Changes to Occupational Safety and Health Administration civil penalty amounts based on cost-of-living adjustments for 2024 went into effect today.
OSHA’s maximum penalties for “serious and other-than-serious violations” will increase from $15,625 per violation to $16,131 per violation. The maximum penalty for “willful or repeated violations” will increase from $156,259 per violation to $161,323 per violation.
States that operate their own Occupational Safety and Health Plans are required to adopt maximum penalty levels that are at least as effective as federal OSHA penalties. Currently, 22 state plans cover both private-sector and state and local government workers, and seven state plans cover only state and local government workers. Civil penalties might differ in those states with their own plans.
“In North Carolina, for example, employers may be surprised to learn that the maximum penalties more than doubled in 2022 — and these penalties will now increase every January to match the maximum penalties available to federal OSHA,” wrote Fisher Phillips attorneys Travis Vance and Curtis Moore.
Under the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act Improvements Act passed by Congress in 2015, agencies are required to publish “catch-up” rules that adjust the level of civil monetary penalties and make subsequent annual adjustments for inflation no later than Jan. 15 of each year. Because Jan. 15 fell on a federal holiday this year, however, the new OSHA penalty amounts became effective Jan. 16.
“Congress believed that increasing the penalty amounts each year was necessary to maintain a ‘deterrent effect.’ The practical effect, however, is that if an employee incurs an amputation or an injury serious enough to require admission to a hospital, a citation alleging a serious violation with the maximum penalty amount for that alleged violation is often issued, regardless of employee fault,” according to attorneys at Constangy, Brooks, Smith and Prophete, LLP.
“As penalty amounts increase, it is even more important for employers to design and implement an effective safety program that includes significant monitoring of employees’ compliance with safety rules and consistent enforcement of those rules through discipline,” they said.
