Missouri Mats failed to notify OSHA about fatal injury; continued to use equipment

Less than one month after OSHA cited Dollar General Corp. with more than $1.6 million in penalties for putting its workers’ safety at risk, federal inspectors have issued citations for similar violations at stores in three states.

An employee of a frozen-pizza manufacturer suffered a fatal injury while cleaning a machine on July 20, 2021. An inspection by the OSHA determined that Rich Products Corp.’s failure to implement energy control procedures – commonly known as lockout/tagout – exposed its third-shift sanitation workers to serious hazards.

During the Trump administration, some were critical of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for taking a too-relaxed approach to enforcement. The number of inspections and citations between 2016 and 2019 were lower than previous years, and OSHA was not always as vocal about its enforcement efforts.

Most workers in the United States are protected from retaliation for raising workplace health and safety concerns and for reporting work-related injuries or illnesses. While these protections have been in place for decades, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a record number of complaints from covered employees claiming retaliation by their employer. Since

In response to President Biden's executive order on protecting worker health and safety, the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration has launched a national emphasis program focusing enforcement efforts on companies that put the largest number of workers at serious risk of contracting the coronavirus.

Of the more than 300 employers who have accrued safety penalties during the coronavirus pandemic, only about one-third have paid, according to an investigation by Reuters.

As OSHA practitioners and environmental, health and safety professionals know, avoiding repeat citations is often a central issue when resolving an OSHA enforcement matter. OSHA policy instructs the agency to consider several factors when determining whether to characterize a citation as “repeat.” One of those factors involves a situation in which there has been a change in corporate structure or ownership between the initial and subsequent violations.

Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic through Dec. 31, 2020, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has issued citations arising from 300 inspections for violations relating to coronavirus, resulting in proposed penalties totaling $3,930,381.

Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic through Oct. 8, 2020, the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has cited 85 establishments for violations relating to coronavirus, resulting in proposed penalties totaling $1,222,156.