Iron Worker Says OSHA’s Safety Failure Behind Brother-in-Law’s Fall to Death

by Mike Hall, Jun 25, 2008

George Cole, a retired Iron Workers member who spent 42 years on construction job sites, told a congressional hearing yesterday that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA’s) “failure to enforce safety standards” is likely what killed his brother-in-law in a fall at a troubled Las Vegas construction site.

The U.S. House Education and Labor Committee hearing probed whether OSHA is doing all it can to protect construction workers—including strong enforcement of the safety rules on the books and development of new workplace safety standards.

The hearing was spurred by the recent deadly crane collapses that killed 10 construction workers and a bystander in New York City, Miami and Las Vegas and the mounting death toll on the massive Las Vegas site that has claimed the lives of 12 workers. Said committee chairman Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.):

This committee has repeatedly raised serious concerns about OSHA’s inability or unwillingness to issue needed health and safety standards for a number of different industries. We have the same concerns about the construction industry.

Cole said on high-rise construction sites, OSHA rules require solid decking or a net every other floor or 30 feet, whichever is less. But OSHA issued what is called a compliance directive, allowing the contractors at the MGM Mirage’s CityCenter site to ignore the decking and net rule if other safety procedures were followed.

There are some 5,000 construction workers on the huge hotel, casino, condominium and retail project. Says Cole, whose brother-in-law Harold “Rusty” Billingsley was one of them:

The compliance directive eliminated this safety provision for Rusty. On Oct. 5, 2007, Rusty fell over 59 feet to his death. On that day I lost my brother and gained a statistic….After 42 years, I know for a fact that Iron Workers have survived 30-foot falls, but I don’t know of one who has survived a 60-foot fall.

Mark H. Ayers, president of the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD), told the committee that, on an average, four construction workers are killed on the job each day, some 1,200 to 1,500 each year. For every worker killed, thousands more are hurt on the job. Construction workers make up about 8 percent of the nation’s workforce, but account for about 22 percent of all workplace deaths.

If the carnage that takes place in the construction industry happened in any other industry there would be a national outcry. Yet, the only way we seem to be able to get attention to this huge problem is when a crisis hits, like the one we are faced with now.

OSHA Administrator Edwin Foulke defended his agency’s safety record, citing decreases in construction death and injury numbers over the past several years. But just last week, the same committee heard from safety experts that OSHA could be underreporting the number of workers hurt on the job by as much as two-thirds.

Ayers said a growing practice by construction employers to classify their workers as independent contractors dramatically increases the underreporting problem in the construction industry.

Over 2 million workers in the U.S. construction industry are classified, or should I say misclassified, as self-employed, i.e., independent contractors. Self-employed workers are not covered by OSHA or the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) survey of workplace deaths and injuries.

Ayers called for the creation of a Construction OSHA, dedicated to construction safety, enforcement and rule making, much as the Mine Safety and Health Administration is focused solely on mine safety.

OSHA, under the Bush administration, has emphasized voluntary compliance by employers over strict enforcement, and while strong penalties are assessed, the fines are relatively low. Said Miller:

Those penalties are low—low enough to be considered just another cost of doing business.

Many times, fines that are initially assessed by on-site inspectors are reduced or eliminated after OSHA officials meet with employers. Cole said he knows that firsthand. Inspectors from Nevada OSHA cited Billingsley’s employer—SME Steel—for several safety violations related to his fatal plunge and assessed a $13,500 penalty.

But after meeting with company officials, all the citations were dropped and the fine rescinded.

Says Cole:

I hope my testimony before you today will prevent future fatalities and help bring closure to our family. We believe Mr. Foulke is accountable and OSHA should be issued a willful citation for knowingly and intentionally violating their own standards.

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