The U.S. Department of Labor announced that its Occupational Safety and Health Administration has issued new enforcement guidance that will increase penalties for employers that repeatedly exposed workers to life-threatening hazards or failed to comply with certain workplace safety and health requirements.
Under the new guidance, OSHA Regional Administrators and Area Office Directors now have the authority to cite certain types of violations as “instance-by-instance citations” for cases where the agency identifies “high-gravity” serious violations of OSHA standards specific to certain conditions where the language of the rule supports a citation for each instance of non-compliance. These conditions