On December 10, the Department of Labor announced in a news release that Dollar Tree Stores Inc. had reached an agreement with OSHA that would settle all of the citations that had been issued to the company.
Dollar Tree received citations on 13 different occasions between the dates of April 21, 2014, and September 30 of this year. As per the settlement agreement, the company will need to create a safety and health program that must do the following:
- Demonstrate its commitment to workplace health and safety.
- Involve employees in the Safety and Health Program.
- Identify health and safety hazards.
- Control health and safety hazards.
- Provide education and training (in addition to the training required by Section 4 of the same settlement agreement) related to the Safety and Health Program.
- Evaluate the Safety and Health Program.
The settlement also includes provisions promising that Dollar Tree Stores Inc. will pay $825,000 to OSHA in penalty fines within 30 days of signing and that a third-party monitor will be allowed to audit 50 company stores. A new anonymous health and safety tip line will also be created, in order for employees to report any violations they observe without having to do so publicly.
When Dollar Tree sets out to complete this two-year agreement, they will be creating a safety and health plan that meets federal standards and should be an excellent model for other companies to follow. Those six steps outlined above are a great checklist for seeing if your company’s safety plan is comprehensive enough to protect your employees as well as stand up to OSHA scrutiny, should it need to. Each step contains specific suggestions for its completion as written in the settlement agreement, and comparing your own safety plan to those suggestions is a great metric for checking if you are up to standards and providing the safest possible environment for your employees.
