Is SB 553 Being Enforced Yet?

SB 553 took effect July 1, 2024, and the most common question about it has been whether Cal/OSHA would actually enforce it. The enforcement data answers: 416 citations of Labor Code §6401.9 through July 2026, starting October 15, 2024 — and the monthly rate is climbing. This page is CompliantCA’s analysis of the federal enforcement data those citations flow into.

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Enforcement started fast and keeps climbing

The first half of 2026 produced 205 citations against 50 in the first half of 2025 — a fourfold increase. July 2026’s low count is a data artifact, not a slowdown: citations reach this dataset with a lag, so the newest months are still filling in.

What gets cited: the plan, above everything

Three citations in four are for the plan itself — not a flaw in a plan, but the absence or failure of one. The pattern matches what this dataset shows across every standard: the written program is what inspections cite first. The log, training, and records citations are fewer so far, and they are the parts that recur — a plan is written once; the log and the training records have to exist on the day an inspector asks.

Who gets cited

• Agriculture leads with 122 of the 416 — more than construction (44) and restaurants and hotels (43) combined. SB 553 reaches essentially every California employer, and the sectors Cal/OSHA already visits most are where its citations land.
• The cited employers are small. The median cited establishment has 15 employees; 79% have fewer than 50. The law’s exemption for workplaces with fewer than 10 employees that are not accessible to the public is narrow, and the data shows small employers are not outside enforcement in practice.
• Most citations did not follow a violent incident. 131 came from planned inspections and 125 from complaint inspections — together 62%. Accident and fatality investigations account for 100. An inspector who is on site for anything can ask for the plan.

Penalties so far

Most SB 553 citations are classified other-than-serious: 368 of 416, with 45 serious, 2 repeat, and 1 willful. The median non-zero penalty is $410; the mean is $2,521, pulled up by a few large cases. The largest: $112,500, willful, §6401.9(c)(1), issued August 2025 against the California Department of Consumer Affairs’ Board of Barbering and Cosmetology in Van Nuys — the state’s largest SB 553 penalty so far went to a state agency, after a complaint inspection. The Board contested the citation in October 2025 and no final order has issued, so the amount is under appeal. Penalties are as retrieved August 2026 and change as cases settle.

What the permanent standard changes

Every citation above rests on the statute, because the permanent regulation does not exist yet: the data contains zero citations of proposed §3343, which is still in rulemaking. Labor Code §6401.9(h) requires the Standards Board to adopt a permanent standard by December 31, 2026. When it lands, enforcement gets a regulation with more specific requirements to cite. Our permanent standard guide tracks the rulemaking and compares the draft to the current statute.

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. Scope: citation line items on California inspections whose cited standard is Labor Code §6401.9 (recorded as 64010009 plus a subdivision code in the dataset), excluding deleted records, as retrieved 2026-08-21. Thirty-nine citations of Labor Code §6401 — a different, older section — are excluded. Subdivision descriptions are quoted from the statute, read 2026-08-23. Sector groups follow NAICS prefixes; establishment size is the dataset’s employee count for the inspected site. The chart’s data appears in the adjacent table.

A citation count says what inspectors cited, not what any employer must do — the statute says that. Review your plan with your safety officer or attorney.