2026 NSC Safety Congress & Expo

- As Prepared for Delivery -

Assistant Secretary Dave Keeling
Tuesday, September 15, 2026
Indianapolis, Indiana

Good morning and thank you for that introduction. It's great to be here at this year's National Safety Council Congress.

It's especially nice to look out and see so many familiar faces – people I've worked with, partnered with and gotten to know throughout my career in safety and health. There's a sense of community in this room, and that's one of the things that make this event so special.

I also want to thank Lorraine Martin for her leadership and for the work she and her team do every day to move safety forward for workers across the country.

The NSC has been a trusted leader in safety and health for more than a century. And at OSHA, we're proud to work alongside NSC and so many of you to advance a shared goal: making sure every worker goes home safe and healthy.

OSHA’s Vision

Many of you know my career and the experiences I bring to this role. But one of the things I've really appreciated about this opportunity is that it gives us a chance to do some things differently.

We have an opportunity to step back and ask ourselves: Is there a better way to do this? Is there a better way to connect with the people we serve?

And you may have noticed that we're taking a different approach.

We're working to make OSHA more approachable and to put greater emphasis on collaboration — showing employers that OSHA can be a resource and a partner in helping them create safer, healthier workplaces.

That's really the thinking behind OSHA CARES, which we launched earlier this year. We want businesses, particularly small and medium-sized businesses, to know that they can come to OSHA for assistance and guidance.

Our goal is to help employers build strong safety and health programs that work for their businesses and, most importantly, help ensure workers go home safely at the end of every shift.

Even something as simple as our updated OSHA poster reflects this approach. We've modernized the design and, more importantly, included a message that encourages employers and workers to work together to identify and address safety concerns.

So, when I talk about doing things differently, I'm not talking about changing who we are or losing sight of our mission. I'm talking about changing how we engage, how we communicate and how we work with others to accomplish that mission.

Because at the end of the day, we want more employers working with us, more workers engaged in safety, and more people going home safely every day.

Key Initiatives

And that brings me to another important part of this approach.

As many of you know, part of our primary mission is to enforce safety and health standards. And that responsibility isn't going away. Enforcement will always be an important tool in our toolbox.

But it can't be our only tool.

I firmly believe we cannot achieve safer working conditions through enforcement alone. If our ultimate goal is to build a stronger culture of safety — one where safety is part of how businesses operate every day — that's going to take all of us.

It takes employers who are willing to invest in safety. It takes workers who feel empowered to speak up. It takes safety and health professionals who bring their expertise to the table. And it takes organizations like this one, working alongside OSHA to share ideas, identify solutions and help move the needle. That's the kind of OSHA I want us to be. An agency that uses every tool available to us.

Sometimes that tool is enforcement. Sometimes it's education.

Sometimes it's technical assistance, collaboration or simply sitting down with an employer and helping them figure out how to make their workplace better.

Because at the end of the day, our measure of success shouldn't simply be how many inspections we conduct or citations we issue. It should be whether we are preventing injuries, illnesses and fatalities, and whether more workers are going home safe.

That's the difference I want us to make.

Over the past year, we've done a lot of work to strengthen how OSHA supports employers and workers, and to make sure our programs and resources are keeping pace with the way work is changing.

One example is our Voluntary Protection Programs, or VPP.

For more than 40 years, VPP has shown what can happen when employers and workers make safety and health part of how they operate every day – not simply something they address after an incident occurs.

We want to build on that success.

But we know not every business is ready for VPP or has the resources to dedicate to the program. All workplaces look different. The risks workers face has evolved and continue to do so all the time.

And the strategies for managing workplace safety and health have also advanced. That's why it's essential for OSHA's approach to voluntary and recognition programs to evolve as well – so we can meet the needs of today's workforce.

That's why we launched the Safety Champions Program, to help employers develop new or improve existing safety and health programs to prevent workplace injuries and fatalities.

• Currently, federal participation in VPP is at over 1,000 worksites, in addition to State Plan participation at more than 700 sites. Together, this covers about nearly 667,000 U.S. employees and contractors.
• To date, about 250 companies have enrolled in Safety Champions.

We've also been working to make OSHA's existing resources easier to use.

Last year, we launched an effort to raise awareness of our Letters of Interpretation. These letters provide valuable guidance on how OSHA requirements apply to specific workplace situations, but we know they haven't always been easy to find or navigate.

So, we're making them more accessible – giving employers another practical tool to better understand their responsibilities and protect their workers.

And we continue to take a similar approach with our penalty policies.

We expanded penalty reductions for small employers and created an additional reduction for employers who take immediate action to correct hazards.

• For example, the 70 percent reduction that previously applied to employers with 10 or fewer employees now extends to those with up to 25 employees. We've also added a 15 percent reduction for employers who immediately take steps to address or correct a hazard.

Small employers who are working in good faith to comply with complex federal laws should not face the same penalties as large employers with greater resources.

By expanding penalty reductions for small employers who are trying to do the right thing, we are supporting the entrepreneurs who drive our economy and giving them the tools they need to keep workers safe while keeping them accountable.

What it comes down to is this: we want hazards fixed.

As I mentioned, strong enforcement will always be an important part of OSHA's mission. But when employers act in good faith and take meaningful steps to protect workers, particularly small businesses with limited resources, we want our policies to encourage that action.

We're bringing that same focus to some of the most serious hazards workers may face, including heat.

We updated our Heat National Emphasis Program, using current BLS and OSHA data to focus our efforts on industries with high rates of heat-related illness and workplaces where heat incidents have resulted in citations or hazard alert letters.

Our compliance officers will continue outreach and compliance assistance, while also expanding inspections when there is evidence of heat-related hazards on heat-priority days.

Emerging Technology and SIF Alliance

But as important as it is to address the hazards we know today, we also have to be prepared for what comes next.

Technology is changing the workplace quickly.

We're seeing more automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence and digital systems across industries.

So, the question is: How do we use that technology to make work safer?

There's tremendous potential.

Technology can help us preserve safety knowledge as one generation of workers leaves and another enters. It can help us better understand how people, equipment and organizations interact. And it can help us recognize patterns that tell us where serious risks may be developing.

That is an area OSHA wants to explore with industry and the safety and health community.

Instead of looking only at what happened after an injury, what if we could use high-severity exposures, near misses and other leading indicators to identify where the next serious incident could occur?

Predictive analytics and smarter use of data can help us spot those warning signs earlier, design safer processes and intervene before someone gets hurt.

And that brings me to something I'm very excited to share with you today.

OSHA is developing a new national alliance focused specifically on preventing severe injuries and fatalities—or SIFs.

We're bringing together the National Safety Council (NSC), the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP), the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA), and the Construction Safety Research Alliance in a unified effort to tackle some of the most serious incidents occurring in our workplaces.

This builds on OSHA's longstanding relationships with these organizations, while bringing in CSRA's strong research-based focus on severe injury and fatality prevention in construction.

And the work is already underway.

Last month, we brought these organizations together for a SIF Prevention Roundtable, to begin identifying practical, measurable ways we can work together.

Through this shared commitment, we plan to develop shared messaging, educational resources and training focused on helping employers and workers identify, and ultimately prevent, the conditions that can lead to life-altering injuries and fatalities.

Because we have an opportunity to do more than respond to what has already happened.

We can use better data. We can learn from near misses. We can recognize high-risk exposures earlier. We can bring together the best research, technology and expertise available, and turn that knowledge into action.

That's really the common thread through all this work.

Because as workplaces and technology continue to change, one thing remains constant – our commitment to protecting America's workers and saving lives.

Regulatory Agenda

Another critical part of our work is determining the Administration's regulatory and deregulatory priorities.

Modernization is how I like to frame it.

Last month, we held a series of virtual informal public hearing for multiple deregulatory actions.

Our goal is to reduce unnecessary burdens, modernizing outdated rules, and prioritizing clarity and efficiency.

Your voice matters in our rulemaking process. I encourage you to visit OSHA's rulemaking page and the federal register notices to provide post-hearing comments. Your input helps inform our work.

Supporting Mental Health and Work Zone Safety

Before I close, I want to touch on two areas where partnership is especially important.

The first is mental health and suicide prevention.

We know not every workplace hazard is visible. Mental health is part of worker health, and for industries like construction, this is an especially important conversation.

Long hours, demanding schedules, injuries and other pressures can take a toll. And while there is no single cause of suicide, we know workplace stress can affect a person's mental well-being.

And that's where all of us have a role to play. Keep the conversation going. Check in with people. And make sure workers know where to turn when they need support.

During Suicide Prevention Awareness Month and Construction Suicide Prevention week, OSHA is working with our colleagues at the Labor Department, industry leaders, educators and other partners to share resources, start conversations and connect workers and employers with support.

Next Tuesday, we are launching a new series of national webinars that focus on important workplace issues. We are partnering with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention to help people better understand suicide, recognize warning signs and risk factors, reduce stigma, and connect individuals to help and support.

I hope you will join us for this important session and share the information as widely as you can.

And that spirit of partnership extends to another challenge we all see every day: work zone safety.

The men and women working on our roads face risks not only from the work itself, but from the drivers moving through their worksites.

This is an area where OSHA can't, and shouldn't, work alone. We want to continue working with organizations like NSC, employers, workers and other safety partners to raise awareness and find practical ways to reduce those risks.

Whether we're talking about mental health or work zones, protecting workers takes all of us – sharing what we know, reaching people where they are and working together on solutions that make a difference.

Closing

Look, the data shows us that progress is possible. Workplace fatalities declined 4% in 2024, and the fatal injury rate fell for the second year in a row. But more than 5,000 workers still lost their lives on the job.

Those numbers represent people, families and communities, and they remind us why our work matters.

Putting the American worker first means building on that progress.

It means using our efforts to work together to prevent injuries before they happen and finding practical solutions that make workplaces safer.

So, let's keep prevention at the center, partnership at the table and America's workers at the heart of everything we do.

Thank you and enjoy the rest of the conference.