The Occupational Safety and Health Act has been on the books since 1970, and the rules have only expanded since. OSHA now regulates roughly 8 million worksites and issues standards across chemical exposure, machine guarding, confined spaces, fall protection, bloodborne pathogens, and dozens of industry-specific hazards. For employers, the compliance burden isn't just the rulebook, it's the general duty clause: the statutory obligation to protect workers from 'recognized hazards' even when no specific OSHA standard applies. That open-ended duty is what drives the enforcement action against novel risks like heat illness, ergonomic exposure, and, increasingly, workplace violence.
What the OSH Act Actually Requires Three obligations sit at the core. The general duty clause: provide a workplace free from recognized hazards causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm. The specific OSHA standards: comply with the hundreds of written standards that govern particular industries and hazards (29 CFR 1910 for general industry, 29 CFR 1926 for construction, and so on). The recordkeeping standard: maintain logs of work-related injuries and illnesses on OSHA Forms 300, 300A, and 301, and report specific severe incidents within the statutory window.
Coverage extends to most private-sector employers. Federal employees, state and local government workers, and certain self-employed people fall under different frameworks. About half of US states run OSHA-approved state plans that go further than federal minimums.
How OSHA Enforces the Law OSHA inspections come in five categories, in priority order: imminent danger, catastrophes and fatalities, worker complaints, referrals from other agencies or media, and programmed inspections in high-hazard industries. Most inspections start with one of the first four triggers, and most result in one or more citations.
Penalty amounts adjust annually for inflation. In 2026, the maximum for serious or other-than-serious violations runs just under $17,000, and willful or repeated violations top $160,000. Multi-citation inspections routinely produce six-figure total penalties even for mid-sized employers.
Which OSHA Violations Are Cited Most Often? Fall protection, hazard communication, respiratory protection, ladders, scaffolding, lockout/tagout, powered industrial trucks, machine guarding, fall protection training, and eye and face protection round out the top ten year after year. Companies that proactively audit against the top-ten list close most of their exposure before inspectors arrive.
Workplace Violence and the General Duty Clause in 2026 Federal OSHA has no workplace-violence-specific standard, but the general duty clause covers it, and enforcement has increased meaningfully since 2023. California's SB 553 (effective July 2024) requires nearly every employer in the state to maintain a written workplace violence prevention plan, train employees, and log incidents. New York's Retail Worker Safety Act, Oregon's healthcare workplace violence standard, and similar state-level action have extended the trend. The result: a growing compliance stack that sits alongside the federal OSH Act framework.
Building an OSH Act Compliance Program That Holds Up Five practices keep OSH Act compliance on track. Map the applicable standards (general industry, construction, or state plan) against the operation and audit against them annually. Maintain the 300, 300A, and 301 logs in real time rather than backfilling at year-end. Report severe incidents within the statutory windows (fatality within 8 hours, inpatient hospitalization or amputation within 24 hours). Build a workplace violence prevention program that meets the most demanding state requirement (California SB 553) and scale it to the rest of the operation. And use AllVoices' workplace violence hotline and anonymous reporting tool to capture early signals before they escalate into reportable incidents; the compliance solution centralizes the incident log and documentation trail that SB 553 and OSHA inspections both require. Reference the OSHA site for current standards, penalty amounts, and state-plan details, and the California SB 553 guidance for the model most other states are following.
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