DART rates – “Days Away, Restricted or Transferred” – are down in California, according to the 2025-26 High Hazard Industry List, just released by Cal/OSHA’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health. The list, which follows on the next two pages, is for the new fiscal year, which began on October 1st. The list is established …
It has been an article of faith around these parts that “Cal/OSHA” refers to all of the components of the state program, but a recent note from the communications team at the Department of Industrial Relations throws this assumption into question. In a recent Cal-OSHA Reporter article about the adoption of the Confined Spaces in …
Research by the Workers’ Compensation Research Institute concludes that California’s first-in-the-nation heat illness prevention standard resulted in substantial declines in work-related heat illnesses. The Waltham, Massachusetts-based organization states that data show the standard, General Industry Safety Orders §3395, has decreased the number of work-related cases on hot days by up to 27% in agriculture, 25% …
A Los Angeles-area construction contractor has settled its Cal/OSHA citations case following a September 2022 scaffold collapse that seriously injured a worker. But, as so often happens in multi-employer cases, the direct employer in this instance still faces six serious violations and more than $144,000 in proposed penalties. The employee of Sunland Scaffolds, also based …
The Cal/OSHA Standards Board declined a request from an advocacy organization for emergency protections for agricultural workers from avian influenza. However, the Board did approve an advisory committee to study possible reforms to its standard for zoonotic transmissible diseases, General Industry Safety Orders §5199.1. The emergency request came from Valley Voices, an activist organization involved …
The state legislature has approved three bills of interest to California’s occupational safety and health community, and they are now awaiting the governor’s action. The foremost of these bills is SB 20 (Senator Caroline Menjivar, D-Van Nuys), aimed at addressing the silicosis crisis in the engineered stone industry. SB 20 no longer would create a …