Seattle, Washington, OSHA Violations

Seattle sits in the middle of the OSHA enforcement footprint for Washington, with 11 cited employers contributing 17 citations to the federal record. Mid-size cities typically reflect the underlying industrial mix: a handful of major employers drive most of the citation volume, with a long tail of smaller cases.

Of 17 citations in Seattle, 14 (82%) are classified as serious — well above the federal average. A high serious-violation share is the clearest signal that local citation counts reflect substantive hazard exposure rather than paperwork or recordkeeping issues.

For broader context, the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) publishes the controlling standards, and the Enforcement Results Data files are the primary public source for inspection and citation history.

Washington operates an OSHA-approved state plan, which means workplace inspections in this city are conducted by Washington state inspectors rather than federal OSHA officers. State plans must be at least as effective as federal OSHA, but enforcement priorities, citation rates, and penalty structures often diverge from the federal baseline.

Total final penalties across Seattle cited employers reach $171K, averaging $16K per company. That mid-range figure is consistent with a mix of settled, contested, and paid citations rather than any single catastrophic incident.

Industry-level injury benchmarks for the region come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, which publishes annual incidence rates by NAICS code. Reading citation counts alongside injury rates is the cleanest way to interpret whether local enforcement activity reflects underlying hazard exposure.

Workers in Seattle retain the full set of federal protections, including the right to a safe workplace, the right to know about hazards, the right to training in a language they understand, and the right to refuse imminent-danger work without retaliation. Confidential complaints can be filed at osha.gov/workers/file-complaint or by calling 1-800-321-OSHA. The OSHA Workers' Rights page spells out the full set of protections under Section 11(c) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

Counts on this page come from OSHA's public Integrated Management Information System (IMIS) enforcement file, refreshed from the Department of Labor's Enforcement Results Data files. We aggregate citations at the establishment level using the recorded site-city and site-state fields. Cities only appear on OSHARecord when at least five distinct employers have been cited there, ensuring the page reflects a real enforcement pattern rather than a single inspection.

The Workplace Safety Score shown on linked company pages applies four weighted factors: violation rate versus industry, share of serious-or-willful citations, repeat-citation ratio, and average penalty per inspection. Read the full methodology for the exact formula and edge cases.