Cal/OSHA proposes per-employee and multi-worksite penalty procedures

What happened

The October 16, 2026 Notice Register announces proposed amendments to title 8 sections 332.4, 334, 335, 336 and 340.4 governing Cal/OSHA classifications, penalties, postings and abatement documentation. The principal provisions implement the egregious and enterprise-wide citation categories already created by SB 606 in Labor Code sections 6317 and 6317.8. This is a proposed regulatory framework, rather than a newly enacted statutory enforcement authority. Written comments must be received by November 30, or may be submitted at the December 3 public hearing beginning at 10 a.m. The notice does not establish an effective date for the proposed amendments.

An egregious violation would require a willful violation plus a qualifying factor within the specified five-year period. The proposed prior-history thresholds include one final repeat, willful or egregious violation, five final serious violations, or ten final general or regulatory violations. Other grounds include intentional disregard of safety duties, clear bad faith, specified fatality or injury history, or an experience modifier above 125 percent. A catastrophe would include inpatient hospitalization of at least three employees, regardless of duration, resulting from a workplace hazard. The proposed penalty procedure would issue a separate citation and willful-calculation penalty for each exposed employee; ten exposed employees would mean ten separate penalties, rather than one penalty for the group.

For employers with employees at multiple worksites, a violative written policy applying at more than one site, or evidence of a pattern or practice across sites, would create a rebuttable enterprise-wide presumption. The written-policy basis would retain the statutory exception for emergency regulations during the first 30 days after the Standards Board votes to adopt or amend them. The proposed enterprise-wide calculation multiplies the penalty by covered worksites, using only classifications, characterizations and credits shared by every covered violation. The draft caps the resulting enterprise-wide penalty at $162,851 and generally limits section 336(d) reductions to size. Enterprise-wide general violations would lose the presumed abatement credit but could receive the specified 50 percent credit upon qualifying timely abatement; egregious general and serious violations would not receive abatement credit.

The package would also change the penalty-history lookback from three to five years and expand citation posting to customary notice locations as well as the violation site, with effective notice and an infeasibility qualification. Abatement certification would be due within ten working days after the abatement date, replacing calendar-day wording to align the regulation with the cited statute; the existing exception for an officer who promptly observes and records abatement remains. For enterprise-wide failures to abate, the proposed penalty would follow the worksites that remain unabated, rather than treating correction at some sites as correction everywhere. These details make site-level evidence and enterprise policy governance central to the proposed process.

Why it matters

A shared safety-policy defect or repeated condition across facilities can create broader exposure than a single-site citation. Covered private healthcare employers should be able to identify common policies, final citation history, exposed employees and completed abatement separately for each affected site.

Implementation playbook

1. Recommended internal target: assign safety, compliance and legal owners for enterprise policy and citation-history assessment. Compliance · Due 2026-10-23
2. Recommended internal target: assess shared policies, five-year final citation history and site-level abatement evidence against the proposal. Clinical Operations · Due 2026-11-06
3. Recommended internal target: complete any proposed comments for review before the official November 30 deadline; note the separate December 3 hearing opportunity. Legal · Due 2026-11-20

Sources

• October 16 Notice Register: egregious and enterprise-wide violations proposalOfficial · California Office of Administrative Law · 2026-10-16
• Proposed regulations: egregious and enterprise-wide violations and penaltiesOfficial · California Department of Industrial Relations
• Initial Statement of Reasons: egregious and enterprise-wide violationsOfficial · California Department of Industrial Relations