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What Do We Do Now?! How to Handle an OSHA Inspection
Foreign device manufacturers should anticipate greater chance of FDA inspection under new FDA leadership
On April 1, 2024, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) published its final rule clarifying that employees may designate a non-employee third party as their representative during an OSHA inspection. ...more
It’s hard to keep up with all the recent changes to labor and employment law, especially since the law always seems to evolve at a rapid pace. In order to ensure you stay on top of the latest changes and have an action plan...more
Federal safety officials have just made good on one of their promises by issuing a proposed rule that would give a designated union representative the right to accompany an OSHA inspector during a facility walkaround —...more
In February 2013, during the early months of the second term of the Obama administration, a standard interpretation related to Occupational Safety and Health Act regulations at 29 C.F.R. § 1903.8(c) that later became known as...more
On January 31, 2022, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held in Doe v. Scalia that once the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has completed enforcement proceedings, an employee may not...more
Late on January 26, 2023, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued a press release concerning a significant change in long-standing policy related to instance-by-instance issuance of citations that will...more
It’s hard to keep up with all the recent changes to labor and employment law. While the law always seems to evolve at a rapid pace, there have been an unprecedented number of changes for the past few years—and this past month...more
Just because you aren’t a large employer in the construction or manufacturing field, 2022 may be shaping up as the year that you get visited by a federal workplace safety inspector. That’s according to the nation’s first OSHA...more
A recent move by the federal workplace safety watchdog agency means that you should prepare for more COVID-19-related OSHA inspections this spring and summer. On March 12, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration...more
In Canada Post Corp. v. Canadian Union of Postal Workers, 2019 SCC 67, one of the last decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada (“SCC”) in 2019, the court clarified the extent of a federally-regulated employer’s inspection...more
On November 26, 2018, the Fifth Circuit released its opinion in Acosta v. Hensel Phelps Construction Co., which held that despite prior rulings to the contrary, OSHA is authorized to issue citations against contractors for...more
Thank you to Jonathan Schaefer for this post. Jon is an attorney in our Environmental, Energy & Telecommunications Practice Group and his practice focuses on environmental compliance counseling, occupational health and...more
On October 9, 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed a district court decision to limit the scope of an inspection sought by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). In this...more
Occupational Safety and Health Administration workplace inspections are often triggered by an employee injury or complaint. In such circumstances, OSHA rules only permit the inspector to investigate the workplace safety...more
Oct. 9, 2018 We've waited for over a year to learn if the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals would uphold an earlier court decision saying that OSHA could not expand an injury-based inspection by arguing that injury records and an...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: A railcar cleaning company and its executive officers were recently charged in a 22-count indictment with conspiracy, violating worker safety standards resulting in worker deaths, violating the Resource...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: Industry has sued to block OSHA’s efforts to give unions increased access to non-union worksites. We had blogged previously about OSHA’s new standard interpretation guidance letter that would allow...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: In this recent case a Federal Magistrate Judge finds that OSHA has gone too far in expanding an incident inspection into a wall-to-wall inspection. A District Court Magistrate Judge recently...more
On March 4, 2016, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued new procedures for enforcing revised injury and illness reporting requirements in 29 C.F.R. § 1904.39. Many of the 2014 interim procedures...more
2015 brought more changes to the OSHA enforcement landscape than we’ve seen in the last 30 years. A judge’s ruling in December that Fed-OSHA could seek abatement of alleged hazards at every location operated by an...more
OSHA inspections are usually site-specific, meaning that the agency’s authority to issue penalties and to seek abatement of workplace hazards applies to the workplace actually inspected. Last month, a federal Administrative...more
In EEOC v. Vicksburg Healthcare, LLC, No. 13-CV-895 (S.D. Miss. Apr. 22, 2015), Magistrate Judge Michael T. Parker of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi denied the EEOC’s request to be allowed to...more
Many articles on handling OSHA inspections provide the same basic guidelines and little explanation of why employers should take certain steps. You already know to take photos whenever the Compliance Officer (CO) takes shots...more