May 14, 2012 by Fred Hosier
Pick any three employees at your company. Chances are, one of them is sleep deprived. And the chances increase for certain industries and among employees who work night and irregular schedules. And most people would not want to take the chance that these sleepy workers will injure themselves or others.
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Tags: Centers for Disease Control, manufacturing, National Sleep Foundation, sleep deprived
May 8, 2012 by Fred Hosier
A New England supermarket chain will pay $400,000 in fines, hire a full-time safety officer and make other improvements in a settlement with OSHA.
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Tags: cut hazards, fell onto concrete floor, Market Basket, OSHA settlement
April 30, 2012 by Fred Hosier
Could an employee show that the reason he was fired was age discrimination and not for a safety violation?
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Tags: age discrimination, Davey Tree, safety briefing
April 18, 2012 by Fred Hosier
“Disregard for the law” is how Labor Secretary Hilda Solis describes the events that led to a grain explosion that killed six workers and left two others seriously injured. Now OSHA has decided on the penalties for two companies involved in the incident.
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Tags: Bartlett Grain, dust accumulation, fatal grain explosion
March 29, 2012 by Fred Hosier
A federal jury has awarded a railroad worker more than $1 million in a lawsuit that accused his employer of retaliating against him because he was injured on the job.
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Tags: Federal Railroad Safety Act, Metro-North, retaliation
March 26, 2012 by Fred Hosier
Cal/OSHA has issued 16 citations totaling $166,890 to a recycling company in connection with the deaths of two brothers in a storm drain system.
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Tags: confined space, hydrogen sulfide gas, recycling, storm drain
March 9, 2012 by Fred Hosier
A federal court says because a company made some effort to comply with an OSHA standard, safety violations weren’t willful. That will reduce the OSHA fines, which were originally almost $7.5 million, by at least 90%.
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Tags: Dayton Tire, lockout/tagout, OSHRC, willful violation
February 8, 2012 by Fred Hosier
OSHA has fined an Oklahoma grain company in connection with an incident last August that caused two 17-year-olds to suffer leg amputations.
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Tags: caught in conveyor, grain company, leg amputations, machine guard
February 3, 2012 by Fred Hosier
A grand jury in New Hampshire has handed up indictments of the former owner of a gunpowder manufacturing plant in the deaths of two workers.
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Tags: failure to train workers, gun powder plant explosion, manslaughter charges, negligent homicide
January 30, 2012 by Fred Hosier
OSHA issued plenty of six- and seven-figure fines in 2011. Here are ten examples of what companies did to become part of a club no one would want to be a member of.
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Tags: grain elevator deaths, PPE, Top 10 OSHA fines, training
January 27, 2012 by Fred Hosier
A contractor faces $169,000 in OSHA fines after an inspection revealed cave-in hazards at a construction site.
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Tags: cave-in hazards, imminent danger, willful violations
January 19, 2012 by Fred Hosier
A preliminary report has failed to find any clear impact of California’s required Injury and Illness Prevention Programs (I2P2) on the total fatality rate in the state. The exact effect on the number of worker injuries is unclear.
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Tags: Commission for Health Safety and Workers' Compensation, i2p2, OSHA white paper, reduction in injuries
January 13, 2012 by Fred Hosier
Here’s a statement that caught our eye: The owner of a small manufacturing business in New Jersey told a local newspaper that his employees are “not concerned about having a safe place to work, they’re concerned about having a place to work.”
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Tags: employees not concerned about safety, machine guarding, OSHA regulations, out of business
January 12, 2012 by Fred Hosier
OSHA has fined a tree surgery company following the death of an employee last summer in Idaho City, ID.
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Tags: Davey Tree Surgery, fail to provide training, killed by falling tree
January 6, 2012 by Fred Hosier
A judge has ruled that there’s enough evidence to order a San Francisco company’s owner and one of its managers to stand trial for the death of a pregnant worker who was crushed by a creasing and cutting machine.
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Tags: death of pregnant worker, owner and manager to stand trial, worker crushed to death
January 5, 2012 by Fred Hosier
A worker’s complaint brought OSHA to a Houston company. The complaint was substantiated, and OSHA found even more violations that added up to a hefty fine because the company had been cited for them before.
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Tags: machine guards, Severe Violator Enforcement Program, willful violations, worker complaint
January 3, 2012 by Fred Hosier
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office has filed criminal charges against a college professor who supervised a UCLA lab where a staff research assistant was killed in a fire three years ago. The University of California also faces millions of dollars in criminal fines in the case.
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Tags: criminal charges, research assistant killed in fire, UCLA fatal fire
December 14, 2011 by Fred Hosier
OSHA is investigating the death of a young worker due to a forklift tipover at a facility in Denton, TX. The incident provides a reminder for workers of one thing not to do if a forklift they’re operating starts to overturn.
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Tags: death of young worker, forklift driver killed, forklift tipover
December 1, 2011 by Fred Hosier
OSHA has revised its guidance on servicing tires to address current hazards and help workers safely perform maintenance on large vehicles.
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Tags: large vehicle maintenance, service wheels, tire explosion
November 23, 2011 by Fred Hosier
I don’t get it. Why deny him? I’m speechless. I don’t understand the denial. Those are some of the comments readers left on a story we ran in October about a Joplin, MO, tornado hero who was denied workers’ comp benefits. Now the insurance company has had a change of heart.
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Tags: denied workers' comp benefits, hero, Joplin tornado, Mark Lindquist
November 18, 2011 by Fred Hosier
As winter arrives, it’s a good time to remind workers not to start gas-powered engines in enclosed spaces. The result is too often fatal.
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Tags: carbon monoxide, gas-powered engines, lawn mower
October 10, 2011 by Fred Hosier
OSHA has ordered a farmer-owned cooperative to increase safety training for grain bin employees and pay a $550,000 fine.
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Tags: farm coop, OSHA settlement, rescue drills, safety consultant, Safety training, trapped in soybeans
September 20, 2011 by Fred Hosier
Imagine this: You’re investigating an incident that caused three worker injuries, one of them serious enough to require hospitalization. What are the potential root causes? Lack of safety training? Equipment failure? Sneezing?
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Tags: fire truck, incident investigation, rollover crash, sneezing fit
September 19, 2011 by Fred Hosier
The final, and most comprehensive, report on the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico points to seven company practices that contributed to the incident. They’re the types of mistakes that could be made by any company, not just an oil giant.
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Tags: BP oil disaster, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, cost saving, Deepwater Horizon, risk management, time saving, Transocean
September 15, 2011 by Fred Hosier
Bostik, Inc., a manufacturer of adhesives, faces $917,000 in OSHA fines for 50 citations following the agency’s investigation into a March 13, 2011, explosion that injured four workers at the company’s Middleton, MA, plant.
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Tags: acetone, Bostik Inc., explosion, OSHA fine, process safety management
September 13, 2011 by Fred Hosier
When two separate safety problems combine, the result too often is fatal.
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Tags: faulty equipment, forklift, lack of training, reverse beeper
September 6, 2011 by Fred Hosier
A company with 14 affiliates spread across the country has agreed to pay a $34,750 fine to settle OSHA citations. That doesn’t sound too bad for a big, nationwide construction company. But it’s only the tip of the iceberg.
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Tags: 30-hour OSHA course, construction company, enterprise-wide settlement agreement, fall protection, OSHA citations, safety program
August 29, 2011 by Fred Hosier
A new report suggests that at best, companies are only getting half the job done when it comes to measuring their employees’ safety.
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Tags: lagging indicators, leading indicators, manufacturing, risk control, safety committees, safety metrics, Safety training
August 12, 2011 by Fred Hosier
Man vs. machine: Which is better at safety? The people at Google think it’s machine, as the company continues to develop its self-driving car. But wait, the self-driving Google car was just in a five-car fender-bender!
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Tags: car crash, Google car, Jalopnik, self-driving car
August 11, 2011 by Fred Hosier
Should the federal government use a plea agreement reached in connection with a Colorado worker’s death as a template for similar cases involving fatalities?
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Tags: asphyxiation, engulfed by grain, Safety training, Tempel Grain Elevator, victim's family
August 3, 2011 by Fred Hosier
When a fatality or serious injury occurs at a nearby business in your industry, expect OSHA to pay a visit to look for similar hazards.
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Tags: immigrant, machine guarding, Spanish, tortilla manufacturer
July 28, 2011 by Fred Hosier
A Colorado grain elevator company is scheduled to plead guilty and be sentenced Aug. 5 in connection with the death of a 17-year-old worker who was buried alive in a grain bin in 2009.
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Tags: buried alive in grain, criminal charges, emergency action plan, grain elevator, Safety training
July 18, 2011 by Fred Hosier
Recent research shows three areas in which many companies would receive “needs-to-improve” marks for employee training. How does your safety training program stack up?
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Tags: apply training, ESI International, Safety training
July 1, 2011 by Fred Hosier
An official from the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) delivered a stinging indictment of the operators of the Upper Big Branch (UBB) mine in West Virginia where 29 miners were killed in an explosion.
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Tags: Massey Energy, mine explosion, MSHA, productivity, records, training, Upper Big Branch, worker intimidation
June 28, 2011 by Fred Hosier
Establishing an open-door policy for employees to bring safety problems to management’s attention can be a real cost-saver: In this case, it might have saved thousands of dollars in OSHA fines.
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Tags: bloodborne pathogens, confined spaces, respiratory program, training, worker complaint
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