencies (particularly the U.S. Department of Labor, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the National Labor Relations Board) have given manufacturers great incentives to review and update employment policies in light of an aggressive enforcement environment.  The National Labor Relations Board

Many manufacturers have found themselves in the position of negotiating an order with an environmental agency over environmental conditions at a site. Oftentimes, these orders are the result of extensive negotiations, and they set the regulated entity on a long and detailed path of investigation and/or remediation. The environmental agency issuing the order often wants

To round out our series on industry and legal outlooks for 2016, I have compiled some of the many things for manufacturers to be aware of in the Environmental Health & Safety world for 2016.

1. Expansion of CERCLA Liability

The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (“CERCLA”) is always a concern for manufacturers

With the new year comes a new focus on increasing criminal prosecutions against employers for worker safety violations.  In the end of December, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and the Department of Labor (“DOL”) announced a plan to deter workplace safety violations through more stringent criminal prosecution.  Under the new plan, the DOJ will work

Just in time for Labor Day, the National Labor Relations Board handed organized labor a great gift and potentially disrupted the business and labor relationships of thousands of American manufacturers.

On August 27, 2015, a divided Labor Board ruled 3-2 that Browning-Ferris Industries was the “joint employer” of workers supplied by a third-party.  Browning-Ferris Industries