By Richard Negri Health and Safety Director SEIU Local 121RN

Cal/OSHA’s Acting Chief of the Division of Occupational Safety and Health and Senior Safety Engineer of the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board have both reviewed the California Safe Care Standard campaign’s Petition No. 538 and recommend that the Standards Board accept it and move it to an advisory committee.

A little background: The first step in the process to get to a comprehensive Cal/OSHA standard on workplace violence for healthcare workers was to submit a petition to the Standards Board. Our petition outlined the issues, the loopholes in California law, and the basic provisions we saw necessary to be included in the standard. We filed our petition with the Cal/OSHA Standards Board on February 10, after a year of talking with and listening to our members, allies, and experts in the field of workplace health and safety.

Upon receiving our petition, the Standards Board then turned it over to its Senior Safety Engineer and to the Division of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH) for review. We received the DOSH report on April 10 and the Standards Board staff report on May 12. Both reports recommend that our petition be moved forward into an advisory committee.

"The Division believes that a regulation that specifically addresses workplace violence hazards in health care environments would improve employee protection and can reduce the incidence and severity of injuries." – Juliann Sum, Acting Chief, Division of Occupational Safety and Health

This is fantastic news – a testament to all of the healthcare workers who have shared their experiences of workplace violence, collected signatures in support of our petition, testified in front of the Standards Board, and educated, mobilized, and organized their co-workers, friends, and family around an issue that not only affects them, but their patients as well.

The Cal/OSHA Standards Board will vote on Petition No. 538 at its June 19 meeting in Sacramento.

If you can attend the June 19 Standards Board meeting, click here to email me.