OSHA watch
Two REPs will target the transportation tank cleaning industry and confined spaces
In the Midwest a regional emphasis program (REP) will target the transportation tank cleaning industry and a REP in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana will target similar industries focusing on confined space hazards. The Midwest program will begin with a three-month educational outreach and then inspect targeted industries in Illinois, Ohio, and Wisconsin and those under federal jurisdiction in Indiana, Michigan, and Minnesota. The program follows investigations of 23 Chicago-area worker deaths and 97 incidents in the transportation and tank cleaning industries since 2016.
The program in the south is designed to raise awareness among employers typically engaged in tank cleaning activities, including trucking, rail and road transportation, remediation services, material recovery, and waste management services.
New small business handbook
The Small Business Safety and Health Handbook highlights the benefits of implementing an effective safety and health program, provides self-inspection checklists for employers to identify workplace hazards, and workplace safety and health resources for small businesses.
New QuickCard - Understanding your role as a shipyard competent person
New hazard alert - Soybean soapstock storage tank explosion
The alert describes a 2015 soybean soapstock storage tank explosion that killed a welder installing a catwalk on top of the tank and the corrective measures that should have been taken.
New whistleblower webpage
A new webpage consolidates all whistleblower protection laws enforced by the Department of Labor.
First egregious citation issued under Biden administration
The agency fined "serial violator" Atlantic Coast Utilities LLC/Advanced Utilities Inc., $1.3 million for the deaths of two workers at a dig site in Boston after a dump truck struck and pushed them into a nine-foot-deep trench. It did so under its egregious citation policy, which allows the agency to propose a separate penalty for each instance of a violation.
Criminal charges and conviction follow OSHA investigation
A Colorado state court has sentenced Bryan Johnson, owner of ContractOne Inc., an Avon construction company, to 10 months in jail for two counts of reckless endangerment and one count of third-degree assault and ordered restitution for the family of a 50-year-old company worker who suffered fatal injuries in a preventable trench collapse at a Granby worksite in June 2018.
Cal-OSHA
The Division of Occupational Safety and Health has endorsed updated guidance from the Department of Public Health advising employers and employees to wear masks indoors, regardless of vaccination status, as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations continue to surge across the state.
MIOSHA
Michigan OSHA is strongly encouraging employers to follow recently updated CDC guidelines due to the Delta variant of COVID-19.
Recent fines and awards
Florida
- Trenton-based Blac Investments Inc., operating as Tri County Metal, was found to have removed protective guards from a machine because the guards caused imperfections to newly manufactured roofing panels. As a result, a 21-year-old machine operator suffered a partial hand amputation. Propose penalties are $122,879.
- Following the electrocution of an employee, United Signs & Signals Inc., operating as US&S in Tavares, was cited with two willful violations for exposing workers to electrical-shock hazards by failing to de-energize or guard circuits and exposing workers to cave-in hazards by neglecting to ensure the use of protective measures. It faces $237,566 in penalties for these and other violations, including failing to ensure workers had a safe means to exit excavations and allowing employees to work in a trench with accumulated water.
Georgia
- A follow-up inspection of the TAV Holdings Inc, a Greenville recycling center that was the site of a fatal accident in 2019, identified repeat violations, including failing to ensure workers completed training before operating telescoping forklifts and failing to examine the forklifts before placing them in service as well as eight serious violations. Proposed penalties are $112,212.
- FBS Manufacturing Corp., operating as Kitchen & Bath Solutions, of Marietta was cited for willfully failing to ensure that employees used fall protection as required after the death of a 55-year-old worker who fell 15 feet onto a concrete floor while attempting to move cabinets from metal storage racks onto his forklift's pallet. In addition to the willful violation, five serious violations were issued, with penalties totaling $167,933.
Illinois
- Topflight Grain Cooperative Inc., a grain-handling cooperative, faces over $303,000 in penalties for exposing workers to serious engulfment hazards when soybeans collapsed inside a Monticello bin and engulfed an employee. The company was cited with three willful, one serious, and one other-than-serious safety grain handling violations.
Massachusetts
- Atlantic Coast Utilities LLC/Advanced Utilities Inc., a Wayland trenching, excavation, and underground construction contractor was cited for 28 willful, repeat, serious, and other-than-serious violations following the death of two workers at a dig site in Boston after a dump truck struck and pushed them into a nine-foot-deep trench. Given the severity and nature of the recent hazards, and the company's and its predecessor company's history of violations, the egregious citation policy was exercised. This allows the agency to propose a separate penalty for each instance of a violation, totaling $1,350,884.
New Jersey
- Lakewood Resource and Referral Center, a medical facility, and temporary staffing agency, Homecare Therapies, which does business as Horizon Healthcare Staffing, were cited for failing to ensure the safety and health of nurses giving flu shots and COVID-19 tests. Lakewood faces penalties of over $273,000 for two willful violations for failing to provide medical evaluations to determine employees' ability to use respirators before requiring their use and failing to fit test staff for the equipment. The staffing agency was cited with two serious citations with $13,653 in proposed penalties.
- The facilities operator, AMA Health Holdings LLC, of transitional housing facility, Seaside Guest Services in Tinton Falls, was cited with two citations for failing to develop and implement effective measures to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and not recording each work-related illness. Proposed penalties are $10,923.