Safe Workplace and Safety News

This is the safety news blog for the Safe Workplace web site. We cover workplace safety related news with a focus on how safety, or a lack of safety, impacts employers, employees and their families. We also cover topics such as safety training, safety tools, and legal issues related to safety. For regular safety news and information enter your email address in the box above the Subscribe button to the right (then click on the button).

Monday, June 01, 2009

OSHA Confirms VPP To Continue

The following is a press release from the Voluntary Protection Programs Participants’ Association, Inc. (VPPPA)

VPPPA has received confirmation from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Acting Assistant Secretary for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Jordan Barab, that OSHA is not suspending the Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP).

Recent media coverage of Acting Assistant Secretary Barab’s statement on April 30, 2009, before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Workforce Protections has caused some confusion for VPP sites and the safety and health community. He stated that, “We need to better utilize the resources that we already have. In order to direct more of OSHA’s existing resources into enforcement and to provide time to address concerns in an upcoming GAO Report on the efficacy of OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Program, I have informed the field staff that we will suspend the previous administration’s practice of establishing goals for new Voluntary Protection Program sites and Alliances.”

In response to the resulting confusion, Acting Assistant Secretary Barab called VPPPA’s Executive Director R. Davis Layne and assured him that OSHA is not suspending VPP. Indicated changes represent a shift in focus toward enforcement but do not equate to an elimination of OSHA’s VPP. In the course of the conversation, Barab accepted an invitation to attend the association’s 25th Annual National VPPPA Conference in San Antonio, Texas, August 24-27, 2009, and address the anticipated 2,500 attendees.

VPPPA, Inc., a nonprofit 501(c)(3) charitable organization, is dedicated to promoting advances in worker safety and health excellence through cooperation among communities, workers, industries and governments. The nearly 2,000 VPPPA member sites primarily consist of worksites that have been approved, or are seeking approval, into VPP as administered by OSHA, state-plan OSHA and the Department of Energy.

Labels: OSHA, VPP