Egregious Violations - Assignment Example

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rules on egregious violations might result in multi-million penalties for employers because instead of combining the violations and issuing an aggregate penalty for such violations, the OSHA now issues separate penalties per violation (Penewell, 2010).  Some companies are crying foul because according to them it was practically issuing multiple citations and penalties for the same violation (MacArthur, 1995).  Furthermore, since the OSHA provision is for the prevention of the same hazards from occurring again, it is improper to multiply the penalties by the number of employees harmed by a violation. 

There is no need to multiply the penalty because the same hazard can be remedied with the “identical abatement method” (MacArthur, 1995).  If OSHA is allowed to execute these multiplied penalties, they might go overboard and start issuing penalties on a per day or per hour basis on every violation made.  This is definitely unreasonable and unacceptable to employers.  OSHA should view the matter from the proper perspective focusing on the fact that if the hazard can be corrected just once, then there is no need for multiplied penalties.  However, if different hazards represent different violations, then the penalties should be multiplied because they cannot be corrected by a single action.