2023 Annual Adjustments to OSHA Civil Penalties

Mary Madison, RN, RAC-CT, CDP
Clinical Consultant – Briggs Healthcare

On December 20, 2022, OSHA issued this Enforcement Memo – same title as this Blog.

Purpose.

The penalty information included in this memorandum is intended to supplement the penalties and debt collection information found in Chapter 6 of the Field Operations Manual (FOM). Tables included in this memorandum reflect penalty amounts for calendar year 2023 and correspond to adjusted penalty amounts found in OSHA Information Systems (OIS). OSHA updates this information annually to ensure access to current penalty information.
Background.

On November 2, 2015, the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act Improvements Act of 2015 was enacted, which further amended the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act of 1990 as previously amended by the 1996 Debt Collection Improvement Act (collectively, the “Prior Inflation Adjustment Act”), to improve the effectiveness of civil monetary penalties and maintain their deterrent effect. The Inflation Adjustment Act required agencies to: (1) adjust the level of civil monetary penalties with an initial “catch-up” adjustment through an interim final rule and (2) make subsequent annual adjustments for inflation, no later than January 15 of each year.

The cost-of-living adjustment multiplier for 2023, based on the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers for October 2022 (not seasonally adjusted), is 1.07745. To compute the 2023 annual adjustment, the Department multiplied the most recent penalty amount for each applicable penalty by the multiplier, 1.07745, and rounded to the nearest dollar. The adjustment factor of 1.07745 is consistent across the minimum and maximum penalties set forth in the Occupational Safety and Health Act and the FOM.
Minimum and Maximum Penalty Amounts.

Table 1 summarizes the minimum and maximum amounts for proposed civil penalties: