Full Complement Promised for Cal/OSHA Appeals Board
The Cal/OSHA Occupational Safety & Health Appeals Board soon may be at full strength, with a labor representative appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to fill a vacancy that has existed since January 2007, The Sacramento Bee reported today in a story about a state Senate Rules Committee renomination hearing for the board's chairwoman, Candice A. Traeger.
She has been the board's management representative since being appointed in November 2004. The board's other member, lawyer Robert Pacheco, is the public representative.
The committee voted to approve Traeger after members questioned her about settled cases. She defended her agency's current rate of settling 84 percent of cases before it, saying that is up only a few percentage points from the rate before she arrived, but committee members suggested cases the Cal/OSHA staff wanted to pursue have been rushed to settlement and she has fined some employers less than the mandatory $5,000 for late reporting of a workplace injury even though the $5,000 was set by the Legislature, according to the newspaper's story.