The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is certainly a good-intentioned organization, but its heavy hand on writing citations can give a company a bad name. Your Texas company should know the safety regulations for your business and ensure they meet and follow all guidelines. This not only guarantees the safety of your organization but the reputation of your business.
Also keep in mind that your company has a right to appeal any OSHA violations that you believe are exaggerated, unfounded or unfair. Having an attorney present during inspections is also an excellent way to ensure that OSHA inspectors are not subjectively writing citations.
In Wisconsin, Outpost Natural Foods is pulling another Wisconsin company's products from their shelves in response to safety violations issued to the company by the OSHA. Palermo's, who produces pizza products, was inspected by the OSHA at their Menomonee Valley plant after a recent accident where a worker had three fingers cut off. The OSHA issued safety violations against the company.
Outpost was apparently monitoring Palermo after some previous violations they had back in May. Coincidentally, Voces de la Fronters, which is the Palermo's Worker's Union, and the AFL-CIO have been trying to convince grocery stores to boycott all products from Palermo due to a labor dispute that has been going on for the past year. Outpost claims their pulling the products off of their shelves has nothing to do with this boycott, but is because of a new "vendor code of conduct" implemented by their company.
Palermo claims that accidents at their company are below average when compared to other companies such as theirs, and they are disappointed that Outpost has refused to sell their products, but they respect their decision.
Source: jsonline.com, "Outpost Natural Foods takes Palermo's pizzas off its shelves" Georgia Pabst, Oct. 18, 2013
