OSHA has a set of fines in place in order to provide employees with the safest and most stress-free work experience. These fines are not to be a nuisance to the company or employer, but to make sure they keep the idea of employee safety in mind. The fines are not getting smaller or disappearing. So it’s better to learn and follow the guidelines to make sure you don’t lose money and your employees are safe and secure on the job than to risk your employees’ safety.
As the fines get more expensive every year with any violation, whether it be a serious, willful, repeated, or a failure to abate prior violation, the fine adds up each day until corrected by the employer. This can add up exponentially as by the new 2019 standards a serious or failure to abate prior violation costs $13,260 and a willful or repeated violation costs $132,598. Tag along the possibility that if the employer doesn’t fix it right away, this can provide a huge loss and direct impact to the company’s bottom line.
Fines of these levels can hit a company hard, so why even allow one to occur? Besides having a drastic effect on the company’s bottom line, it can also affect government contracts, depending on the seriousness of your OSHA violation, as well as some insurance companies not allowing partnerships with other companies.
These fines are set to not only make sure you follow the guidelines, but also to help make sure your standards are up to order so you both gain income and make sure your employees who give their time up are secure and don’t have to fear risk of injury or in worst cases death. Is it really worth ignoring OSHA guidelines only to lose money and have an employee potentially leave? No, that’s why Karl Environmental follows and provides the utmost care and caution when it comes to working with employees and training them for the future.