(from Honolulu Civil Beat) Hawaii is starting to get its act together when it comes to workplace safety and the feds are taking notice.
The Obama administration is letting the state reassume responsibility for regulating manufacturing industries, according to an announcement Friday.
Here’s the news:
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Hawaii Occupational Safety and Health Division have shared regulatory responsibility for Hawaii per an agreement that clearly divides enforcement responsibilities. The Operational Status Agreement (OSA) went into effect last September and was designed to jointly rebuild and strengthen the safety and health regulatory environment in Hawaii. The OSA, a procedural agreement, provides a roadmap for how the OSHA and DLIR’s HIOSH will work together to meet safety and health goals and assure safe and healthful working conditions for Hawaii’s workers.
“By continuing to work together closely with OSHA, and in partnership with employers, we are on track in rebuilding the HIOSH program. A strong HIOSH not only lowers injury and illness rates, but also improves the overall work environment and accountability,” said Governor Neil Abercrombie. “This Administration is committed to restoring the state’s ability to assure workplace safety and health.”
The agreement suspended HIOSH’s enforcement authority in specific industries where OSHA assumed responsibility for enforcement until the State is able to be “at least as effective” as OSHA. The partnership allows OSHA to commit the resources and staff necessary to provide the training and support, which will enable HIOSH to reassume sole enforcement authority in the State. HIOSH will progressively resume authority over industries as it rebuilds capacity during the three-year period outlined in the agreement. The return of the Manufacturing sector to HIOSH jurisdiction is the first sector that was scheduled in the OSA to return to HIOSH. (continue reading)
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About mavity2012
I am a Senior Partner operating out of the Atlanta office of Fisher & Phillips LLP, one of the Nation’s oldest and largest management employment and labor firms. My practice is national and keeps me on the road or in one of our 28 offices about 50 percent of the time. I created and co-chair the Firm's Workplace Safety and Catastrophe Management Practice Group. I have almost 29 years of experience as a labor lawyer, but rely even more heavily on the experience I gained in working in my family's various businesses, and through dealing with practical client issues.
Employers tell me that they seldom meet an attorney who delivers on his promise to provide practical guidance and to be a business partner. As a result, some executives probably use different terms than “practical” to describe my fellow travelers in the profession.
I don't enjoy the luxury of being impractical because I spend much of my time on shop floors and construction sites dealing with safety, union and related issues which are driven by real world processes and the need to protect and get the most out of one's most important business assets ... its employees. That's one of the reasons that I view safety compliance as a way to also manage problem employees, reduce litigation and develop the type of work environment that makes unions unnecessary. Starting out dealing with union-management challenges and a stint in the NLRB have better equipped me to see the interrelationship of legal and workplace factors.
I am proud also of my experience at Fisher & Phillips, where providing “practical advice” is second only to legal excellence among the Firm’s values.
Our website lists me as having provided counsel for over 225 occasions of union activity, guided unionized companies, and as having managed approximately 450 OSHA fatality cases in construction and general industry, ranging from dust explosions to building collapses, in virtually every state. I have coordinated complex inspections involving multi-employer sites, corporate-wide compliance, and issues involving criminal referral.
As a full labor lawyer, I oversee audits of corporate labor, HR, and safety compliance. I have responded to virtually every type of day-to-day workplace inquiry, and have handled cases before the EEOC, OFCCP, NLRB, and numerous other state and federal agencies. At F & P, all of us seek to spot issues and then rely upon attorneys in the Firm who concentrate on those areas. No tunnel vision. I teach or speak around 50 times per year to business associations, bar and professional groups, and to individual businesses. I serve on safety committees at three states’ AGC Chapters, teach at the AGC ASMTC
Howard Mavity 