The Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration disclosed Thursday an update to the enforcement policies and procedures for its Severe Violator Enforcement Program.
“The Severe Violator Enforcement Program empowers OSHA to sharpen its focus on employers who — even after receiving citations for exposing workers to hazardous conditions and serious dangers — fail to mitigate these hazards,” Assistant Secretary for Occupational Safety and Health Doug Parker said in a statement.
The new instructions supersede OSHA’s June 18, 2010, SVEP, while continuing to “concentrate resources on inspecting employers who have demonstrated indifference to their Occupational Safety and Health Act obligations by willful, repeated, or failure-to-abate violations.”
“These changes to SVEP will hold a microscope to those employers who continue to expose workers to very serious dangers and help ensure America’s workers come home safe at the end of every shift,” Parker said.
Some changes:
- Program placement for employers with pertinent citations for at least two violations
- Follow-up or referral inspections one year, but not longer than two years, after a final order “even if the agency has received abatement verification of the cited violations.”
- Removal of an employer from the SVEP three years after the date the agency has received verification that the employer has abated all program-related hazards.
- An employer that agrees to an Enhanced Settlement Agreement may elect to reduce the SVEP term to two years.
“A nationwide referral under the SVEP can lead to substantial costs and OSHA inspections at company facilities across the country, so it is important to remain vigilant in carefully reviewing and responding to OSHA citations,” JDSupra reported. “OSHA’s revised SVEP makes it clear that aggressive enforcement and substantial penalties remain a primary objective for the agency.”
