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California has more than its share of natural disasters: earthquakes, wildfires, and mudslides, to name several. The 2017 California wildfire season had a record 9,133 fires that burned more than 1.3 million acres, and in January 2018, severe mudslides shut down about 30 miles of Highway 101 between Northern and Southern California. Although California workplaces […]
In 2017, California became the first state in the nation to implement a regulation requiring health care employers to take steps to prevent workplace violence. That rule took effect in April 2018. Now, the state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, better known as Cal/OSHA, is developing a similar standard for general industry.
Be prepared for the Cal/OSHA standards board’s July 1, 2018 regulation requiring hotels, lodging establishments, resorts, and bed-and-breakfast inns to implement new protection from musculoskeletal injury for all employees performing housekeeping tasks.
Though there are more fall protection resources than ever before in terms of training, products, and regulatory attention, the number of injuries due to slips, trips, and falls in the workplace continues to rise nationwide, and California is no exception. In 2015 alone, Cal/OSHA reported that there were over 20,000 injuries caused by slips, trips, […]
Cal/OSHA, California’s state regulatory agency responsible for occupational safety and health, is known for being stricter and more active in rulemaking than its federal counterpart. Here, we provide key information about the status of several current rulemaking efforts, upcoming compliance deadlines, and standards taking effect soon for California employers.
California health care employers will soon have a new regulation to comply with. On December 8, the state’s Office of Administrative Law approved new Section 3342 of the General Industry Safety Orders, Workplace Violence Prevention in Health Care. The standard takes effect on April 1, 2017.
A Riverside electric company was cited by California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) for serious and willful safety violations after a worker installing solar panels fell 30 feet through a skylight. Was this employer unaware of the law or just terribly irresponsible? Get details here.
In 2008 and 2009, 12 construction workers died in an 18-month period on the Las Vegas Strip. An investigation by the Las Vegas Sun revealed that Nevada OSHA inspectors were simply failing to enforce existing safety standards.
What’s your procedure for handling workers’ complaints about health symptoms? Some health symptoms are “nonspecific,” meaning they can have more than one possible cause. A headache, for example, can result from exposure to hazardous airborne chemicals—or the worker could be coming down with a cold or might have skipped lunch. It’s important to carefully investigate […]