Governor Newsom Appoints New Chief of the Division of Occupational Safety and Health

June 7, 2024July 10, 2025Samuel Rose Leave a comment

California Governor Gavin Newsom has announced that he has appointed Debra Lee as the new Chief of the Division of Occupational Safety and Health at the Department of Industrial Relations (also known as Cal/OSHA). Lee, a 30-year veteran of Cal/OSHA, had been serving as Acting Chief since Jeff Killip departed the position in January.

Lee has previously served the Division as Regional Manager, District Manager, and Deputy Chief for Field Enforcement. Prior to joining the agency, Lee was an Industrial Hygienist at various companies.

The news comes as Cal/OSHA makes a push to fill numerous vacancies and struggles to recruit new talent, which will certainly be one of many issues at the Division that Lee will need to confront in the early days of this new role.

For more information on the latest Cal/OSHA updates please check out our recent blog article Extensive Rulemaking Offered at the May Cal/OSHA Standards Board and Cal/OSHA Advisory Committee Meetings blog and our Cal/OSHA Mid-Year Update webinar.

Pres. Biden Nominates an Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA – Doug Parker, the Current Head of Cal/OSHA

April 13, 2021April 13, 2021Eric J. Conn 2 Comments

By Eric Conn, Fred Walter, and Beeta Lashkari

Last Friday, April 9th, the White House announced Pres. Biden’s nomination of Doug Parker for Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA – the top job at federal OSHA. Mr. Parker is currently the Chief of California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA), serving as the Head of Cal/OSHA since the summer of 2019. Mr. Parker was considered a leading candidate for this nomination to head OSHA since he was picked for a spot on the Biden-Harris Labor Transition Team to focus on worker safety and health issues.

In his role as Division Chief at Cal/OSHA, Mr. Parker has been involved in numerous major developments, including:

Developing the enforcement plan for Cal/OSHA’s new-ish regulation for Workplace Violence Prevention in Healthcare;
Rolling out Cal/OSHA’s emergency Wildfire Smoke Rule and overseeing the development of the Permanent Wildfire Smoke Rule;
Overseeing an extension of the statute of limitations for injury and illness recordkeeping violations – making them “continuing violations” for the five-year record-retention period;
Advancing a rulemaking for an Indoor Heat Illness Prevention standard; and
Implementing a Cal/OSHA operational change to significantly expand the agency’s definition of “Repeat” violations

Even with all that, Mr. Parker’s tenure at Cal/OSHA will likely be best remembered for his role in developing and rolling-out Continue reading →

Another Status Update about Federal OSHA’s COVID-19 Emergency Rulemaking

April 12, 2021July 10, 2025Eric J. Conn Leave a comment

By Conn Maciel Carey’s COVID-19 Task Force

It has been nearly a full month since the deadline set by President Biden’s Day-1 OSHA Executive Order for Federal OSHA to determine the necessity of and to issue a COVID-19 Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS), and we are all still waiting for the big news. OSHA has not issued a final ETS. The Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) website has not been updated to reflect that it has received a proposed ETS from OSHA. OSHA has not even explicitly announced that it will issue a COVID-19 ETS.

According to reports last week from Bloomberg Law, brand new Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh requested a hold on the release of an OSHA ETS, but according to a DOL spokesperson, that “hold” was so that OSHA could make “a rapid update based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis and the latest information regarding the state of vaccinations and the variants.” The sense from that reporting was that OSHA would be quickly updating certain provisions in a near-final draft of the ETS to align with the latest CDC guidance. No suggestion that an ETS would not be issued.

However, later in the week, Politico reports that Secretary Walsh gave a public interview in which he said this:

That was the first time since President Biden’s Executive Order that we heard anyone at OSHA or the Department of Labor imply that a COVID-19 ETS may not happen, and it conflicts directly with Continue reading →

Five Important Updates About Federal OSHA and Cal/OSHA COVID-19 Recordkeeping

March 22, 2021March 23, 2021Eric J. Conn Leave a comment

By Conn Maciel Carey’s COVID-19 Task Force

It has been a little while since we last shared an update about COVID-19 recordkeeping issues. Since Fed OSHA issued its COVID-19 recordkeeping guidance in May 2020 and Cal/OSHA issued its controversial COVID-19 Recordkeeping FAQs with unique, more onerous requirements in June, the agencies have been mostly quiet about COVID-19 recordkeeping. But that does not mean there have not been significant developments in that area or that there are no important developments to monitor closely.

Here are five notable OSHA and Cal/OSHA COVID-19 recordkeeping updates that we wanted to share with you:

1. Congressional Intervention About Cal/OSHA’s COVID-19 Recordkeeping FAQs

As we explained last year, Cal/OSHA’s May 27th COVID-19 Recordkeeping FAQs departed from Fed OSHA’s COVID-19 recordkeeping requirements in two key ways: (i) rejecting Fed OSHA’s recordability precondition of a positive COVID test; and (ii) flipping the burden of establishing work-relatedness on its head, setting instead a presumption of work-relatedness if any workplace exposure can be identified, even if the cause of the illness is just as likely to be attributable to a non-work exposure.

Aside from being bad policy that will result in many non-work related illnesses being recorded on California employers’ 300 Logs, Cal/OSHA is not legally permitted to deviate from Fed OSHA’s recordkeeping requirements.

The latest big development on that front was a helpful letter from the U.S. Department of Labor responding to an inquiry about this issue from a group of California Congressmen, in which DOL confirms that Cal/OSHA should be following the same recordkeeping requirements as Fed OSHA. Despite the clear statements in Cal/OSHA’s FAQs that a “confirmed case” is not required for recordkeeping and that work-relatedness should be presumed, the federal Department of Labor explained in its letter to the Congressmen: Continue reading →

What Employers Need to Know about the Pay and Benefits Continuation Elements of Cal/OSHA’s COVID-19 Emergency Rule

January 27, 2021August 11, 2025Theresa Jordan 1 Comment

By Mark Trapp, Andrew Sommer, and Beeta Lashkari

On November 30, 2020, Cal/OSHA issued its final COVID-19 Emergency Temporary Standard (“ETS”), with all of its provisions effective immediately. One of those provisions — the exclusion pay and benefits continuation requirements — has been at the center of much controversy.

Typical among these COVID-19 emergency rules, the Cal/OSHA regulations requires employers to exclude from the workplace “COVID-19 cases” as well as employees who experience a “close contact” exposure (i.e., contact within 6′ of a confirmed case for a cumulative 15 minutes). But the Cal/OSHA ETS gets controversial at Sec. 3205(c)(10)(C), where it requires employers to continue and maintain those employees’ earnings, seniority, and all other employment rights and benefits, as if the employee had not been removed from the job. Where permitted by law and when not covered by workers’ compensation, employers may use employer-provided employee sick leave benefits, and may consider benefit payments from public sources, in determining how to maintain earnings, rights and benefits.

There are several important exceptions to these exclusion pay and benefits continuation requirements. For example, the ETS provides that the provision does not kick in for any period of time when the employee is not able to work for reasons other than protecting persons at the workplace from possible COVID-19 transmission. Likewise, the pay and benefits continuation provision does not apply where the employer can demonstrate the employee’s COVID-19 exposure is not work-related. Finally, although not characterized as an “exception” specific to the exclusion pay and benefits provision, the ETS does also carve-out employees who can be temporarily reassigned to work where they do not have contact with other persons until applicable return-to-work requirements are met.

To provide some clarification about this pay and benefits continuation provision (as well as most other elements of the ETS), Cal/OSHA has issued two batches of FAQs, most recently updated January 8th. There are now 10 FAQs related to exclusion pay and benefits, most notable among them: Continue reading →

Cal/OSHA’s Proposed Permanent Wildfire Smoke Rule – Coalition to Comment

April 27, 2020May 8, 2020Megan Shaked Leave a comment

By Andrew J. Sommer and Eric J. Conn

Last summer, at the urging of various interest groups, the Cal/OSH Standards Board adopted an emergency regulation regarding hazards associated with wildfire smoke. The regulation took effect on a temporary emergency basis on July 29, 2019.

Recently, the Board published a request for written comments and notice of a public hearing on its proposal to revise the emergency standard and make it permanent. The Board explained:

Current regulations are not sufficiently specific as to what employers are required to do during wildfire events. This results in confusion on behalf of both employers and employees, leaving many employees unprotected…. As wildfire seasons worsen, the proposed regulation will avoid a potential increase in debilitating and sometimes life-threatening illnesses faced by workers exposed to wildfire smoke.

The deadline for written comments is May 21, 2020, and the public hearing will be held in Rancho Cordova, CA that same day.

The Emergency Standard

The emergency standard (which is still in effect) requires California employers to take steps to protect employees who may be exposed to wildfire smoke. Importantly, the regulation covers “workplaces” rather than employers of a particular size or scope of service. It applies in workplaces where:

The current Air Quality Index (AQI) for PM2.5 is 151 or greater, regardless of the AQI for other pollutants, and
The employer should reasonably anticipate that employees may be exposed to wildfire smoke.

The regulation specifically exempts Continue reading →

Calif. Employers Are Not Required To Reimburse Restaurant Workers For the Cost of Slip-Resistant Shoes

August 8, 2019August 8, 2019Megan Shaked Leave a comment

By Megan Shaked and Andrew J. Sommer

A recent California Court of Appeals decision in Townley v. BJ’s Restaurants, Inc., has further defined the scope of reimbursable business expenses under California Labor Code section 2802, this time in the context of slip-resistant shoes for restaurant workers.

A former server filed an action under the California Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 (PAGA), seeking civil penalties on behalf of herself and other “aggrieved employees” for California Labor Code violations, including the failure to reimburse the cost of slip-resistant shoes. Plaintiff alleged a violation of Labor Code section 2802, which requires an employer to reimburse employees for all necessary expenditures incurred by the employee in direct consequence of the discharge of their duties.

Plaintiff argued that, because the restaurant required employees to wear slip-resistant, black, closed-toes shoes for safety reasons, such shoes should be provided free of cost or employees should be reimbursed for their cost.

The Court of Appeal, persuaded by the reasoning in an unpublished Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision, Lemus v. Denny’s, Inc., and guidance from the California’s Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE), held that section 2802 did not require the restaurant employer to reimburse its employees for the cost of slip-resistant shoes. Specifically, the Court held that the cost of shoes does not qualify as a “necessary expenditure” under section 2802.

In reaching its decision, the Court Continue reading →

Key Cal/OSHA Issues California Employers Must Track [Webinar Recording]

May 16, 2019July 10, 2025Eric J. Conn Leave a comment

On May 28, 2019, Andrew J. Sommer, Eric J. Conn and Megan S. Shaked of Conn Maciel Carey LLP‘s national OSHA Practice presented a webinar regarding: “Key Cal/OSHA Issues California Employers Must Track.”

The state of California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, better known as Cal/OSHA, is perhaps the most aggressive and enforcement-heavy approved state OSH Program in the nation. California employers face a host of requirements that other employers around the country do not. Likewise, the Cal/OSHA inspection and appeal process creates several unique landmines for California employers.

Of particular significance in the coming year, California employers should be on the lookout for a new permanent E-Recordkeeping injury data submission rule, a new focus on finding Repeat violations, and the roll-out of several new California-unique rules.

Participants in this webinar learned about:

Continue reading →

Top 5 OSHA Issues to Track in 2019 and OSHA’s 2018 in Review [Webinar Recording]

January 10, 2019January 21, 2019Eric J. Conn Leave a comment

On January 15, 2019, the Partners in Conn Maciel Carey’s national OSHA Practice presented a webinar on “The Top 5 OSHA Issues to Track in 2019, and OSHA’s 2018 In Review.”

The ball has dropped, the confetti has been swept out of Times Square, and 2018 is in the books. It’s time to look back and take stock of what we learned from and about OSHA over the past year. More importantly, it is time to look ahead to what we can expect from OSHA as we transition to the out years of President Trump’s first term. This webinar reviewed OSHA enforcement, rulemaking, and other developments from 2018, and discussed the Top 5 OSHA Issues employers should monitor and prepare for in the New Year.

During this webinar, participants learned: Continue reading →

Delinquent State OSH Agencies Adopt E-Recordkeeping; Calif. Employers to Submit 2017 Injury Data by Year End

December 18, 2018July 10, 2025Megan Shaked Leave a comment

By Andrew Sommer, Megan Shaked, and Dan Deacon

As we have reviewed previously on the OSHA Defense Report, federal OSHA’s Rule to “Improve Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses” (aka the E-Recordkeeping Rule) requires small employers that operate in certain “high hazard industries” and all large employers to proactively submit their electronic injury and illness data to OSHA through a web portal – the Injury Tracking Application (“ITA”).

When federal OSHA promulgated the Rule in 2016, it built into the Rule a mandate that all State Plans adopt substantially identical requirements within six months after its publication. Implementation of the federal Rule, however, has been mired in difficulty from industry challenges, shifting guidance, informal changes, extended deadlines and mixed signals about the future of the rule as we transitioned from the Obama administration to the Trump administration. As a result, numerous State OSH programs failed to initially adopt the rule. After some headbutting with federal OSHA, almost all of the delinquent states, including California, have now implemented rules to “catch-up” to the federal OSHA data submission rule.

Delinquent State Plans Began Adopting E-Recordkeeping

In the midst of uncertainty surrounding federal OSHA’s E-Recordkeeping Rule, several State Plans delayed adopting state versions, even after OSHA made it clear that state plans needed to act soon. While the majority of State Plans acted promptly to promulgate their own version of the E-Recordkeeping rule by the end of 2017, eight State Plans had not yet adopted the rule, including:

California (Cal/OSHA);
Washington (WA DLI, WISHA, or DOSH);
Maryland (MOSH);
Minnesota (MNOSHA);
South Carolina (SC OSHA);
Utah (UOSH);
Wyoming (Wy OSHA); and
Vermont (VOSHA)

Give the substantial number of State Plans that failed to comply with the Rule’s order, federal OSHA attempted to force covered employers in these State Plans to submit 300A data despite not being subject to the rule or federal OSHA’s jurisdiction. Specifically, on April 30, 2018, federal OSHA issued a Continue reading →

Delinquent State OSH Plans, Particularly Cal/OSHA, Catch-up with Fed OSHA’s E-Recordkeeping Rule

September 27, 2018September 27, 2018Daniel C. Deacon 1 Comment

By Eric J. Conn and Dan C. Deacon

When fed OSHA promulgated the Final Rule to “Improve Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses” (aka the E-Recordkeeping Rule) in 2016, it built into the Rule a mandate that all State Plans adopt substantially identical requirements to the final E-Recordkeeping Rule within six months after its publication. However, because State Plans all have their own legislative or rulemaking processes, they cannot simply snap their fingers and instantly adopt a new Rule even if required to do so by fed OSHA. Also importantly, the State Plans, as well as all employers in the regulated community, were getting mixed signals about the future of the E-Recordkeeping Rule from fed OSHA under the new Trump Administration.

Accordingly, although most of the 20+ State Plans acted promptly to promulgate their own version of the E-Recordkeeping rule, leading up to the first injury data submission deadline last year, several State OSH Plans had not yet adopted their own version of an E-Recordkeeping Rule. Specifically, as of the end of 2017, these eight State Plans had not yet adopted (and some, like California, had not even started the process to adopt) an E-Recordkeeping Rule:

California (Cal/OSHA);
Washington (WA DLI, WISHA, or DOSH);
Maryland (MOSH);
Minnesota (MNOSHA);
South Carolina (SC OSHA);
Utah (UOSH);
Wyoming (WY OSHA); and
Vermont (VOSHA).

Given the uncertainty of the fate of the E-Recordkeeping Rule after the transition to the Trump Administration and OSHA’s announcement that it would soon issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to revisit the E-Recordkeeping Rule, each of these State Plans except for Vermont OSHA continued to delay adopting the Rule even as we approached the second data submission deadline of July 2018. And that is when fed OSHA started to speak up.

OSHA’s April 30, 2018 Press Release

On April 30, 2018, OSHA issued a press release announcing that employers in all State Plan States (not the State Plans themselves) must implement OHSA’s E-Recordkeeping Rule. In the press release, OSHA states that it had determined that:

Section 18(c)(7) of the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act, and relevant OSHA regulations pertaining to State Plans, require all affected employers to submit injury and illness data in the ITA, “even if the employer is covered by a State Plan that has not completed adoption of their own state rule.”

State Plan State Responses

The remaining seven State Plan States provided conflicting responses to fed OSHA’s directive Continue reading →

Conn Maciel Carey Adds Seasoned Employment Attorney Megan Stevens Shaked to Expand its California Practice

July 10, 2018July 11, 2018Megan Shaked 1 Comment

Conn Maciel Carey is pleased to announce that Megan Stevens Shaked has joined the firm as a senior associate in its San Francisco, CA office. Ms. Shaked, an experienced employment litigator, will represent clients in a wide-range of employment-related litigation, and counsel clients in myriad legal issues that California employers face in the workplace.

“Megan brings a depth of experience with employment litigation, counseling and training that will enhance the employment law services we provide to employers across all industries,” said Andrew J. Sommer, head of the firm’s California practice.

She will also represent clients in connection with inspections, investigations and enforcement actions involving Cal/OSHA and other OSH-related matters on the West Coast.

“Megan is an ideal attorney to help grow our California practice in general, and our Cal/OSHA bench in particular,” said Eric J. Conn, a co-founder of the firm and Chair of the firm’s national OSHA Practice. “California is a prominent base for our firm’s work, and Megan brings deep experience with the full range of employment issues that California employers face, including navigating the challenging waters of Cal/OSHA.”

Ms. Shaked has successful first-chair experience in employment law trials, and brings a creative approach to resolving tricky client issues. Those qualities fit perfectly with the CMC model. Ms. Shaked added that: Continue reading →

Important Cal/OSHA Issues that California Employers Must Track [Webinar Recording]

June 29, 2018July 10, 2025Megan Shaked 1 Comment

On July 10, 2018, Conn Maciel Carey attorneys Andrew J. Sommer, Eric J. Conn, and Megan S. Shaked presented a webinar: “Key Cal/OSHA Issues that California Employers Must Track.”

Of particular significance, in the coming year, California employers can expect an uptick in Cal/OSHA penalties as result of two significant changes, one adopting higher maximum civil penalty authority, and the other changing how the agency finds and cites violations characterized as Repeat.

During this webinar, participants learned about:

Continue reading →

Tug-of-War Between Fed OSHA and the State OSH Plans over the E-Recordkeeping Rule

May 17, 2018June 29, 2018Eric J. Conn 1 Comment

By Eric J. Conn, Dan Deacon, and Beeta Lashkari

A fascinating jurisdictional tug-of-war has broken out between federal OSHA and a few fed OSHA approved State OSH Programs, in relation to OSHA’s Final Rule to “Improve Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses” (aka the E-Recordkeeping Rule). The E-Recordkeeping Rule requires large employers and smaller employees that operate in certain “high hazard industries” to proactively submit their electronic injury and illness data to OSHA through a special web portal – the Injury Tracking Application (“ITA”).

State Plan Adoption of OSHA’s E-Recordkeeping Rule

When fed OSHA promulgated the Rule in 2016, it built into the Rule a mandate that all State Plans adopt substantially identical requirements to the final E-Recordkeeping Rule within six months after its publication. However, because the State Plan states all have their own legislative or rulemaking processes, they cannot simply snap their fingers and instantly adopt a new fed OSHA rule.

Most of the 20+ State Plans acted promptly to promulgate their own version of the E-Recordkeeping rule, ahead of the deadline to submit data the first year of the Rule, but as of the end of 2017, when employers’ 2016 300A data was due to be submitted, eight State Plans had not yet adopted (and some, like California, had not even started the process to adopt) an E-Recordkeeping Rule. Those states included:

California (Cal/OSHA);
Washington (WA DLI, WISHA, or DOSH);
Maryland (MOSH);
Minnesota (MNOSHA);
South Carolina (SC OSHA);
Utah (UOSH);
Wyoming (WY OSHA); and
Vermont (VOSHA).

The delay by these States has primarily been a result of fed OSHA’s numerous announcements that it will soon issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to amend (or rescind) the federal E-Recordkeeping Rule. The State Plans have been reluctant to invest the time and resources to implement their own versions of the rule, only to watch fed OSHA change it, causing the states to have to change their own rules again very soon.

Of those eight states, only Vermont has since finalized its E-Recordkeeping Rule this year, and the other seven remain delinquent in their obligation to adopt the Rule.

Last year, fed OSHA and those eight state plans apparently recognized that only employers in fed OSHA states or State Plan states that had already adopted the E-Recordkeeping rule were required to submit their 300A data to OSHA. This year, however, fed OSHA spoke up about the delinquent states. Continue reading →

Cal/OSHA Compels Hospitality Employers to Clean Up Their Act, Ergonomically Speaking

March 8, 2018March 13, 2018Megan Shaked 1 Comment

By Aaron R. Gelb and Andrew J. Sommer

Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) are the single most common type of work-related injury, but federal OSHA has struggled for decades to develop a coherent regulatory and/or enforcement strategy to address the hazards that cause these ergonomic injuries. Where federal OSHA fell short, the State of California has picked up the slack, with Cal-OSHA recently finalizing a safety standard regarding Housekeeping Musculoskeletal Injury Prevention. The standard, which will go into effect this summer applies to all lodging establishments that offer sleeping accommodations available to be rented by members of the public, and requires operators to develop, implement and maintain a written Musculoskeletal Injury Prevention Program tailored to hazards associated with housekeeping.

Background About Ergonomics

An ergonomic hazard is a physical factor within the work environment that has the potential to cause a musculoskeletal disorder (MSD). MSDs are injuries and disorders that affect the human body’s movement or musculoskeletal system; i.e., muscles, tendons, ligaments, nerves, discs, blood vessels, etc. Common ergonomic hazards include repetitive movement, manual handling, workplace design, uncomfortable workstation height, and awkward body positioning. The most frequent ergonomic injuries (or musculoskeletal disorders) include muscle/tendon strains, sprains, and back pains, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, Tendonitis, Degenerative Disc Disease, Ruptured / Herniated Disc, etc., caused by performing the same motion over and over again (such as vacuuming), overexertion of physical force (lifting heavy objects), or working while in an awkward position (twisting your body to reach up or down to perform a work task).

MSDs are the single most common type of work related injury. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, MSDs alone account for nearly 30% of all worker’s compensation costs. OSHA estimates that work-related MSDs in the U.S. alone account for over 600,000 injuries and illnesses (approx. 34% of all lost workdays reported to the BLS), and employers spend as much as $20 billion a year on direct costs for MSD-related injuries and up 5x that on indirect costs (e.g., lost productivity, hiring and training replacement workers, etc.).

Federal OSHA’s Ergonomics Enforcement Policy

Nevertheless, federal OSHA has been lost in the woods for years searching for a coherent ergonomics enforcement policy. In the final days of the Clinton Administration in November 2000, federal OSHA promulgated an extremely controversial midnight Ergonomics Standard, requiring employers to take measures to curb ergonomic injuries in the workplace. Continue reading →

Announcing Conn Maciel Carey’s 2018 OSHA Webinar Series

December 14, 2017July 10, 2025Eric J. Conn 1 Comment

The Trump Administration has taken the reins at OSHA, and the first year of the new OSHA’s enforcement and regulatory (or de-regulatory) agenda is in the books. We have already seen significant changes in the way OSHA does business and the tools available to the Agency in its toolkit. Now, as the new Administration finishes filling out the OSHA leadership team with its own appointees, we are sure to see shifting of enforcement priorities, budgets and policies, and an amplified effort to repeal or re-interpret controversial Obama-era OSHA rules and policies. Accordingly, it is critical to stay abreast of OSHA developments.

Conn Maciel Carey’s complimentary 2018 OSHA Webinar Series, presented by the firm’s national OSHA Practice Group, is designed to give employers insight into changes and developments at OSHA during this period of flux.

To register for an individual webinar, click the link below the program description. To register for the entire 2018 series, click here to send us an email request, and we will register you. If you missed any programs from prior years, here is a link to an archive of recordings of those webinars.

OSHA’s 2017 in Review & 2018 Forecast

Tuesday, January 16th

New Cal/OSHA Enforcement Issues

Tuesday, July 10th

Unlock the Mysteries of OSHA’s Lockout/Tagout Standard

Tuesday, February 20th

Future of OSHA’s Policy
of Public Shaming

Tuesday, August 21st

OSHA’s New Leadership Team

Tuesday, March 20th

Walking/Working Surfaces Update

Tuesday, September 18th

OSHA’s New Silica & Beryllium Rules

Tuesday, April 17th

Repeat, Willful & Egregious CiTations

Tuesday, October 16th

OSHA’s New E-Recordkeeping
and Anti-Retaliation Rule

Tuesday, May 5th

Process Safety Update:
OSHA PSM and EPA RMP

Tuesday, November 13th

Joint- and Multi-Employers,
Contractors and Temps

Tuesday, June 5th

OSHA and the ADA: How Two
Labor Laws Align and Diverge

Tuesday, December 4th

See below for descriptions of the webinars and registration links

Continue reading →

New Cal/OSHA Issues that California Employers Must Understand [Webinar Recording]

March 31, 2017May 4, 2017Megan Shaked Leave a comment

On April 11th, Andrew J. Sommer and Eric J. Conn of Conn Maciel Carey’s national OSHA Practice Group presented a webinar regarding “New Cal/OSHA Issues that California Employers Must Understand.”

The state of California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH), better known as Cal/OSHA, is perhaps the most aggressive and enforcement-heavy approved state OSH Program in the nation. California employers face a host of requirements that other employers around the country do not. Likewise, the Cal/OSHA inspection and appeal process creates several unique landmines for California employers.

In light of new Cal/OSHA standards taking effect in 2017 and others on the horizon, this is the perfect time for companies doing business in the Golden State to revamp their safety programs and take necessary steps to ensure compliance with the latest Cal/OSHA safety regulations.

Participants in this complimentary webinar learned about the following:

Cal/OSHA’s New Repeat Violation Rule
Cal/OSHA’s New Workplace Violence Rule for Health Care Facilities
New Law Mandating the Development of Heat Illness Prevention Regulations for Indoor Workplaces
Changes to Cal/OSHA Penalties on the Horizon
Other Industry Specific Developments

Here is a link to the recording of the webinar. Continue reading →

Cal/OSHA’s Workplace Violence Rules for Health Care Take Effect April 2017

March 27, 2017July 10, 2025Megan Shaked Leave a comment

By Andrew J. Sommer and Eric J. Conn

Effective April 1, 2017, a new California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board (“Standards Board”) regulation at Title 8, Section 3342 requires certain employers in the health care industry to develop and implement a Workplace Violence Prevention Plan. The passage of these regulations came after nearly two years of meeting and work within the Agency, and more than two years after the California legislature passed Senate Bill 1299, which instructed the Standards Board to implement these workplace violence regulations.

Rules Apply to Health Care Facilities

Senate Bill 1299 only directed the Standards Board to adopt regulations requiring licensed hospitals to adopt violence prevention plans to protect health care workers and other facility personnel from aggressive and violent behavior. The regulations that were adopted by the Standards Board, however, apply not just to licensed hospitals, but more broadly to any “health facility,” defined as:

“any facility, place or building that is organized, maintained, and operated for diagnosis, care, prevention or treatment of human illness, physical or mental…to which [] persons are admitted for a 24-hour stay or longer.”

Additionally, the regulations apply to the following facilities regardless of their size or how long a patient stays there:

Home health care and home-based hospice;
Emergency medical services and medical transport, including services provided by firefighters and other emergency responders;
Drug treatment programs;
Outpatient medical services to the incarcerated in correctional and detention settings.

Immediate Requirement to Begin Reporting Violent Incidents

Beginning April 1, 2017, every general acute care hospital, acute psychiatric hospital and special hospital generally must report to the Division of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH) any incident involving Continue reading →

5 Key Cal/OSHA Issues that California Employers Must Understand – [Webinar Recording]

July 28, 2016October 6, 2016Megan Shaked Leave a comment

On July 21, 2016, Andrew J. Sommer and Eric J. Conn, of Conn Maciel Carey’s national OSHA Practice, presented a webinar regarding important Cal/OSHA issues that all employers who do business in California must understand.

The state of California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH), better known as Cal/OSHA, is perhaps the most aggressive and enforcement heavy approved state OSH program in the country. Cal/OSHA faces many fewer bureaucratic and political obstacles than fed OSHA in developing new rules (really legislation). Accordingly, California employers face a host of requirements that employers around the country do not. Likewise, the Cal/OSHA inspection and appeal process creates several unique landmines for California employers.

Participants in last week’s webinar learned the following: Continue reading →