Low Health and Safety Penalties Endanger Workers’ Lives, Witnesses tell House Labor Committee
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Current penalties against employers that endanger workers’ health and safety are too low to deter future violations, witnesses to the House Education and Labor Committee today.
“Penalties are the key enforcement mechanism under the law. They must be real. They must be meaningful,” said U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-CA), chairman of the committee. “And, these penalties must not be just the cost of doing business.”
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Today is also Workers Memorial Day, which honors workers who lost their lives on the job due to hazardous working conditions. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, 5,657 workers died while on the job in 2007 – an average of about 15 a day.
While deaths on the job have significantly decreased since 1970 when Congress created the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, witnesses said that penalties have not been increased since 1990 and are much smaller than penalties contained in other federal laws.
“Nearly four decades after the [Occupational Safety and Health] Act was passed, enforcement of the job safety law remains weak and OSHA penalties remain low, particularly when compared with other safety and environmental laws,” said Margaret “Peg” Seminario, director of safety and health at the AFL-CIO. “Our analysis found that the average penalty for a serious violation is less than $1,000 and the average penalty involving workers deaths is $11,300.”
Witnesses said that OSHA’s penalties are too low and are often reduced after the initial citation. Nineteen year-old Jeremy Foster was killed in October 2004 while working at a sawmill in Ola, Ark. OSHA cited his employer for a ‘serious’ safety violation for improperly modifying a piece of equipment that resulted in his death. Even though Foster’s employer was cited for a ‘serious’ violation, the law only allows a fine up to $7,000.
“We were appalled to see the amount of the fine: $4,500. Surely this was an error,” said Rebecca Foster, Jeremy’s stepmother. “Shortly afterwards we read in our state newspaper that the fine had been reduced to only $2,250. Did they place a value of our only son’s life at this amount?”
While both civil and criminal penalties are available under the OSH Act, criminal prosecutions of egregious violations are rare and may only occur when a willful violation leads to the death of a worker. Even then, no matter how bad an employer acted, the maximum penalty is only a class B misdemeanor that may bring up to 6 months in prison. Other federal laws contain stricter penalties.
“In recent years, most of the criminal prosecutions for workers safety violations have been brought by the Justice Department's environmental crimes section,” said David Uhlman, former chief of the environmental crimes section. “While our worker safety regulations could be stronger, the primary flaw in our worker safety laws is not the rules we impose, but the lack of consequences for breaking those laws.”
According to Uhlman, there have been only 71 successful criminal prosecutions since 1970 under workers health and safety laws, a period when over 330,000 workers were killed in workplace fatalities.
Last week, members of the committee introduced the Protecting America’s Workers Act (H.R. 2067). The bill would update OSHA penalties, strengthen whistleblower protections, and ensure that bad employers are held accountable. For more information on the legislation, click here.
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