Former Cal-OSHA Chief Defends Safety Program

The former chief of the California Occupational Safety and Health Division defended its Injury’s Illness Prevention Program following a study by think tank RAND Corp. showing the occupational safety program that requires California businesses to eliminate workplace hazards only works when it’s adequately enforced.

The study by Santa Monica, Calif.-based RAND, which says this is the first study to be conducted on the program, shows the program reduces workplace injuries, but only at businesses that had been cited for not addressing the regulation’s more-specific safety mandates.

The program is designed to save countless dollars in workplace injury payouts.

The California Injury and Illness Prevention Program, or CIIPP, which began in 1991, mandates certain procedures for employers, including communicating to employees about risks, carrying out workplace surveys, abating hazards, safety training and investigating causes of injuries. It also requires employers to have a written document concerning the program.

“We found the safety effects to be real, but not very large,” John Mendeloff, lead author of the study and a senior public policy researcher for RAND, said. “We think that the most important reason for the limited impact of this program is that inspectors often did not go beyond a review of the employer’s written document.”

Len Welsh, acting chief counsel for California Department of Industrial Relations’ litigations unit, and a former chief of Cal-OSHA from 2003 to 2011, said he views the study as a positive endorsement of CIIPP and he defended Cal-OSHA’s inspections. DIR oversees Cal-OSHA.

“You can’t draw from a study like that the inspector wasn’t inspecting enough,” Welsh told the Insurance Journal. He added that to determine the quality and thoroughness of individual inspections would require looking at each inspection file.

By DIR estimates Cal-OSHA has roughly 240 inspectors, but California has 1.3 million businesses, according to the Employment Development Department

“People have this idea that OSHA can go inspect every workplace in the world and it’s never going to happen,” Welsh said.

Welsh said a more “holistic approach” is being undertaken by OSHA in the battle to promote safety in the workplace, including inspections, education, consultation services, and Internet and media campaigns.

“We do a lot of triage when we go to workplaces,” he said. “We have to ask ourselves, ‘Should we be spending half-a-day there to issue one or two tickets, or should be moving in on and trying to nail somebody who is in the underground economy?'”

By targeting the worst actors, or “the underground economy,” the ones who Cal-OSHA can best use its resources, he said, adding, “government can’t be everywhere.”

What Welsh took away from the RAND study is that “if you really implement an IIPP, you will see a benefit, but if you get it and stick it on a shelf, it’s not going to do anything for you. To me the news is pretty much all good.”

But, he added, “If the proposition is that the inspectors should dig deeper when they see no paper … I would say that’s a resource question that needs to be studied.”

The RAND study shows that when Cal-OSHA inspectors did investigate further and found failures to comply with provisions that specific businesses must train workers, identify and abate hazards, and investigate injury causes, the average injury rates at targeted businesses declined more than 20 percent in the following two years.

However, these provisions were cited in only about 5 percent of Cal-OSHA inspections, the study shows. In the other 20 percent of inspections where a violation of the rule was cited, it was only for the section requiring the employer have a written program, which carries a fine of $150.

The 20 percent reduction in injuries following citations for the specific CIIPP requirements translates to about one injury per year at a workplace with 100 employees, and most estimates of the value of preventing a work injury are in the range of $15,000 to $50,000, according to RAND.

The study was sponsored by the California Commission for Health, Safety and Workers’ Compensation, a public body with management, labor and public representatives located in the state’s Department of Industrial Relations.

Topics California Workers' Compensation