A 10-foot fall by a construction worker at a Rancho Cordova residential project in 2016 turned into an almost eight-year legal battle between his employer and Cal/OSHA. The case, L&S Framing, has reached the California Court of Appeal, where the employer’s attorney, Manuel Melgoza, accuses the Appeals Board and Division of Occupational Safety and Health …
A review of recent employer settlements with the Cal/OSHA Appeals Board included one case that particularly stood out: Lamps Plus in Redlands appeared to face failure-to-abate (FTA) penalties of almost $353,000 in a foot-protection case. But the settlement order showed the violation of General Industry Safety Orders §3385(a) was “reclassified to repeat serious & reduced …
The Cal/OSHA Standards Board will hold another advisory committee meeting about making broad changes to regulations regarding so-called “walking/working surfaces.” The committee meets on February 22nd in Sacramento. This meeting will be the third convened by the board, following meetings in 2020 and 2022. Cal/OSHA is obligated to bring its regulations in line with the …
There are eleven new California workplace fatalities across five incidents. An employee of California Terra Garden in Half Moon Bay shot and killed four fellow employees that also saw him murder three others at a different farm. Cal/OSHA says it is investigating the incidents as work-related. The suspect, Chunli Zhao, 66, reportedly told law enforcement …
In 2021 as she prepared to graduate high school, Itzel Prieto faced a choice: Go to college, as her parents wanted, but without a clear direction, or choose another route. Here is how she found an unusual occupation. Happenstance, coincidence or not, changed her direction. “I was just scrolling through Tik Tok one afternoon when …
Cal/OSHA’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health has increased the penalties for all violations except the serious variety. The increase is mandatory and comes as the result of an act by the United States Congress in 2015 to index penalties to inflation. The change applies to citations issued on or after January 1st. The penalty …
The Cal/OSHA Standards Board has voted to request that the Division of Occupational Safety and Health include so-called “exclusion pay” in the upcoming aerosol transmissible diseases standard for general industry. The vote was close – 4-3, with management representatives Chris Laszcz-Davis and Kathleen Crawford and public member Nola Kennedy voting against the idea. DOSH has …
The Cal/OSHA Appeals Board approved more than 100 settlements at the close of 2022. Included are fatality, accident, and other citations. Here are some of the most significant. Dewey Pest Control: This Pasadena employer will pay $6,000 (10%) of a proposed $61,000 in the March 2017 death of employee Jack Ruiz, 66. He and a …