OSHA’s “New” Instance-by-Instance Citation Directive
Employers who use leading indicators to measure and improve their safety programs tend to have better outcomes than those who are more reactionary in nature, focusing only on lagging indicators, such as injury rates or the number of OSHA citations they receive.
Even so, it is still important to understand the strategies OSHA can use to “motivate” employers towards compliance. OSHA’s consultation program, a leading indicator, can provide good insight to employers on areas of improvement needed before an injury occurs, or a citation is issued.
Citation. Singular. Currently, OSHA can, and does, issue citations for multiple violations however, a new directive and enforcement memo recently issued from Federal OSHA may now cause employers to receive multiple citations for the same individual violation.
This strategy is known as their “instance-by-instance” or “IBI” policy. Penalty adjustments are a tool that OSHA enforcement personnel can use to cite and assess penalties for each instance of a workplace health & safety violation separately. Since introducing the policy in 1990, OSHA has used instance-by-instance citations for only the most egregious, willful employer violations.
OSHA now aims to apply IBI penalties to “achieve an additional deterrent effect” for noncompliance with some of the most frequently violated Standards applicable to the industries we commonly work in, Construction and General Industry. This includes:
- Lockout / Tagout
- Falls
- Trenching
- Machine guarding
- Respiratory protection
- Confined space
- Other-than-serious violations specific to recordkeeping
As of March 26, Federal OSHA compliance officers will be able to use IBI citation policy to determine penalties for violations of the hazards listed above. Oregon OSHA has yet to weigh in on how / if this will apply locally however, State OSHA Plans, like Oregon and Washington, must be “equally as effective” as OSHA in their enforcement activity.
As I previously reported, Oregon is already under scrutiny from OSHA due to not meeting minimum number of inspections over the last 3 years (FAME report) and I expect them to apply the IBI to minimize any further negative audit reports.
