When California enacted SB 606 in 2021, it created two powerful new Cal/OSHA enforcement tools: Egregious Violations and Enterprise-Wide Violations. While those provisions have been on the books for several years, Cal/OSHA is only now proposing regulations that would establish how the agency intends to classify these violations and calculate penalties under the law.
To that end, Cal/OSHA has commenced formal rulemaking to incorporate these classifications into California’s occupational safety and health regulations and establish procedures for citation and penalty calculations. The proposal will be considered at a public hearing scheduled for December 3, 2026, with written comments due by November 30, 2026.
What Do the Regulations Propose?
The proposed regulations provide additional detail regarding when Cal/OSHA may characterize a violation as “enterprise-wide.” Generally, the classification may apply when an employer maintains a written policy or procedure that violates a safety requirement or when there is evidence of a pattern or practice of the same violation occurring at more than one worksite.
For many employers, the significance lies in the reality of operating across multiple worksites and affiliated entities. Where safety programs, management practices, or operational procedures are shared across locations, a deficiency identified at one worksite could potentially prompt broader scrutiny elsewhere within the organization.
In other words, the issue may not be limited to whether a violation occurred at one ranch, packinghouse, shop, or facility. Cal/OSHA may also examine whether the same deficiency reflects a broader policy, practice, or failure appearing across multiple locations. This makes it especially important to communicate and implement corrective actions throughout the organization when the same issue could exist elsewhere.
The proposal also sheds additional light on how Cal/OSHA intends to apply the Egregious Violation classification. Under the proposed regulations, a violation generally must first qualify as willful before it may be classified as egregious. Factors that may support an egregious classification include an employer’s prior history of serious, repeat, willful, or egregious violations; conduct demonstrating intentional disregard of employee safety; conduct amounting to clear bad faith; and violations associated with particularly serious outcomes, including fatalities, catastrophes, or multiple injuries or illnesses.
In practical terms, the proposed criteria focus on conduct suggesting repeated noncompliance, intentional disregard, bad faith, or a failure to address known safety concerns, rather than treating every safety violation as egregious.
Perhaps most importantly, the proposed regulations illustrate how penalties may be assessed. An egregious violation could result in separate citations and penalties for each employee exposed to the violative condition. Likewise, enterprise-wide violations could allow penalties to be assessed across multiple locations where the same deficient practice exists. For employers with numerous California worksites, the difference between an isolated citation and an enterprise-wide citation could be significant.
As discussed here, California law already authorizes Cal/OSHA to pursue enterprise-wide citations and, in certain circumstances, count affected employees separately for penalty purposes. The current rulemaking does not expand that authority, but it does provide the clearest picture yet of how Cal/OSHA intends to exercise it.
What Does It Mean?
While the proposal does not impose new statutory obligations, it serves as a timely reminder to evaluate whether safety programs are not only uniformly written, but effective, current, and consistently implemented across all locations. Most importantly, employers should keep in mind that a standardized policy can create broader risk if the same flaw is repeated throughout the organization.
For businesses operating multiple locations, the message behind the proposed regulations is straightforward: Cal/OSHA is increasingly focused on patterns, practices, and systemic safety failures rather than viewing each worksite in isolation. As the agency moves forward in developing regulations clarifying how it will enforce SB 606, employers should take the opportunity to review enterprise-wide safety practices before an inspection raises those questions for them.
Additional information, including public hearing details and a videoconference link for the hearing, can be found by visiting Cal-OSHA’s website.