OSHA slammed for low fines in worker deaths

The U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee published a report entitled, “Discounting Death: OSHA’s Failure to Punish Safety Violations That Kill Workers” (available at www.aflcio.org) on April 29. The report calls the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s penalty system “flawed” due to low fines, which are further reduced in the settlement process, in cases where workers have died. The report is also highly critical of the low number of fatality cases referred to the U.S. Department of Justice for criminal prosecution.

At the release of the report, the committee’s chairperson, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), pointed out that companies fishing for tuna in the wrong waters of the South Pacific face more penalties than those that allow dangerous conditions that contribute to an employee’s death. (Charlotte Observer, April 30) He stated: “If you improperly import an exotic bird, you can go to jail for two years. If you deal in counterfeit money, you’re looking at 20 years. ... But if you gamble with the lives of your employees and one of them is killed, you only risk six months in jail.” (Industrial Safety & Hygiene News, April 30)

The report found that in 2007 the median penalty assessed by OSHA in a fatality case was $3,675. “Workers’ lives are obviously worth far more than that,” said Kennedy. (Charlotte Observer, April 30)

Family members of workers who had been killed on the job testified before the committee on April 29. Donald Coit Smith’s 22-year-old son was a mechanic’s helper who was electrocuted while disconnecting wires from an electric motor at Sanderson Farms poultry plant in Bryan, Texas. The $31,000 OSHA penalty was reduced to $12,000 in a settlement, and Mr. Smith said that “mad doesn’t begin to describe” how he felt. “He was left alone to do a job, no supervision. He did what he was told and he paid for it with his life.” (Charlotte Observer, April 30)

Ron Hayes, who testified at the hearing about his son’s death in a grain silo, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that current penalties are “not enough to deter.” (ISHN, April 30)

Peg Seminario, AFL-CIO Director of Safety and Health, testified that for some groups of workers the rate of deaths on the job has gotten worse. The fatality rate among Latin@ workers increased from 4.9 deaths per 100,000 workers in 2005 to 5.0 deaths per 100,000 workers in 2006—a rate that is 25 percent higher than that of the workforce as a whole. Of the 5,840 deaths from fatal occupational injuries in 2006, 990 were of Latin@ workers, the highest number ever reported to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Similarly, deaths among immigrant workers in 2006 reached a new high of 1,046 fatalities. In both cases, the increase was overwhelmingly due to higher numbers of deaths in the construction industry.

Seminario’s testimony revealed that in 2006, there were significant increases in deaths from falls, hazardous substances, and fires and explosions. She pointed out that OSHA has a smaller staff now than it did in 1975, even though the size of the workforce has doubled. The result is that in the states covered by federal OSHA (as opposed to state OSHA plans), there is the capacity to inspect each workplace, on average, only once every 133 years. (www.afl-cio.org)

Although there are compliance officers within OSHA who come from the labor movement or the worker safety and health movement, as well as others who investigate fatality cases conscientiously and issue all appropriate citations, the system is set up in numerous ways so that companies that receive citations can appeal the penalty amount. An army of attorneys and consultants has sprung up whose specialty is shooting holes in OSHA citations to get them eliminated or reduced. In addition, not all workplace deaths are considered clear violations of OSHA standards, such as heat stroke fatalities.

Bills have been introduced to update OSHA penalties and criminal prosecutions, but introducing bills that never make it out of committee is not enough to turn back the assault on worker health and safety.

OSHA was formed as a result of the militancy of working people, by unions and occupational safety and health coalitions. Although OSHA in its present form is badly flawed, unions continue to successfully push it forward to set standards such as the regulations on hexavalent chromium, a carcinogenic, and the recent pressure to address workplaces with combustible dusts. With 16 workers dying every day due to injuries on the job, a stepped-up militancy is needed to fight this unnecessary slaughter.