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Law360 (November 13, 2020, 4:48 PM EST) -- The U.S. Department of Labor's workplace safety arm has issued 26 more citations against nursing homes, rehab centers and other facilities for violations related to COVID-19 with $369,404 in newly proposed penalties, according to the latest list that the agency released Friday.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has now issued more than 200 citations for violations related to the pandemic.
Loren Sweatt, OSHA's principal deputy assistant secretary, previously told Law360 through a DOL spokesperson, "OSHA is working around the clock to protect America's workers from COVID-19. … Throughout this crisis, the incredible men and women of OSHA will continue to work diligently to keep America's workers safe and healthy."
The new list brings the total number of citations to 204 and the total amount of proposed penalties to $2,856,533, even as the agency said it had also withdrawn a previously announced proposed penalty after the employer showed it had tried to comply with the standard.
The list of new citations contains establishments in eight states: Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Rhode Island. New York is home to the most establishments on the new list, with nine.
As in previous pandemic-related OSHA enforcement actions, the establishments on the current list are almost all nursing homes or rehab or medical facilities. The exception is the Cleaning Company, a carpet cleaning and janitorial services company in East Haven, Connecticut.
The list previously included Optimize Manpower Solutions Inc., a staffing company in South Plainfield, New Jersey, but the DOL later said its violation was not related to COVID-19.
OSHA cited the Cleaning Company for not providing employees with information about hazardous chemicals in their work area; not properly verifying that a workplace hazard assessment had been performed; and not providing proper training for personal protective equipment.
More information about how all of those violations related to COVID-19 was not immediately available.
The highest proposed penalty on the new list is $32,965, which OSHA levied on Mystic Meadows Rehabilitation & Nursing Center in Little Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey. The fine is for not reporting a workplace-related death within eight hours; not providing respirators when necessary; not providing an evaluation to see if an employee can use a respirator; and not ensuring that an employee was fit-tested before using a respirator.
But OSHA also said it had withdrawn a previously announced citation, against Mercy Medical Center in Rockville Centre, New York, "after the employer provided evidence of a good faith attempt at complying with the standard in question," according to a statement Friday by the agency. OSHA had issued that citation in October.
OSHA has for months faced scrutiny that it is not doing enough to protect workers from COVID-19. Critics of the agency's handling of the pandemic have likened the penalties to a slap on the wrist and claimed they do little to keep workers safe.
One of those critics, Deborah Berkowitz, the Worker Health and Safety program director at the National Employment Law Project, previously told Law360, "The agency's enforcement strategy seems more to be about trying to fool the press that the agency is really stepping up, when if you look closely at where they cited and for what, this does little to protect workers."
A DOL spokesperson told Law360 by email Friday, "OSHA's civil penalty structure is in accordance with well-established and longstanding statutes, procedures, legal standards."
On Thursday, the country's largest registered nurses union said OSHA should publish an emergency temporary standard to protect workers.
The expanded list comes amid record-high new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 194,610 new cases for the previous day, the highest since the start of the pandemic. The seven-day moving average has doubled since just late October, the data showed.
More than 10,000 people in the U.S. have died from the disease since election day, according to the CDC numbers.
Representatives for the Cleaning Company, Optimize Manpower Solutions and Mystic Meadows Rehabilitation & Nursing Center were not immediately available to comment.
--Editing by Emily Kokoll.
Update: This story has been updated to reflect that OSHA has removed Optimize Manpower Solutions from its Nov. 13 list of COVID-19-related citations.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
