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, …
The delayed data from the 2024 Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries has finally been released. It shows 419 workplace deaths in California, a 5% drop from 439 in 2023. But when you remove the 30 fatalities attributable to “intentional self-harm,” versus the same adjusted figure from 2023, something curious is revealed. The 2024 purely work-related …
California’s employers will see a more than 200% increase in workers’ comp premium assessments for the Occupational Safety and Health Fund. Other funds subject to assessments also show increasing costs during the new fiscal year. The OSH Fund was established by law in 2008 to stabilize Cal/OSHA’s funding and provides the lion’s share of state …
California’s Commission on Health, Safety, and Workers’ Compensation (CHSWC) is trying again to get a usable study to assess the cancer risks faced by those who clean and maintain firefighting vehicles. The Commission recently approved a study proposal after hearing a presentation by the UCLA Labor Occupational Safety and Health (LOSH) program outlining its plans …
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 …
A review of Cal/OSHA enforcement by the California State Auditor (CSA) cites continuing staffing shortages and “lax management of its policies and procedures” – and sometimes the P&Ps themselves – for several deficiencies it identified after inspecting selected case files. Audits of state agencies are a more/less routine function of the CSA. The audit was …
A multimillion-dollar project to automate Cal/OSHA’s information handling capabilities is about to enter its next stage – construction – officials of the Department of Industrial Relations said at the recent Cal/OSHA Advisory Committee meeting. The committee also heard about the Division’s plans for heat illness education and enforcement, its hiring progress, and updates from several …