OSHA’s Weak Fines Little Deterrent to Employers to Improve Job Safety

by Mike Hall, Jun 2, 2008

Recently, television viewers in the Greenville, S.C., area saw something that far too few people, in far too many TV markets ever see—an in-depth, local news report on workplace deaths and injuries. The report focused on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA’s) pattern of significantly reducing employer fines for safety violations linked to those deaths and injuries.

On top of that, those fines, as a U.S. Senate hearing found last month, already are too weak to serve as a deterrent to employer safety violations.

In “Discounted Lives,” News Channel 7 (WSPA) reporter Andy Pierrotti examined four years (2004–2007) of state OSHA records covering 196 serious workplace incidents, including 116 fatalities. He found that in 129 of those cases (nearly 70 percent), OSHA backed off its initial penalty assessment and reduced the fines.

Overall, OSHA assessed some $670,097 in penalties, but after meetings with employers, the safety agency cut the fines by $487,631—more than 72 percent.

Travis Wood, 22, was killed in a 31-foot fall at a Gaffney distribution center in April 2007. After finding 11 safety violations, OSHA fined the employer $15,225, but later cut the fine to just $2,700. Wood’s father, Ronald, told Pierrotti:

It’s just unbelievable that they can actually get by with that small amount of money.

News Channel 7’s story could be replicated in nearly any U.S. state because of OSHA’s pattern of taps on the wrist for safety violations is nationwide. Last month, Peg Seminario, AFL-CIO Health and Safety director, told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee:

In both informal settlements by the agency, and formal settlements after employer challenges to OSHA citations, penalties are routinely cut by another 30–50 percent. Indeed, it is OSHA practice to offer employers an automatic additional 30 percent penalty reduction at the time the citations are issued, no questions asked, if the employer agrees to correct all violations. The effect of these policies and practices in most cases is to reduce penalties to a level too minimal to have any effect.

At the hearing, committee chairman Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) said:

OSHA routinely downgrades the severity of violations or withdraws the violations entirely in the course of its investigating, and often doesn’t bother to collect the penalties it issues. In many cases where a worker is killed, the employer never has to pay anything. How can we expect workplaces to become safer if OSHA won’t bother to collect fines from employers who break the law?

Not only are OSHA penalties weak, the maximum fines are rarely assessed, said Seminario. The maximum fine for a serious violation (those that pose a substantial risk of death or serious injury) is a mere $7,000. But in fiscal year 2007, the average assessed penalty for such violations was only $906 in federal OSHA cases and $913 in states like South Carolina, which are certified to enforce federal workplace safety laws.

Seminario also told the panel:

Even in cases where workers are killed, penalties are abysmally low. According to OSHA inspection data, the average serious penalty in fatality cases for FY [fiscal year] 2007 was just $2,343 for federal OSHA and $3,988 for the state plans….Clearly, for most employers these levels of penalties are not sufficient to change employer behavior, improve workplace conditions or deter future violations.

That lack of deterrence is what moved Pierrotti to launch his investigation into the reduced fines.

I first got interested into fines levied by OSHA, after covering a Charleston, S.C., fire that killed nine firemen. While OSHA, and several federal agencies found significant violations with the way the department handled the fire, OSHA negotiated a fine worth only $3,160. The initial fine was $9,325. The day OSHA released its initial fine, a fireman called me to complain that those nine firemen’s deaths would not initiate change with such a small monetary fine.

The Senate is considering a bill (S. 1244) to toughen OSHA penalties and enforcement.

Click here to view “Discounted Lives,” here to read Seminario’s full testimony and here for more on the hearing, including a video.

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