Editorial & Corrections Policy

How pages are produced

Every employer, city, state, industry, and ranking page on PlainWorker is generated from documented public datasets: the OSHA Enforcement / IMIS inspection records and the Department of Labor Wage & Hour Division enforcement files, published through the DOL Enforcement Data Catalog. We load each dataset into a structured database and render every page from that database. The figures you see — inspection counts, violation breakdowns, current penalty amounts, and back-wage totals — are taken from those federal records, not hand-typed and not estimated by us.

This is a data-publishing model: one reviewed template renders every employer page so that coverage is consistent across all 232,214 employers in the index. We are transparent that these pages are produced programmatically through a continuous editorial pipeline from the source data, rather than written one at a time. The editorial work goes into the pipeline — how data is sourced, joined, de-duplicated, and presented — into the methodology, and into the written guides and research, not into hand-authoring hundreds of thousands of near-identical employer profiles, which would add no accuracy and invite inconsistency.

Sourcing standards

• Primary sources only. Inspection and violation data comes from OSHA's enforcement records; back-wage and wage-violation facts come from the DOL Wage & Hour Division's published case data. We do not republish third-party summaries or scraped aggregates.
• Attribution in context. Each data page names its dataset and links to the methodology, which explains how OSHA penalties are recorded as initial versus current (after settlements and informal conferences) and how WHD cases are reported.
• Derived values are labeled. Numbers we compute ourselves — penalty-per-inspection rates, industry aggregates, percentile rankings, and per-employee back-wage figures — are presented as our analysis of the federal data, distinct from the agencies' published counts.
• No invented data. Where a field is missing for an employer, the page says so rather than filling the gap with an estimate. A clean inspection record (no violations) is shown as exactly that, not hidden.

Update cadence

OSHA and WHD publish enforcement data on a rolling basis; the consolidated catalog is refreshed periodically as agencies post new inspection closures and case resolutions. We rebuild our database when the federal datasets release an update and recompute the derived rankings and rates. Because penalties are recorded as the current adjusted amount after any contest or settlement, an employer's figures can change at the source over time as a case concludes; between releases the figures are stable because the source itself does not change.

Corrections process

If a figure on PlainWorker looks wrong, please tell us. Because our pages are generated from the federal datasets, a genuine error almost always traces back to either the source data or our processing of it — so this is how we handle a report:

1. Report. Use the contact page with the page URL and the number that looks off.
2. Verify. We compare the figure against the source record (OSHA establishment search or the DOL WHD case data) for that employer, city, state, or industry.
3. Fix at the source. If the value is wrong on our side, we correct it in the database and pipeline that generate the page — not just on the single page — so every affected page is fixed at once. If the figure faithfully reflects the federal data, we explain that and, where useful, add context (for example, that a penalty was reduced after an informal conference).
4. Note it. Material corrections are reflected the next time the affected pages rebuild.

We aim to acknowledge data-error reports within a few business days.

Independence & affiliation

PlainWorker is an independent project, published by Kiznis Studio. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by OSHA, the Wage & Hour Division, the U.S. Department of Labor, or any government agency. We present their public enforcement data in a more searchable form and link back to the official sources throughout. We carry no advertising relationship with, and accept no payment from, any employer whose record appears here.