Cubicle & Workstation
Moving San Diego

Since July 1, 1991, every California employer has had to establish, implement and maintain an effective Injury and Illness Prevention Program, in writing, with a minimum set of elements the regulation specifies (8 CCR §3203(a)). Among them: a named person with authority and responsibility for the program, a system for making sure employees follow safe work practices, communication with employees in a form they can readily understand that encourages reporting hazards without fear of reprisal, procedures for identifying and evaluating hazards including scheduled periodic inspections, timely correction of what those inspections turn up, and training both on general safe practice and on the hazards specific to each job assignment. Where crews are dispatched away from a fixed workplace, the written program may be kept at the established central workplace instead of at every site. Ask to see it. Every vendor bidding your floor is required to have one.

The second is what is supposed to happen when something goes wrong. A California employer has to report a serious work injury, illness or death to Cal/OSHA immediately, and §342(a) defines immediately as no more than eight hours after the employer knows, or with diligent inquiry would have known, extended to twenty-four only on a showing of exigent circumstances, by telephone or through the Division’s specified reporting mechanism. Serious injury is defined at §330(h) as one requiring inpatient hospitalization for something other than medical observation or diagnostic testing, or involving amputation, loss of an eye, or any serious degree of permanent disfigurement. On a job where overhead bins and full-height panels come down off a ladder, those definitions are not abstractions.