OSHA Penalties on the Rise

by Tom Hayes, TriSure OSHA Compliance Consultant

During the past 6–8 months, employers in North Carolina who have received a compliance inspection from North Carolina OSHA have experienced a significant increase in penalties if cited for a serious violation.

NCOSH has changed the way they calculate penalties and the result is higher penalties in a lot of cases. The reason for the change is pressure put on North Carolina by Federal OSHA. They think the penalties issued by North Carolina to employers is not high enough to make employers change their business practices to protect their employees. In fact federal OSHA is making changes to their penalty structure which will raise penalties from the current average of $1,000 per serious violation to $3,000 - $4,000 per serious violation.

This change made by the Feds could further impact North Carolina and force them to increase penalties to the Federal level. North Carolina is a state OSHA program and the program must be “as effective” as the Federal program. This includes penalties.

Some of the ways the Federal penalty structure is going to change is to increase the time a citation may be cited as “repeat” from 3 years to 5 years. This means any OSHA violation you receive will stay on your record for 5 years. Another change is if an employer has been cited for any high gravity, willful, repeat or failure–to–abate violation within the previous 5 years, the employer will receive an additional 10% increase in their penalty. Two other ways penalties will be increased is by raising some of the gravity based penalties and reducing employer credits such as size. Another change is to increase the amount of a minimum penalty for a serious violation from $100 to $500.

Employers can, for the most part, avoid the bad news mentioned above by having a comprehensive, documented safety and health program that includes frequent and regular documented inspections of their work places and an active disciplinary program for employees and subcontractors.

Employers, if cited by OSHA can no longer afford to accept all issued citations and penalties as a part of doing business. Employers need to understand what they have been cited for and the potential ramifications for their companies down the road. Citations have been issued by OSHA in the past that employers were not guilty of or did not deserve. You need to decide to challenge these type citations and try and keep your OSHA record as clean as possible.

I work to help TriSure’s clients reduce the likelihood of incurring any penalties. If you’d like to know how I can help your business, contact your representative for more information on our safety consulting services.

Kirby Dibb can also help you increase your OSHA compliance by providing customized employee manuals, policies, and training programs vailable through TriSure Online. You can reach Kirby at 919-469-2473.