OSHA Violations

There are six types of OSHA violations depending on the nature and severity of the infraction.

• De Minimis violations — These violations are the least serious, having no significant impact on employee health or safety. Instead, they are more of a technical error, listed on the employer’s case inspection file, but not subject to a monetary penalty. A door or window clearance half an inch lower than what OSHA requires would be a typical example of a De Minimis violation.
• Other-than-serious violations — These violations do not pose an immediate threat to employees but are nevertheless indicative of non-compliance to OSHA regulations. Common examples include poor recordkeeping and failure to provide safety regulation information to employees.
• Serious violations — Any situation with a definite chance of causing severe injury or death to employees would classify as serious if the employer knew (or should have known) about the hazard but did nothing to fix it. For example, failure to ensure construction workers wear steel-toe boots would be considered a serious violation.
• Willful violations — The highest degree for OSHA violations are willful violations. These occur when an employer intentionally disregards employee health and safety. Willful violations are subject to the highest fines and may even be grounds for criminal charges in some cases. An example of a willful violation would be providing employees with equipment proven to be faulty and hazardous.
• Repeated violations — As their name suggests, these violations occur when an employer commits the same or a very similar offense. Accordingly, the fines for repeated violations are typically higher than first-instance violations.
• Failure to Abate — If an employer fails to remediate a violation by the set deadline, they commit a new offense referred to as failure to abate. To discourage employers from postponing corrective actions, fines for this type of violation increment over time.