Employer Responsibilities
OSHA's mandate is to focus its attention on employer compliance with rules.
If OSHA inspects and discovers an employee using unsafe safety procedures, they will not likely cite the employee, but rather OSHA will evaluate the employer's success in meeting its responsibility to maintain a safe and healthful workplace. Employer responsibilities include the following:
- Provide employees a workplace free from recognized hazards. It is illegal to retaliate against an employee for using any of their rights under the law, including raising a health and safety concern with you or with OSHA, or reporting a work-related injury or illness.
- Comply with all applicable OSHA standards.
- Report to OSHA all work-related fatalities within 8 hours, and all inpatient hospitalizations, amputations and losses of an eye within 24 hours.
- Provide required training to all workers in a language and vocabulary they can understand.
- Post OSHA citations at or near the place of the alleged violations.
Note: Free assistance to identify and correct hazards is available to small and medium sized employers, without citation or penalty, through OSHA-supported consultation programs in every state.
Knowledge Check Choose the best answer for the question.
1-5. OSHA has just inspected your workplace and found an employee who was not properly using PPE. Who is OSHA likely to cite as a result of the employee's unsafe performance?
You forgot to answer the question!