A U.S. District Court Judge has denied a warrant obtained by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to inspect the Mar-Jac poultry plant in Gainesville, Georgia, for worker safety violations.
The ruling last week was handed down by Senior U.S. District Judge William C. O’Keefe and can be interpreted as a blow to OSHA’s Regional Emphasis Program, which OSHA unveiled last fall to reportedly improve worker safety in poultry plants through outreach, education, and enforcement efforts, including increased inspections of poultry processing operations.
The Regional Emphasis became the basis for OSHA’s request for a warrant to inspect up to 16 areas of inquiry beyond an initial injury investigation that began in February. OSHA had argued that high rates of injury at the Mar-Jac plant demanded an expanded inspection as well as “reasonable suspicion” of underreported injury recordkeeping, giving OSHA the authority to expand unannounced inspections.
However, the court has now ruled that OSHA does not have the authority to expand its unannounced inspections under the Regional Emphasis Program. Instead, the court found that OSHA needed to establish “probable cause” lest inspection warrants “become tools of harassment.” The court ruled that standard was not met.
The court also said that an expanded inspection cannot be based solely on an employee complaint or report of an injury and injury logs did not support a reasonable suspicion of additional violations.
Meanwhile, OSHA has published a regional notice to renew for another year the Regional Emphasis Program, which applies to all Region IV area offices, effective October 26. The notice states that the program will provide the “administrative authority to evaluate the employers’ workplace(s) at all programed, programmed, or other limited-scope inspections pertaining to poultry processing operations to assure that employees are being properly protected. Area offices will normally conduct inspections for all complaints, formal, or non-formal, which contain allegations of potential worker exposure to poultry processing hazards. In addition and where applicable, all programmed inspections will be expanded to include all areas required by the emphasis program.”
