Among the hundreds of settlements to Cal/OSHA cases approved by the Appeals Board in March are two involving fatalities and serious injuries that had hundreds of thousands of dollars in proposed penalties at stake. Here’s how those, and other significant cases, settled out. Alhambra Foundry, a metalworks and fabrication company, has agreed to pay $147,350 …
Debra Lee, a 30-plus-year employee of Cal/OSHA’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, has been confirmed as its Chief. The California Senate Rules Committee approved her 5-0, and the full Senate followed up with a 33-0 vote. “I joined Cal/OSHA as an industrial hygienist back in 1994, wanting to be an agent of change,” she …
The Cal/OSHA Standards Board has moved quickly to adopt a Fed-OSHA final rule created during the last days of the previous administration. The rule is simple: It requires that personal protective equipment (PPE) is of safe design and construction and properly fits each employee. It is being adopted as a “Horcher” rule, meaning it is …
Cal/OSHA’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health has cited three employers and proposed sizable penalties in 2024 cases involving a trench collapse and two fatal falls. The most significant case is against W.A. Rasic Construction, based in Long Beach, following an August 28th death at a San Diego construction site. Joel Olea Gomez, 27, was …
California employers have distributed millions of pieces of personal protective equipment; Cal/OSHA has monitored thousands of employees at dairies and poultry farms and conducted inspections at dozens of compliance inspections ostensibly to control the bird flu outbreak, which has hit this state’s animal agricultural industry. Now, a controversy has developed at the Cal/OSHA Standards Board …
In response to comments last summer to its proposal to establish “egregious’ and enterprise-wide violations, Cal/OSHA’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health has revised its draft language. The Director’s Regulation is not yet in formal rulemaking. DOSH will hold a virtual advisory meeting on March 25th to discuss the changes. The revisions to §§ 332.4, …
The long and winding road to resolving the decades-long issue of how and when autonomous vehicles and equipment can be used in California agriculture gets a kick-start on March 26th. That’s when the Cal/OSHA Standards Board will convene an advisory committee to discuss autonomous tractors. Cal/OSHA says the meeting will be virtual to allow for …
Cal/OSHA’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health and the Department of Industrial Relations will soon release revised draft language to implement new regulations regarding egregious and enterprise-wide violations. A virtual advisory committee will follow that release on March 25th. The committee met in August 2024, and the new draft will reflect changes based on comments …