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OSHA Increasing Fines, Increasing Their Enforcement Guidance Under the current administration, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has begun to enhance their enforcement efforts. In the fall of 2022, we saw articles explaining how OSHA is working with the Department of Justice to file criminal charges for some very serious OSHA violations. While criminal cases are rare, there has been a lot of publicity around these cases. Go to rb.gy/jiak9w to read more information about them. Recently, OSHA announced new enforcement guidance encouraging Regional Administrators and Area Office Administrators to issue more “instance-by-instance citations” and discouraged “grouping” of violations. OSHA staff can now cite certain types of violations as Instance-by-Instance citations when they identify “high gravity” serious violations of OSHA standards specific to falls, trenching, machine guarding, respiratory protection, permit-required confined spaces, lockout tagout and other-than-serious violations of OSHA standards specific to recordkeeping. A decision to use instance-by-instance citations should normally be based on consideration of one or more of the factors listed as follows:
The employer has received a willful, repeat or failure to abate violation within the past five years. The employer has failed to report a fatality, inpatient hospitalization, amputation or loss of an eye. The proposed citations are related to a fatality/catastrophe. The proposed recordkeeping citations are related to injury or illness(es) that occurred as a result of a serious hazard. OSHA also encourages staff not to “group” violations, which was common in the past. They contend citing each item separately will encourage employers to more effectively comply with the rules. These new guidelines will become effective March 27. In addition to the new enforcement guidance, OSHA penalties went up again this year on Jan. 16. The maximum penalty for a Serious violation increased from $14,502 to $15,625 per violation. The maximum penalty for a Willful/Repeated violation increased from $145,027 to $156,259 per violation. The penalty increases are scheduled annually following a 2015 law that requires Federal civil penalties to be adjusted each year. However, when combined with the new enforcement guidelines, this could significantly increase the penalties an employer may see for a given situation. For example, in the past, OSHA
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