With OSHA’s near-80 percent fine increase going into effect August 1, and its more rigorous inspections process, it could be even more crippling to try to stay up to code. Until very recently, a serious OSHA violation penalty stood at $7,000.
New rules now in effect have increased the fine to $12,600. When it comes to willful and repeat violations, penalties have gone up from $70,000 to $126,000 per violation. For small or medium sized business, it could spell the end.
6 comments:
It’s no surprise that OSHA is increasing its fines. With the increase in technology and dependence on more dangerous equipment, the stakes are very high. One violation could result in massive casualties. So it makes sense that as the safety stakes increase, so does a violation fine. This article gives some really solid advice for how to avoid increased OSHA fines: don’t get fined. The whole point to a large fine is to increase incentive to not get fined in the first place. I especially liked that the first piece of advice in the article was about giving your employees a system through which they can report safety violations. A lot of the time, management might try to make excuses about their unsafe conditions, using “We didn’t know” as an excuse. But it is everyone’s responsibility to take workplace safety seriously. Creating a culture where people feel ok talking about potential safety hazards is essential to maintaining a safe environment. This, in addition to using updated technology to electronically track your OSHA requirements, means any company can avoid getting fined in the first place.
I’m not surprised that OSHA’s fines are increasing, either. It’s impossible for OSHA to effectively monitor the safety of all American workplaces because of the sheer number of them and because it has to rely on employees reporting unsafe conditions or, worse still, following up after people have already been injured. The only way to force more workplaces to comply, when it’s impossible to inspect them all, is to give the regulations real teeth. People have to be afraid enough of the potential consequences that they just can’t risk being out of compliance.
Tangentially: It seems right that allowing your staff to work in an unsafe environment should “put businesses in danger of losing their financial footing.” I know it can be difficult for smaller businesses to keep up with regulations, but shouldn’t safety be considered one of the costs of business… and if you can’t keep up, perhaps your business isn’t viable?
From the standpoint of a business, fines that could run your business into the ground probably seem very intimidating. But from an employee’s point of view, they’re a big protection. It’s unacceptable for a business to skirt safety and put their employees at risk. If a business can’t afford to do something the correct/safe way, then they should not do it. Period. Having a system that empowers employees to report safety concerns is crucial. Because of the inherent power dynamic in most work places, employees may not be comfortable reporting a possible costly problem to management. It is crucial to either make employees feel comfortable to do so, give them an anonymous means of reporting, or (in my opinion the best option) give them a middle-man to speak to who can advocate for safety. Having worked at both places with and without clear protocol for reporting safety issues and work-cultures that were or were-not safety oriented, working in a pro-safety environment is a much better experience. I think the author’s suggestion to incorporate web-based platforms for keeping track of company and OSHA regulation information is a good one, because it makes info easily accessible to employees.
At first I was mildly turned off by the tone if this article because the author seems to make allusions to siding with business and basically how being unsafe means a business might have to pay a fine and that could mean the end for some businesses. But isn't that okay? Do we really want companies who make blatant and obvious safety violations to stay in business? What does that say about our ranking and value of human life to business success? Having had a recent OSHA reporting experience myself, I think that fines could be even higher and inspections for complaints should be mandatory in almost every situation. Right now OSHA has no teeth, it's basically a loud toddler with no real impact to safety. Hopefully these steps will bring OSHA to a more powerful and mature standing, where business focus on worker safety in fear of an OSHA smack down.
Although I understand how these increased fines could potentially hurt smaller theatre companies, I think that it's definitely a good thing that OSHA has increased their fines. Health and safety should always be the number one priority no matter what, and I feel like in theatre we often forget that. There is this prevalent and extremely dangerous attitude that we should have to "suffer for our art" which is just fundamentally untrue. You see it both on crew assignments and in people's private work habits, and it has affected me in the past. I remember last year on load out for a mainstage we were moving a large piece of scenery and it snapped and fell down on top of my friend and I. Our instinct was to try and catch it because we were so afraid of being wrong. Luckily one of the TD's caught it and told us "we can always rebuild more scenery, but we can't rebuild you guys". Those words have really stuck with me, and now I always put my own safety first before hastily getting a job done. Hopefully these increased fines will lead more people towards this attitude shift, as now the risk is really not worth the reward.
I think the fine increase is the most effective way to ensure that all businesses, especially harder-to-reach smaller ones, are actually following the required health and safety standards. Putting the well-beings of their employees first seems so straightforward, but in smaller companies with smaller budgets, people often cut corners to save money, putting employees at risk. I do think the tone of this article implies that the author is siding with businesses and trying to make OSHA seem like a money-hungry organisation trying to increase their income, but they exist and do the things they do for a reason: to ensure that everyone working can do so in a safe and healthy way. Without the ability to physically visit and ensure everyone is up to code, fines create the best form of motivation, especially for smaller companies which may have more motivation to create unsafe environments, to stay up to the current standards. Another thing worth pointing out, as technology advances, more and more companies are gaining access to higher level, and with it more dangerous, equipment. While this allows many organisations to go things that they never thought they could, it also increases risk in the workplace, and I think that the increase in OSHA's fines could help mitigate that risk.
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