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4 4 Pallet C e nt ral • May -Ju ne 2 0 26 OSHA CONT. Adele Abrams, Esq., ASP, CMSP, is Senior Counsel in the Washington, DC, office of Liler Mendelson PC, where she is part of the firm's Occupational Safety and Health group and leads the national MSHA practice. Adele provides OSHA/MSHA case representation, training, and consultative services on safety and employment law. She can be reached at Aabrams@liler.com or 301-613-7498. Often, these state rules have conflicting requirements, posing a challenge for multi-state companies, and some apply only indoors or only outdoors, while others apply in all work environments. Violent actions, including homicides and suicides on the job remain a concern, although OSHA had planned to limit its forthcoming workplace violence rule to the healthcare and social services sectors (and the fate of that rule is in doubt in the current deregulatory environment). In the past 15 years, there has been a 57% increase in serious workplace violence injuries. Overdoses at work are also on the rise, another consequence of the opioid crisis, and employers should consider adding Narcan to their first aid supplies to provide a timely life-saving response! While ergonomics, workplace violence, and heat illness clearly take a toll on workers, because federal OSHA does not yet have standards addressing these conditions, employers may think that the agency is toothless when it comes to enforcing recommendations included in their emphasis programs and guidance documents. at is not the case! OSHA can still issue citations under the General Duty Clause—Section 5(a)(1) of the 1970 OSH Act—and penalties can reach up to $165,000 per violation and per affected worker. In the absence of a codified standard, the General Duty Clause allows OSHA to cite an employer for these and other situations where there is (a) a recognized hazard to which employees of that employer are exposed, (b) the hazard is serious enough to cause death or serious injury or illness, and (c) there is a feasible method of abating the hazardous condition. Recognition of the hazard can be imputed to the employer by showing its recognition in existing programs, through industry recognition, and via common sense. Workplace fatalities, injuries, and illnesses impose costs of up to $348 billion a year on society, in addition to the emotional impact on those left behind and their communities. Meanwhile, the fight over OSHA funding (and its continued existence) continues in Congress. Currently, the agency receives about $3.85 per covered worker to enforce safety and health rules, and it is estimated that OSHA can inspect each workplace under its jurisdiction once every 191 years, given current funding. HR 86, the NOSHA Act, would abolish the agency entirely at the federal level, which would also jeopardize the ability of the 22 states that run their own programs to continue in the absence of a federal partner. Will our success in reducing preventable deaths and injuries continue, or will we return to the bad old days? "In the United States, over 5,000 workers a year lose their lives on the job, a rate of roughly 3.5 per 100,000 workers."

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