New York's State Plan, Public Employee Safety and Health (PESH), covers public employers only; private employers in New York are covered by federal OSHA. Its best-known state rule is the Workplace Violence Prevention Act for public employers. Since 2025, private retail employers have a separate workplace violence law, enforced by the state Department of Labor. Here is what the official texts say.
Who PESH covers
According to OSHA's State Plan page, PESH covers all state and local government workers in New York, while federal OSHA keeps authority over private-sector employers. PESH has its own state-initiated rules, among them workplace violence prevention (12 NYCRR Part 800.6), Right-to-Know (12 NYCRR Part 820) and its own injury and illness recordkeeping (12 NYCRR Part 801).
Public employers: Labor Law § 27-b
Under Labor Law § 27-b, which applies to the state, its political subdivisions and public authorities:
- every public employer evaluates its workplaces for factors that might put employees at risk of occupational assaults and homicides;
- every employer with at least twenty full-time permanent employees develops and implements a written workplace violence prevention program;
- employees receive information and training at the time of their initial assignment and annually thereafter.
According to the NYS Department of Labor, public schools, BOCES and similar bodies are covered as of January 4, 2024.
Private retail: the Retail Worker Safety Act
Labor Law § 27-e applies to private employers with at least ten retail employees, not to public ones, and is enforced by the Department of Labor (retail worker safety page), not by PESH. Employers give a written workplace violence prevention policy on hire and annually, and training on hire and every year; employers with fewer than fifty retail employees train on hire and every two years. Silent response buttons for employers with 500 or more retail employees are marked effective January 1, 2027.
Where a quiz fits
Annual training for every employee, in every school or store, is exactly the kind of duty that is easy to run late and hard to prove. A short quiz on your own program, played in a staff meeting, keeps it concrete. Federal standards adopted for public employees still bring their own annual training, such as bloodborne pathogens training (29 CFR 1910.1030(g)(2)).
A short quiz on your workplace violence prevention program, played live from phones at the end of a session, shows what people actually understood, not only who signed the sheet. When you need evidence, run the same quiz in Test mode (Trainer plan): each worker answers under their own name, you set the pass mark, and you download a PDF learning assessment record with the date, the topic, the trainer, each person's answers and result, and a signature column. It sits next to the training records the state asks for; it does not replace the training, and Quizhat never certifies anyone. Quizhat is an independent tool, not affiliated with or endorsed by OSHA.
State rules change: read the current text on the state's site, or ask the state agency, before you rely on this summary.