The U.S. Occupational Safety Health Administration (OSHA) keeps a check on workplace safety measures to ensure that employers make it a priority to safeguard their employees on their worksites. According to the Multi-Employer Citation Policy, CPL 2-0.124 (the Multi-Employer Policy), “more than one employer may be citable for a hazardous condition that violates an OSHA standard.”
This Multi-Employer Worksite Rule, as it’s known, puts the responsibility for worker safety on all companies operating at a site. OSHA wants to avoid situations in which companies evade responsibility by insisting another company on the site is responsible for the hazardous condition that results in a worker’s injury or death.
Range of OSHA Violations
An employer might be subjected to citations from OSHA if workers are simply found to be prone to any hazardous and unsafe conditions at worksite. Violating OSHA’s regulations and getting cited can hamper your company’s image and may leave you with hefty fines to pay. Employee safety at multi-employer worksites is a key compliance issue in the area of worker safety & security that employers often struggle with.
The factors that determine whether an employer is violating OSHA’s Multi-Employer Policy include: (1) the levels of accountability in the OSHA contractor hierarchy; and (2) whether an employer meets with the obligations with respect to OSHA requirements for that category.
What’s Your Status?
The answer to this question lies in understanding the four categories of OSHA contractor hierarchy, which include the following types of employers on a multi-employer worksite:
- A “Creating” Employer creates a hazardous condition violating OSHA’s policy.
- A “Controlling” Employer has contractual or general control at the worksite, and also has the authority to correct safety violations.
- An “Exposing” Employer has exposed its workers to a hazard on the worksite but may not have created that condition.
- A “Correcting” Employer is responsible for correcting the hazardous or violating condition.
Shore Up Your Safety Program
The exact formula for OSHA’s structuring of multi-employer site penalties is the subject of a webinar sponsored by AudioSolutionz, “Interpreting OSHA Multi-Employer Worksite Responsibility: ‘You Can Run But You Cannot Hide,’” with expert speaker John J. Meola, CSP, ARM. John will discuss the Multi-Employer Worksite Rule and the arcane vocabulary of OSHA’s multi-employer worksite penalty structure, translating the definitions into understandable concepts.
Join John and his audience of other compliance professionals to understand the safety protocols to follow during an OSHA inspection or investigation and learn how to continually improve your safety program toward best industry practices. Register for and learn more about the program on the event page.
