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At the 2018 National Safety Council Congress & Expo in Houston, Texas, Patrick Kapust, deputy director of OSHA’s Directorate of Enforcement Programs, presented the agency’s top 10 violations for fiscal year (FY) 2018 to a standing-room-only crowd of safety professionals. While the list—particularly its top half—is largely familiar from previous years, one standard made an […]
The General Duty Clause (Clause) of the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act has been in effect since the Act was passed in 1970 and, therefore, should be an important consideration in employer worker safety and hazard reduction plans. But while most employers that are familiar with the OSH Act and federal and state worker-protection […]
OSHA has ordered Springfield Terminal Railway Inc. to compensate an employee who faced an investigative hearing with possible disciplinary action or termination for reporting an on-the-job injury at its facility in Andover, Massachusetts. OSHA ordered the company to pay the employee $10,000 in compensatory damages, $75,000 in punitive damages, and attorney’s fees.
Can an employer be cited for committing a willful violation of a worker protection standard even if the employer professed ignorance of the standard?
Does evidence of a hazard in a workplace or even evidence of an injury provide a reasonable suspicion that an inspection of the workplace would reveal violations of the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act?
On Monday, three news releases from OSHA covered recent enforcement actions. Two of them were taken against construction companies that failed to protect employees from trenching hazards, and one of the enforcement actions was unfortunately taken only after two employees were killed.
OSHA has cited five contractors for safety and health violations after three employees were fatally injured and two others critically injured following an explosion onboard a towboat in Calvert City, Kentucky. These five companies have collectively received 55 of violations with proposed penalties totaling $795,254.
On July 23, 2018, OSHA’s 1-month delay of enforcement of alleged violations of the agency’s Respirable Crystalline Silica Standard for General Industry/Maritime (29 CFR 1910.1053) came to an end. During that period, OSHA inspectors were instructed to provide compliance assistance in lieu of enforcement to employers whom inspectors believed were making a good-faith effort to […]
In November 2017, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that injury and illness rates among workers at meat and poultry slaughter and processing plants declined from 2004 through 2015 but that in 2015, the industry still had the 8th-highest number of severe injury reports of all industries. The GAO reported on several areas where […]
In a data brief, the National Employment Law Project (NELP) reports that under the Trump administration, OSHA’s enforcement totals have steadily fallen. According to the NELP, the decrease in OSHA inspectors during the same period “has clearly led” to the enforcement decline.