New OSHA Slip & Fall Rules Impact Employers in All Industries

Employers in every industry now face stringent federal rules governing slip and fall prevention that until recently applied only to the construction business. Mostly going into effect on January 17, 2017, the rules finalized by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cover equipment and practices designed to prevent slips and falls in the workplace, focusing primarily on the training, use and maintenance of protective equipment.

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The final rules will have a wide scope of impact by establishing new requirements for all general industry pertaining to the use of walking-working surfaces, such as floors, stairways, ladders, dockboards, roofs, scaffolds, and elevated work surfaces and walkways.

OSHA claims that 112 million workers employed at 7 million worksites will be covered by the new rules. Before they were issued, the agency had been strictly enforcing similar rules only in the construction industry, where the largest number of slip and fall injuries and fatalities occur.

According to OSHA, the final rules will increase consistency between general and construction industries, which it believes will help employers and workers in both industries.

“Because a key motivation for the rule was to keep pace with technological advancement and national consensus standards, employers who have adopted those standards may be largely compliant already,” say attorneys Mark Duvall and Jayni Lanham of the law firm of Beveridge & Diamond.

As the agency notes, many conscientious employers already follow most of these practices. What goes unsaid is that workers’ compensation and other insurance costs, state workplace regulation—and the ever-present threat of tort lawsuits—already act as a powerful incentive in this area for even reluctant employers.

However, OSHA estimates that its new rules will prevent 29 fatalities and more than 5,842 injuries annually. Originally proposed in 2010, the rules become effective on Jan. 17, 2017, with some portions of them going into effect after that—in one case a full two decades later.