By Conn Maciel Carey’s COVID-19 Task Force
Over the course of the last month, several of our retail clients have been visited by Michigan OSHA (MIOSHA) for COVID-19 enforcement inspections in circumstances without an employee complaint or any self-reported work-related COVID-19 hospitalization or death. The reason for these inspections, it turns out, is MIOSHA has launched a State Emphasis Program (SEP) on COVID-19 in Bars, Restaurants, Gas Stations, Grocery and Convenience Stores, and Other Retail. We got our hands on the Directive for the Emphasis Program. Here’s a summary of what Michigan employers in those industries need to know about MIOSHA’s new enforcement strategy.
The Directive lays out MIOSHA’s approach for selecting various retail and hospitality workplaces for programmed inspections about COVID-19 infection control.
The stated purposes of the Emphasis Program is to “increase MIOSHA’s presence in retail establishments to ensure workers are protected from SARS-CoV-2,” because “employees who come in contact with large numbers of people as a result of their employment [like in retail] are at elevated risk of infection.”
The inspections are evaluating the employer’s adherence to Governor Whitmer’s Executive Orders for COVID-19, OSHA Guidance on Preparing Workplaces for COVID-19, and applicable CDC guidance for COVID-19.
The agency has created a targeting list of retail/hospitality businesses broken down as follows: