The news of Parker’s nomination was first reported by POLITICO.
Parker heads California’s Occupational Safety and Health Division and previously worked for the Mine Safety and Health Administration during the Obama administration. According to the White House, he also began his legal career as a lawyer at the United Mine Workers of America.
Security experts praised the nomination, pointing out that he was working on Covid-19 risks at state-level police workplaces.
“Cal / OSHA did almost as much enforcement in one state in 2020 as federal OSHA did,” said Debbie Berkowitz, an adviser to OSHA during the Obama administration.
“Doug gets the importance of a temporary emergency standard to protect workers from COVID-19 and strong enforcement of offenders,” Berkowitz, now with the left-wing National Labor Law project, added.
David Michaels, former OSHA chief during the Obama administration, added that Parker’s work had been cut for him.
“He faces a very difficult challenge,” Michaels said. “COVID is a major occupational safety crisis, and OSHA has not even been allowed to issue an emergency standard.”
Walsh on Thursday defended the slow pace of OSHA’s progress towards a coronavirus workplace safety standard and said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”: “I would not say it’s a delay, I would say we’re watching this … just to foresee we are moving forward with any kind of standard, if we are to continue with a standard. ‘
According to the Department of Labor, Walsh requested a quick update of the standard “based on CDC analysis and the latest information regarding the condition of vaccinations and the variants.”
Parker joins several other California officials on their way to Washington. Most importantly, Biden nominated Julie Su, the California Labor Secretary, to be Walsh’s second commander.
Su, who originally ran for the No. 1 spot, has not yet received a Senate vote for confirmation. Her testimony before the Senate Labor Panel was certainly more controversial than that of Walsh: Republicans scolded her, among other things, over the state’s fight against unemployment insurance fraud.
It is also concerned about businesses and their allies: Su’s role in implementing California’s own version of a temporary emergency standard, which many employers considered unworkable. This set of rules will no doubt pose challenges for Parker as well: as head of California’s own workplace safety agency, he has played a key role in developing and implementing the regulations.
“The standard of Virginia, the standard of Michigan [employers’] efforts, ”said Ed Egee, vice president of the National Retail Federation, earlier this year. But California has “a completely unworkable standard,” he added.
“Hopefully we can work together more constructively at the federal level than at the state level,” Egee said of Parker’s nomination. “I want to keep an open mind.”