#WorkforceWednesday: OSHA Issues COVID-19 Citations, Michigan Enacts Liability Shield, and States Battle for Telecommuter Taxes - Employment Law This Week®
A recent federal appeals court ruling illustrates the risks of “single-employer” liability for OSHA citations for common business arrangements today. These involve separate companies that perform different functions but share...more
After an employer has received a citation from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the informal conference process offers a path for potential settlement of the dispute. The informal conference can result in...more
Even the most experienced employers are sure to have questions from time to time about the nation’s workplace safety agency – the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). That’s where we come in. The Fisher...more
Year in and year out, the same 5 standards tend to be cited the most frequently in general industry inspections. While their placement in the Top 5 may vary from time to time, Lockout/Tagout, Hazard Communication, Respiratory...more
This is the eleventh installment in a series of articles intended to provide the reader with a very high-level overview of the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act of 1970 and the Occupational Safety and Health...more
A judge just dismissed a safety claim being prosecuted by North Carolina workplace safety officials after it was revealed at trial that NC OSHA inspectors had been shredding handwritten notes and other documents from their...more
Employers will face higher penalties for workplace safety violations in 2025 now that the U.S. Department of Labor has just published its listing of annual increases. These yearly increases to OSHA’s maximum civil penalties...more
Following another close national election, President Trump returns to the White House for a second term, and resumes control over the vast Executive Branch bureaucracy, including the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety...more
Many employers have a false notion that OSHA cannot issue a citation if there is no specific standard violated. The reality is, however, that OSHA has a catchall/gap filler provision that allows it to cite an employer...more
OSHA has a time limit on issuing citations. It must issue a citation within six months of the occurrence of any violation. The only exception to this rule is where the employer has concealed the violative condition or misled...more
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) citations are generally issued to employers at the closing of, or after, an inspection by an OSHA compliance officer. An OSHA citation is not a one-pager. Instead, OSHA’s...more
OSHA has released its “Top Ten” list of the most cited safety violations of last year. The largest number of violations were observed in the Construction Industry. The Top Ten include...more
With maximum limits for Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) penalties increasing every year, knowing what to do when OSHA arrives at your door is more important than ever. That’s why we’re releasing this...more
With maximum limits for Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) penalties increasing every year – currently over $15,000 for serious/other than serious citations and more than $150,000 for a repeat and willful –...more
When Fisher Phillips attorneys recently secured a key victory over a state OSHA plan that was improperly trying to create a quota system to encourage investigators to issue citations and assess penalties, it opened the door...more
On April 14, 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States opened the door for new challenges to the federal administrative state. In a unanimous decision in a pair of consolidated cases, Axon Enterprise, Inc. v. Federal Trade...more
The U.S. Department of Labor has announced that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has initiated a National Emphasis Program (NEP) to prevent falls in the workplace, which OSHA states is the leading...more
Ogletree Deakins recently launched its OSHA Tracker, which compiles and filters inspection and citation data by Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) region, state, city, industry, and date. Employers in Region...more
Workers’ Compensation law is a double-edged sword. While employers cannot avoid Comp liability based on the employee’s negligent behavior, the injured employee cannot sue the employer outside of the Comp system for damages...more
“There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics” has famously been attributed to Mark Twain, who himself attributed it to British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. Data, however, never lies....more
Ogletree Deakins’ OSHA Tracker shows that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) conducted 988 inspections in Nevada in 2022, of which 2.5 percent resulted in citations. Reno, with twenty-seven citations,...more
Welcome to FP Snapshot on Manufacturing Industry, where we take a quick snapshot look at the most significant workplace law developments over the past month with an emphasis on how they impact manufacturers. This edition is...more
At the end of March, a new OSHA policy will go into effect expanding penalties for instance-by-instance (IBI) citations. The move signals OSHA’s stated commitment to increased enforcement in 2023 and beyond....more