For clients and friends of Jackson Kelly PLLC
Volume 11, Number 20
©2015 Jackson Kelly PLLC
Last week, the Federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (“MSHA”) briefly posted a new Program Policy Letter (“PPL”) on their website regarding enforcement of 30 C.F.R. §§ 56/57.18002, Examination of Working Places. The letter, PPL No. P15-IV-01, stated an effective date of July 9, 2015. This letter has since been removed from MSHA’s website. MSHA representatives have told industry groups that the PPL will be reintroduced at a stakeholder meeting tentatively set for Wednesday, July 22, 2015, at 1:00 p.m. EDT. Official notice of the stakeholder meeting has not yet occurred.
The PPL appears to expand the scope of the standard. It addresses the definition of ‘competent person,’ and states that the examiner should be able to recognize hazards and adverse conditions that are known by the operator to be present in a work area, or that are predictable to someone familiar with the mining industry. The PPL indicates that it is a best practice to have a foreman or other supervisor conduct the examination under the standard. This is concerning because often the person performing the workplace examinations is not a supervisor, and the phrase “predictable” situations would be open to interpretation by inspectors.
The PPL also appears to expand the mine areas that would need to be inspected under the standard. "Working place" is defined in 30 C.F.R. §§ 56/57.2. MSHA, in the PPL, is stating the definition also includes “areas where work is performed on an episodic, sporadic, or infrequent basis, such as areas accessed primarily during periods of maintenance or clean-up.” This is a new interpretation to “working places” and could require inspections of areas where no work will occur during a given shift.
The PPL states that MSHA considers conducting workplace examinations a “new task” for which the examiner must be trained under Parts 46 and 48. MSHA states that if a trained examiner fails to identify multiple or similar safety hazards, it could indicate that task training as required under Parts 46 or 48 was inadequate or never occurred.
Finally, the PPL states that a best practice is to include a description of hazardous conditions in the examination record, “to facilitate correction and to alert others at the mine of conditions that may recur or in other ways affect them.” This would be a new requirement to communicate any defect found in a workplace examination, and given that miners can move areas on a mine site throughout their shift, compliance burdens to supply this “alert” may be significant.
We will keep you updated on when the PPL is released again by MSHA.
This article was authored by Dana M. Svendsen, Jackson Kelly PLLC. For more information on the author, click here.
OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH PRACTICE GROUP
Denver, Colorado
Responsible Attorney
Kristin R.B. White
(303) 390-0006
kwhite@jacksonkelly.com
The Jackson Kelly PLLC Occupational Safety & Health News-Alert is for informational purposes only and not for the purposes of offering legal advice or a legal opinion on any matter. No reader should act or refrain from acting on the basis of any statement in the Jackson Kelly PLLC Occupational Safety & Health News-Alert without seeking advice from qualified legal counsel on the particular facts and circumstances involved.
If you or others would like to receive future copies of the Jackson Kelly PLLC Occupational Safety & Health News-Alert via e-mail, please send your name, job title, and company name, along with your e‑mail address, to Janet Kosman at jlkosman@jacksonkelly.com. You may also call her at (303) 390‑0038.
If you wish to UNSUBSCRIBE to this legal news alert list, please reply to this e-mail and type the word ‘UNSUBSCRIBE’ in the subject line.
The Rules of the Kentucky Supreme Court require the following: THIS IS AN ADVERTISEMENT.
KRISTIN R.B. WHITE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CONTENTS OF THIS ALERT.
Comments