Interim final rule for anti-retaliation complaints
- OSHA published an interim final rule establishing procedures and timeframes for handling employee retaliation complaints under the Criminal Antitrust Anti-Retaliation Act.
- The Department of Labor and Justice will collaborate to enforce CAARA to ensure the protection of whistleblowers from retaliation for reporting potential criminal antitrust violations.
- These activities include testifying, participating or assisting in certain federal government investigations or proceedings.
- Protected reports include providing information relating to price fixing, bid rigging or market allocation schemes between competitors, or information relating to violations of other criminal laws.
Meatpacking firm fined $1.5M
- Packers Sanitation Services Inc. in Wisconsin paid $1.5 million in fines for employing more than 100 teenagers in dangerous jobs at meatpacking plants in eight states.
- The largest penalties against Packers stemmed from its contracts at JBS USA plants in Nebraska and Minnesota and a Cargill Inc plant in Kansas.
- The U.S. Department of Labor said Packers Sanitation allowed at least 102 children between 13 and 17 years old to work overnight shifts and use hazardous chemicals.
- Federal labor law bars children under 18 from working in meatpacking plants and prohibits minors from working past 9 p.m. in the summer and 7 p.m. during the school year.
OSHA won’t take over Arizona oversight
- OSHA will allow Arizona to continue to regulate workplace safety and health.
- The agency is no longer seeking to take over all or portions of the Arizona Division of Occupational Safety and Health.
- The change came after Arizona officials during the summer and fall adopted several rules and guidance documents that OSHA said in April the state needed to approve.
- The announcement follows OSHA issuing a notice last year that proposed changes because of Arizona’s pattern of failures to adopt adequate maximum penalty levels.
Worker killed during storm repairs
- OSHA has been notified about a guest at an oceanfront hotel in Florida that died after being run over by a forklift working on storm repairs.
- The 62-year-old woman was struck while walking through the parking lot of the Beach Haven Inn.
- The forklift was transporting roofing material for storm repairs from Tropical Storm Ian, and the driver apparently didn’t see the woman before running over her.
- The hotel is located next to the Atlantic Ocean and sustained damage during the September storm.