No penalty is a good penalty, but many Department of Labor fines just got worse – including those that can be assessed against mine operators. The agency just published a final rule that increases the maximum civil penalties that federal agencies can assess against employers, in accordance with a federal law that mandates automatic increases based upon inflation. And penalties issued by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) did not escape this increase.

List of Increases

Any violation of the Mine Act or MSHA regulations that the agency assesses on or after January 15 will be calculated using these increased amounts. For MSHA, the increase affects all maximum penalties and some minimum penalties.

Effective immediately, penalties are as follows:

Remember that MSHA applies the penalty increase based upon the date that it assesses the penalty, and not when it issues the penalties.