CALIFORNIA IN BRIEF : SACRAMENTO : Cal/OSHA Job Vacancies Reported

Sixteen months after California voters re-established Cal/OSHA, nearly a fourth of the worker safety office’s positions remain vacant, the state’s fiscal analyst reported. A representative of the nonpartisan legislative analyst’s office testified that Cal/OSHA has a “23% vacancy rate (which) is bound to have some program effect” on regulating workplace safety. The vacancies range from about 75% in the anti-discrimination unit of the labor standards and enforcement division to 11% in the field enforcement unit. Jarvio Grevious, a principal program analyst for Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill, told a subcommittee of the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee that the hiring delays appeared to have been caused by the difficulties in alerting people who were laid off that they can now be rehired.