OSHA Update Show: January 25, 2021
Safety Consultant with Sheldon Primus
OSHA Update Show: January 25, 2021
January 25, 2021
In this week's episode, Sheldon goes over the Executive Order by President Biden to have OSHA respond to the COVID-19 pandamic. Also, he goes over the OSHA recordkeeping electronic reporting requirement and the new increased penalties.
Keywords: 
OSHA, Compliance, Joe Biden Jr., Kamala Harris, Vice President Harris, President Biden, Former President Trump, Trump, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Obama, MSHA, DEA, Agriculture, Sheldon, Primus, Sheldon Primus, EHS, Safety and Health, COVID-19, Health, Industrial Hygiene, meat packing, OSHA Recordkeeping, 300a log, OSHA electronic recordkeeping, OSHA penalties, Inflation, Willful Violations, Repeat Violations, Serious Violations, Obama, Safety Culture, HOP, BBS, Safety First, Safety Differently, Safety FM, Jay Allen, Safety Consultant TV, Roku, Apple TV, Android TV, App Store, Firestick, Amazon Fire TV, Resources


[00:00:00] :  this'll episode is powered by Safety FM. Welcome to an episode of the safety consultant Podcast. I'm your host, Sheldon privates. Here's the podcast where I teach you the business of being a safety consultant. This'll week we're gonna do the OSHA update for January 21 for January 2000 and 21. Today is actually the 25th in doing this. The day of some planning Children, right? A little bit busy last week, so I'm actually going to go over some of the things with the OSHA, uh, website that I see and then some things that has come out as an executive order. So therefore, we're going to do a comprehensive ocean update for things that are gonna happen, like, right now. All right, so I am actually not going to do a sponsor because I want to get this thing out like today. So it's a day of so I'm gonna go straight into the episode, So it's just gonna be me and you with this one. Eso Let's go ahead and do this. Alright. If you're not driving, I need you to goto OSHA dot gov If you are driving, you cannot go to OSHA dot gov because you're driving. So what you're gonna do is, if you're not driving, you're gonna goto OSHA dot gov And let's start with the simple things. So first, one of the simple things that we're going to start with is the up. The price has gone up with the penalties. So in 2015, Congress passed the federal Civil Penalty Inflation Adjustment Act Improvement Act. Not too sure how they had that double act, but they've been doing that lately. So that federal penalty act basically, it catches up with the penalty cost per inflation. So therefore, when inflation goes up, this cost will go up. And when I say penalties, meaning OSHA cited you, therefore there's going to be a penalty that you're gonna have to pay for this particular citation and OSHA's penalty page. We'll tell you that the limits for the maximum that you could get fined for willful on repeat violations and serious and olive and serious. That's where you're going to see this. So the other than serious and serious. The increase was from 13,000 494 to 13,653 to the same increase of inflation is the same increase that this penalty has gotten willful and repeat violations will increase from 134,000 $937 to 136,000 532. So that is Theo increase. And, uh, let me give you that penalty page if you get OSHA gov back slash penalties. That's where you're going to see this. So that is the penalty page OSHA dot gov back slash penalties. And that's where you're going to see the charts. So the violation types or serious other than serious. And if you have a posting requirement that you did not do you know you didn't post the has come? Uh, you know something with that or you didn't post for, um, let's say it's your 300 log or something similar. 300 A. You don't wanna post your 300 thin 13,653 per violation, so that means a firm. If it's a record keeping one and you didn't post your 300 a. Your firm could have many establishments, so that means if they're going to throw the book at you, It could be $13,653 per establishment. Failure to abate You didn't fix the problem. 13,653 per day beyond the abatement date. So if you're supposed to get something worked out, OSHA came. They gave you a citation. You gone through the final closing conference and you know what you're supposed to do that gave you an abatement date in that letter that they issued your citation. Then you go beyond that. Mhm. This is the cost per day $13,653 per day that you could be charged for that infraction, willful and repeat violation per violation again, Is that 136,532 per violation? So if you're, let's say residential rougher and you've already been cited before for your workers not having full protection, it's a repeat violation. You've done this and no, she knows that you should know better, s So therefore, chances are if you got a five man team on that roof, the 501 regulation for 1926 501 says that each person should have a duty for fall protection. Basically, each is going to be the violation. So those six guys on the roof came each carry 136,532 for a repeat or a willful violation. So therefore, you want to take care of that. That's going to get expensive real quick, bankrupt the business. So that's one of the easy ones. Let's go over another one. That's coming. This is a pending date. OSHA right now is starting to get all the information that they need for the record keeping. I've been speaking about this with my, uh, Tuesday and Thursday on my LinkedIn and Facebook. Even my YouTube channels, I do a OSHA compliance help show. So in that OSHA compliance help show, I have been talking about getting ready for your actual record keeping that you're gonna have to do so. OSHA record keeping for injuries and illnesses. Excuse me? It has to be Elektronik if you have a business over 250 or more. And actually you you hit the record keeping criteria because if you still are exempt from recordkeeping, you're gonna be exempt from. This is well but If you are in the record keeping criteria, then therefore you're actually going to end up having to do this is well, where 250 or more employees. You're gonna end up having to keep records if you're a smaller company. Thio 20 to 249 employees. You have only have to be in certain historically high rates. Uh, industry and high rate for OSHA is usually you're days away. Restricted transfer rate. So an injury rate, Uh, this one is a little bit harder as a u r l to tell you, but I will anyway. OSHA dot gov back slash recording Excuse me. Record keeping so OSHA dot com gov backslash record keeping slash N A I. C s hyphen codes hyphen Elektronik hyphen Submission OSHA dot gov Backslash record keeping back slash M ai C. S for North American industrial classifications system backslash codes back slash Elektronik backslash submission. So if you go there, you're going to see the list of industries that OSHA says these air high hazard industries. If you are on this list and you're any I C. S code falls on this list, you have to keep records of injury and illness is from 20 to 249,000. Excuse me. Oh, my goodness. I mean, not a cup of coffee from 20 people. 202 149 people. Man, once you get to your 250th in, you're gonna automatically have to keep records because of your size. Unless you're one of the exempt companies. So that is the record keeping, uh, there's a due date to this. So OSHA is receiving this data right now on the injury tracking application. You just goto OSHA gov and back slash injury reporting. And it's got a lot of this information. I just went over. You wanna launch the injury tracking application and do that, uh, and put all your data in there. And the deadline for this one is going to be, um, March 2nd. So right now, OSHA's is taking the information, and you have to have all your establishments in by March 2nd. All right, let's do the hard one. This one is actually coming from the White House. So newly minted President Joseph R. Biden, he has done a bunch of executive orders. Most of them are turning over what was things that were done in the Trump administration, which, you know, when Trump became president, he did the same thing for Obama. You know where he did a bunch of executive orders to overrule the Obama administration stuff. So here we go. There's executive order here. This one is going to directly influence Ocean because it is an executive order entitled Executive Order on Protecting Worker Health and Safety. So this is directed to the Occupational Safety and Health. It's broken up into four sections, and I'm going to give you the heading in the meat of each section. It's actually not too long. Let me read it. I don't know. It depends on how I'm feeling. Section one is policy. So in the beginning of the policy section, it just really talks about the coronavirus and how there's been a lot of effect in the brown and the black community. So therefore, the meat of this one is It's going to require OSHA to do science based guidance to keep workers safe from covert 19 exposure, including with respects to mask wearing partnering with state and local governments to better protect public employees, ensure worker and health safety requirements. And pushing for additional resource is to help employers protect their employees. So therefore, now the government federal government has jurisdiction over some states with a private sector. When, like me, I live in Florida. So therefore, in Florida, we have federal OSHA that is in control of private. However, federal OSHA does not have jurisdiction over the public sector. So therefore, cities counties, their employees or not under OSHA, so OSHA this guidance wouldn't go for them. However, state plan states they cover the public sector workers. So therefore, this executive order is going to reach out to the state plans to protect the public sector workers in respect to mask wearing too. So that's Ah, that's a big one. Section two, protecting workers from Cove in 19 under Occupational Safety and Health Act. So now what's being said here is it's up to OSHA through the ninth the Act of 1970 to protect his workers. So therefore, this is going to be specific guidance that federal OSHA is gonna have to do once federal OSHA does this. State plans must adopt any rules from federal OSHA within six months, so therefore we're probably going to see this second section of this executive order really make a move for OSHA. So it's broken up into paragraphs. A is within two weeks of the date of this, uh, executive order OSHA is going to have to and I'm going to read this verbatim issue within two weeks of the data disorder and in conjunction or consultation with the heads of any other appropriate executive departments and agencies revised guidance to employers on workplace safety during the covert 19 pandemic. So now oh, she's gonna have to do a guidance. They've been leaving up to the States, and they've been doing some sort of, um, non mandatory guidance. So right now it's looking like, Oh, she's gonna have to do some sort of again a federal guidance on this. It's not saying it's gonna be regulation yet. In this part, the date in question is January 21st 2021. That's when this executive order was issued. So with the executive order being issued, then that means that the two week clock is already ticking. Paragraph B of this is they could've order says Consider whether an emergency temporary standard on covert 19, including with respect to mask in the workplace are necessary. And if such standards are determined to be necessary, issue them by March 15th 2021. I could tell you now it's going to be necessary, so therefore you should see some sort of temporary standard emergency standard by March 2021 March 15th. Excuse me. The reason why I say it's gonna be necessary is because if their states already making these provisions on their own as emergency standards Virginia, Minnesota, California there's other states that they're doing this federal OSHA. At this point, it's gonna be hard for them to say that if the's individual states feel like it's it's executive type thing or emergency standard, how can we in a federal side say you don't need to sing eso? It's going to become harder for them because of their peers and actually their subordinates. More than the peers. Their subordinate organizations in the state plan are doing it already, and our shared numbers in the states is so high that it is going to mandate that what they're gonna do is we're gonna look at things like outbreaks in meatpacking or outbreaks such as, uh, that you would see where there is a closeness of people in manufacturing. That's probably how they're gonna work that thing out. Just thio do their numbers for their numbers sake. And if there's a great enough, uh, potential or a great enough caseload, then that's also going to be part of the justification letter. See on this one. Review the enforcement efforts of out of OSHA related to Kovar 19 and identify any short, medium and long term changes that could make uh, that could be made to better protect and ensure equity in enforcement. So now OSHA's gonna really look through what they've done in the past. The most of the enforcement have been recordkeeping enforcement's, and it's been in the health care. So in this in this executive order, they're going to have to look at what have they done so far with any kind of enforcement efforts with has been, in my opinion, pitiful. It's really been pitiful. They're touting on the website, you know, $3 million worth of fines, but then when you look at the complaints, you know there's so many complaints with employees saying, Hey, they're not doing what they're supposed to hear. OSHA should be out there finding Mawr and more people. It should easily be in the same range as 502 or five and one for fall protection, which is very highly cited and dollar figures air going up crazy for that one. This should be in that same range. You should be looking at no less than 20 to $30 million. That should have been sighted already. The next thing that we're looking for is launch and National Program to focus OSHA enforcement efforts related to cover 19 on violations that put the largest number of workers at risk or are contrary to anti retaliation retaliation. Principals meeting people that were, uh, people that were punished for calling OSHA about what happened. And that's the 11 c violation rule whistleblower cases. So Rocha is gonna have to oh, she's gonna have to launch launch on program to focus on those enforcement efforts and then, for we're still in Section two E in Section two. You're saying that oh, she's going to need to coordinate with other offices just to make sure, including labor unions and community organizations and everything to make sure that everyone's voice is heard as they're putting in these rules and regulations. So that's a good thing. You really want to see that? You wanna make sure that oh, she is not doing it myopically on Lee through the Onley through the resource is they have in house. They'll be nice if they could reach outside of what they have in house cut to Some community leaders talked to some unions and other civic groups make sure that their concerns are going to be reflected in a new emergency standard. Section three. Protecting other categories of workers from Covad 19. So Section three's got, ah, couple things that they really want to make sure and one says, coordinate with states to have occupational safety and health plans approved under Section 18, uh, to ensure workers covered by such plans are adequately protected from Kovar 19, consistent with any revised guidance or emergency temporary standard issue by OSHA. So therefore, they're looking at their state programs. You want to make sure the state plan programs they're gonna be taken care off Now the thing that they say in here, in the States that do not have such plans consult with state and local government entities, which responsible, which, with responsibilities for public employees, uh, safety and health with public employee unions to bolster protection from covert 19 for public sector workers. So this is exactly what I just explained about Florida where I am. This is just one example, but basically half of the states have a private sector. Onley covering talent plan, which is a federal government, only covers the private, the public. Excuse me, private sector and then the other half of the states have state plans, and that's where public and private are protected. So in those states like Florida that do not have ah state OSHA plan Thisted directive is saying that federal ocean now needs to reach out to the counties in the cities and labor unions that represent the public sector so that those workers aren't for gotten. This is new and unique. I haven't seen OSHA do this before, so it's telling me that with the right angle, you might actually start seeing s, um or push tohave states all states think more about becoming a state planned state. Let's put it that way. And so I really believe that that's possible, especially because of this here e love it tell you the truth, E. Would I really think that the the act itself needs to be amended to include public sector? I think it's high time for that act to be amended. We shouldn't have just private and public private Onley for Federal Ocean. I think it should be both. All right, so now there's a couple of things that are still related to this section. C. One is the president is looking for coordination between all the departments that have workers in its such as agriculture, labor, health and human sciences, transportation, energy. They wanna He wants to see ah, coordination between all those agencies to come up with some sort of comprehensive protection plan for workers specifically. And then C is for Empta, the mining agency, to say I'm sure you may need to come up with something to we need you to start considering this and look into what the standards gonna look like. And that's all In section three. Section four is general provisions, and that's just really saying, Hey, this law is intended to mess with any other things that needs to keep going, like the Office of Management and Budget and ah few other things, so it's just some legalese that they need to throw in at the end of this. So this was signed. Joseph R. Biden Jr. White House, January 21st 2021. That means this is going to be in effect very, very shortly. Two weeks. I would look out for that. So I would also say, if you personally in your organization or your consulting people, you should bring this thing up to them, send them a link to this. Let them know that they're going to really have to think long and hard about what they're doing with Covert 19 because it's probably going to be a big change soon if they're resistant to mask wearing in the organization they might be mandated to. So they should just go ahead and be proactive on this one. All right, So for my purposes, I'm gonna call this one done. I didn't go nuts with with the OSHA regulations. I just wanted to really give you a nice little quick update of what's happening. There's a lot of changes. I might end up having to do this more than quarterly, like e normally do, because OSHA is a big driver for actual consulting. So if you have not thought about being consultant, this might be the actual time to do it. So I would say, Really start looking for that. 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