WITNESSES DEMAND HIGHER OSHA PENALTIES, STRONGER ENFORCEMENT

Friday, May 2, 2008

(PAI)WITNESSES DEMAND HIGHER OSHA PENALTIES, STRONGER ENFORCEMENT
By Mark Gruenberg
PAI Staff Writer

   WASHINGTON (PAI)--Workers’ safety and health on the
job are hampered by small fines and fitful--at
best--enforcement of job safety and health laws,
witnesses told the Senate Labor Committee on April 29.

   In the second of a series of hearings on the
anti-worker GOP Bush regime’s Occupational Safety and
Health Administration, and whether it is doing its job
or not, they demanded lawmakers vastly increase the
fines, make OSHA violations that cause a worker’s
death on the job felonies punishable by long prison
terms, and increase enforcement while relying less on
voluntary industry cooperation.

   Senators, led by panel chairman Edward M. Kennedy
(D-Mass.), were sympathetic. Even Republicans Johnny
Isakson (R-Ga.) and Michael Enzi (R-Wyom.) did not
defend business at the session after Workers Memorial
Day. “I ran a company for 33 years and it included
heavy equipment, for golf courses. I knew if I had an
accident--and I never did--it would hurt the worker
and the company. My best assets were on two legs,”
Isakson said.

   The witnesses, led by AFL-CIO Safety and Health
Director Peg Seminario, made the point that deaths and
injuries from preventable accidents--such as from
falls, fires, explosions and machinery “or where
workers are being crushed”--are increasing. Deaths on
the job from other causes, notably traffic accidents
and killings, are dropping.

   Much of the increase, witnesses said, is lack of
enforcement, including small fines and little or no
time in prison.   Seminario pointed out the maximum
fine for a “willful” violation of job safety and
health laws is $70,000, and it’s $7,000 for a
“serious” violation. But the average “willful” fine
was $906 and the average when a worker dies is
$10,133.

   University of Michigan environmental law and policy
professor David Uhlmann, who prosecuted environmental
crimes for the Justice Department for 17 years, until
last July, compared the penalties for environmental
crimes and those for deaths on the job and found the
latter way too low.

   A company that commits a willful violation that leads
to a worker’s death, he told Kennedy, can have its
executives brought to trial, for a misdemeanor. The
maximum jail term is six months. He contrasted that
with the penalties for environmental crimes, citing a
1996 case where Evergreen Resources, an Idaho
fertilizer factory, ordered workers to clean out a
tank and dump cyanide-laced sludge from its bottom.

   The workers pleaded unsuccessfully for safety
equipment, Uhlmann said. Young untrained worker Scott
Dominguez was overcome by fumes, collapsed and nearly
died. His life was saved by heroics at the hospital
and Evergreen denied there was cyanide in the tank
when the doctors called.

   But ensuing investigation uncovered the denial and
company owner Allan Elias was convicted for breaking
environmental laws. He got 17 years in prison, “yet
Elias did not commit a criminal violation of the
worker safety laws,” Uhlmann added.

   Such light penalties and lack of enforcement are the
rule, Seminario told senators.   “Right now, there’s
no serious consequences” for breaking job safety and
health law and rules, she said. “Deaths are treated
by OSHA as a routine matter.

   “The majority of workplace fatalities are because of
workplace conditions” which could be easily corrected,
she told Enzi.

   And if Dominguez had died in that Idaho accident,
Evergreen owner Elias “could have been tried for a
Class D misdemeanor,” former prosecutor Uhlmann said.
But U.S. attorneys, he added, rarely prosecute
misdemeanor cases. And OSHA’s maximum fine of
$70,000--changed only once since the law passed in
1970--is inconsequential now, he said.

   “There will always be some employers who don’t think
the law applies to them--who think workers are
expendable,” he added.

   Kennedy and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) have
introduced legislation to vastly increase the fines
for job safety and health violations, and to make
incidents where a worker dies felonies punishable by
years-long jail terms for company officials involved.
Seminario reminded senators that, especially at larger
firms, the responsible official is not necessarily top
one, as Elias was at Evergreen.

   And Seminario said in an interview after the hearing
that lack of enforcement is compounded by OSHA’s
in-house settlement manual, which gives regional
officials--above the on-the-ground
inspectors--directions on how to settle job safety and
health cases.

   “it starts out by saying ‘We offer you a 30% cut’ in
the fine ‘if you sign now,’” she said. “They’re
offering to cut the fine down across the board even
before you (the company) decides to contest the
violation” of job safety and health rules. That makes
the fines even less of a deterrent to lawbreakers,
Seminario pointed out.

   “Then you get into a contest with the company and the
agency’s staff doesn’t even have the resources to
litigate”--go to court--she added. “So it’s only a
rate case, a BP or a Cintas, where you have high
penalties.”

   Despite the favorable reception, and recent signs
from Isakson to Murray that he wants to work jointly
on job safety issues, the outlook for the safety and
health legislation this year is cloudy. “We’re going
to try to do whatever we can” to move it, Kennedy said
after the hearing. But even Seminario admitted “the
legislative calendar is pretty jammed.”

   “Still, it’s an outrage that after all these years,
we have the lowest penalties” of any law for its
violation. “Civil penalties (fines) changed in 1990,
from $1,000 per violation to $10,000, and the criminal
penalties haven’t changed at all.” ###