IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
MAY 1, 2008

JOB SAFETY REPORT REVEALS 5,840 DEATHS; CONGRESS PROBES OSHA’S NON-ENFORCEMENT

WASHINGTON (PAI)— On the eve of Workers Memorial Day, April 28, the AFL-CIO’s annual job safety report revealed 5,840 deaths on the job in 2006. And ten times that many workers died from job-related illnesses then, the last year for which data are available. It also hit the anti-worker GOP Bush regime’s lack of job safety enforcement.

The difference, this year, is that the Democratic-run Congress is probing the issue, too, and highlighting both the problems and the Bush Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s sorry record.

The federation reported 4.1 million workers were injured and 5,840 workers were killed due to job hazards in 2006, while 50,000-60,000 more died from occupational diseases. Those range from black lung to the numerous lung problems, cancers and other illnesses that rescue workers on “The Pile”--the ruins of the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks--have contracted.

“On an average day, 153 workers lose their lives as a result of workplace injuries and disease, and another 11,233 are injured,” the report said. It also noted fatalities among Latino workers rose 86% in the last 14 years, from 533 in 1992 to 900 in 2006.

Meanwhile, OSHA lacks the staff to do its duty, the fed said. It says with only 821 federal OSHA inspectors and 1,273 state inspectors nationwide, they get to work-places on the average once every 133 years (federal) or once every 65 years (state).

And when inspectors find a problem, the average fine is small: In fiscal 2007, which ended last Sept. 30, it was $909 for employers who allowed "conditions creating a substantial probability of death or serious physical harm to workers." The average penalty against a company where a worker died on the job was $10,153.

"$10,000 for a worker's life is an outrage," exclaimed AFL-CIO President John j. Sweeney after the report’s April 24 release. "It's clear the workplace safety net has more holes than fabric, and it is costing too many workers their lives. Our nation's workplaces have gotten more dangerous, not safer, under Bush.

“Congress and the next president must take real action by strengthening the OSHA act with tougher civil and criminal penalties, addressing increasing risks for Hispanic and immigrant workers, increasing funding for OSHA, and fully implementing the provisions of the Miner act," the mine safety and health law Congress enacted in 2006, Sweeney added.

Alaska, Wyoming, and West Virginia had the highest worker death rates in 2006, while New Hampshire and Rhode Island tied for the lowest rates. And 29 states saw increases in actual workplace deaths or fatality rates from 2005-2006.

Construction--one sector targeted by OSHA--had the largest number of fatal injuries (1,239, up from 1,192 in 2005). Transportation and warehousing was second (860), and agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting (655) was third. And 192 miners died in 2006, up 33 from 2005. Those deaths, particularly in the Sago and Alma coal mines early in the year, prompted passage of the Miner Act.

But another key difference this year is that while deaths on the job rose, the Democratic-run Congress is probing OSHA’s enforcement, or lack of it.

A House Education and Labor subcommittee held hearings on April 23 on OSHA’s failure to move against repeat violators. It focused on the nation’s largest commercial launderer, Cintas--object of a joint Teamsters-UNITE HERE organizing drive--where 46-year-old worker Eleazar Torres-Gomez last year was pulled by a faulty conveyor belt into a 300-degree dryer at Cintas’ Tulsa plant.

Subcommittee chairman Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) noted Cintas had warnings, from both OSHA and internally, as far back as 2000 about the risks to workers from the dryers--and did nothing.

“While my father was attempting to un-jam clothes stuck on the shuttle, he was dragged into an operating industrial dryer where he was trapped for over 20 minutes as it continued to spin, and as a result, was killed,” Torres’ son, Emmanuel, told Sanchez. “I will be haunted forever imagining the terror and pain he must have felt.

“Despite (Cintas) CEO Scott Farmer’s statement that blamed my father for not following Cintas’ safety policies, OSHA’s investigation, which included review of security cameras’ tapes, revealed over 30 similar instances over a 2-week period prior to my father’s death in which other employees climbed on wash floor machinery. Any one of them could have been hurt or killed. OSHA even said these violations were ‘willful.’ Based on the OSHA investigation, we know the procedures my father followed were not merely an isolated occurrence but were happening routinely.”

OSHA proposes fining Cintas $2.78 million, a record, for the fatal accident and similar willful dryer safety violations at its other plants nationwide, but the firm and the Bush OSHA are in secret settlement talks. The amount could drastically decline.

The Senate Labor Committee will hold a hearing April 29 about OSHA’s lack of enforcement--and about how businesses have incentives not to report workplace
deaths and injuries. Panel chairman Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) on April 22 asked the Government Accountability Office, the non-partisan audit and investigations agency, to probe the underreporting problem.

"When it comes to the health and safety of American workers, we can't allow OSHA to just take employers at their word," Murray said. "We need an agency that takes the initiative to keep businesses honest about the dangers their workers face." Kennedy added that more than 40 years after OSHA’s enactment, “The workplace is still too dangerous for too many workers. But OSHA can’t do its job to protect these workers if it doesn’t know what is really going on.”

Both senators want OSHA to be more proactive. The Bush regime turned OSHA into a “consultative agency” for business, exempting many firms from oversight and inspections. “The system seems all too easy to game,” Murray said.

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