OSHA fall protection violations can stack up fast, especially if you don’t take immediate action to resolve violations and noncompliance issues. OSHA inspectors cited a Syracuse foundry with dozens of different violations, ordering them to pay almost $1 million in penalties. This follows years of violations, including at least 60 violations in 2019 alone. These include a wide range of serious, other-than-serious, and repeated violations—but what do those different distinctions mean?

The more your organization and safety compliance teams know about OSHA and CCOHS standards, the better you can prepare your facilities. However, it’s just as important to understand OSHA penalties so you can protect your organization and get buy-in for safety initiatives and budget increases. Learn more about the different types of OSHA penalties, the potential fall safety gaps in your facility that can lead to hefty penalties, and what to do to resolve them.

Breakdown of OSHA Penalties for OSHA Fall Protection Violations 

OSHA establishes safety standards for many different factors that impact worker safety, from handling and storing sharp cutting tools to indoor falls. Because trips and falls are both frequent and significant, it’s one of the most important areas to focus on when you want to keep your teams safe and reduce the risk of incurring OSHA penalties. Start your safety improvements with a thorough understanding of each type of OSHA penalty and what sort of incidents fall into each category.

Serious

This is a broad category of penalties, and your organization will receive a penalty between $1,221 (the allowed minimum) and $16,550 (the allowed maximum) per violation. OSHA representatives assess the seriousness of a serious violation based on the severity of the violation and the probability of harm from a violation. Serious violations that are both severe and have a greater probability of harm receive the highest Gravity-Based Penalty (GBP) of $16,550. The fee goes down for medium severity but highly probable harms and continues to go down as the violation becomes less severe and the likelihood of harm decreases.

Some potential OSHA fall protection violations your facility might incur are:

• • Not providing adequate training on fall protection equipment (1910.30)
  • Workers not using fall protection equipment on a tall ladder (1910.23) — which you can resolve with wearable harnesses and appropriate guardrails around fixed ladders and hatch openings
  • Improperly installed fall protection system equipment (1910.29) — which you can address with modern self-closing gate products, stainless steel guardrails, safety gates for stairs, and other sturdy barriers

Other-Than-Serious

Other-than-serious violations are less severe than serious violations. While they can carry a $) penalty, especially for a first occurrence, you can receive a penalty fee of up to $16,550 per violation as a deterrent. Repeated other-than-serious violations will incur fees for each subsequent incident: a $472 fee for the first repeated penalty, then $1,182 for the second repeat, and $2,364 for the third repeated incident.

Some common other-than-serious violations related to fall protection are:

• • Not providing adequate training for low-risk fall scenarios
  • Minor gaps in an otherwise compliant guardrail or barrier system
  • Fall harnesses that work adequately but don’t fit the worker well—which you can resolve by upgrading your harnesses to ensure they fit all your staff and have the proper reinforcement for comfort and safety

Failure to Abate

For most OSHA violations, the citation starts the clock for an abatement period. During this timeframe, employers must take action to correct the issue and ensure the problem is not present when OSHA representatives come back for a follow-up inspection or general inspection. If you don’t make satisfactory improvements, your facility can incur serious violations and ‘failure to abate’ violations., which receive a specific GBP. Failure to abate penalties can have a $16,550 per day cost.

‘Failure to abate’ penalties apply when there are changes you need to make but fail to do so. This can include not correcting gaps in barriers and guardrails, not installing a proper loading dock gate, or other corrections. This is distinct from repeated actions (or failure to act) that pose distinct incidents; those violations are covered below.

Willful or Repeated

If your facility repeatedly has the same safety violation, such as workers not wearing appropriate fall protection equipment while in dangerous areas that pose severe fall risks, you can be charged penalties for willful and repeated violations. Each violation can be cited individually, with serious violations having a $11,823 minimum penalty per violation. The maximum penalty is $165,514—more than 10 times the maximum penalty for the first serious offense.

This means your facility should treat the subject of past safety violations as high-priority action items.

A Note on Posting Requirements

Whenever your organization or facility receives a violation, you must post the violation notice at the site of the violation for at least three working days or, if it takes longer to fix it, the length of time until your team abates the issue.

How to Proactively Resolve OSHA Noncompliance to Avoid Penalties

The best way to prevent hefty fees, penalties, and follow-up inspection schedules is to eliminate OSHA violations through internal audits and proactive self-assessments. Conduct a full audit of your facility’s indoor fall risks, your existing fall protection systems and equipment, and your workers’ compliance with fall protection standards. This activity will highlight the potential violations that OSHA inspectors could flag the next time they visit your facility. For even better results, conduct internal audits at regular intervals so you minimize the risk of (i) falling out of compliance or (i) missing a costly element of noncompliance in a past audit.

You can also review your facility’s past OSHA inspection documentation. Use past violations and warnings as a quick-audit list to ensure you’ve abated those noncompliance elements so you don’t incur penalties for failure to abate or for willful and repeated violations.

Benefits of proactively conducting your assessments—and obtaining solutions like safety gates for stairs, self-closing gate solutions, and harnesses—include:

• Fewer penalties and fines for failure to comply
• More efficient programs and initiatives, as you can target your budget and work hours to the safety initiatives that matter most
• A better reputation for safety among vendors, customers, and potential employees
• Ultimately, a safer workplace for your team

Fabenco Is Here to Help With OSHA-Compliant Fall Protection Solutions

Understanding OSHA penalty levels is just the first step. Conducting training, providing fall protection equipment, and installing better guardrails and self-closing safety gates is the next step. Fabenco provides OSHA-compliant solutions for facilities, including standard, extended-coverage, and full-coverage self-closing gate products, fall harnesses, safety gates for stairs, and more. Reach out today to match OSHA fall protection violations with our products designed specifically to abate them.