Please respond to the following 
OSHA will refer to the General Duty Clause to cite a violation that is not covered by a specific regulation. Chapter 4 of the Field Operations Manual lists the criteria that must be met in order for a compliance officer to cite this clause. Do you believe the criteria is adequate? Why, or why not?
UNIT III STUDY GUIDE
OSHA Violations and Fines
Course Learning Outcomes for Unit III
Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:
3. Express employee rights related to workplace safety.
3.1 Discuss employees’ rights and responsibilities following an OSHA inspection.
4. Describe legal disincentives for noncompliance with workplace safety standards.
4.1 Discuss what steps employers should take once receiving OSHA citations and proposed
penalties.
5. Summarize employer responsibilities related to worker safety and health.
5.1 Discuss the employer’s abilities to reduce the level of citations and/or penalties.
5.2 Discuss the documentation required to respond to citations and penalties.
Course/Unit
Learning Outcomes
3.1
4.1
5.1
5.2
Learning Activity
Unit Lesson
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Unit III Essay
Unit Lesson
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Unit III Essay
Unit Lesson
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Unit III Essay
Unit Lesson
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Unit III Essay
Required Unit Resources
This unit will use chapters from the following resource:
Occupational Safety and Health Administration. (2020). Field operations manual. U.S. Department of Labor.
https://www.osha.gov/enforcement/directives/cpl-02-00-164
In order to access the following chapter resources, click the chapter links below.
Chapter 4: Violations
Chapter 5: Case File Preparation and Documentation
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Chapter 6: Penalties and Debt Collection
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Unit Lesson
Introduction
In Unit II, we learned about the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspection process. In
this unit, we are going to discuss what happens after an OSHA inspection occurs and how penalties for each
of the violations are determined.
Steps After OSHA Inspection
After the inspection is completed, the OSHA compliance officer will review all the findings from the walkaround, employee interviews, and any sampling that was performed. Based on the review, the compliance
officer will determine if any violations occurred, and the severity associated with each violation.
Violations must be associated with established regulations and any standards that have been incorporated by
reference. OSHA regulations can be found in Title 29 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). For
example, regulations for general industry can be found in 29 CFR §1910, and regulations for the construction
industry can be found in 29 CFR §1926.
What exactly does the term incorporated by reference mean? A standard that has been written by
government or nongovernmental agencies can be incorporated by reference, which gives them the same
force and effect as OSHA regulations. This means OSHA can issue citations and levy fines against employers
for violating mandatory sections of the standards (where the term shall is used).
One decision the compliance officer must make is whether a horizontal or vertical standard applies to
violations that have been identified.
•
•
Horizonal Standard: OSHA regulations that apply to a broad range of employers. An example would
be the respiratory protection standard, 29 CFR §1910.134, which applies to the use of respirators in a
broad range of industries, including manufacturing and construction.
Vertical Standard: OSHA regulations that only apply to one industry. For example, OSHA’s
nonionizing radiation regulation, 29 CFR §1926.54, only applies to nonionizing radiation sources in
construction activities.
When a hazard in a particular industry is covered by both a vertical and horizontal standard, the vertical
standard will take precedence even if the horizontal standard is more stringent.
When violations are discovered, the compliance officer must also decide if penalties are appropriate and, if
applicable, the amount of penalties to apply.
Penalty Factors
The penalty structure is designed to provide an incentive for preventing or correcting violations voluntarily.
OSHA penalties are not intended to serve as punishment for the violations but should be significant enough to
deter employers from violations. Penalties should be assessed using four factors: gravity of the violation, size
of the employer’s business, good faith efforts of the employer, and employer’s history of previous violations.
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Gravity of the Violation
This is the primary consideration for determining penalties. To determine the gravity, two assessments need
to be made, severity and probability.
•
•
Severity Assessment: The severity of the injury or illness.
Probability Assessment: The probability an injury or illness will result from a hazard has no role in
determining the classification of the violation, but affects the amount of the proposed penalty.
This means the penalties are assessed by looking at both the severity of the violation and a probability
assessment. In other words, how likely is it to happen, and how severe would any injury/illness be if it did
happen? This is commonly referred to as a risk assessment in the safety field. The different levels of severity
for violations are summarized in Table 6-1 of the Field Operations Manual (OSHA, 2020).
Size of the Employer’s Business
A maximum of 70% reduction is permitted for size. The size of an employer is calculated based on the
maximum number of employees for an employer at all workplaces nationwide, to include State Plan states, at
any one time during the previous 12 months. A size reduction table is provided in Table 6-2 of the Field
Operations Manual (OSHA, 2020).
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Good Faith Efforts of the Employer
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A maximum of 25% reduction is permitted for good faith efforts. A penalty reduction is permitted in recognition
of an employer’s effort to implement an effective safety and health management system in the workplace.
Chapter 6 of the Field Operations Manual provides very specific guidance to compliance officers when good
faith efforts are not permitted to be applied. Some examples include high gravity serious violations, willful
violations, repeat violations, and failure to abate violations.
Employer’s History of Previous Violations
An employer who has been inspected by OSHA within the previous 5 years and has no serious, willful,
repeat, or failure-to-abate violations will receive a 10 percent reduction for history.
Reductions
Good faith reductions are commonly applied for OSHA penalties as long as the violation is not a high-gravity
serious violation, a repeat violation, a failure to abate violation, or if the employer has no safety and health
program (or a very weak program). This reduction is given in recognition of an employer’s efforts to implement
an effective safety and health program. Basically, if employers can show that they have taken steps to
implement the basic safety and health programs required by OSHA, they can receive a good faith reduction,
except for the instances mentioned above.
Employers may also receive an additional reduction if the site has not had serious, willful, or repeated
violations in the last three years. Many employers are not aware of these penalty reduction options. The
OSHA compliance officer should incorporate the reductions automatically, but that does not always occur. An
employer may ask OSHA for one of the reductions or ask for a larger reduction if they believe it is applicable.
Another option for reducing penalties is not well known by most employers. The reduction is called a quick-fix
penalty reduction. The primary reason the quick-fix reduction exists is to encourage employers to immediately
correct issues that are identified during an inspection, thus immediately reducing the risk to employees. If
employers immediately abate a hazard that is identified by a compliance officer during an inspection, the
compliance officer can decide to provide a quick-fix reduction. This reduction is very limited and is at the
discretion of the compliance officer. The quick-fix reduction is 15% and can only be applied to individual
citations that have been corrected. However, there are some limitations to when the quick-fix reduction can be
applied. Quick-fix reductions cannot be applied to violations that are more serious (OSHA, 2020).
Types of Violations
There are different types of violations, that include repeated violations, willful violations, failure to abate,
serious, and other than serious.
Repeated violations
Repeated violations are violations that were identified in an earlier inspection and are still present in the
workplace. In some cases, the violation may still be present, but the level of the citation can change from
inspection to inspection. For example, a facility may be cited for failure to have an adequate respiratory
protection program, and this issue may be rated as serious one year. The respiratory program may still be
cited as deficient the following year, but improvements now put the citation in the other-than-serious category.
The penalty in the second year would be based on the other-than-serious category instead of the serious
category.
The primary concern is that a repeat violation represents an increased risk of injury or illness to employees.
Abating the violation results in a safer, healthier workplace. Additionally, violations that are not abated will be
repeat violations on subsequent inspections, resulting in much higher penalties. Historically, many employers
have contested citations to have serious violations reclassified as other-than-serious in order to reduce the
risk of repeating a serious violation in the future. We will discuss the employer’s options for contesting
violations and penalties in the next two units.
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Willful Violations
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Written for employers who commit intentional violations. The term intentional may be interpreted differently by
different OSHA compliance officers, and employers sometimes may not understand why they have received a
willful violation. Willful violations will be classified as willful serious or other-than-serious. The classification as
serious or other-than-serious is important in determining the amount of the penalty, and the amount of
reductions that are available.
OSHA will also not apply any good faith reduction for a willful violation. The main difference between willful
serious and other-than-serious violations is in the application of reductions for size.
Failure to Abate
This violation occurs when a citation has become a final order, and the same violation is present during a
subsequent inspection (OSHA, 2020). There are several factors that are considered when determining a
penalty for failure to abate. The factors are summarized in Section VII of the Field Operations Manual. An
important consideration for penalties for failure to abate violations is that the penalty may be applied for every
day that the violation was not abated.
Serious
When a workplace hazard could cause an accident or illness that would most likely result in death or serious
physical harm, unless the employer did not know or could not have known of the violation.
Other-Than-Serious
A violation that has a direct relationship to job safety and health, but is not serious in nature, is classified as
other-than-serious.
Current Penalty Schedule
(OSHA, n.d.)
Summary
As you can see from the discussion above and reading through the required chapters in the Field Operations
Manual for this unit, there are a lot of factors that go into determining the penalty amount an employer may be
cited. OSHA starts out with a base penalty amount; however, there are numerous factors in place that can
help reduce the penalty amount.
References
Occupational Safety and Health Administration. (n.d.). OSHA penalties. U.S. Department of Labor.
https://www.osha.gov/penalties
Occupational Safety and Health Administration. (2020). Field operations manual. U.S. Department of Labor.
https://www.osha.gov/enforcement/directives/cpl-02-00-164
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Suggested Unit Resources
UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title
In order to access the following resources, click the links below.
If you are interested in exploring the topic of OSHA inspections, citations, and penalties further, review the
resources below.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration. (1994). Inspections, citations, and proposed penalties:
Citations, notices of de minimis violations; policy regarding employee rescue activities. U.S.
Department of Labor.
https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=STANDARDS&p_id=9618
Occupational Safety and Health Administration. (2016). Inspections, citations, and proposed penalties:
Posting of citations. U.S. Department of Labor.
https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=STANDARDS&p_id=9621
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