10.5 OSHA, I-9, and Workplace Compliance Records

OSHA: Safe Workplace, Deadlines, and Anti-Retaliation

The Occupational Safety and Health Act, enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), requires employers to provide a workplace free from recognized hazards likely to cause death or serious harm — the General Duty Clause — and to comply with applicable standards, examine conditions, provide safe equipment, communicate hazards, and train workers in language and vocabulary they understand.

Reporting and recordkeeping deadlines are high-yield exam facts:

OSHA also protects workers who report hazards or injuries (Section 11(c) anti-retaliation). A safety concern is not insubordination just because it is inconvenient. If an employee reports a hazard and a manager then wants to cut hours or assign undesirable work, HR examines the facts: legitimate, documented, consistent performance management may continue, but it must be separate from the protected safety activity.

Form I-9: The Employment-Eligibility Workflow

The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) requires Form I-9 to verify the identity and employment authorization of every person hired to work in the United States — citizens included. The timing is testable:

• Section 1 — completed by the employee no later than the first day of work for pay.
• Section 2 — completed by the employer (examining documents) within 3 business days of the start date.
• Retention — keep the I-9 for 3 years after hire or 1 year after termination, whichever is later.

The employee — not the employer — chooses which acceptable documents to present (one List A document, or one List B identity document plus one List C work-authorization document). HR must not demand a specific document, ask for more than required, or reject valid documents based on national origin or citizenship status. Doing so is document abuse / over-documentation, a prohibited unfair immigration-related practice.

E-Verify and Record Discipline

E-Verify is a web-based system that compares the I-9 information against Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security records to confirm work authorization. Key point the exam loves: employers who use E-Verify still complete Form I-9 — it is a companion check, not a replacement. If E-Verify returns a Tentative Nonconfirmation (TNC), the employer must follow the prescribed notice-and-contest process and may not take adverse action (suspend, terminate, withhold pay) while the employee timely contests it.

The PHR answer is process-driven: apply I-9 procedures consistently to all hires, keep compliance records access-limited, never backdate or fix safety issues only by email, and never retaliate after a protected report.

Worker Rights, Inspections, and the Hierarchy of Controls

OSHA grants employees specific rights HR should be ready to honor: the right to a safe workplace, to receive training and information on hazards (including Safety Data Sheets under the Hazard Communication Standard), to review their own exposure and medical records, to file a confidential complaint, and to request an OSHA inspection. Employees also have the right to participate in an inspection and to be free from retaliation for exercising any of these rights. A retaliation complaint under Section 11(c) must generally be filed with OSHA within 30 days.

When OSHA conducts an inspection, it typically follows opening conference, walkaround, and closing conference steps; the employer and an employee representative may accompany the compliance officer. Citations are classified by severity — other-than-serious, serious, willful, and repeat — with escalating penalties. HR's role is to coordinate the response, preserve records, correct cited hazards by the abatement date, and avoid any appearance of punishing employees who cooperated.

On the prevention side, the exam favors the hierarchy of controls, which ranks hazard remedies from most to least effective: elimination, substitution, engineering controls, administrative controls, and personal protective equipment (PPE). PPE is the last resort, not the first answer — a frequent distractor is choosing "issue respirators" when an engineering control would remove the hazard at the source.

I-9 Storage, Reverification, and Penalties

Form I-9 carries administrative discipline beyond initial completion. Employers should store I-9s separately from personnel files (paper or electronic) to simplify a potential audit, and must produce them within 3 business days of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Notice of Inspection. Certain documents with expiration dates require reverification in Section 3 before they lapse, but employers must not reverify a U.S. passport, a Permanent Resident Card, or List B identity documents. Civil penalties apply for paperwork errors and escalate sharply for knowingly hiring or continuing to employ unauthorized workers.

The operational lesson mirrors OSHA: consistent process, accurate and access-limited records, timely correction, and zero retaliation are what every PHR compliance item is testing.