A tragic safety record mars America’s workplaces

Sunday, June 22, 2008 | 2:06 a.m.

Steelworker Harold Billingsley was walking on uneven decking last year at the massive CityCenter project on the Strip when he fell 59 feet to his death.

Inspectors from the Nevada Occupational Safety and Health Administration found that Billingsley’s employer, SME Steel Contractors, had violated safety laws. Billingsley’s safety harness wasn’t working properly, and the hole he fell through should not have existed. The contractor had not provided a safety net or floor that would have broken his fall.

Writing that “with reasonable diligence the hazard could have been detected and prevented,” inspectors issued three citations with fines totaling $13,500.

But SME Steel Contractors contested the citations, saying Billingsley wasn’t supposed to be in the area. It blamed him for his own death.

Despite what inspectors found, OSHA supervisors agreed with the contractor and waived all the citations and the fines. Sadly, it was no surprise. The tragic lesson in Billingsley’s death is this: Laws passed to protect workers provide meager fines and punishments, and violators are typically allowed to escape with few, if any, penalties.

Under federal law, the maximum fine for the most serious safety violations, such as a worker death caused by an employer who willfully ignored hazards, is $70,000. Oddly, federal law punishes other violations much more severely. For example:

• The Agriculture Department can issue a fine of up to $130,000 under the Fluid Milk Promotion Act.

• A violator of the Clean Air Act can be fined $270,000.

• Fishing companies can face a $325,000 fine under the South Pacific Tuna Act.

OSHA fines not only pale in comparison, they are negotiable. Agency officials meet with the companies they fine and routinely discount, if not waive, the penalties when challenged. As a result, the fines are little more than a nuisance. Last year the median final fine issued by OSHA in a worker fatality case was a mere $3,675.

The law should act as a deterrent to shoddy practices that leave workers vulnerable to injury, but what deterrence is there when a company knows a fine can be negotiated away?

That has been patently clear with the shocking number of worker deaths on the Las Vegas Strip and the crane failures in New York City. Fines of a few thousand dollars don’t register on multibillion-dollar construction projects. They only add insult to a worker’s injury.

The House Education and Labor Committee will hold a hearing Tuesday on a bill designed to improve workplace safety by raising fines and penalties. The bill would raise the minimum fine in a worker fatality to $50,000 and allow prosecutors to file felony charges against employers whose repeated and willful actions lead to a worker injury or death. Now such offenses are misdemeanors, punishable by six months in jail.

Those are certainly improvements, but Congress should be looking to do much more, as it did in the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals. In 2002 lawmakers passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to protect investors, and under it, executives of public companies who lie to investors can face 25 years in prison and up to $5 million in fines. As a result, American corporations have drastically changed the way they do business.

In the same way, lawmakers have an opportunity to send a strong message on safety in the workplace and protect workers by giving OSHA the enforcement tools it needs to prevent further workplace deaths.

For instance, OSHA inspectors should have the power to immediately shut down a dangerous job site, and fines and penalties should be increased significantly to be real deterrents and make companies pay close attention to worker safety.

Also, lawmakers should find ways to minimize the agency’s ability to negotiate fines. House committee members will hear from George Cole, Billingsley’s brother-in-law, and they should listen closely. A retired steelworker, he once ran a contracting business and learned to cut corners on safety practices because he could always fight OSHA and get his fines reduced or waived. Now he wonders, “What kind of incentive is that to change your practices?”

OSHA needs a significant overhaul. It doesn’t have enough people to do the job, and safety standards used by the agency are antiquated, in some cases predating the agency’s creation nearly four decades ago. And the agency’s staffing has left it struggling to investigate emerging workplace hazards such as combustible dust and carcinogens.

Congress will have to act if anything is to get done this year. The Bush administration has blocked new safety regulations and pulled back others in its efforts to placate its supporters in industry. Business interests have decried enforcement measures as “criminalizing” safety, so the Bush administration has taken a kinder, gentler approach. The agency now focuses on building “partnerships” with companies it inspects.

In the meantime, more than 5,000 workers die every year and millions more are injured on the job. And the Bush administration’s record? Since 2000, the number of workers killed by falls, equipment, fires and explosions has increased.

Bush administration officials try to dismiss the numbers, claiming most accidents happen because of worker error. They conveniently omit the fact that worker error is often compounded by poor safety practices. Harold Billingsley might have fallen on his own, but a safety net or a full floor below him could have saved him.

It should be common sense, not just a requirement, to have a net below. Industry officials often dismiss such measures as redundant, considering steelworkers are supposed to wear safety harnesses. But redundancies are common in good safety programs — that’s why car manufacturers are mandated to provide both seat belts and air bags.

Lawmakers should consider what other redundancies could be required to prevent more deaths. They should be talking about whether workers in dangerous and high-risk jobs should have limitations on the number of hours they can work in a week to prevent accidents caused by fatigue. They should also look at how the pace of work, such as the torrid construction schedule for Strip resorts, affects worker safety.

Industry officials often argue that the cost of adding safety measures is too high. Yet studies have repeatedly demonstrated that companies can reap huge rewards with an investment in safety. American corporations lose billions of dollars each year in productivity and see insurance and disability costs increase because of needless injuries.

It is tragic that people continue to be injured in preventable accidents on the job while the Bush administration and its supporters needlessly fret about the cost of regulation. Congress should ignore such small-minded opposition and focus on the real cost: thousands of workers dying because the agency designed to protect them doesn’t.