South Carolina Palmetto Star
Voluntary Protection Program

Palmetto Star Voluntary Protection Program
This program, which is voluntary, provides recognition to qualified employers who exceed the requirements of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 in providing their workers a safe and healthy worksite. Any employer in Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) Codes 20-39 may choose to apply.

Palmetto Star sites are not expected to be perfect, but they are expected to effectively protect their workers from the hazards of the workplace through their safety and health systems. A Palmetto Star site is one that has proven it is able to function independently of OSHA and is self-sufficient in its ability to control hazards at the worksite.

To qualify, an applicant must demonstrate management's commitment to safety, assess hazards that may be present within the workplace, maintain a system for hazard correction and control, provide employees safety and health training, and assure employee participation in safety and health programs. Finally, the company must have a total injury/illness incident rate and a total lost workday incident rate that is 50% or below the state average for the applicant's industry for each of the last three years.

Voluntary Protection Program (VPP)
SCOSHA has long recognized that compliance with occupational safety and health standards alone cannot accomplish all the goals of the OSH Act. The standards, no matter how carefully conceived and developed, will never cover all unsafe and unhealthful activities and conditions. Furthermore, limited resources will never permit regular or exhaustive inspections of all of the state's workplaces. But most importantly, no amount of standard setting and enforcement can replace the understanding of work processes, materials and hazards that come with employers and employees' day-to-day, on-the-job experience. This knowledge, combined with the ability to evaluate and address hazards rapidly and to reward positive action, places employers in a unique position to improve workplace safety and health in ways simply not available to SCOSHA.

The purpose of the PS is to emphasize the importance of, encourage the improvement of, and recognize excellence in employer-provided, employee-participative, generally site-specific occupational safety and health programs. These programs are comprised of management systems for preventing or controlling occupational hazards. The systems not only ensure that OSHA standards are met, but, using flexibility and creativity in striving for excellence, go beyond the standards to provide the best feasible protection for workers at that site. In the process, these work sites serve as models for effective safety and health programs in their industries.

Click here for Palmetto Star, VPP certificate (67K)