With the support of the business community and the California Chamber of Commerce, Chris Laszcz-Davis was appointed yesterday to the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board by Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr.
Laszcz-Davis fills a management representative seat on the seven-member Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board, the standards-setting agency within the Cal/OSHA program. All members are appointed by the Governor.
The Standards Board’s objective is to adopt reasonable and enforceable workplace safety and health standards at least as effective as federal standards. The Standards Board also has the responsibility to grant or deny applications for variances from adopted standards and respond to petitions for new or revised standards. The part-time, independent board holds monthly meetings throughout California.
As founder and principal at the Environmental Quality Organization LLC since 2002, Laszcz-Davis adds strong management and industrial credentials to the board. She held several positions at Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corporation from 1980 to 2002, including vice president of corporate environmental affairs, health, safety and operational integrity, corporate manager of product liability and corporate director of risk assessment, strategy and compliance. Laszcz-Davis was an industrial hygiene engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories from 1976 to 1980 and a regional manager for medical and industrial hygiene programs at the U.S. Department of Energy from 1974 to 1976. Laszcz-Davis earned a Master of Science degree in environmental health sciences from the University of Minnesota.
This position does not require Senate confirmation.
Laszcz-Davis joins board members:
- David Thomas, Board Chair, labor representative. He has been a business representative for the Northern California District Council of Laborers since 2009.
- Laura Stock, occupational safety representative. She is director of the Labor Occupational Health Program at the University of California, Berkeley, where she has worked since 1982.
- David Harrison, labor representative. He has been director of safety at Operating Engineers Local 3 since 2008.
- Patricia Quinlan; public member. She was deputy director at the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health at UC Berkeley from 2011 to 2016. She continues to teach as an academic coordinator/clinical professor in the occupational medicine and occupational health nursing programs at UC San Francisco.
- Barbara Smisko, management representative. She is the retired executive director of national environmental health and safety at Kaiser Permanente.
There is currently one vacant seat for the occupational health representative.
