Cal/OSHA Enforcement in Alameda County

Cal/OSHA does not publish county-level enforcement statistics. This page is the Alameda County cut, computed from the federal enforcement data: the 2,159 inspections opened at county addresses from January 2020 through December 2025, and the 4,451 citations they produced, carrying $10.3 million in penalties as they currently stand.

Alameda County is inspected more than the state average — about 47 annual inspections per 100,000 covered workers against roughly 40 — and the count has climbed: 285 inspections opened in 2020, 417 in 2025. Oakland leads the county’s cities with 562 inspections, then Hayward (280), Berkeley (189), Livermore (177), Fremont (177), and San Leandro (162).

What gets cited in Alameda County

Average penalty is the penalty as it stands now, after any appeals and settlements, averaged across the row’s citations — as retrieved August 30, 2026; these figures may change as cases settle.

The §3203 IIPP and heat lead as they do statewide. §3205, COVID-19 prevention, is #3 with 259 citations — 5.8% of the county’s total against 1.9% statewide, 3.1x the state’s concentration. §5199, aerosol transmissible diseases, follows the same pattern at 111 citations, 1.8x, and respiratory protection (§5144) runs at 1.3x. §342, the injury-reporting duty, is notably under the state here — 117 citations, 0.6x.

Free IIPP template. The §3203 program that leads this table — one section for each of the eight elements listed in §3203(a), plus the inspection and training record forms §3203(b) requires. PDF, no account. Request the template →

Construction leads; health care and food manufacturing over-index

Construction accounts for 1,085 citations, 24% of the county’s total, a little under the state’s 26%. Health care (sector 62) takes 7% against 4% statewide, and food manufacturing (sector 31) 9% against 6%. The ten most cited industry groups:

The construction groups lead — foundation and exterior contractors (305), residential builders (289). The one clear over-index is bakeries and tortilla manufacturing at 113 citations, 2.2x the statewide share. Warehousing, restaurants, and auto repair sit near their statewide shares.

Complaints start three in ten inspections

Share of the 2,159 county inspections opened 2020–2025, by trigger, against the statewide mix:

Complaints started 30% of the county’s inspections against 24% statewide — nearly as many as accident investigations (34%). Planned inspections run well under the state at 14%, and related and follow-up inspections above it at 16%. Fatality and catastrophe investigations, at 3%, are below the statewide 5%.

Methodology

CompliantCA computed this analysis from the U.S. Department of Labor enforcement dataset (the OSHA Information System), which includes Cal/OSHA because California operates an OSHA-approved State Plan and includes federal OSHA’s California activity; retrieved August 30, 2026. Scope: inspections opened January 2020 through December 2025 at Alameda County sites, and citation line items issued in the same window on those inspections, excluding citation records deleted in the source data.

Each inspection is assigned to the county by its five-digit site zip via the Census Bureau’s 2020 ZCTA-to-county relationship file, assigning each zip to the county holding the largest share of its land area, with the site city as fallback — the same method as our county breakdown, whose Alameda row these totals match. City counts use the city on the inspected site’s address, which is the postal city rather than the municipal boundary. Federal OSHA’s own inspections at county addresses — 47 of the 2,159 — are included, matching our other city and region pages, and identified by the inspecting office on the record. Citations are grouped to the base section, so §3203(a) and §3203(a)(4) count together; industry groupings use the NAICS code on the inspection record; trigger shares use the inspection-type code, with the statewide column computed from all California inspections the same way. “Times the statewide share” compares an industry’s or standard’s share of the county’s citations with its share of all California citations in the window. The per-worker rate divides the six-year inspection count by six and by the county’s average covered employment 2020–2025 from the BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, times 100,000; 2025 employment is preliminary. Penalty figures are the penalty as it stands now, after any appeals and settlements (the dataset’s “current penalty”), and change as cases settle. Cal/OSHA’s own statewide summaries are at DIR’s citation statistics pages.

A citation count says what inspectors cited, not what any employer must do — the standards themselves say that.