Heat illness, infectious disease and workplace violence are still on OSHA’s radar for its Spring 2022 Regulatory Agenda, with rulemaking efforts continuing, albeit slowly. Violations involving these three hazards have typically been enforced via the General Duty Clause – with enforcement efforts already in place for 2022 on heat illness and COVID-19 – and the […]
An Ohio contractor entered into a settlement agreement with OSHA after an investigation into a worker’s June 2020 fatal fall that saw three others injured. The agreement has Industrial Insulation and Coatings accepting an OSHA citation for a willful violation of the construction industry fall protection standard and paying an $84,201 fine. Under the June […]
Cal/OSHA is in the process of revising its workplace violence regulations – which are currently only applicable to health care – to apply to general industry. Non-healthcare industries have traditionally fallen under the state’s version of OSHA’s General Duty Clause when it comes to regulating workplace violence, but a May 17 draft revision of the healthcare […]
OSHA is investigating a horrific fatality at an Illinois foundry involving a worker who fell into a vat of molten iron. Steven Dierkes, an employee at the Caterpillar Mapleton Foundry, “was presumably working alongside a crucible when he fell” into the 2,600 degree Fahrenheit vat. He died instantly. Too inexperienced to work near molten iron? […]
Oregon OSHA has adopted a new heat standard and new rules regarding wildfire smoke that are said to be the most protective in the U.S. Both rules “are the most protective of their kind in the country and reflect the need to strengthen protections in the workplace while focusing on the needs of Oregon’s most […]
A U.S. Congressman is calling for an OSHA investigation into Amazon warehouses over “skyrocketing” injury rates at its New Jersey facilities. Congressman Donald Norcross of New Jersey, a member of the Workforce Protections Subcommittee of the House Education and Labor Committee, said that he is “deeply troubled by the injury rates at Amazon facilities in […]
Federal OSHA has made it clear in early 2022 that employers need to take Form 300A injury and illness reporting very seriously. How so? Well, by mid-April, the agency has: started an enforcement program targeting 300A non-responders proposed amendments to injury and illness recordkeeping regulations, and has stated again that it will be making employer […]
OSHA is calling on Amazon to improve its severe weather emergency procedures in response to a Dec. 10, 2021, fatal warehouse collapse in Illinois. The agency issued a Hazard Alert Letter to Amazon, requiring the company to review its severe weather emergency procedures after six contractors were killed and another was severely injured when a […]
Thirteen workers die from workplace injuries every day in the U.S., and to mark Workers Memorial Day, the agency is broadcasting an event to remember lives lost and stress the high cost of ignoring safety on the job. April 28 is Workers Memorial Day and OSHA is joining with “some of those scarred by workplace […]
