If you've got OSHA knocking on your door, what's your first thought?
Would you be ready for them or would you fear getting fined?
Do you have cranes in the proper condition?
What about your tracking system or your fall protection?
This is the first of a series we're calling the OSHA inspection series,
where we'll be diving deep into OSHA regulations and how to maintain
a safe workplace within the industries Mazzella Companies specializes.
Throughout these episodes will be covering fall protection
training, rigging cranes and warehouse racking.
So let's get into it.
Welcome back to the lifting and rigging channel.
My name is Kay,
and today we'll be covering the penalties of an OSHA violation
who is responsible for a violation and how the violation can be resolved.
We sat down with Kevin Paul, Mazzella Companies director of Safety,
to explain the importance of OSHA.
00:00:57:05 - 00:01:00:12 So OSHA, the Occupational Safety
and Health Administration.
They were founded because there was a lot of incidents injuries, illnesses
in the workplaces, and there wasn't a best practice for companies to follow.
So OSHA kind of adopted these processes and procedures.
I like to think of it as the Bible of a successful workplace.
So they've done a lot of the due diligence in the background
based on industry trends or past history.
If OSHA's not an expert on the topic, they'll defer
to some of the industry experts.
So you might have ASME, you might have the
NFPA you might have
these other outside agencies or associations that this is what they do.
This is what they know.
This is what they develop all their time and commitment to
OSHA's not going to say, let's try and reinvent that.
It's just, we'll adopt their best practice,
and that's what we expect companies to implement and maintain.
A lot of times OSHA and others other regulatory agencies get a bad rap.
Companies want to put up defense measures.
But if you stop and you really think why
they're trying to do what they're doing, it's to help
send everybody home in the same condition that they arrived to work in.
OSHA's mission statement with the Occupational Safety
and Health Act of 1970, Congress created the Occupational Safety
and Health Administration to ensure safe and healthful working conditions
for workers by setting and enforcing standards
and by providing training, outreach, education and assistance.
OSHA might field a complaint.
Somebody could write a letter.
They could call in a number, and OSHA's going to see does it have validity to it?
So they're going to reach out to the company by means of either a phone call and email,
some kind of communication and say, Hey, here's what we heard.
Tell us if this is true or not.
If it's not, share evidence or proof,
that it's corrected or it's abated, or it's not an issue.
OSHA might use a database of companies
and say, Hey, we're going to go randomly to this spot today
and they'll pop in and they'll want to make sure
that they have a chance
to look at the environment or there's the points of emphasis programs.
If OSHA sees a history of forklift related incidents, they might focus in
and say, Hey, let's do more forklift specific inspections.
There's also any time there's a significant incident or injury or illness
that by might be means for OSHA to come on site and they'll want to help with
the investigation and again, make sure we don't have any repeat incidents.
They want to make sure the environment is safe.
There's a reason for why it happened and we know what's going to take
to get it corrected, so it doesn't happen again.
When they walk in the door,
they're going to have a sit down and say, Hey, here's why we're here
and then work with them to say, Yeah,
all right, well, here's what we'll look at together.
Is this what you're looking for?
After an inspection is done a lot of times OSHA will submit their report with you.
And as they're doing the inspection with you,
you're going to have a closing conference with them and you're going to sit down
and understand like, Hey, here's what we saw.
Here's what you guys saw.
Get to the root cause and they're going to say,
All right, you have so many days
to make sure this is abated when they issue a citation.
It could be just a notification of penalty.
It could be a dollar amount associated with it.
Employers must post OSHA citations.
The OSHA citation contains the standard or standards that were violated,
the length of time set for the correction
and proposed penalties the employer will be obligated to pay.
A copy of each citation must be placed at or near the places
where the violation or violations occurred for three days
or until the violation is fixed, whichever is longer.
Employers must inform workers of what they have done
to resolve the violation tag equipment that has been cited.
Allow workers to examine and copy the abatement documents.
OSHA penalties are based on violation
types and are adjusted each year for inflation.
Here are the current maximum penalty amounts
for serious other than serious posting requirements.
For failure to abate for willful or repeated violations.
Not everything is going to be able to be taken care of immediately.
There's a lot of planning and investment and sometimes additional
training or effort needed to get this properly abated.
OSHA, for example, it has great programs available to companies,
so they'll come out
and you can enroll in some of these VPP or these SHARP programs
to where they'll work with the company and they'll say, here's
what we're going to do to get you up to where we need you.
Other avenues of help would be like your insurance company so you can lean on them.
They have a lot of training or processes or procedures in place
that they can share with you and help mitigate the risk.
There's state and local municipalities, bureau of workers comp.
They're a great resource where they have a lot of free information
training available, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel.
It's hey, here's a best practice solution.
Let's make it work for you guys.
Here's what we need to do to get it in place.
So there's a lot of those.
There's third party consultants, there's a company like ourselves
who are specific industry experts with certain niches.
There's a variety of tools out there, just you want to make sure
you pick the right ones, depending on what your need is.
Safety is everybody's responsibility, I mean, ultimately, it comes down to you
making sure you're working safe and yeah, we want this -
it's going to start from the top the CEO is going to say
this is my stance or this is our stance and this is what we expect.
These are our requirements.
Foremost, though you've got to take ownership.
You've got to be accountable.
If something's not right, you've got to raise your hand,
you've got to stop work, you've got to get clarity
or get managers or coworkers involved if help is needed.
So one of the things that
we're really trying to drive home is the Stop Work Authority, which
every employee possesses and we expect them to use.
If you ever come across a situation that's unsafe, you stop,
you raise your hand, you say, Hey, I got questions, I need to get clarity
from my supervisor, from myself or whoever that person might be.
We want you to stop the job and get clarity before proceeding.
It's all about continuous improvement.
But again, we want to make sure everybody has that
buy-in and that drive to improve.
Are you looking for more information on how to be OSHA compliant?
Stay tuned for more episodes on the OSHA inspection series.
Can't wait until then?
Check out the article on how OSHA defines a competent, qualified,
designated and certified person. Link down below.
Ultimately, OSHA's goal is to make sure that you're working in a safe
and healthful workplace.
They're not out to get you or to trip you up.
They just want to make sure that you're doing your part
to keep safety at the front of your mind every day on the job.
Don't forget to like subscribe and leave us a comment if you have any questions
or just want to say hi once again, my name is Kay and I'll see you later.