A California Senate budget subcommittee held the first hearing on a budget change request that would significantly increase the number of investigators in Cal/OSHA’s Bureau of Investigations (BOI). While the Senate subcommittee on Corrections, Public Safety, Judiciary, Labor, and Transportation did not vote on the BCP, its members appear receptive to the idea. The Department …
Cal/OSHA’s Bureau of Investigations has published its 2024 annual report, bringing the Bureau up to date on public release of its legislatively mandated annual reports. The report is over a year late. More reporting is due. The 2025 report was to have been submitted by the Division of Occupational Safety and Health to the Department …
AB 2321, Assemblyman Liz Ortega’s bill that would require local prosecutors to investigate fatality and total permanent disability cases, instead of Cal/OSHA’s Bureau of Investigations, is intended to “alleviate” BOI of some of its workload, the legislator says. Ortega, chair of the Assembly Labor and Employment committee, is a fierce critic of Cal/OSHA enforcement and …
At last August’s legislative hearing on the results of a critical audit of Cal/OSHA’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, Assemblyman Liz Ortega (D-Hayward) expressed special ire over the performance of the Bureau of Investigations (BOI). “When do you decide to hold an employer accountable,” following a workplace fatality, she asked DOSH Chief Debra Lee, …
Considerably more than a year late, the Department of Industrial Relations has provided the results of the 2023 Cal/OSHA Bureau of Investigations report to the state legislature. The 2024 report, also late, has still not yet been provided; such reports are normally publicly available in December of the year following the period covered. Cal/OSHA has …
The State Fire Marshal says his agency has completed its investigation into the deadly July 1st, 2025, explosion at Yolo County fireworks warehouse that killed seven workers. Chief Daniel Berlant, who heads the Office of the State Fire Marshal (OSFM), which oversees Cal Fire, says its report is now headed to the Yolo County District …
Cal/OSHA’s beleaguered Bureau of Investigation has gone from having only two investigators in Southern California and none in the north in 2023 to having a new chief investigator and eight new investigators, all since July of this year. Moreover, the Division has reimagined how the bureau should operate, moving investigators from central hubs such as …
Cal/OSHA’s Bureau of Investigations (BOI) will have no personnel in Northern California following the resignation of Julio Alfaro, a senior investigator who was the lone BOI representative in the north …