OSHA Updates Whistleblower Policy
Monday, August 1, 2011
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced today has revised its whistleblower policy. Part of the change is enhanced enforcement of whistleblower provisions of 21 statutes protecting employees who report violations of various workplace safety, airline, commercial motor carrier, consumer product, environmental, financial reform, food safety, health care reform, nuclear, pipeline, public transportation agency, railroad, maritime and securities laws.
"The ability of workers to speak out and exercise their legal rights without fear of retaliation is crucial to many of the legal protections and safeguards that all Americans value," said OSHA Assistant Secretary David Michaels. "The new measures will significantly strengthen OSHA's enforcement of the 21 whistleblower laws that Congress charged OSHA with administering."
EPA and OSHA watchdog plans
Last June, The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released guidance "toward greater transparency in the agency’s chemical safety inspections process." Under that guidance, EPA inspectors offered employees and employee representatives the opportunity to participate in chemical safety inspections.
EPA also requested that state and local agencies adopt similar procedures under under the Risk Management Rule.
Clearly the two agencies want to make it less uncomfortable (notice the double-negative there) for employees to report something seriously amiss. This is fine. We don't think this will much change the number or quality of incident/equipment/chemical hazards. Occasionally you have to purge the system.
In fact, OSHA also announced today it has purged a backlog of more than 150 complaints on appeal (some such cases were on appeal since 2008). A clean slate.
2011 Revised Whistleblower Manual
OSHA also announced it has revised the Whistleblower Investigations Manual. Myself, I am not often in the field anymore, but if I were that is one document I wouldn't want to be caught reading due to the title and all the negative connotations of a tattle-tale. The title would be disturbing to any passing co-worker. They might instead title it, "Safety Procedures IV" or something more positive.
The new edition is expected shortly.
Key changes include:
- requirement that investigators make every attempt to interview the complainant in all cases; and that as part of the intake process, the supervisor verify that applicable coverage requirements have been met and that the prima facie elements of the allegation have been properly identified
- clarification that whistleblower complaints under any statute may be filed orally or in writing, and in any language
- additional clarifications of the investigative process including method and recording of interviews, and processing of dually-filed 11(c) complaints in State plan states
- expanded guidance on dealing with uncooperative respondents and issuing administrative subpoenas during whistleblower investigations
"I believe these changes," Michaels said, "combined with recent hiring of 25 new investigators, will significantly improve the effectiveness of the program and will strengthen OSHA's enforcement of the 21 whistleblower laws that Congress has given OSHA to administer."
Blog Articles
