When OSHA celebrates an anniversary, it does it up big. The federal agency otherwise known as the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) plans to commemorate its 50th anniversary this year with a yearlong celebration of past achievements, current events and future initiatives. The Williams-Steiger Occupational Safety and Health Act signed into law by President Richard M. Nixon on December 29, 1970 – that one that created OSHA – gave the federal government the authority to set and enforce safety and health standards for most of the country's workers.

Employers across the world allow their employees to listen to music each day while on the job. Allowing workers to jam out can boost workplace morale, job satisfaction and productivity. Listening to music is increasingly popular in construction-related fields since canceling out loud noise is required to protect hearing. The problem is that listening to tunes while performing high-risk jobs can often lead to unfortunate accidents.

A fire and explosions at a refinery in Pennsylvania have resulted in an energy company being cited by OSHA for serious violations related to process safety management (PSM). Philadelphia Energy Solutions faces $132,600 in penalties stemming from the June 2019 incident at its Girard Point Refinery Complex in Philadelphia.

A Nashville sheet metal manufacturer has received accolades from the state of Tennessee for its zero lost time achievement in 2018. “We are thrilled to join an elite group of companies committed to a safe work environment for their employees.” says Scott Eder, the company’s Safety Director.

With the new year comes new maximum penalty amounts for safety violations leveled by OSHA, due to an annual adjustment for inflation. Here are the maximum penalty amounts that may now be assessed by the agency (as of Jan. 15, 2020.)

After being notified by concerned neighbors living near several construction projects, the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries investigated – and found multiple worker safety violations at three different worksites involving Allways Roofing.

An Arkansas manufacturing facility has been recognized for logging two million working hours without a lost time incident. Utility Trailer Manufacturing Company, a manufacturer of refrigerated trailers, dry freight vans, flatbeds, and Tautliner® curtainsided trailers, was presented with a safety award by the state of Arkansas for the achievement at its Paragould manufacturing plant.

The National Safety Council has received a second $500,000 grant from the McElhattan Foundation for the NSC Work to Zero initiative, launched last January to educate employers about technological safety advancements that promise to reduce and ultimately eliminate preventable deaths in the workplace. Since receiving the first grant last December, NSC has conducted research into emerging and existing technologies and will release a comprehensive report in February that details which technologies could reduce fatality risk in the most hazardous situations for workers.

Among the end of 2019-beginning of 2020 workplace incidents in the U.S. were employees killed or seriously injured by collapsed machinery, a pallet grinder and an exploding wheel. In Nebraska, a 39-year-old woman sustained traumatic injuries to her head, arms and upper body when she was partially pulled into the pallet grinder she’d been working with. The woman, an employee of Tradewell Pallet in Gretna, was air lifted to a hospital by a medical condition, where she was reported to be in critical condition, according to news sources.