Mike Rubel is a regulatory compliance consultant with over 25 years of experience. He is the founder of National Compliance Institute, an independent full-service environmental, health, and safety consulting firm. The company specializes in bringing small to medium size businesses from all industries into regulatory compliance with such agencies as OSHA, EPA, DOT (Department of Transportation), and EDD on both state and federal levels.

If your company receives a Cal/OSHA citation or experienced a serious injury or fatality, Cal-OSHA will make notification in writing by certified mail of any citations/penalties received. You have only 15 working days to either pay the penalties or contest the citation, the penalties, or both. Failure to contest the citation within this time frame confirms the penalty as FINAL. We can help! Employers are reminded that OSHA compliance officials (industrial hygienists, safety engineers, etc.) possess specific law enforcement powers. They are not quite like your cop on the beat who can arrest you and take you to jail, but they can and do obtain search warrants, seek complaints from the local District Attorney, and testify against you in front of the OSHA Appeals Board, or the criminal court trial. Therefore, you should exercise extreme caution whenever an OSHA official appears at your work-site. This is even more important if an employee injury or death or employee safety complaint is the reason OSHA is knocking. The following steps outline a basic procedure that you can follow if OSHA does show up. When OSHA Knocks We have a proven track record for reducing and/or eliminating OSHA citations and penalties while getting your company back in compliance and keeping it there. Click here to see what an actual OSHA citation looks like.