The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is giving up on a plan to replace hard-nosed inspections with a voluntary workplace safety improvement program, following a court decision that struck down the voluntary program.
On Monday, OSHA announced that the agency is targeting 2,200 dangerous workplaces for inspections by the end of the year.
Under the voluntary program struck down by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals two weeks ago, those workplaces would have been able to reduce their chances for an inspection, which are time-consuming and can often lead to heavy fines, by agreeing to develop stringent workplace safety policies.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which challenged the program in court, argued that the "voluntary" program was coercive and mandated safety standards beyond what is called for in federal law. The court ruled that OSHA should have conducted a formal rulemaking before implementing the program, so that such concerns could have been factored into the agency's plans.
An OSHA spokesman said Tuesday that the agency had no plans for reviving the Cooperative Compliance Program through a formal rulemaking. The agency has not made a decision on whether to appeal the circuit court's ruling.
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