384 | 2025 Cal-Peculiarities ©2025 Seyfarth Shaw LLP www.seyfarth.com employee. However, when an employer’s violations are serious, repeated, willful, or arise from a failure to abate, or where an inspection results in ten or more first instance violations, a citation must be issued. The legislation also authorizes Cal/OSHA to seek an injunction restraining certain uses or operations of employment if it has grounds to issue a citation. This is a massive expansion of Cal/OSHA enforcement power; previously, Cal/OSHA could only seek an injunction if “the condition of any employment or place of employment or the operation of any machine, device, apparatus, or equipment constitutes a serious menace to the lives or safety of persons about it.” And finally, there’s now an “egregious violation” category for citations. Cal/OSHA can issue an egregious violation if it finds that at least one of the following seven criteria “is true”: (1) The employer, intentionally, through conscious, voluntary action or inaction, made no reasonable effort to eliminate the known violation, or (2) The violations resulted in worker fatalities, a worksite catastrophe, or a large number of injuries or illnesses. “Catastrophe” means the inpatient hospitalization, regardless of duration, of three or more employees resulting from an injury, illness, or exposure caused by a workplace hazard or condition. (3) The violations resulted in persistently high rates of worker injuries or illnesses. (4) The employer has an extensive history of prior violations of this part. (5) The employer has intentionally disregarded their health and safety responsibilities. (6) The employer’s conduct, taken as a whole, amounts to clear bad faith in the performance of their duties under this part. (7) The employer has committed a large number of violations so as to undermine significantly the effectiveness of any safety and health program that may be in place. 14.19 Workplace Violence Prevention Plan Requirements in 2024 In late 2023, Governor Newsom signed SB 553, which requires nearly all California employers to create, adopt, and implement written Workplace Violence Prevention Plans that include numerous elements, annual workplace violence prevention training, violent incident logs, and the creation and retention of various records.36 Under the new law, the Cal/OSHA Standards Board is required to adopt workplace violence standards codifying SB 553 no later than December 31, 2025, to be adopted by the Cal/OSHA Standards Board no later than December 31, 2026. But regulations or not, Cal/OSHA was directed to start enforcing SB 553 on July 1, 2024. The new requirements apply to nearly all employers and employees in California, except employers previously covered by Cal/OSHA’s Violence Prevention in Health Care standard, employees who telework from a location of their choosing that is outside of employer control, locations not open to the public where fewer than 10 employees work at a given time, Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and law enforcement agencies. The law defines “workplace violence” broadly as any act of violence or threat of violence that occurs in a place of employment, including threats involving a firearm or dangerous weapon regardless of whether employee injuries are sustained, threats against an employee that result in or have a high likelihood of resulting in injury, psychological trauma, or stress, regardless of whether actual injuries are sustained. This definition is very broad, meaning a seemingly innocuous comment might be considered workplace violence based on the perception of an employee.
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