Law Paper (Essay Sample)

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List and discuss five important criteria that a state must meet in order to be approved by OSHA for safety and health related responsibility.
The 1970 Occupational Health and Safety Act (OSHA) urges each state to generate state-specific health and safety workplace policies. These policies vary from one industry to another. If these health and safety policies meet the federal standards, the state is given regulatory control by OSHA (Holtzman, 2001). The following are the five crucial criteria, which a state has to meet to be approved by OSHA health and safety related duty.
* Coverage
* Developmental Plan
* Provisional Operation
* Final Approval
* Considerations
Coverage
If the plan of a State is sanctioned, OSHA must pay 50% of the State plan's cost of operations and permit it to develop as well as monitor its plan. Moreover, States have an option for OSHA's coverage of private and public workers or the public sector only. According to the Depart of Labor, US, twenty two states are using the plan, except Texas (Bailey, 2008).
Development plan
To obtain sanction, a State has to demonstrate it possesses a structure for running its safety and health programs. Furthermore, the State has to prove that all standards will be operational in a period of 3 years. Safety and health standards for state plans are usually similar to federal criteria, though States are required to create comparable policies. States may likewise develop standards that the federal government does not use (Holtzman, 2001). Furthermore, enforcement, monitoring, education and training programs have to be ready. All this require States to pass the suitable staff positions and legislation to run programs. Once a state effectively documents every standard, it is set for certification. Note that certification does not grant any benefits; it just signifies all the essential criteria are met.
Provisional Operation
Once a state's plan is licensed, the OHSA supervises its operations until it considers the State ready to implement its own safety and health policies. Once set, OHSA will accord the state a working status agreement that permits the state operate its individual programs without federal supervision.
Final Approval
States have to wait a year to receive final sanction. To attain final sanction, the OHSA has to ascertain the state-operated programs sustain federal standards as witnessed in real working place settings. It must also observe 100% of the plan's levels of staffing in place as well as the usage of OHSA's data inspection computerized system (Bailey, 2008).
Considerations
Though approved States attain control over numerous workplace safety and health concerns the federal administration can still get involved if violations arise. Violations for unsafe or incomplete policies could be conveyed to OHSA local administrator. Equally, State safety standards might be more specific and stringent than federal policies (Holtzman, 2001). Moreover, a number of of OHSA's federally operated policies fall under state's responsibility. Such programs as the Cooperative Program assist small plus medium-sized businesses avert illness and accidents in the place of work.
Define “imminent dangers” and discuss OSHA inspections related to these potential events and how they might differ from a routine inspection.
OSHA define imminent danger as any condition/situation in which there is practical conviction that a hazard exists, which can be projected to cause serious physical damage or death immediately, or afore the hazard can be eradicated via normal enforcement techniques. Imminent danger inspections follow an un-programmed inspection procedure (Bailey, 2008). Un-programmed inspections like that of an imminent danger are triggered by unsafe working conditions or employees protests of suspected violations. OSHA may then carry out an un-programmed follow-on investigation. When an officer from OSHA is realistically certain there is a hazard, which is expected to cause serious injury or death before standard OSHA processes can be adhered to, the officer from OSHA contacts the compa...