OSHA Legal Aspects of Safety and Health - Essay Example

Running Head: MULTIPLIED PENALTIES AND EGREGIOUS VIOLATIONS Multiplied Penalties and Egregious Violations Module: Lecturer: submission: OSHA in many occasions has faced numerous accidents where citations are to be issued. Many of the accidents especially in manufacturing plants seem to involve more than one casualty or fatalities. When OSHA inspectors inspect the site, they normally issue multiple citations to the employer. There are instances where multiple penalties on egregious violations are allowed while in other cases they are not.

Multiple violations exist where different violation conditions exist with numerous corrective measures at the disposal of the employer. OSHA is also allowed to issue multiple penalties incase the consideration is on per instance basis (Ehlke, 2005). In this case, the standard violated needs to have clearly stipulated that compliance is per individual employee. In this instance, record keeping and lead protection standards stipulate that all recordable injuries should be entered on the log and an employee should be removed from work after being exposed.

Also in case an employer has persistent high rates of injuries and/or fatalities, long history of violations, intentional ignorance to standards and lastly, bad faith multiple citations can be issued (Ehlke, 2005). These are good examples where multiple violations can be cited by OSHA under the egregious violations policy. It is important to note here that OSHA has the discretion to group violations and use this as a basis to propose penalties with multiple violations attracting single or multiplied penalties.

References Ehlke, B. M. (2005). OSHA targets for 2005. Retrieved 25 Jan. 2011 from, http://library.findlaw.com/2004/Aug/1/231145.html