Senators push latest bipartisan attempt to make OSHA’s VPP permanent

I am not in favor of the possibility of the VPP programs becoming permanent. As a Compliance Inspector for Federal OSHA and MIOSHA and as Assistant Director for Federal OSHA stationed in Savannah, GA I saw many abuses of the VPP program. I inspected companies, for their final round before getting their VPP Certification, that had multiple Serious Violations that had gone unnoticed and/or ignored during the process and they still qualified for their VPP Flag. One company in particular was a very small operation and in one day of inspection I found 37 Serious and 2 Other Than Serious violations. The company was given the VPP Certification without the violations being abated. I heard complaints from the VPP Coordinators stating that they had to show the program as a success. Many companies use the VPP program as a way of limiting inspections by the OSHA Enforcement Staff, which is one parameter of the program. There was also a high degree of desire for companies to qualify, whether they were actually safer or not, by OSHA Managers, because they wanted the program to look like it was actually accomplishing the goals. It has been a ploy of the Republican Party to get this program established permanently stating that employers want to comply with OSHA regulations, when the facts and the citation history of many companies reveal that this is not the case. If anything, OSHA should be allowed to enlarge their CAS, Compliance Assistant Specialists, Officers. This is truly a program that does help and assist employers to learn about and correct hazards (with the provision that the employers actually abate the hazards found) in order to save lives and injuries from affecting our workforce. I've always felt that the CAS group should be roughly 1/3 of all the Officers in OSHA. This is a program that can achieve true and legit bipartisan support and success.