It should be the goal of every New York workplace to keep employees safe from harm. However, accidents still happen that lead to serious injuries. These injuries can have serious impacts on a worker’s personal life. Not only can the worker incur medical expenses as a result of the accident, the worker may also lose income as the person recovers.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration tries to ensure that workers are safe at work by passing workplace safety regulations. These regulations help to set standards for employers to enforce. OSHA is also responsible for investigating New York workplaces. These investigations help to ensure that workers are safe and that rules are followed.
However, it is impossible for OSHA to inspect every workplace in the United States. Therefore, a set of workplace inspection priorities has been adopted by the agency.
Under these inspection priority guidelines, workplaces with imminent danger situations will receive top priority for inspections. Imminent danger hazards include those that lead to death or serious injury. Next, OSHA will investigate workplaces where an employee has suffered from an illness or severe injury. Next, they will visit places where workers have complained about safety conditions. OSHA will then inspect places that have been referred to them from other governmental agencies.
Once these inspections have been completed, OSHA can undertake targeted inspections of certain industries. Typically, these are injury industries with high hazard and high rates of workplace accidents. Finally, OSHA will carry out follow-up inspections in workplaces that had previous violations.
These inspections can be important to keeping workers safe. However, an OSHA inspection will not help individuals who have already suffered injuries at work. The workers’ compensation system, on the other hand, may be able to help. While this blog post cannot give specific legal advice, an attorney can help injured workers in New York.