The Cal/OSHA Standards Board has named Millicent Barajas, a career civil servant, its new executive officer. She replaced Christina Shupe, who left the Board several months ago to join a water agency in the Central Valley. Barajas has spent the last 14 years at the California Department of Technology. In that agency, she provided strategic …
California’s Office of Administrative Law has approved Cal/OSHA’s indoor heat illness prevention regulation. The controversial regulation is now in effect. General Industry Safety Orders §3396 standard applies to most indoor workplaces, including warehouses, restaurants, and manufacturing facilities. Emergency operations and correctional facilities are exempted from the requirements. Cal/OSHA’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health plans …
For many years and through various important rulemaking efforts – COVID, lead, indoor heat illness, and others – employer representatives have complained long and loud that Cal/OSHA isn’t taking their concerns seriously enough and not really listening to them on the costs and unintended consequences of major proposals – and even some minor ones. That …
Fed-OSHA and California’s residential construction industry remain at odds over the Feds’ insistence on a strict six-foot trigger height for fall protection. The latest salvos come in response to the Cal/OSHA Standards Board’s recent 15-day notice of modifications to its proposal that would revise the longstanding residential rules. The new Fed-OSHA Oakland area director says …
The Cal/OSHA Standards Board denied a variance and is requiring the general contractor for a Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority expansion project to use Title 8-compliant procedures for construction personnel hoists (CPHs) in tunnel access shafts. The reason, it says, is that the Board fears the variance sought by Tutor Perini/O&G Joint Venture could lead …