OSHA fines over one-million dollars have become more common. But here’s one with a twist: It’s not for workplace hazards — it’s for recordkeeping violations.

OSHA has issued Goodman Manufacturing Co. 83 willful citations for failing to record and improperly recording work-related injuries and illnesses at the company’s Houston air conditioning cooling facility.

The proposed fines total $1.215 million.

OSHA received a complaint that Goodman wasn’t properly recording injuries.

An investigation showed the company had either not recorded or failed to properly record the nature and/or duration of 72% of employee injuries and illnesses from January 2008 to March 15, 2010.

OSHA categorized the recordkeeping citations as willful because the company was extremely knowledgeable about OSHA’s requirements but made many unsupportable decisions.

The company has 15 business days from receipt of the citations to decide whether to contest the citations.

OSHA has implemented a National Emphasis Program (NEP) on Recordkeeping to assess the accuracy of injuries and illnesses recorded by employers. You can find out more about the NEP here (PDF).

Metrolink in California and Connex Railroad are offering a $200 million settlement to victims and families in connection with the Sept. 12, 2008, crash between a commuter train and a Union Pacific freight train. The crash killed 25 and injured more than 100. There are 76 lawsuits filed against the railroad companies.

Paul Kiesel, the coordinating attorney for all the lawsuits in the case says the $200 million offer isn’t enough.

Kiesel says some victims already have medical bills that total six or seven figures.

Example: Construction worker Curtis Whitney suffered spinal injuries in the crash. He had no insurance and has undergone multiple surgeries. His medical bills already total $600,000.

The $200 million offered is the liability cap allowed under federal law in passenger rail incidents.

The cap was set in law by Congress.

U.S. Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-CA), in whose district many of the victims live, said he probably will introduce legislation that could adjust the liability cap.

Kiesel points to what BP has done regarding the Gulf oil disaster and claims the payouts can and should exceed the liability caps. BP could have stayed within a $75 million cap, but it put up $20 billion to pay for damages caused by the gusher.

The train crash was caused by a contract Metrolink engineer, employed by Connex, who ran a red light while text-messaging, according to an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board. Metrolink now employs Amtrak as its operating contractor.

Should the cap be raised in the Metrolink case? Let us know what you think in the Comments Box below.

The jury awarded $30.4 million to Gerardo Solis who worked in plants that processed diacetyl, a butter flavoring, for about 20 years. The verdict was against diacetyl supplier BASF Corp.

The jurors assessed compensatory damages of $32 million but subtracted 5% ($1.6 million) for his portion of fault because he continued to work in butter flavoring plants after his first breathing symptoms appeared.

Doctors diagnosed Solis with bronchiolitis obliterans, an incurable lung disease. He currently has only 25% normal lung capacity and will probably need a lung transplant.

According to Lawyers USA Online, Solis filed suit against more than a dozen companies, including the factories where he worked and the suppliers of the chemicals used to make the butter flavoring.

He settled with all the companies except BASF. Solis’ lawyer says BASF offered a $350,000 settlement which was rejected.

Solis’ attorney said a key piece of evidence was a study conducted by BASF’s parent company back in 1993 that showed rats exposed to diacetyl developed severe lung disease.

BASF says it will appeal the verdict.

OSHA is developing regulations on diacetyl and other flood flavorings.

What do you think about the jury’s verdict? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

The first federal lawsuit has been filed in the case, and a lawyer says he waited for OSHA to act before going to court.

A February explosion at the Kleen Energy site in Middletown, CT, killed six workers and injured 50 others. OSHA hit 17 construction companies with a total of $16.6 million in fines for 371 safety violations.

Now an injured worker has filed a $6 million lawsuit in federal court alleging proper safety precautions weren’t taken at the site.

Nicholas Novik is suing the plant’s owner and three contractors, claiming they failed to properly ensure that gas at the plant wouldn’t ignite.

Novik’s injuries are reported to be “life-altering,” including trauma to his head and hearing loss.

Many other civil lawsuits have also been filed in state courts.

More than 35 residents whose homes were affected by the explosion have also filed lawsuits.

How does the OSHA fine connect to the lawsuits?

William Bloss, a lawyer for Novik, told The Record, “We were interested in seeing what OSHA’s conclusions were before filing. They obviously were very thorough with their investigation.”

The fines are in connection to the 2005 explosion at BP’s Texas City, TX, refinery that killed 15 workers and injured 170.

BP had already paid $21 million in fines for that explosion. In the original settlement, BP also agreed to identify and correct certain safety deficiencies.

In a 2009 follow-up inspection, OSHA found the company made many changes but “failed to live up to several extremely important terms of that agreement,” according to OSHA.

As a result, OSHA issued $87.4 million in penalties against BP. Originally, $56.7 million was levied for BP’s failure to abate hazards it said it would fix in the original agreement. Another approximately $30 million was for new violations. OSHA found it had assessed 29 duplicate violations totaling $6.1 million. That brought the failure-to-abate fines down to $50.6 million.

So BP has agreed to pay the entire $50.6 million for the failure-to-abate fines. It is still contesting the $30 million in new violations.

On top of the fine, BP has agreed to allocate a minimum of $500 million to take immediate steps to protect those now working at the refinery.

BP has also agreed to:

• perform safety reviews of the refinery equipment according to set schedules
• hire independent experts to monitor its efforts, and
• submit quarterly reports for OSHA’s review.

OSHA has cited three construction companies and 14 subcontractors for 371 safety violations, totaling $16.6 million in penalties.

The Feb. 7, 2010, explosion at the Kleen Energy plant construction site was felt as far as 40 miles away.

OSHA officials say the construction companies cut corners to gain a $19 million incentive if they finished construction early on the plant. Published reports say in the weeks and months leading up to the explosion, employees were working seven-day, 84-hour weeks.

In late June, a U.S. Chemical Safety Board investigation revealed the explosion was most likely caused when natural gas was used during a routine gas purging procedure. The gas found an ignition source. Welding and other work was being performed nearby.

O&G Industries, the project’s general contractor, has been issued 119 willful and 17 serious citations with penalties totaling $8.3 million. Keystone Construction and Maintenance was issued 94 willful and 16 serious citations with fines of $6.6 million. Bluewater Energy Services, the commissioning and startup contractor for the plant, was issued 12 willful citations and 8 serious citations totaling $896,000. In addition, 14 subcontractors were also cited and fined.

O&G says it plans to contest the fines.

As a result of the explosion, OSHA will be issuing a warning letter to natural gas power plant operators regarding the dangerous practice of cleaning fuel gas piping using natural gas.

Erie County, NY, wanted to cut its $11 million annual outlay for workers’ comp payments.

So the County Executive, Chris Collins, announced a new policy: Injured employees would have to come to work and get their workers’ comp checks from their supervisors.

New York’s Workers’ Compensation Board ruled the policy was illegal. Specifically, the board said the Erie County policy violated the law that workers’ comp payments must be “periodic, prompt, in like manner as wages and direct.”

The Buffalo News reports Collins’ administration has backtracked a bit, but has refused to entirely end the policy. A spokesman says only workers who aren’t permanently disabled and might be fit for light duty would have to collect their checks from their supervisors.

The workers’ comp board had been deciding a challenge filed by an Erie County correctional facility officer who was injured when she broke up a fight between inmates. The worker had been awarded permanent partial disability. She had received notice that she would have to personally pick up her biweekly checks at sheriff’s headquarters.

The workers’ comp board said requiring employees in that situation to pick up their checks “overly burdens an injured worker by adding unnecessary traveling costs and potentially places an injured worker at risk of further injury.”

The injured officer had been receiving $390 a week — slightly more than $20,000 a year.

What do you think of the county’s policy and the state workers’ comp board’s ruling? You can leave a reply below.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) have called on OSHA to demand stricter safety requirements in its negotiations with BP regarding $90 million in fines.

In a letter to OSHA, the senators ask the agency to require BP to:

• report any process safety incident that occurs at a site under its control, regardless of the number of workers injured or killed. Currently, companies must report incidents to OSHA only if one or more workers are killed or three or more are sent to hospitals.
• record all injuries and illnesses of workers at sites under its control, regardless of whether they are employed by BP or by a contractor. Companies don’t have to report contractor injuries or deaths unless they directly control the employee’s work.

All 15 workers who died in an explosion at BP’s Texas City, TX, refinery in 2005 were contractors.

BP faces $90 million in fines for 862 safety violations after a follow-up inspection at the Texas City refinery and another inspection at a BP refinery near Toledo, Ohio.

When a safety incident causes deaths or serious injuries, should OSHA be able to impose tough new requirements on the company? Let us know what you think by leaving a reply below.

If you guessed $1.6 billion, you’re right. Federal employees filed more than 79,000 new claims, and that doesn’t include the Postal Service.

President Obama has announced a four-year program to reduce injuries and related costs. It’s called POWER: Protecting Our Workers and Ensuring Reemployment.

The program doesn’t have specific goals, at least not yet.

But by the end of FY 2014, federal agencies must improve performance in seven areas:

1. Reduce total injury and illness case rates.
2. Reduce lost time injury and illness case rates.
3. Analyze lost time injury and illness data.
4. Increase the timely filing of workers’ compensation claims.
5. Increase the timely filing of wage-loss claims.
6. Reduce lost production day rates, and
7. Speed employees’ return to work in cases of serious injury or illness.

Sound familiar? It seems, to save money, the federal government has to pursue the same safety goals as private businesses.

Cal/OSHA shut down Rheingans Farms and Greenfield, Inc., both near Winchester.

Officials say at Rheingans, temperatures were in the 90s with employees working in a field without access to shade. The employer had provided no water, didn’t have a required heat illness prevention program and made no provisions for how to respond if an employee became ill from the heat.

The state says Greenfield had no shade, no heat illness prevention program, no training and no emergency response procedures. The afternoon temperature in Greenfield’s farm was 98 degrees.

Both employers can’t restart their operations until they come into full compliance with California’s heat illness prevention standard.

Did California do the right thing by shutting down these businesses? Let us know what you think in the Comments Box below.

That scenario has cost a company in Washington state $2.7 million.

The horse had been hit and killed by an employee driving a utility bucket truck owned by Sprint’s subsidiary, United Telephone Co. of the Northwest. The driver said he left the scene to get help. It was after sunset, and the road was dark.

A car Nanette Aurdal was driving struck the dead horse. An eyewitness said Aurdal’s car became airborne before crashing back to the pavement.

Aurdal sustained a full-body whiplash, pulling her spine, nerves and muscles so severely that she had to get an implanted pump to administer pain medication directly into her spinal cord.

The injuries made it impossible for her to have children, and she has gone into debt because of her medical bills. She also quit her job and was forced to close her family business.

Her lawyer argued that the utility truck driver had flares, cones and other safety devices in the vehicle that could have been used to warn other drivers and prevent Aurdal’s crash.

A jury awarded Aurdal $2.7 million. The company hasn’t commented or said whether it plans to appeal.

Do you think the company was liable because its driver left the scene of the crash with the horse? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

In slightly over two months, the agency has fined seven USPS facilities all over the country almost $2.3 million for various safety violations.

April 30: A Providence, R.I., facility is hit for $558,000, primarily for electrical and lockout/tagout hazards. Employee complaints precipitated the investigation.

May 10: A Bedford Park, Ill., processing center is assessed $210,000 for electrical and protective equipment hazards. Again, employee complaints led to the inquiry.

May 10: A Denver distribution center is fined $217,000. OSHA said employees were testing live electrical equipment and without adequate training or PPE.

June 8: A Pittsburgh processing facility is billed $299,500 for electrical hazards, inadequate training, failure to protect employees from arc-flash hazards and electrical current, and failure to use appropriate safety signs and symbols.

June 8: On the other side of the state, two Philadelphia facilities are fined $497,000. OSHA found inadequately trained employees working without PPE.

June 21: In Portland, Ore., a processing and distribution center is fined $77,500 for electrical hazards, lockout/tagout violations and inadequate PPE.  Employee complaints led to the investigation.

June 28:  A Scarborough, Me., facility is fined a whopping $430,000 for exposing workers to electrical hazards, arc flashes and arc blasts.

With the U.S. Postal Service already having trouble making ends meet, this new trend can’t be helping.

But OSHA’s message seems clear: No matter how tight money is, scrimping on safety is never acceptable.

In an interpretation letter, the DOL says that the exemption for paying employees for the time it takes to change clothes “does not extend to protective equipment worn by employees that is required by law, by the employer or due to the nature of the job.”

In other words: If workers are putting on or taking off safety gear, pay them for the time it takes to do that.

This interpretation letter departs from previous ones, which concluded that “clothes” included the protective gear worn by employees.

Under a section of the Fair Labor Standards Act, time spent changing “clothes or washing at the beginning of end of each workday” is excluded from compensable time.

You’ve probably heard lots of “rules of thumb” about workplace safety. But are they really true? This article will look at three of them.

Richard Sesak and Jerry Davis, two professors in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Auburn University in Alabama recently presented a session on safety truisms at the American Society of Safety Engineers Safety 2010 conference.

Using their research, let’s look at 3 safety rules of thumb and how true they really are.

1. 90% of accidents are caused by unsafe human acts. 10% are caused by unsafe conditions.
2. Indirect costs are 3-5 times the direct costs of accidents.
3. If you must be within arms’ reach to hear normal conversation, you are exposed to noise at or above 90 decibels and need hearing protection.

Take a guess whether these truisms are true or false, and then find out by clicking here.

Maryland Occupational Safety and Health (MOSH) has issued a record $1.03 million fine to poultry processor Allen Family Foods.

MOSH inspected the company’s facility in Hurlock after an employee suffered a serious hand injury reaching beneath an unguarded conveyor belt.

State officials say Allen has ignored warnings to improve a dangerous workplace for more than a decade.

Allen Family Foods has been inspected 16 times at two locations in Maryland since 1998. Seven inspections were after incidents, and MOSH issued a total of 192 violations.

Other incidents have included cuts on employees’ hands and arms. Among previous citations against Allen were ones for lack of safety training.

Allen VP of human resources Tracy Morris said, “The citation in this case is not an accurate reflection of our safety record. Rather, we think it is the result of MOSH’s adoption of a more aggressive enforcement policy.”

The company plans to contest the fines.

The million-dollar fine is the result of 51 violations, including one categorized as egregious and 15 as willful.

It’s the largest MOSH fine in Maryland history.

The cries for less government have become more frequent these days, including in reader comments on this website when OSHA ramps up enforcement or rulemaking. One frequent argument is that OSHA’s regulations hurt the U.S. economy.

A recent article in the Idaho Statesman by an economist takes a look at the question: Would we be better off if we got rid of “job-killing OSHA?”

Economist Ed Lotterman sums up the situation this way: We don’t want people to be killed at work. But many people are willing to take certain risks in their personal lives every day. And companies often don’t have difficulty finding people willing to do dangerous jobs.

Therefore, should government intrude into the private agreement between employer and employee?

Lotterman suggests an answer to his own question. First, he admits that OSHA regulations raise the cost of labor, at least somewhat. That could cause some companies to hire fewer workers.

The costs to business vary greatly, according to Lotterman, and are smaller than many people think.

For Lotterman, the question then becomes, what is the value of lives saved and injuries avoided relative to the cost of regulation?

While it’s difficult for most to put a price on human life, Lotterman suggests it is neither small nor infinitely large.

Coming up with the exact figure may be difficult, but Lotterman says society clearly is better off if a life is saved for every $10,000 spent on workplace safety. However, should that amount rise to $10 billion per life, we would be worse off.

But, what about the free-market argument that it’s up to employees to decide whether the risks involved with a particular job are worth the offered wages? If it becomes difficult for employers to hire workers to do dangerous jobs, they either have to raise wages or reduce the risks.

Lotterman says there’s one problem with that viewpoint: an information gap. Many employees don’t have accurate information about the risks involved. With bad or incomplete information, they can’t make reasoned decisions when comparing risks to wages.

Lotterman concludes that the free market doesn’t lead to “a social optimum.” He says government action may make things better.

For those who think, “OSHA is out of control,” Lotterman offers these thoughts. He’s not saying that everything the agency has done in the past 40 years has made total sense. Example: He doubts requiring dairy farms to post signs that manure may make floors slippery has generated any “net benefit for society.”

On the other hand, Lotterman cites shoring requirements for trench walls as a worthwhile OSHA regulation. Requiring trench walls or boxes has greatly reduced the number of construction worker deaths each year, and that’s worth the cost to business, according to Lotterman.

And he concludes that, no matter which candidates are elected to office, OSHA isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Is the new leadership at OSHA going too far? Where do you draw the line between good OSHA regulation and bad? Let us know what you think in the Comments Box below.

OSHA has filed 23 willful violations against the South Dakota Wheat Growers Association of Aberdeen, SD, for a fatality at its McLaughlin grain handling facility.

Steve Lee died Dec. 22, 2009, when he climbed inside a bin to see why the flow of grain had slowed. Lee was engulfed and smothered.

Co-workers tried to rescue him. OSHA says its investigation determined that five workers were also at risk of being engulfed when they were sent to rescue Lee. That added to the amount of the fines against the company.

An OSHA official says Lee was directed to enter the bin while it was being emptied — a common practice for the company, according to the agency’s investigation.

Earlier last year, another SD Wheat Growers employee died in a forklift incident at a different company facility.

The company is reviewing the citations. It has 15 days to decide whether to contest them.

The citations against the company include violations of confined space and grain handling standards.

Earlier this month, OSHA fined a Mississippi shipbuilder $1.32 million. That case also involved confined space violations. Two workers died in that incident.

What do you think about OSHA’s larger penalties in the last 18 months? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

The statistics on workplace deaths and injuries in the U.S. are sobering:

• In 2008, 5,071 U.S. workers died from workplace injuries — that’s 14 per day.
• 49,000 deaths annually are attributed to work-related illnesses.
• In 2008, an estimated 4.6 million workers had a nonfatal workplace injury or illness; 40%-50% of these workers were transferred, placed on work restrictions or took time away from work.
• 3.4 million workers were treated in emergency rooms for occupational injuries and illnesses in 2007.
• 94,000 were hospitalized in 2007 from workplace incidents.
• Employers and insurers spent nearly $85 billion on workers’ compensation in 2007.

And those workers’ comp costs are just a fraction of the costs to employers for worker injuries. Other costs include training replacement workers, incident investigations, lost productivity, damaged equipment and property, and legal expenses.

On this Workers’ Memorial Day — and any day at work — what messages are you sending to employees about workplace injuries and deaths? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

Mark Buttitta was exposed to asbestos as a child. His father handled brakes and clutches containing the substance while working at a General Motors warehouse and carried the asbestos fibers home on his work clothes.

Buttitta was then directly exposed to asbestos while working at a GM warehouse during his summer and winter breaks from college.

In upholding the jury award, the largest mesothelioma award in New Jersey history, the Superior Court noted that the frequency, regularity and proximity test had to be viewed differently than the test for another asbestos-related disease, asbestosis.

Mesothelioma, a cancer that is often fatal, can develop from infrequent exposure to a relatively small amount of asbestos. Asbestosis usually requires much more prolonged exposure.

The court ruled that Buttitta’s “rather brief work history” with asbestos was enough to establish a medical link with his mesothelioma some 30 years later.

The $30.3 million award broke down this way: $8 million for pain and suffering, $2 million for loss of consortium, $9.3 million for lost earnings, $2 million for loss of services, and $3 million to each of Buttitta’s three daughters for loss of parental care.

Cite: Buttitta v. Allied Signal, Inc., Superior Court of NJ, 5/5/10.

Christopher Dupree fell about 150 feet while painting a water tank in Hurtsboro, AL.

Paramedics tried to revive him, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

The local sheriff’s department said Dupree was suspended from a rope on top of the water tower and was wearing a harness, but it appeared there might have been some malfunction of the safety equipment that caused the fall. Dupree was one of three workers at the tank that day.

At first, Dupree’s wife sued her husband’s employer, a general contractor, the Russell County Water Authority and an engineering firm. However, the lawsuit was later amended to focus on Robinson and Sons Construction Services, because it was responsible for workplace safety on the project.

In closing arguments, the lawyer for Dupree’s wife asked jurors to return a verdict that would send a message to all employers that they must provide a safe working environment for employees.

The question is more important these days because OSHA is cracking down on underreporting of occupational injuries.

A report issued in November by the Government Accountability Office showed some employers underreport injuries to reduce insurance premiums and workers fail to report injuries because they fear being fired.

In the wake of that report, OSHA unleashed a National Emphasis Program on recordkeeping. The targets: companies in high-injury industries that report much lower than average injury rates.

An article in Business Week highlights this current situation.

Example: AK Steel reduced its annual injuries by 96% from 1994 to 2009.

It’s that type of injury improvement that raises the eyebrows of some workplace safety experts. “It is extremely unlikely that injury rates would plummet like this,” said Susan Baker, a scholar of workplace injuries at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

AK Steel had good cause to improve its safety practices: 10 workers died at company plants from 1993 to 1996, leading to a $1.9 million OSHA fine.

But some former AK Steel workers tell Business Week that injuries appear to be down because workers who report them are penalized with time off without pay.

An AK Steel spokesman says, “We make no apologies for our safety program and all of its components, including discipline.” At the same time, the company considers not reporting an injury an “extraordinarily serious offense.”

How do you hold employees responsible for safety rules through discipline, yet make sure you don’t discourage reporting of workplace injuries? Let us know what you think in the Comments Box below.

A judge has ordered Murphy Oil Corp. to pay the five employees $50,000 each for noise-induced hearing loss, a total of $250,000. The five employees worked at the company’s Meraux, LA, plant.

The company may have to pay out more for hearing loss, as the court has yet to rule on the claims of 35 other former employees.

A ruling in favor of all the workers would amount to $2 million if they all were ordered to receive $50,000.

The judge said Murphy Oil violated its duty to its employees by failing to provide:

• a safe place to work free from excessive noise
• an effective hearing conservation program
• regular and periodic hearing tests, and
• warnings of the dangers associated with long-term chronic occupational noise exposure.

The court also noted Murphy Oil decided not to spend $110,000 for noise control equipment during a $35 million plant expansion in the late 1970s.

Disasters of that magnitude usually launch a series of changes, either in prevention, response or both. Example: The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) underwent significant changes after the much criticized response to Hurricane Katrina.

In this case, the changes came in the form of prevention — or, at least that’s what officials hope.

One person weighing in is John Bresland, Chairman of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board. CSB’s final report on the BP blast, issued three years ago, found:

• organizational and safety deficiencies at all levels of the BP Corporation
• cost-cutting that had affected safety programs and critical maintenance
• production pressures that resulted in costly mistakes made by workers likely fatigued by working long hours, and
• although problems were brought to the attention of BP’s board, there wasn’t sufficient action.

Bresland notes that BP has spent over $1 billion repairing and improving the Texas City plant. It’s also spent a similar amount on settling lawsuits with those injured and families of the deceased. He says it gives new meaning to the old adage, “If you think safety is expensive, wait until you have an accident.”

“When will we know whether the tragedy of 2005 has resulted in greater safety at BP and other companies’ refineries?” Bresland asked. “Only when we can look back over the passing of a significant number of years without major accidents, deaths, or injuries.”

In the Houston Chronicle, business columnist Loren Steffy writes, “BP can’t escape the ugly truth: Without the 15 deaths, the company wouldn’t have fixed what was wrong.”

BP’s troubles aren’t over, either. It faces $87.4 million in OSHA fines (the largest OSHA fine ever), on top of ones it has already paid. The agency says the company hasn’t lived up to all portions of the settlement agreement regarding the Texas City plant. BP is appealing that fine.

OSHA has also fined BP $3 million for problems at a plant in Ohio. Other oil companies have been penalized under OSHA’s National Emphasis Program on refineries, prompted by the Texas City explosion.

How do you put the safety problems that U.S. oil refineries face in perspective? “If the airline industry was having the same number of accidents as the refinery industry, I don’t think too many people would be flying,” Bresland said.

Do you think BP and other oil companies have learned a lesson? Let us know your thoughts in the Comments Box below.

“Unscrupulous employers often consider it more cost effective to pay the minimal OSHA penalty and continue to operate an unsafe workplace than to correct the underlying health and safety problem. The current penalties do not provide an adequate deterrent.”

Those words came from OSHA administrator David Michaels in his testimony in favor of the Protecting America’s Workers Act (PAWA).

The bill would include public employers under OSHA and increase whistleblower protections.

But the major attention has been paid to the parts of the measure that would increase OSHA fines. The bill would:

• increase the maximum penalty for knowingly violating a rule that results in the death of an employee to 10 years in prison
• increase penalties for willful or repeat violations that involve a fatality to as much as $250,000, and
• create automatic increases in fine amounts by tying them to inflation.

In his testimony before a U.S. House subcommittee, Michaels pointed out that the average OSHA fine is about $1,000. The median fine for cases in which a worker was killed is about $5,900.

Michaels went on to point out that other federal agencies have the ability to issue much larger fines for infractions that don’t include human death. For example, the Department of Agriculture can impose a $130,000 fine on milk processors for willful violations of the Fluid Milk Promotion Act. TV and radio stations can be fined $325,000 for indecent language. The EPA can issue $270,000 fines for Clean Air Act violations.

Michaels also supports PAWA’s provision to increase the number of criminal prosecutions for workplace deaths and serious injuries.

What do you think about Michaels’ assertion that OSHA penalties are too low to matter to most businesses? Should the penalties for the most egregious violations, those that result in serious injury or death, be significantly increased? What about prison time for company managers when a worker is killed on the job? Let us know what you think in the Comments Box below.

James Lomma, owner of New York Crane, and his former mechanic, Tibor Varganyi, have pleaded not guilty to second-degree manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and reckless endangerment charges in the deaths of two workers on May 30, 2008.

A weld on a crane’s turntable, that officials say New York Crane had done on the cheap in China, cracked apart, sending the machine’s boom and car plummeting 20 stories to the ground with the driver still in it. The operator and another worker on the ground were killed. A third worker was seriously injured.

The Manhattan District Attorney said Lomma was “motivated by profit,” to make the crane repair on the cheap using a Chinese company.

A lawyer for Lomma’s crane company said they’d fight the charges because no fewer than seven inspectors signed off on the refurbished crane part.

But prosecutors say even the Chinese company warned it wasn’t equipped to do the repair. An e-mail from the company says, “We are afraid the weld we had it not good.”

In the first year of the Obama administration, OSHA was busy handing out fines the likes of which hadn’t been seen for eight years. Here’s our rundown of 10 significant fines from the last 12 months, and what they mean for businesses:

1. OSHA issues largest fine ever: $87.4 million to BP. This fine demonstrates OSHA’s intent to check up on companies once they’ve made serious safety mistakes. The agency evaluated BP’s progress after the 2005 fire and explosion that killed 15 people and injured 170 more at its Texas City, TX refinery. OSHA issued 270 “notifications of failure to abate” and identified 439 new willful violations at the plant.
2. Two executives face prison time and huge fines in deaths of five workers. Phillipe Goutagny and James Thompson, executives with RPI Coating, each face 2.5 years in prison and a fine up to $1.25 million if convicted. On Oct. 2, 2007, vapor from a solvent ignited inside a tunnel at a hydroelectric plant in Colorado. Workers survived the blast but were overcome by smoke and fumes and died of asphyxiation. OSHA says it will work more closely with the Justice Department in cases like these to bring criminal charges against executives with penalties that include prison time.
3. OSHA wastes no time in using new per-employee citations, issues $1.2 million fine. G.S. Robbins & Co. of St. Louis, MO, was hit with 21 egregious willful citations for hazardous chemical handling. Each citation was on a per-instance basis. Even during this period of difficult economic recovery, OSHA won’t hesitate to use per-instance, per-employee fines to hike total fine amounts. This wasn’t the only instance in which OSHA used per-instance citations in 2009 (see item #7 below).
4. Company hit with $1.14 million fine following employee complaint. Are the big fines relegated only to incidents involving deaths or multiple serious injuries? Hardly. OSHA began a December 2008 inspection at Milk Specialties in Whitehall, WI, in response to an employee complaint. Willful citations were issued for the employer’s failure to comply with OSHA’s confined space and lockout/tagout regulations. OSHA is taking employee complaints seriously.
5. After two similar incidents, owner and manager go to jail. ANC Roofing of Santa Rosa, CA, owner Kenneth Alton pleaded no contest to failing to protect employees from a hazard. He was sentenced to nine months in jail and a $248,000 fine. Supervisor Robert McAfee pleaded no contest to one misdemeanor violation and was sentenced to 30 days in jail. On May 11, 2006, an ANC employee backed into an unguarded skylight and fell 21 feet to his death. Four months later, another ANC employee suffered major head trauma when he fell 19 feet from an unprotected skylight.
6. OSHA fines Wal-Mart $7,000 for worker trampling incident. A Wal-Mart worker was trampled to death by a crowd of 2,000 shoppers on the day after Thanksgiving in 2008. OSHA said Wal-Mart should have recognized that its employees were exposed to being crushed by the crowd based on previous experience. Wal-Mart fought the fine. OSHA used the General Duty Clause to issue the fine and has said it will use the GDC in similar situations where safety was compromised but a specific regulation wasn’t violated.
7. Company faces $1.09 million OSHA fine for 202 willful violations. OSHA didn’t really need anyone’s permission to start issuing per-instance fines (see item #3 above), but it got the go-ahead in the form of a decision from the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC). The appeals panel ruled OSHA properly cited Smalis Painting Co. on a per-employee basis for violations of the lead-in-construction regulations, in connection with a project near Pittsburgh, PA. OSHA monitored six Smalis employees for lead exposure. Based on that data, OSHA issued violations for all employees who would have been exposed to the same hazards.
8. OSHA is getting companies to agree to implement safety and health improvements above what’s required by regulations. A-1 Excavating of Bloomer, WI, agreed to make numerous changes in its work processes in exchange for lowering fines from almost $900,000 to $470,000. A-1 has to hire a full-time safety director, develop and implement site-specific safety and health plans for all major projects, identify all job sites to OSHA before work begins for the next three years, reduce the salary of job superintendents and project managers who fail to comply with OSHA requirements, and retain a third-party safety consultant.
9. Cintas agrees to pay $3 million in fines and to comply with other conditions. In some cases, it hasn’t been an either-or situation between fines and strict safety improvements. After a worker was killed when he fell onto an unguarded conveyor and was dragged into a 300-degree industrial dryer, Cintas agreed to the huge fine and to retain a team of independent experts to develop permanent fixes and review interim controls. Cintas also agreed to hire additional safety staff, conduct more frequent internal safety inspections, and establish new systems to examine employee complaints.
10. A construction company agrees to pay $750,000 in fines and cut the pay of unsafe supervisors. Broadway Concrete of New York, NY, agreed to reduce the salaries of senior job superintendents who failed to comply with job safety practices. Broadway also agreed to hire a full-time corporate safety director, develop a new corporate safety plan, and provide OSHA with information on major projects and access to all job sites for the next four years.

What do you think of OSHA’s recent enforcement tactics? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

Criminal prosecution of companies where safety violations cause serious injuries or fatalities are rare in the U.S. With that in mind, it’s interesting to note how such cases are handled in another democracy.

In the last seven years, more than 70 plea bargain deals have been cut in Queensland, Australia, between companies with serious workplace accidents and the state government.

The Queensland state government recently settled with an electrical contractor, Stowe Australia. One of its workers was left a paraplegic after a 2007 industrial incident. The worker was helping unload an almost 900-pound switchboard when the equipment fell on him, causing severe spinal injuries.

In exchange for dropping criminal charges, Stowe agreed to make a formal statement of regret, improve its health and safety standards, publish an article on the incident, and provide funding to the Spinal Injuries Association.

For comparison, the trucking company that was transporting the switchboard was prosecuted in court and fined $45,000.

In another case, Sea World was initially prosecuted for a workplace injury case on charges that carried a maximum penalty of two years in prison and more than $1 million in fines. The government withdrew the criminal charges. In exchange, Sea World promised to spend almost $300,000 on safety improvements.

A spokesman for the government defended the settlements, saying they “require the employer to carry out a range of safety measures that extend well beyond the original breach. They are only entered into when the benefits for workers, the industry and the community can be clearly shown.”

The spokesman said the settlements pave the way for “long-lasting and more wide-ranging safety changes.” The government totals the number of safety enhancements at companies due to these settlements at more than $17 million.

What do you think about this method of holding companies responsible for serious injuries and fatalities? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

The shareholders don’t get any money from the settlement, but they did get this: Cintas has promised a work environment that promotes safety and compliance with laws.

Specifically, Cintas has agreed to:

• provide regular written safety reports to the board of directors
• have a safety officer attend shareholder meetings, and
• implement a 24-hour hotline so workers can report safety and other suspected violations.

The shareholders stated that among their reasons for filing the lawsuit was the March 6, 2007 death of Cintas employee Eleazar Torres-Gomez at its Oklahoma City plant. Torres-Gomez fell onto an unguarded conveyor and was dragged into a 300° industrial dryer. He was already dead from burns when another employee found him 20 minutes later.

Cintas agreed to pay an almost $3 million OSHA fine in that and five other cases. OSHA had originally cited Cintas with 43 willful violations, many involving failure to guard machines and to lock out hazardous energy while employees were maintaining equipment. OSHA downgraded the severity of the willful violations in the settlement. Two Democrats in Congress called the settlement a last-minute pardon of Cintas under President Bush’s administration.

“From our perspective, the claims had no merit,” said Gerry Utter, a lawyer representing some of the company’s directors in the suit. “When one person dies, it doesn’t mean anybody did anything wrong,” Utter told the Cincinnati Enquirer.

What do you think about the lawsuit and the settlement? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

A burned out light, two identical doors and an 18-foot fall add up to a costly jury verdict for one employer.

Seattle firefighter Mark Jones was working an overnight shift at a city fire station on Dec. 23, 2003.

He woke at about 3 a.m. from his second-floor bunk to use the bathroom. Then he mistook a nearby door to the station’s fire pole for the restroom. The two doors were on the same wall, six feet apart.

He fell 18 feet to the first floor. He wasn’t working at his usual fire station that night.

A safety light that normally illuminates the fire pole alcove had burned out. A chain that would have restricted access hadn’t been latched.

Jones suffered brain and spine injuries, along with 10 broken ribs, multiple pelvic fractures and other injuries.

The injured firefighter received minimal disability benefits under the state’s pension system. He’s unable to work any sustainable job.

He sued the city, and a jury awarded him $12.7 million.

Since the accident, the department has installed reflective tape around fire pole shafts and protective glass doors with special handles that don’t open unless they’re pushed in.

In some states, when workers are placed on permanent partial disability, it’s expected that injured employees will make a “good-faith effort” to find alternate employment they can perform. However, one state court just found a reason to overturn that 15-year precedent and allow a worker to keep collecting.

Carolyn Bergstrom worked for Spears Manufacturing Co. as a production janitor. One day, after lifting a garbage can and setting it back down, she felt pain in her back.

The next day the pain became severe, and she was reassigned to sorting parts. She was unable to do that because standing in one place caused her too much discomfort.

An orthopedic surgeon directed her to stop working and file for disability benefits. Initially, she was awarded permanent total disability by an administrative law judge (ALJ).

But the state workers’ comp board set aside that decision, and the ALJ suggested Bergstrom try to return to work. She did, and she was again assigned to the parts sorting job.  She said she wasn’t able to perform the job for more than 3 hours because of pain and went home. The company fired her.

Then her award was reduced to permanent partial disability. The state’s workers’ comp board found that Bergstrom “didn’t exercise good faith” when she failed to perform alternate job duties that her company offered her after her injury.

Bergstrom appealed.

An appeals court upheld the reduction of her award based on the “good-faith effort” doctrine that appeals courts in Kansas had applied to such cases for 15 years. In other words, a workers’ comp award could be reduced if the injured employee didn’t make a good-faith effort to seek out and accept alternate employment.

But a majority on the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the state’s workers’ comp law contained no such good-faith provision. It ruled that appeals courts in the state had ruled incorrectly for years on the matter. So in this case, it reversed the lower court’s ruling and sent it back for further consideration.

The upshot: It appears until this is corrected by an act of the Kansas legislature, employees can decide they suffer too much pain after a workplace accident, leave their job and collect benefits without looking for alternate employment.

Let us know what you think about this case in the Comments Box below.

Cite: Bergstrom v. Spears, Supreme Court of KS, No. 99,369, 9/4/09.

Francisco Moreno Garcia died as the result of an incident at the ADM facility in Decatur, IL, when a waste compression system malfunctioned. He was insulating pipes 15 feet in the air when he was sprayed with steam and hot caustic chemicals.

He struggled to free himself from his harness and tumbled to the ground. Third degree burns covered 90% of his body.

He lived in excruciating pain for a day and a half before doctors decided there was nothing more they could do to save him.

Workers’ comp awarded $60,000 to Garcia’s family in Mexico. Most of that will be returned to an insurance company after the family receives payment from the jury trial.

In many workplace deaths, the family can’t sue because workers’ comp prohibits it – it’s the “exclusive remedy.”

But in this case, Garcia was working for a contractor, so the family could sue ADM. The jury award was one of the largest such judgments in Illinois history for a single man with no spouse or children.

Toys R Us faces $69,000 in fines for 10 violations at one of its stores in Brooklyn, NY.

OSHA’s inspection found hazards that could impede employees’ exit during a fire or other emergency. These included:

• obstructed exit access
• missing or defective exit doors
• an exit door that was painted over and couldn’t be opened
• improper or inadequate exit signage
• employees not trained in fire extinguisher use, and
• all fire extinguishers not kept in their required locations.

OSHA also cited the company for other violations, including damaged storage racks that were prone to collapse.

Three of the citations, for the obstructed exit route, blocked aisle and damaged storage racks, were categorized as repeat and came with $50,000 in fines. But the Brooklyn store wasn’t fined for these problems before.

OSHA had cited Toys R Us stores in Ohio and New Jersey for similar hazards, and that triggered the more expensive repeat citations. The other seven violations were categorized as serious for a total of $19,000 in fines.

The workers’ comp premium rate in Oregon will decrease 1.3% for 2010. The state had 21,660 accepted disabling claims in 2008, a decrease of 1,773 from 2007. The claims rate is 1.2 per 100 workers, down from 1.3 in 2007.

The report from Oregon also notes that 30.4% of claims were filed by workers in the first year with their employer.

The average age of workers making claims was 41. If you assume most workers are between the ages of 18 and 64, 41 is the average age of workers overall.

So it’s not how old workers are that matters, it’s how long they’ve been with your company.

Some other statistics from Oregon’s report:

• The most common injuries were sprains, strain and tears (47%); fractures, 12%
• The top events causing injuries: overexertion (24%); struck by or against an object (14%); and bodily reaction (14%)
• The biggest sources of injuries: bodily condition or motion (24%); floors, walks or ground (17%); and containers (8.5%), and
• The body parts most commonly affected: back (21.5%); trunk, except back (16%); and knees (11%).

That’s what happened to Sims Bark Co. and Sims Stone Co. in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi.

OSHA received a complaint about safety at one of Sims’ locations and determined that similar hazards might exist at its other locations.

Result: $576,750 in OSHA fines after inspectors visited six Sims facilities.

Willful citations were issued for:

• allowing workers to service, unjam and clean machinery without procedures to ensure they wouldn’t be caught in or struck by equipment or burned by machines’ heat strips, and
• exposing workers to dangers associated with being caught in fast moving machinery.

OSHA issued serious citations for:

• lack of employee training
• exposure to electric shocks
• lack of fall protection
• lack of machine guards
• exposure to noise hazards
• struck-by dangers, and
• accumulation of combustible dust.

Sims also faces other-than-serious citations for failing to keep injury/illness logs according to OSHA rules.

The company has 15 business days to comply with or contest the citations.

Dan Kavanaugh, vice president and general manager with Turner Construction Co. in Oregon, told the Daily Journal of Commerce, “Money is not the motivator. A fine doesn’t mean anything to us.”

Dan Johnson, vice president of operations for Sakanska USA, agrees. “If they raised fines, would that become a motivation? I’m thinking ‘no.’”

However, Johnson says higher fines could be big financial hits for small and mid-sized construction companies.

Oregon OSHA administrator Michael Wood realizes that the fines he’s proposing still wouldn’t have a significant impact on the largest companies.

Wood is considering setting the cap for the most severe violations at $7,000. Now, it’s $5,000.

When a state OSHA inspects a company after a fatality, even the $5,000 fines can add up.

Recently, Oregon OSHA announced penalties totaling $90,000 against ConAgra Foods and a company performing repairs at a ConAgra plant in connection with an incident in which a welder was killed.

Wood acknowledges that ConAgra’s portion of the fine, $65,000, won’t be a big hit for such a large company. Besides raising fines, he’s considering a sliding scale based on company size.

Do you think OSHA fines are real motivation for companies to improve their safety? Is it different for larger vs. smaller companies? Should fines be higher for larger companies? Let me know in the Comments Box below.