How Effective Are OSHA's Complaint Procedures?

Gao ID: HRD-79-48 April 9, 1979

A review was made of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) and States' procedures for responding to complaints to determine if the agency and the States were making the best use of limited inspection resources and adequately protecting workers from workplace hazards.

Most complaints reviewed came from non-high-risk industry and did not appear to address serious hazards or involve violations of standards. Initial complaint information received was generally vague. Usually, such complaints were handled by a workplace inspection. All offices visited carried a backlog of health complaints. In many cases of potentially serious hazards, the timeliness and thoroughness of initial and followup investigations did not seem adequate.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: No director on record Team: No team on record Phone: No phone on record


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