But what OSHA does require is that ALL employers must provide for a safe work environment and with respect to electrical systems, they MUST have an Electrical Safe Work Program that is periodically reviewed and to which employees are periodically tested (I use periodically because there have been changes to the periods and I can't remember them right now). OSHA does not specifically SAY that the program must be NFPA-70E, but it CLEARLY implies it by using it as the only stated example of one.
My company provides Arc Flash Prevention services and Arc Resistant Equipment, so I get involved in this question on a semi-regular basis, probably 6-8 times per year. For people that I have been involved with who have had Arc Flash incidents in their facilities where OSHA inspectors became involved, the sequence tends to go like this;
The inspector(s) first meet with company management, asking to see a copy of their Electrical Safe Work Program. If the answer is "Our what?", the conversation becomes almost immediately hostile and if they cannot produce it very very quickly, OSHA can IMMEDIATELY shut down the entire facility and send everyone home! In addition if the accident cause can be traced to a poor procedural issue that should not have been allowed, the company managers and all supervisors for the area or process where the accident took place can be JAILED. I have not come across anyone who has had that happen, but I attended a seminar by retired OSHA inspectors who confirmed that they have "made examples" of managers at times. The operative issues are that 1) the document is REQUIRED BY LAW of ALL employers, whether or not they actually do electrical work, 2) ignorance of the law is not an excuse, and 3) it cannot be subrogated to off-site contractors, meaning you cannot say "Well, all of our electrical work is done by XYZ Contracting, so they are responsible for it." You can have that contractor provide you with a copy of their program and you can adopt it as your own, but you must still have one and have knowledge of it. These issues have almost universally come as a shock to all of the people I have encountered who have gone through this.
Conversely, the two I met last year who had in fact adopted NFPA-70E reported that the conversation with management was basically very short once that was revealed, so the inspectors move on to the details of the accident to look for what went wrong or what in the procedure, if anything, was not followed.
Utilities have different standards for THEIR electrical work practice programs, but as employers, they are absolutely required to have one, and I would be shocked (pun intended) if any one of them did not. But it does not have to follow NFPA-70E, their standards must, by necessity, be very different.
As to the anecdote about hiring utility workers to get around the rules. The rules are not about the workers, they are about the employers. That guy could have been jailed had anything gone wrong.
" We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know." -- W. H. Auden