OSHA is seeking several new clauses from employers settling industrial accident citations. Here are some of the latest:
1) Comprehensive Safety and Health Program—OSHA administrators indicate they seek this clause as a management commitment to address all potential hazards in the workplace. This demand frequently encompasses, in OSHA's mind, a commitment by management to educate workers to recognize all hazards in their respective work areas.
2) Hire a Safety Consultant — This clause imposes obligations to retain an outside consultant to conduct quarterly safety audits and report the results directly to OSHA as well as to company management. A corresponding employer obligation—to implement all feasible compliance steps recommended by the consultant—also normally attaches.
3) Special Extra Training of Machine Guarding for all Employees Using an Accident Machine—Following inspection of an Ohio assembly plant where a maintenance worker reportedly was killed on a conveyor line, OSHA obtained the company's written pledge to train all affected workers on machine guarding, to test the workers' knowledge and to report the documented training to OSHA. In related lockout citations,
OSHA had alleged willful violations for uncorrected lockout/ tagout (LO/TO) program deficiencies, which had surfaced in the company's audits. Serious violations had been alleged when the employer's own LO/TO-program periodic audit sheets misidentified the machine or equipment being audited.
4) One-Hat Safety Professionals—In a recent case OSHA submitted a unique clause: The agency sought to have future applicants for the company's safety manager job first screened by OSHA.
When it believed that the employer's safety and environmental manager wore too many job hats, OSHA sought to have the company separate the dual responsibility position into two separate jobs (with different employees).
What OSHA has been seeking here are contractual-agreement clauses beyond what OSHA standards require. Proposed OSHA settlement-agreement clauses should be viewed as negotiable and carefully reviewed by employers and their legal counsel.