(a) Any employer who violates any occupational safety or health standard, order, or special order, or Section 25910 of the Health and Safety Code, and the violation is specifically determined not to be of a serious nature, may be assessed a civil penalty of up to twelve thousand four hundred seventy-one dollars ($12,471) for each violation.
(b) Commencing on January 1, 2018, and each January 1 thereafter, the maximum penalty amount specified in this section shall be increased based on the percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), not seasonally adjusted, for the month of October immediately preceding the date of the adjustment, as compared to the prior year’s October CPI-U. Any regulation issued pursuant to this section increasing penalty amounts based on the annual increase in the CPI-U shall be exempt from the rulemaking provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act (Chapter 3.5 (commencing with Section 11340) of Part 1 of Division 3 of Title 2 of the Government Code), except that the regulation shall be filed with the Office of Administrative Law for publication in the California Code of Regulations. Any penalty shall be calculated using the penalty amounts in effect during the calendar year in which the citation was issued.
(Amended by Stats. 2017, Ch. 28, Sec. 30. (SB 96) Effective June 27, 2017.)