Hearings in Congress, About Employers Who Kill Workers, Reveal More Bush Administration Failures
Congress is finally getting around to this. McClatchy News reports: "Employers who intentionally disregard hazards that cost workers their lives should face the threat of felony prosecution and stiff prison sentences, lawmakers said Tuesday.
"That almost never happens now, witnesses told members of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
"It’s more costly to fish for tuna in the wrong waters of the South Pacific than to allow dangerous conditions that contribute to an employee’s death, said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., the committee’s chairman.
"The median penalty for a workplace fatality last year was $3,675, according to a new report titled “Discounting Death: OSHA’s Failure to Punish Safety Violations that Kill Workers,” issued by Kennedy’s committee staff.
"At the sometimes emotional hearing about death on the job and the minimal penalties that often follow, parents who’ve lost children in workplace accidents talked of their heartbreak and their ensuing frustration while trying to find justice.
"Since the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act in 1970, about 341,000 workers have died on the job, but only 68 cases have been criminally prosecuted, said Peg Seminario, director of safety and health at the AFL-CIO.
“The maximum sentence should be measured in years, not in months,” said David Uhlmann, [former Justice Department lawyer] now a professor at the University of Michigan.
"Uhlmann said he was unable to use OSHA laws to prosecute an employer who in 1996 knowingly sent a worker into a tank that held cyanide waste, rendering Scott Dominguez brain damaged. Under OSHA law, employers can’t be prosecuted unless a willful violation leads to a worker’s death. Uhlmann instead used environmental laws to prosecute the owner of Evergreen Resources, a fertilizer company.
“There’s something wrong with the law if sending workers into a tank of cyanide waste, ruining a young man’s life, is not a crime under worker safety laws and it’s a 17-year felony under the environmental laws,” he said.
I've written many times about workplace safety and Bush's politicized, toothless OSHA.
In one post I wrote, "As Les Leopold, workplace safety expert writes in "Recent Explosion Reveals Fatal Double Standard for Workers" about Tony Mazzocchi the late labor leader instrumental in the creation of OSHA and the Chemical Safety Board, Mazzocchi argued that "In industrial facilities, the drive for profits undermines safety."
"As Leopold explains, "Even more egregious is that OSHA knew about the dangers of dust explosions, as it headlined a bulletin issued on July 31, 2005, "Combustible Dust in Industry: Preventing and Mitigating the Effects of Fire and Explosions." "The Bush administration took care to make sure that despite the findings and the suggestions for improvements, that the bulleting was 'not a standard or regulation, and it creates no new legal obligations. The Bulletin is advisory in nature, informational in content, and is intended to assist employers in providing a safe and healthful workplace.'
"Currently OSHA has so few inspectors that it would take 70 years to inspect all the job sites in South Carolina.
"Hopefully, under the next Democratic president, there will be a strong regulatory OSHA not Bush's politicized, enabling corporate defiance of workers' safety, deliberately ineffective pawn that exists now."
Still true as nothing will happen to improve the oversight and prosecution of deliberately negligent employers until after this Bushite protect corporate crony criminals administration is gone.
Another heinous example of Bushite intentional mismanagement to destroy effective government administration and deliberate suppression of regulation by Bush's politicized government regulatory agencies resulting in deaths.
And impeachment is still off the table.
"That almost never happens now, witnesses told members of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
"It’s more costly to fish for tuna in the wrong waters of the South Pacific than to allow dangerous conditions that contribute to an employee’s death, said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., the committee’s chairman.
"The median penalty for a workplace fatality last year was $3,675, according to a new report titled “Discounting Death: OSHA’s Failure to Punish Safety Violations that Kill Workers,” issued by Kennedy’s committee staff.
"At the sometimes emotional hearing about death on the job and the minimal penalties that often follow, parents who’ve lost children in workplace accidents talked of their heartbreak and their ensuing frustration while trying to find justice.
"Since the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act in 1970, about 341,000 workers have died on the job, but only 68 cases have been criminally prosecuted, said Peg Seminario, director of safety and health at the AFL-CIO.
“The maximum sentence should be measured in years, not in months,” said David Uhlmann, [former Justice Department lawyer] now a professor at the University of Michigan.
"Uhlmann said he was unable to use OSHA laws to prosecute an employer who in 1996 knowingly sent a worker into a tank that held cyanide waste, rendering Scott Dominguez brain damaged. Under OSHA law, employers can’t be prosecuted unless a willful violation leads to a worker’s death. Uhlmann instead used environmental laws to prosecute the owner of Evergreen Resources, a fertilizer company.
“There’s something wrong with the law if sending workers into a tank of cyanide waste, ruining a young man’s life, is not a crime under worker safety laws and it’s a 17-year felony under the environmental laws,” he said.
I've written many times about workplace safety and Bush's politicized, toothless OSHA.
In one post I wrote, "As Les Leopold, workplace safety expert writes in "Recent Explosion Reveals Fatal Double Standard for Workers" about Tony Mazzocchi the late labor leader instrumental in the creation of OSHA and the Chemical Safety Board, Mazzocchi argued that "In industrial facilities, the drive for profits undermines safety."
"As Leopold explains, "Even more egregious is that OSHA knew about the dangers of dust explosions, as it headlined a bulletin issued on July 31, 2005, "Combustible Dust in Industry: Preventing and Mitigating the Effects of Fire and Explosions." "The Bush administration took care to make sure that despite the findings and the suggestions for improvements, that the bulleting was 'not a standard or regulation, and it creates no new legal obligations. The Bulletin is advisory in nature, informational in content, and is intended to assist employers in providing a safe and healthful workplace.'
"Currently OSHA has so few inspectors that it would take 70 years to inspect all the job sites in South Carolina.
"Hopefully, under the next Democratic president, there will be a strong regulatory OSHA not Bush's politicized, enabling corporate defiance of workers' safety, deliberately ineffective pawn that exists now."
Still true as nothing will happen to improve the oversight and prosecution of deliberately negligent employers until after this Bushite protect corporate crony criminals administration is gone.
Another heinous example of Bushite intentional mismanagement to destroy effective government administration and deliberate suppression of regulation by Bush's politicized government regulatory agencies resulting in deaths.
And impeachment is still off the table.
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