The Occupational Safety and Health Administration did not consistently ensure that complaints and referrals were adequately addressed, nor did the agency regularly enforce hazard abatement timelines, according to the results of a Department of Labor Office of Inspector General audit released Wednesday.

Public accounting group Lopez Group LLP conducted the audit on behalf of OIG, reviewing 100 complaint and referral cases from fiscal year 2019 to fiscal 2020. Seventy-six of the complaints opened and closed in that time were initiated from a complaint, and 70 resulted in an inspection.

According to Lopez, OSHA failed to show clear reasoning as to why it did not conduct an inspection for 11 out of 30 sampled cases where a complaint or referral met its criteria for conducting one. Also, the accounting firm said, OSHA did not regularly ensure that safety and health violations from complaints and referrals were corrected in a timely manner.

“As a result, OSHA may have conducted incomplete inspections and workers may have been exposed to hazardous working conditions for an extended period of time,” according to the report.

Based on the findings, OIG recommended that OSHA:

  • Modify its field operations manual to include a policy for mandatory interviews of complainants and witnesses or document the rationale for lack thereof and provide training to Compliance Safety and Health Officers on the updated requirements.
  • Update the manual to require documented case file review and approvals by supervisors and provide training for Compliance Safety and Health Officers to ensure complete documentation of significant decisions and actions.
  • Establish controls and provide training of field operations manual abatement certification and documentation requirements and create a monitoring process that is reviewed and approved by a supervisor.

OSHA “generally disagreed” with the results of the audit, according to the OIG report.

OSHA Assistant Secretary of Labor Douglas Parker noted that Lopez analyzed less than 0.2% of the more than 62,000 complaints and referrals the agency received during the time period examined.

“The OIG has declined to provide the criteria used to select the same case files, leaving OSHA in the difficult position of being unable to do its own follow up to determine how representative the samples may be of larger issues, while having to respond to an audit report that concedes it does not provide a basis for the sweeping recommendations it contains,” Parker said. 

“We remain open to continued dialogue and cooperative approach between the OIG and OSHA, and we will explore ways to improve our case file documentation to provide greater clarity on decisions made during the investigative and inspection processes,” the secretary added.