For Health And Safety Conferences

"This is to notify you that the MSHA BS District pilot program for health and safety conferences has ended. The pilot program was extended from November 20, 2010 to allow the BS District a sufficient amount of time to collect additional data and effectively evaluate the results. *Effective May 31, 2011 standard procedures for contesting citations will resume. *2 This requires you to formally request a conference within 10 days of issuance.

The conference will be delayed by the District’s Conference Litigation Officer (CLR) until you have received the assessments package. If you have any questions please contact your local field office supervisor."

The above is a direct extract of the District notice. The following comments are by $afepro. Identities redacted to prevent embarrassment.

* The standard procedures for “Contesting” citations and orders as stated in The Act Sec 105(d) were never suspended.

*2 refers to the “informal conferencing” rule MSHA "plucked from the ozone" to make it more confusing for Producers to informally conference.

Either the BS District does not know the difference between “Formal Contestment” and “informal conferencing” or is trying to confuse the Production Industry with its illicit unilateral mumbo jumbo.