As the latest Star Wars prequel heads into its third record-breaking week, it seems that the Dark Side has captured yet another victim.

California Bay Bridge welders, victims of the KFM flu, have sued "a joint venture led by Peter Kiewit Sons' Inc., alleging that they developed serious illnesses from exposure to toxins while working on the Bay Bridge in San Francisco."

The welders, as you will remember, were overexposed to manganese and other welding fumes and then many were fired for complaining about health and safety conditions on the bridge.

While this is a story in itself, a small paragraph in the article caused me to do a double-take:

Kiewit spokesman Chris Lehane said the company does not comment on ongoing litigation. He said the company is committed to the safety of the public and its workers.

Chris Lehane? Could this be the same Chris Lehane, well known to us political junkies?

Sure enough:

Bridge builder's new flack a true PR virtuoso

KFM hires ex-Clinton spinmeister, Gray Davis energy crisis adviser

Chris Lehane, 37, helped the Clinton White House spin the Whitewater investigation, spoke for Vice President Al Gore on the 2000 presidential campaign trail and advised former Gov. Gray Davis during the 2001 energy crisis and 2002 gubernatorial campaign.

Now he's working for KFM Joint Venture, the contractor building the Bay Bridge's new eastern span. The Oakland Tribune has reported welders' accusations that many of the project's welds are defective and that unsafe working conditions existed on the job site. An FBI investigation is under way, and lawmakers are calling for probes of their own.

"Chris is the best in the business. If you have damage that needs to be controlled, he's the guy to bring in," said veteran Republican campaign and public affairs consultant Dan Schnur. "And if any damage-control challenge is tougher than what he faced with Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, it might be this one."

Yeah, I'd say it's tougher than Monica Lewinsky. On one hand you have a blow job, on the other hand you've got workers who have been knowingly exposed to welding fumes, including manganese, in violation of OSHA standards. On one hand you have a company covering up injuries and punishing workers who are hurt on the job, and on the other hand you have someone covering up....a blow job.

Now, I'm the first to admit that everyone's got to make a living, and from personal experience, I'll admit that it's not easy for former political operatives and appointees to find challenging jobs (that pay decently) in a Republican world. I'll also admit to being a bit judgmental on occasion, but after decades in the health and safety business, to me there is almost no creature lower than the pond scum corporate P.R. flacks who cover up the fact that their clients are hurting or killing workers, and then insisting over it all that the company is "committed to safety."

Democratic consultant Roger Salazar worked with Lehane in Gore's office and on the 2000 presidential campaign. He called Lehane and his partner, Mark Fabiani, also formerly of the White House, "the masters of crisis communications — they know how to manage an issue and look at it from every conceivable angle, find all of the strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities."

All well and fine. But it makes me sick to think that this talent is now being used to stomp abused and poisoned workers further into the ground for a company that is rapidly rising to the top of the corporate outlaws list.

What's next Chris, Bill Frist's communications director?

Yech!



Related Articles

• More KFM Flu: Neglected Workers and a Suffering Safety Agency, April 19, 2005
• Behavioral Safety Out of Control and The KFM Flu, April 12, 2005
  
  
  

Labels: Behavioral Safety, Corporate America, Mindnumbingly Stupid Stuff

By a vote of 13-5, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed asbestos compensation legislation Thursday and sent it to the full Senate.

All 10 Republicans voted to move the bill to the full Senate, as did three Democrats. The opponents were all Democrats.

Three Republicans on the committee said they were not sure they would support the bill's ultimate passage. Support in the House of Representatives, which has not considered the issue, is uncertain.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), a physician, said he would vote against the bill as written because he said the medical criteria would permit compensation to smokers and others with cancers not clearly related to asbestos.

Coburn estimated that the payments for lung cancers of undetermined cause could amount to as much as $20 billion a year, quickly bankrupting the fund.

"It's not going to work," Coburn said. "We're giving false hope. This bill as written will fail in year three, four or five."

But at a news conference after the vote, Specter said he expected the bill to win support from both parties on the Senate floor. He said neither victims' advocates nor companies and their insurers got all they wanted.

"Everyone wants a little more, but the final vote is going to turn on whether it's better than the current system," Specter said. "When you look at the deal versus the current system, there's no contest."

Related Stories

• Asbestos Compensation Hearings Held, April 27, 2005
• AFL-CIO Opposes Specter Asbestos Comp Bill, April 23, 2005
• Specter Files Asbestos Comp Bill, April 20, 2005
  

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Labels: AFL-CIO, Asbestos

Journalist (and former labor organizer) Brendan Coyne seems to have found a new passion: workplace safety and health issues. Following up on his excellent articles on the elimination of the AFL-CIO's Safety and Health Department and a story on the fatal BP Amoco Texas City explosion that killed 15 workers, Coyne's current work focuses on the fate of OSHA's worker training program and how it will effect workplace safety.

As I've written before, after four years of attempting to slash OSHA's Susan Harwood worker training grant program, the Bush Administration has proposed complete elimination of the program next year. The Senate -- largely due to the efforts of Senator Arlen Specter -- has saved the program every year, although it's too early to tell what will happen this year.

The grant program provides around $11 million to unions, COSH Groups, business associations and other non-profits. It's a ridiculously small amount of money, but did they do any good? Definitely, according to Western NY COSH Director Roger Cook:

From 1997 through 2000, WNY COSH ran a joint labor-management ergonomics safety training program funded entirely with a Susan Harwood Grant at grocery warehouses in Western New York. The results were dramatic, as evidenced by a 35-page report -- complete with letters from employers thanking the group and touting the results of the program -- provided to TNS.

One warehouse, the Tops Distribution Center in Buffalo, NY, experienced a 30 to 50 percent drop in work-related injuries during the years it participated in the program. The grocery chain’s freezer facility reported a remarkable drop in injuries during the same time, from 1 in 5 when the program started to 1 in 50 two years later. Tops’ parent company, Ahold USA, liked the results so much that it initiated similar programs at Giant and Stop & Shop stores in Maryland and elsewhere, according to documentation provided with the report.

Other companies enrolled in similar COSH-run programs reported parallel results. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Western New York saw its worker’s compensation costs drop by $150,000 within three years of beginning an ergonomics program, and Try-It Distributing, a Western New York beverage distributor, reported a 44 percent reduction in injuries within just one year of implementing a similar educational regimen.

Hardest hit by elimination of the grants would be COSH groups -- and the populations they serve:

"If the COSH groups do lose this funding," said William Johnson, co-editor of Labor Notes, "it will mostly be noticed at the local level, where they operate., But the impact could be quite substantial. These groups fill in the gaps where unions either can’t or don’t want to operate. They’re on the shop floor and out in the community, reaching out to immigrants and others who desperately need the training." Labor Notes is a monthly magazine that focuses on the union movement and is operated by a nonprofit organization of the same name.

On average, an individual COSH receives $20,000-$30,000 a year from the Harwood grants, [New York COSH Associate Director Susan] O’Brien said, making the grant funding a substantial portion of most groups’ budgets, which vary from less than $50,000 to over $1 million a year.

And what does OSHA propose to replace the training program that currently provides direct training to thousands of workers every year?

Funding levels are only one aspect of a larger problem, according to Tom O’Connor, national coordinator for COSH. A bigger obstacle for COSH groups and labor safety educators comes from the technology-oriented approach OSHA has increasingly embraced in the last several years, he said.

The shift in priorities has been noticed by health and safety advocates ever since Bush took office, but it began in earnest with the 2005 budget request, they say. For that year, Bush proposed revising the Susan Harwood training grants program to "focus on new technologies and emphasize development of training materials rather than delivery of training."

O’Connor said, "The top people at OSHA in this administration are greatly enamored with high-tech training, web-based training, production of DVD’s and the like."

He continued, "These bureaucrats are so removed from the reality of low-income workers that they don’t seem to realize that few of the workers who most need this training have the capacity to access such methods."

Workplace health and safety advocates also blame OSHA’s increasingly cozy relationship with businesses -- a relationship marked by employer-focused training programs and increased efforts to help companies comply with the law.

O’Brien, of New York COSH, said the new direction OSHA appears to be heading cannot achieve the same results groups like hers do, namely because grassroots training casts a wide net, offers situation-specific programming, and teaches employees to be proactive and work with all elements of the communities they work in.

And, of course, combined with the AFL-CIO's recent decision to dissolve its Safety and Health Department, threats to the training grants and the survival of COSH groups does not bode well for workers:

"I’m actually scared to death about the direction workplace safety and health are heading," [Director of Labor Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst Tom] Juravich said. "Workplaces are becoming more dangerous. My real concern is that there hasn’t been enough thought given to the effect the Federation’s decision will have on the national level. They’ve played a strong coordinating role with employers, OSHA, and the COSHes. I don’t really know what the other options are now. "

Unions have long organized around the issues of workplace health and safety, and a study of workers’ attitudes towards their jobs conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates for the AFL-CIO in 2001 found that health and safety issues ranked highest among their priorities, with 98 percent of respondents citing a "safe and healthy workplace" as an essential or very important right at work.

Statistics like these give pause to labor educators observing the changes in organized labor. Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of Labor Education Research at Cornell University’s New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations questioned the wisdom of focusing on organizing at the expense of core services unions have traditionally supplied.

"If you defund education, and health and safety and other critical functions at the center, you hurt organizing and political action because these are the departments that are at the core of motivating and educating people around the critical issues which you are trying to mobilize them around," Bronfenbrenner explained.

***

Johnson, the Labor Notes co-editor, takes this critique one step farther in assessing the future of organized labor and workplace health and safety, especially the grassroots sort of efforts that the COSH groups undertake. "Why are we in a situation where the most reliable workplace health and safety advocates are government -- and not union -- sponsored," he asked. "Why would workers want to join unions that have stopped devoting resources to protecting them on the job?"

Labels: AFL-CIO

Names of Americans killed in Iraq.

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When I was at AFSCME, I worked a lot on workplace violence issues -- mostly dealing with our social service, corrections, health care and other members who were routinely assaulted, and sometimes killed on the job.

Much less common, but much more newsworthy were those employees (or ex-employees) who would "go crazy," bring a gun in and start shooting supervisors or co-workers. Unfortunately, there were a few of those among our members and former members as well.

As I've written before, it's the latter type of violence, those workers who "go postal" (apologies to our much-maligned postal workers) who get the most press, and who keep the workplace violence "consultants" and "experts" in business.

I have three major problems with these guys. First, they tended to play up the likelihood of one of your employees going berserk. Workplace violence, after all, was the second leading cause of death in the workplace for a number of years. They neglected to tell you, however, that only around 7% of those homicides were so-called "worker-on-worker" events.

Second, they tended to focus on profiling: listing a number of characteristics that employers could use to identify workers who might "lose it." While most workers who committed these crimes fit the profiles, so did a number of other employees.

Finally, most of these consultants focused on the suspect worker, but completely ignored the workplace environment that could have contributed to driving a worker over the edge. The media and so-called workplace violence experts generally assume that "worker-on-worker" violence is the result of mental health problems. This "crazy worker" theory of workplace violence ignores organizational causes, and particularly hostile work environments.

I thought about this last February when I read an excellent article by Michael Brooks in the Toledo City Paper about Toledo Jeep Assembly Plant worker Myles Meyers who went on a shooting rampage last January, killing two plant workers, and injuring two others. Unfortunately, I never got around to writing anything then, but after reading the following article, I couldn't resist any longer:

Potentially violent workers give cues, speaker says in Toledo

THURSDAY, MAY 19, 2005 -- Look for a history of violence, an obsession with firearms, problems with temper control, and a sudden change in behavior when assessing whether an employee may become violent at work, an expert says.

Another potentially volatile employee who warrants watching is someone who doesn't take criticism well, holds a grudge, and is repeatedly disciplined.

Such apparently was the case with Toledo Jeep Assembly Plant worker Myles Meyers, who in January went on a shooting rampage in the factory that left two dead and two injured, said John Lewton, president of Toledo's Workplace
Resources, an employee assistance program for high-stress occupations.

According to Brooks, however, "Meyers’ outburst was not isolated and was the culmination of systematic harassment by management that took place throughout many months."

In fact, most of his co-workers thought the world of Meyers: a good work ethic, loved his family, "cool," "selfless," "friendly," and, as one co-worker said “He was the last person I would ever expect to react this way,” he said. “I was sad that he felt he had no other choice.”

So what happened?

Meyers may have come to the attention of management because he was an outspoken advocate against what many workers feel is an attempt by DaimlerChrysler to eliminate the higher-paid positions, which are often held by older workers.

Yang agreed with this assessment.

“For example, one way lean production eliminates “waste” is by attacking the seniority system, pitting old-time workers against the younger ones,” he said. “The former views the younger temporary workers as ‘scabs’ while the newer workers resent the old guard for getting better paid and being hostile to them.”

“Myles understood that the company would love to have only one category of worker: low wage, jack of all trades, and master of none,” said Windau, citing the company’s record of forcing workers to perform work outside of their job descriptions. Employees who refuse, according to many workers, face disciplinary action up to and including termination.

And conditions at the Jeep plant were particularly bad:

“You can’t even take a water bottle to your work station,” said a millwright. “Try working in the summer heat without water.” According to workers, food, drinks and personal items are now forbidden at work stations.

“At the old plant, guys would have on headphones, or keep a radio nearby to make things more tolerable,” said Phil. “Sometimes you would see people singing or smiling while they worked. Now, there’s nothing but factory noise for 10 or 12 hours.”

Several workers described a room near Labor Relations in the plant, where injured workers are sent.

“They don’t want to pay the (state administered worker’s compensation benefits) or have OSHA [Occupational Safety & Health Administration] investigate, so many injured workers are forced to work jobs where they can sit,” said ‘Jerry.’ “If they are too hurt to do any work, they have to sit in this room with nothing in it. They aren’t even allowed to talk to the other injured workers,” he said, adding that injured workers are told “you are not here to talk.”

Another source of friction for Jeep workers is DaimlerChrysler’s policy of mandatory overtime — employees must put in 10- to 12-hour days, six days a week.

“The mandatory overtime began right after all those workers were laid off,” said “Marty,” a production worker. “It doesn’t take a genius to make the connection between the layoffs and the overtime.”

Workers are also unhappy about the company’s increasing use of temporary part-time workers (TPTs), who work three-day workweeks and are eligible for few benefits.

“These workers get the possibility of full-time employment dangled in front of them, and they are pressured into working like maniacs,” said “Kevin,” a production worker. “Plus, if an older worker goes on sick leave, his job is covered by TPTs. When the worker gets back, he’s expected to perform at the level of two gung-ho part-timers who each have four days to rest up from their overexertions.”

But the working conditions at the Jeep plant weren't a mistake, they were planned:

The industrial buzzwords for the DaimlerChrysler’s manufacturing philosophy — such as “lean production” and “continuous improvement” — have a different name for many of the people who work at Toledo North.

“A better term would be ‘management by stress’,” said “Phil.” “Plant managers keep pushing the limits on people and machines to get just a few more cars per hour. Whatever you did last week is never good enough this week.”

Manuel Yang, an instructor at University of Toledo who has published numerous scholarly articles concerning labor relations in the auto industry, described the new philosophy as “a method of how to make the average worker work faster, harder and more intensively.”

“Lean production is one of corporate business management’s weapons in this concerted attack against workers across the world,” he said. “Needless to say, workers suffocate under such intensified labor conditions, and understandably crack up under the stress, go mad, or take their guns to work, as it happened with Myles Meyers."

And it wasn't uncommon for management to harass workers who complained about working conditions. And Meyers complained:

“For the last two months, Myles had at least one manager watching him the entire shift,” he said. “A female supervisor would even follow him to the bathroom at break and sniff his clothes to see if he had been smoking in the bathroom.” (Toledo North is a nonsmoking facility).

‘Karl’ also witnessed what seemed to be a pattern of coordinated persecution by management against Meyers.

“Supervisors would stand outside the welding tunnel, arms crossed and stare at Myles all shift,” he said. “If he asked for a restroom or cigarette break, they would ignore him, because they would get to write him up if he left the work area without tag relief (a worker assigned to fill in for breaks).”

‘Marty,’ who worked in Meyers’ area in December, spoke of even more pervasive harassment.

“They would direct workers to move welding screens when Myles went to lunch, or they would hide his tools — petty shit,” he said. “When Myles would come back, everything would be in the wrong place, and managers would yell at him because he couldn’t jump right back in.”

‘Karl’ witnessed something that particularly upset Meyers.

“A younger female supervisor was directed to hang these insulting signs in Myles’ work area, things with pictures that were so dumbed down as to be degrading,” he said, describing the signs as geared toward children. “Here was a man who had been building Jeeps longer than she had been alive and he’s being treated like he’s stupid!” Meyers was visibly angered at this incident, which occurred in late November.

‘Jerry’ said that a supervisor with whom he is friendly, told him that management had been warned weeks before the shooting, that Meyers was acting strangely.

“The supervisor told me that workers had overheard Myles saying that he was going to ‘get’ Toney and Thacker,” he said, referring to two of the victims, the late Roy Thacker and Mike Toney; also injured in the attack was Paul Medlen.

The article also doesn't have much good to say about the UAW local at the plant is not adequately representing its members.

Talk to any human behavior or violence expert and they'll tell you that there is a point at which any human being can be driven to violence. It differs from person to person, but no one is immune. But just blaming a violent event on an aberrant personality that "doesn't take criticism well, holds a grudge, and is repeatedly disciplined," borders on malpractice if organizational factors in the workplace, or any harassment the worker had been suffering are ignored.
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Labels: Workplace Violence

Some people don't accept that the loved ones they lost in workplace accidents should just end up as filler on a slow news day: In Memory Of Lance.

More tributes here.

Workers Comp Insider has an interesting article about an attempt by South Carolina politicians to keep undocumented immigrant workers from receiving workers comp because "illegal immigrants often commit fraud, such as fake Social Security and green cards, to obtain jobs."

But, as the article points out, aside from being cruel, it would backfire against employers.

When workers are afforded the protection of workers comp, in all but extraordinary circumstances, they are then barred from suing their employer. Workers comp becomes the exclusive remedy for any on-the-job injuries. If you remove that protection from the worker, you are also removing the protection from the employer. If injured, these workers would be free to sue the employer (and under such circumstances, we would encourage them to do so!)

Second, not having to pay workers comp for "illegals" would actually be an incentive for unscrupulous employers to use more undocumented workers.

Hispanic workers already suffer an extremely high injury and fatality rate. "Such a measure would merely open the door to further abuse for an already exploited population."

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Wait a minute, you mean this isn't not about workers who cheat?

COLUMBUS, Ohio, May 27 - For nearly a decade, Thomas Noe has been the Republican Party's man to see in northwest Ohio, a confidant of governors and a prodigious fund-raiser for legislators, judges and just about every Republican statewide elected official.

He also happened to be a dealer in rare coins. And in 1998, the Ohio Workers' Compensation Bureau agreed to invest in a rare-coin fund that he controlled as a way to hedge its holdings in stocks and bonds, an investment that experts have called highly unorthodox.

But this week, Mr. Noe's lawyers said that as much as $13 million of the state's $50 million investment in his two funds could not be accounted for. Mr. Noe, meanwhile, has become the focus of at least six investigations or audits involving either his handling of the coin investments or his campaign fund-raising. Federal investigators are also looking into his contributions to President Bush's 2004 campaign as a "Pioneer," raising more than $100,000.

Yeah, right, all employers need is more training and compliance assistance and workplaces will become safer.

Wade Damron had worked in mines for 11 years but never feared for his life until he found himself on a runaway coal scooper heading toward three co-workers, he testified yesterday during a federal mine-safety hearing.

"I started hollering, 'No brakes! No brakes!' "Damron said. "I had to put it into the rib (mine wall) to stop it."

Damron, 36, was one of four miners who testified before a federal administrative law judge that a Letcher County coal company fired them for complaining about safety conditions at the underground mine where they worked.

The Labor Department is seeking a $40,000 fine against the mine and its owners for each of the cases where mineowners discriminated against workers who were exercising their health and safety rights. But the owners protest.

[Company owner Stanley] Osborne, 61, who like [superintendent Simon] Ratliff is representing himself at the hearing, said safety was the top priority.

Osborne also said that he fired only one of the miners, Wendell McClain, for using profanity after the coal-scooper incident involving Damron.

Using profanity? I’m sure that’s unheard of in a coal mine, especially after a near-death experience.

The others quit, Osborne said.

Yeah, no doubt their virgin ears had been violated by the profanity.

McClain, 36, of Letcher County, who had worked at the mine for only five days, denied the allegation during his testimony.

"I just said someone was going to get killed if they didn't fix the thing," McClain said.

"They told me to grab my bucket and get off the hill."

And, finally, when all else fails, there’s the traditional company fallback position:

Ratliff asked [Administrative Law Judge T. Todd] Hodgdon to allow him to introduce evidence of drug use at the mine.

But the judge rejected the request as irrelevant to a complaint alleging discrimination.

Welcome to the modern American workplace.

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"Damn workers are to blame. "

"Oh, no they're not. Sorry."

"No, actually, it is their fault."

I’m so confused.

Last week, BP North America issued an interim report on the March 23 explosion at its Texas City plant that killed 15 workers and injured more than 170, blaming the blast on “surprising and deeply disturbing” mistakes made by plant operators who did not follow proper procedures. Workers were made the scapegoats despite the fact that BP admitted that the unit that blew up had been “recognized as potentially hazardous for this type of service” and that BP had bypassed several opportunities to take it out of service. Furthermore, BP admitted that its faulty hazard reviews had failed to note the danger inherent in placing occupied trailers so close to hazardous units. All of those killed were contractors meeting in the trailers or doing non-essential work nearby..

BP’s press release stated that they were issuing the interim report because “further analysis is not expected to change the root causes or the recommendations made public today.” As a result of the interim findings, several operators and supervisors were fired.

BP’s “blame the worker” strategy came under harsh attack by the Steelworkers union, which represents workers at the plant, as well as the Houston Chronicle which published an article stating that “BP's finding that worker error is the root cause of the fatal blast at its Texas City refinery is at odds with respected industry guidelines for refinery accident investigations.” Even the Chronicle's business reporter attacked the BP report as "corporate scapegoating."

As of this morning, according to the Chronicle, BP had realized that its arguments weren’t flying and made some "adjustments" to its conclusions:

BP backed off statements made last week that the root causes of its deadly Texas City refinery explosion were that workers weren't following procedures and supervisors were lax.

While those were indeed critical factors leading to the blast, they were not the deeper causes, as the company had said in releasing its interim report on the accident a week ago, BP spokesman Hugh Depland said.

"We simply used the wrong language to describe the report's findings," he said. "Our fault."

The true causes have not yet been identified, he said.

***

Last Tuesday, BP Products North America President Ross Pillari said the company was releasing its interim report because he did not expect its ongoing inquiry "to change the root causes of the accident" being made public that day. He went on to describe operational and supervisory failures by workers.

Two days later, Depland reiterated, "The primary root cause was a failure to follow operating procedures and a failure of supervision."

OK, so far, so good. Until this afternoon, when this comes across the wires:

BP Stands Behind Texas City Investigation Report

Wednesday May 25, 3:13 pm ET

HOUSTON, May 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Today's Houston Chronicle incorrectly reported that BP has changed its views of the March 23rd incident interim investigation report. BP stands fully behind its issued report, which has always been identified as an interim report

Huh?

At that time, we said we did not expect the work that remains to change the findings and recommendations made public last week. The investigation team is now working to identify the deeper, root causes and to gain complete understanding of the exact nature of the hydrocarbon release. This is consistent with our statement last week that the May 17 report was an interim report and that there would be additional findings.

OK, so last week, they stated that they did not expect remaining work to change the findings.…which is consistent with their statement that there would be additional findings. That certainly clears things up.

Oh, and BP also wants to make clear that “In speaking about the report, we have sometimes described the immediate critical factors as root causes. This has caused some confusion, for which we apologize.”

That’s not all we’re confused about (nor are we the only ones confused.)

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Labels: BP

Terrorism has been used as an excuse for a lot of crazy things like limiting civil liberties and even re electing George W. Bush. Now, according to some people in Cloud Cuckooland Congress, it's also an excuse for letting workers die.

One of our favorite Congressmen, Charlie Norwood (R-GA), Chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, held a hearing last week on voluntary safety programs and contracting out OSHA third-party safety and health audits, where, instead of OSHA inspections, employers could hire third party auditors to inspect their workplace. (After all, it worked so well with Arthur Anderson and Enron, why not try it in every workplace?)

The "highlight" of the hearing was a statement by Congressman John Kline (R-MN), according to a BNA report. Referring to AFL-CIO figures that it would take OSHA 108 years to inspect every worksite under its jurisdiction, Kline said that OSHA does not have the resources. He noted that in light of expanding the nation's defenses against terrorism, the notion of enlarging OSHA to police more worksites is "just not reasonable at this time."

Reasonable? Let's see, in 2003 5,559 workers were killed in workplace "accidents" (not to mention the 50,000 - 60,000 workers who die each year of occupational disease). That means that more people die on the job in this country last year than were killed on 9/11, in Afghanistan and in Iraq put together. OSHA's budget request this year is somewhere between $400 and $500 million, while we're spending around $5 billion a month in Iraq.

Sounds pretty damn reasonable to me to spend a few more bucks to hire more OSHA inspectors.

Let's be clear. We're talking about spending tax dollars to save lives here, not to extend a highway in Kansas or build a new library in Toledo. But according to Congressman Kline and his cronies, it's more important to push through tax cuts for the wealthy and eliminate the inheritance tax for the super wealthy than it is to spend a few more dollars to save the lives of American workers. War on terrorism and all that, you know.

Ezra Klein points out an article in the American Prospect by Geoffrey Nunberg that criticizes Democratic politicians for not actively defending necessary government programs:

Republicans will try to pin a big-government label on the Democrats, but the appropriate response to that is not to apologize for government, as some liberals have recently done, but rather to call the Republicans’ bluff. Kerry just once might have responded to Bush’s charge that he was a big-government liberal not just by denying that his health-care plan was a government takeover but by bearding Bush on his government-bashing. “Just which government programs are too big?” he might have said. “What should we do away with? Social Security? Medicare? The Food and Drug Administration? The Securities and Exchange Commission? The Environmental Protection Agency?”

OSHA?

We should make all these guys work in an unprotected 15-foot deep trench for a week

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Labels: Charlie Norwood

Hmm. This is interesting. You know how surprised you are when that couple that always seemed so happy decides to get a divorce? Well, a certain honeymoon may be coming to an end. At least we can hope.

Remember how a few months ago, business groups like the National Association of Manufacturers were ready to jump into the battles over judical nominations?

John M. Engler, the former Republican governor of Michigan who now heads the National Association of Manufacturers, vowed before the November elections to use his trade association's might to back President Bush's judicial nominees. But as the Senate showdown approaches, the business group is delivering a different message: Judges are not its fight.

NAM's decision to sit out the brawl may be indicative of a broader trend. From Wall Street to Main Street, the small-government, pro-business mainstay of the Republican Party appears to be growing disaffected with a party it sees as focused on social issues at its expense.

Yes folks, there seems to be trouble in paradise:

Economic conservatives grew restless during the first Bush term, when federal budget surpluses turned to yawning deficits, federal spending soared and the Republican-controlled Congress passed a Medicare drug benefit that marked the largest new federal entitlement since Lyndon B. Johnson was president.

Concern eased after the 2004 election. The president's stated priorities were to control spending, address Social Security's long-term financing problems and simplify the tax code. But since then, the drive to restructure Social Security has stalled. Efforts to rein in federal spending have been upended by a highway bill that exceeds Bush's promised price tag and a budget resolution passed Congress that rebuffed the toughest entitlement cuts demanded by the White House.

Instead, Washington's focus has shifted from fiscal issues to more narrow concerns backed vociferously by social conservatives: the Terri Schiavo case, the nomination of John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations and, most of all, the fate of the Senate's ability to filibuster judicial nominees.

OK, if you're that unhappy guys, here's my advice: Go out and form a third party.

Darn. If trends continue, I'll soon have a big enough readership to start selling some ads. But it looks like I may already have lost a major client.

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Scientific American has always been THE magazine for budding young scientists and even older folk who have a strong interest in science. So it's a good way to educate that group of people about how corporate America and George Bush's White House are succeeding in their campaign to undermine and corrupt science, at least when it comes to the science needed to develop regulatations to protect people from harmful chemicals and drugs.

George Washington University Professor David Michaels has been leading the crusade to enlighten Americans about what is happening to science -- and to the government programs designed to protect them against harmful substances. He has just published an article in Scientific American (reprinted here, but buy the magazine for the cool pictures). And, as icing on the cake, the SI article was highlighted in today's Washington Post "Magazine Reader" column (scroll down).

Last month I reviewed a longer, more "scholarly" article by Michaels about similar issues. The SI article is shorter and pithier. In fact, I have never read a better description of the challenges facing scientific inquiry seen in one small paragraph:

Few scientific challenges are more complex than understanding the health risks of a chemical or drug. Investigators cannot feed toxic compounds to people to see what doses cause cancer. Instead laboratory researchers rely on animal tests, and epidemiologists examine the human exposures that have already happened in the field. Both types of studies have many uncertainties, and scientists must extrapolate from the evidence to make causal inferences and recommend protective measures. Because absolute certainty is rarely an option, regulatory programs would not be effective if such proof were required. Government officials have to use the best available evidence to set limits for harmful chemicals and determine the safety of pharmaceuticals.

Unfortunately, Michaels writes, corporate America is using that uncertainty -- manufacturing uncertainty, in fact -- to undermine the government's ability to protect its citizens.

Uncertainty is an inherent problem of science, but manufactured uncertainty is another matter entirely. Over the past three decades, industry groups have frequently become involved in the investigative process when their interests are threatened. If, for example, studies show that a company is exposing its workers to dangerous levels of a certain chemical, the business typically responds by hiring its own researchers to cast doubt on the studies. Or if a pharmaceutical firm faces questions about the safety of one of its drugs, its executives trumpet company sponsored trials that show no significant health risks while ignoring or hiding other studies that are much less reassuring. The vilification of threatening research as “junk science” and the corresponding sanctifi cation of industry-commissioned research as “sound science” has become nothing less than standard operating procedure in some parts of corporate America.

Michaels uses the examples of beryllium, which causes seroius lung disease, the pain-reliever Vioxx, which was shown to cause heart attacks, and the appetite suppressant PPA, which caused hemorrhagic strokes in young women. Both drugs were eventually taken off the market, but only after years of delay and hundreds of needless deaths due to doubts "manufactured" by the drug companies. Beryllium, while adequately regulated for Department of Energy employees (thanks to Michaels, when he was Assistant Secretary of Energy under the Clinton administration), but OSHA's standard remains dangerously high for all other workers.

Vioxx, PPA and beryllium are only three of many examples. But that's not all:

Corporations have mounted campaigns to question studies documenting the adverse health effects of exposure to beryllium, lead, mercury, vinyl chloride, chromium, benzene, benzidine, nickel, and a long list of other toxic chemicals and medications.

And it gets worse:

Out of the almost 3,000 chemicals produced in large quantities (more than one million pounds annually), OSHA enforces exposure limits for fewer than 500. In the past 10 years the agency has issued new standards for a grand total of two chemicals; the vast majority of the others are still "regulated" by voluntary standards set before 1971, when the newly created agency adopted them uncritically and unchanged. New science has had no impact on them. I conclude that successive OSHA administrators have simply recognized that establishing new standards is so time- and labor-intensive, and will inevitably call forth such orchestrated opposition from industry, that it is not worth expending the agency's limited resources on the effort.

Finally, although Scientific American is hardly known for its radical prose, Michaels pulls no punches when it comes to identifying the political villians of this tragedy:

Industry groups have tried to manipulate science no matter which political party controls the government, but the efforts have grown more brazen since George W. Bush became president. I believe it is fair to say that never in our history have corporate interests been as successful as they are today in shaping science policies to their desires.

Finally, before switching off the computer, scroll down and check out yesterday's article once more about the battles that David Egilman has been fighting to publicize corporate efforts to conceal damning health effects. After all, if the information isn't out there in the first place, they don't have to go to all the trouble to manufacture doubt.

Bottom line: Two Thumbs Up. Go buy this article (or at least print it). There's much more of value there than I have the energy to describe. I'm putting it on the list of articles to save and re-read before going on vacation this summer with your obnoxious brother-in-law who listens to talk-radio and complains about "junk science" all the time.

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What is the matter with David Egilman anyway?

The Associate Professor at Brown University is under the curious impression that civilized countries should expect companies to commit corporate suicide by revealing the conclusions of studies that show that their products are harmful. More outrageously, Egilman thinks that scholarly scientific journals have some responsibility to uncover corporate cover-ups and corruption of science.

It all began in 2003, when Egilman submitted an article for publication in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM)that stated that Dow Chemical was covering up evidence that asbestos in a Texas chemical plant had caused a high number of mesotheliomas. (Mesothelioma is a fatal lung cancer only caused by exposure to asbestos.) Egilman cited a Dow study that concluded that 11 cases of mesothelioma among its 28,000 employees did not suggest a work-related cause, even though the usual incidence of mesothelioma is around one or two cases per million. When a company chooses not to share that information with workers, customers, and the general public, especially when the studies reveal alarming health consequences, it's called "suppression bias."

The Journal, however, refused to publish Egilman's article, not because it found it of low quality, but because the subject was “not likely to be a high priority for the majority of JOEM readers.”

Finding it difficult to believe that occupational health specialists would not find evidence of corporate corruption of scientific research to be a "high priority," Egilman simply bought two pages of advertising space in the Journal and ran the entire rejected manuscript anyway.

JOEM editor, Paul Brandt-Rauf, was incensed. Claiming that he wouldn't have allowed the advertisement if he had known about it, he allowed Dow to publish a response, but then refused to allow Egilman to publish a rebuttal.

Now, two years later, Egilman's has published in this month’s International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health not only rebuttle to Dow, but also a critique of IOEM's ethics. Dow's behavior was hardly surprising, according to Egilman; suppression bias is all too common. JOEM's behavior, on the other hand was deeply disturbing.

Milton Friedman pointed out many years ago that “the [only] social responsibility of business is to increase profit,” and many agreed. Corporations’ desire to maximize profitability means that adverse health information has often been hidden from workers, customers, and the scientific community. Industry influence over scientific production becomes much more alarming when it is condoned, and even aided, by a respected occupational and environmental health journal. Peer-reviewed journals are supposed to function as the unbiased medium through which researchers exchange and critique each others’ ideas, experiments, and conclusions. Conflict-of-interest policies, peer-review procedures, and funding-disclosure rules are meant to assure authors and readers that journals are indeed functioning as neutral arbiters of important scientific research and discussion. However, experience shows that even well-known journals at times pursue an agenda that seems more favorable to corporate interests than to scientific integrity.

Dow's assertion that the mesotheliomas were not work related barely passes the scientific version of the laugh-test considering that the plant "not only had thousands of feet of pipes covered in asbestos insulation, but also used thousands of tons of asbestos in the chlorine-production process." Furthermore, although the 11 mesothelioma cases themselves were far higher than expected, Dow failed to study possible cases of mesothelioma among the plants contract employees:

These workers, whom Dow refers to as “spares,” have some of the highest exposures of all plant workers, yet are intentionally excluded from studies of “Dow workers” because they are not technically employees of the company. In their response, [Dow's] Burns and Kociba defend this decision, stating it is typical practice. We agree. Worker cohorts in corporate studies rarely include subcontractors precisely because they often have higher exposures and hence higher rates of disease. But the fact that excluding these workers is common practice does not make it good practice.

According to an article in the London Times, Brandt-Rauf was not amused and the battle continues:

Professor Brandt-Rauf has come out with his fists raised. “I don’t know where he [Egilman] gets this idea that he gets to publish anything he wants in the journal of his choice,” Brandt-Rauf told The Scientist last week. “If that were true, I’d publish all of my pieces in Nature and Science.” If Egilman needed any more fuel for his fury, it came in Brandt-Rauf’s comment that, had he seen the ad before publication, he would have vetoed it.

That, Egilman writes, “is even more troublesome”, because it shows a willingness to censor advertising material that does not toe the editorial line. A commentary accompanying Egilman’s tart review points to associations between the JOEM and Dow, and says that Dow is a significant contributor to Columbia University, which employs Brandt-Rauf. It isn’t meaty conspiracy fodder, but it turns out that an organisation affiliated to JOEM once gave Dow a “corporate health achievement award”. Still, the acrimonious tussle provides an insight into the practice and dissemination of corporate science.

All of this would probably be upsetting to most Americans who don't realize that most chemical testing in this country is done by the companies that manufacture the chemicals. In his original article/advertisement Egilman pointed out that “Dow Chemical Company operates one of the largest private toxicology research units in the United States.” In an ideal world, this information will be peer-reviewed and the results provided to affected workers, other scientists and the regulatory authorities who could then use the information to decide whether or not exposure to the substance needs to be controlled or eliminated. Even without regulation, workers and consumers could use the information to take some kind of action.

For example, publication of health effect information discovered in 1993 by BASF about a chemical called diacetyl might have been useful for the thirty employees of a Missouri popcorn plant who now need lung transplants because no one informed them that the chemical was known to destroy the lungs of rats.

But that's not the society we live in. Snakes gotta bite, bees gotta sting, and companies seem to think they gotta cover up damning health information about their products.

But,

The priorities of a journal such as JOEM are a different matter. The journal is the organ of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, a group dedicated to “promoting the health of workers through preventive medicine, clinical care, research and education.” Such a journal should eschew corporate interests, and actively work to uncover science hidden by interests that do not prioritize the pursuit of truth. Instead, the journal has chosen to contribute to the obfuscation of information harmful to Dow, but vital to many workers’ health. JOEM must re-examine its priorities if it is to secure a place as an important publication in the field of occupational and environmental health.

When this affair first broke in 2003, I wrote that, although workers were accustomed to being screwed by companies who cover up health information, they were in big trouble if the JOEM is right and occupational health professionals truly are not interested in fighting the corruption of science. Publication of Egilman's work by the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health puts some of those fears to rest.

Related Articles

• Lungs of the Living Dead, March 1, 2004
• Who Will Tell The People? Covering Up The Corporate Coverups?, July 3, 2003
  
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Labels: Asbestos, Diacetyl, Popcorn Lung

Globalization may be wreaking havoc on American jobs, but it may have benefits for the health of Americans exposed to toxic chemicals in their workplaces and in the environment. The Los Angeles Times covers what may be the chemical silver lining of globalization:

Driving EU policy is a "better safe than sorry" philosophy called the precautionary principle. Following that guideline, which is codified into EU law, European regulators have taken action against chemicals even when their dangers remain largely uncertain.

Across the Atlantic, by contrast, U.S. regulators are reluctant to move against a product already in use unless a clear danger can be shown. A chemical, they say, is innocent until proven guilty.

Critics say the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's search for scientific clarity takes so long that the public often goes unprotected. Paralysis by analysis, the critics call it.

U.S. risk assessments can last years, sometimes longer than a decade, and in some cases, the EPA still reaches no conclusions and relies upon industries to act voluntarily. For instance, despite research that showed by 2002 that polybrominated flame retardants were doubling in concentration in Americans' breast milk every few years, the EPA has still not completed its risk review. Meanwhile, the U.S. manufacturer of two of the flame retardants agreed voluntarily to stop making them last year after they were banned in Europe and in California.

American industry isn't too pleased with what the Europeans are doing, but they aren't exactly in a position to ignore them:

Many companies, even those based in America, follow the European rules because the EU, with 25 countries and 460 million people, surpasses even the United States as a market. Rather than lose access to it, many companies redesign their products to meet European standards. For example, Revlon, L'Oreal and Estee Lauder have said that all their products meet European directives that control the ingredients of cosmetics. And U.S. computer companies say they are trying to remove lead and other substances banned in the EU from everything they sell.

And it's only going to get worse (or better). Looming on the horizon is Europe’s proposed REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals) program:

Under REACH, which was approved by the EU's executive arm and is scheduled to go before the European Parliament this fall, companies would have to register basic scientific data for about 30,000 compounds. More extensive testing would be required of 1,500 compounds that are known to cause cancer or birth defects, to build up in bodies or to persist in the environment, as well as several thousand others used in large volumes. Those chemicals would be subject to bans unless there is proof that they can be used safely or that the benefits outweigh the risks. The testing would cost industries $3.7 billion to $6.8 billion, the EU says.

American industry is not amused, accusing the Europeans of irrational paranoia, in addition to ulterior motives:

"There is a protectionist element to this, but it goes beyond Europe trying to protect its own industries or even the health of its public," said Mike Walls, managing director at the American Chemistry Council, which represents chemical manufacturers, the nation's largest exporter. "It's a drive to force everyone to conform to their standards — standards that the rest of the world hasn't weighed in on."

John Graham, an economist and senior official of Bush's Office of Management and Budget, which reviews new regulations, has called the notion of a universal precautionary principle "a mythical concept, kind of like a unicorn."

"Reasonable people can disagree about what is precautionary and what is dangerous," he said at a 2002 conference.

I’ve always said that whether its European regulations or good old fashioned (and increasingly rare) American regulations, industry will always claim that the sky will fall, but once forced to deal with new restrictions, capitalisms always manages to adjust, innovate and continue making profits – in this case hopefully in a healthier way.

Related Stories

• Bush Administration Reaches Out to Strangle European Chemical Initiative, June 29, 2004
• Polar Bears, Unicorns and Babies: REACH and the Precautionary Principle, May 5, 2004
• US Continues Attempt To Block Europe's REACH, May 4, 2004
• US Government Lobbies Against Euro Chemical Safeguards at Request of Chem Industry, April 1, 2004
• "Reaching" for the U.S. Chemical Industry, December 7, 2003
• REACH: European Proposal to Regulate Chemicals, October 23, 2003

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Loren Steffy, the Houston Chronicle's business columnist, was not impressed with BP's Interim Report, released last week, even though the company promised to take steps to prevent similar incidents:

But that's not the same thing as taking responsibility.

What BP offers as a mea culpa is little more than corporate scapegoating. It lays the blame for the disaster squarely at the feet of its own low-level and midlevel employees in Texas City.

Unit operators and their managers didn't follow proper procedures, the report found. They didn't properly supervise the startup of the isomerization unit where the blast occurred, and they didn't evacuate people when they became aware of vapor releases and rising pressure in the unit.

The report doesn't answer several key questions: Who hired those employees? Who trained them? Who supervised them?

The report also found that the location of the contractor trailers, where many of the victims died, added to fatalities and injuries. So did the failure to evacuate nonessential personnel before the isom unit startup. A flare system, which BP had twice before decided not to install, would have reduced the severity of the incident, the report found.

Are we to believe that low-level employees were in charge of the placement of contractor trailers? Did low-level employees decide to forgo the investment in a flare system? Did low-level employees set staffing levels for the control room and the isom unit?

BP says it did hazard reviews on the location of the trailers, but those reviews "did not recognize the possibility of multiple failures by isom unit personnel."

Why not? Safety is, after all, a function of prevention, and prevention starts by identifying what can go wrong.

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Taken as a whole, the BP report shows a company going through the motions. It blames low-level employees as if they function in a vacuum. It doesn't address larger problems at BP, and despite the news release's headline, it doesn't really address BP's responsibility.

BP simply pointed the finger of blame inward, singling out workers it hired, trained and trusted. If those employees failed in some way, then BP as a company failed, too.

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Labels: BP

Battle Creek police detective shot, killed

BATTLE CREEK, Mich. -- Two Battle Creek police detectives were shot, one of them fatally, while conducting an investigation Monday, the department said. The slain officer was identified as Detective Lavern Brann, 44, a 20-year veteran of the department. Police were searching for a 21-year-old man driving a car he stole moments after the shootings. The shooting happened about 4:15 p.m. on the city's south side. Brann and Detective Greg Huggett had gone to an apartment complex to interview two women as part of their investigation of a taxi driver's slaying last week, police said in a statement. Brann and Huggett exchanged gunshots with the suspect, who was leaving the building, the statement said. Brann was taken to Battle Creek Health System, where doctors pronounced him dead. Huggett was treated and released for a leg injury.


ROAD WORKER KILLED IN NAPA ACCIDENT IDENTIFIED

Napa, CA- An autopsy will be performed today on the body of a young man killed in a road construction accident in Napa Saturday. The Napa County coroner's office has identified the worker as 20-year-old Christopher Weeks of Escalon, Calif. According to sheriff's investigators, Weeks suffered major upper body injuries when a rubber-wheeled roller ran over him. He was working on a road resurfacing project at Foothill Boulevard and Elm Street. His coworkers tried to revive him, but Weeks was pronounced dead later at Queen of the Valley Hospital. Weeks worked for Modesto-based Western State Surfacing, according to the sheriff's office. His death will be investigated by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA), as well as Napa police and the city's public works department.


N.Y. window washer dies in fall

New York, NY, May. 6 (UPI) -- A 68-year-old window washer fell nine stories to his death when his safety harness snapped outside a New York City building. Independent contractor Joel Gillum had been hired by a building tenant to clean windows, The New York Times reported Friday. He was pronounced dead at a Manhattan hospital not long after the 10:15 a.m. Thursday incident. Witnesses said Gillum had just gone out a ninth-story window and leaned back to begin cleaning windows when the safety harness snapped.


Maintenance Worker Killed In Scrubber

CENTRALIA, Wash. -- A maintenance worker was killed by falling material inside the scrubber at the power plant in Centralia. Authorities say he was a man in his 30's from the Longview-Kelso area working for a subcontractor. The Lewis County sheriff's office says he was hit in the head yesterday by a piece of material about ten-feet-by-five-feet that came off the wall of the scrubber. The man had been blasting the material from the wall. The scrubbers were installed three years ago at the coal-fired plant to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide. The state Department of Labor and Industries is investigating the death


Crush of dirt led to death in ditch

PINELLAS PARK, FL- A trench cave-in broke a plumber's ribs and pelvis, leading to cardiac arrest during a rescue effort, an examiner says. The plumber killed in a trench accident Thursday died from blunt trauma caused by the heavy, fast-moving wall of dirt that collapsed on him, the Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner's Office said Friday. The force broke Charles "Mike" Morrison's ribs and fractured his pelvis, setting the stage for the cardiac arrest he suffered as workers tried to free him from the 15-foot-deep trench behind Intrepid Powerboats Inc. on Belcher Road.


Bouncer Shot, Killed Outside Nye's In Minneapolis

Minneapolis, MN- A bouncer was shot to death outside Nye's Polonaise Room in Minneapolis after he ejected a patron, authorities said. William Walsh III, 43, died at around 3:45 a.m. at Hennepin County Medical Center. The bouncer, known to Nye's staff and patrons as "Big Billy," was a divorced father of three. Police said the shooting suspect returned to the bar early Friday after being ejected, shot the bouncer in the back and went into the Mississippi River.


Work related accident kills South Hall man

Gainesville,GA- Bobby Eugene Blackwell Jr., 29, Flowery Branch, died Tuesday from a work-related accident, a spokesman for Utility Line Construction in Barrow County confirmed Friday. Dennis Stapola verified that Blackwell was an employee with the Barrow County electric company, but declined to give further comment on Blackwell's death. "Right now we're concerned with the well-being of the family," he said. "It's a difficult time for them."


Two workers shot to death

FREDERICKSBURG, Pa. - Two employees were shot to death Thursday afternoon in an apparent murder-suicide at a chicken processing plant, a company spokesman said. The shooting victims at the BC Natural Chicken plant were a married couple, said Ken Trantowski, a spokesman for the Golden, Colo.-based company. No other employee was harmed, he said. Trantowski described the couple as estranged, but said he did not know whether they were divorced. He would not release their names and referred other questions to state police, who would not release any further details. The plant, which employs about 300 workers, was closed for the rest of the day, but was expected to reopen Friday morning, Trantowski said.


Construction worker dies in W. Sac

Woodland, CA- A man was impaled at a construction site in West Sacramento Thursday. Andrew L. Sanchez, 62, of Citrus Heights, died of a penetrating injury to the chest and abdomen, according to Yolo County Deputy Director Robert LaBrash. "We're not sure why he fell," LaBrash said. Sanchez fell about five feet and was impaled on a rebar pole at a construction site on Industrial Boulevard at about 1:45 p.m. Thursday. "He died immediately," LaBrash said. Coroners do not suspect drugs or alcohol played a role in the Sanchez's death. He will, however, undergo a toxicology and drug screen, LaBrash added.


Petersburg co-op elevator worker dies

Petersubrg, TX- Officials are investigating a fatality at the Petersburg Grain Co-op after a Thursday afternoon accident. An employee identified as Alex Ramirez, 36, apparently suffocated when he was buried by grain about 5:20 p.m. Justice of the Peace Precinct 3 Karen Davis requested an autopsy. No other details were available. A person at the business declined to give information and officers who worked the accident were unavailable.


Nexans worker dies on the job

Elm City, NC- An employee at an Elm City electronics company died Wednesday when she was electrocuted on the job. Maj. J.H. Farmer of the Wilson County Sheriff's Office said an employee at Nexans Berk-Tek Electronic Cables died Wednesday while at work. Nexans is located on Parker Street in Elm City. The woman, whose name has not been released, was transported to Wilson Medical Center where she died, Farmer said. "It appears to be an industrial accident at this time, but Lt. D.W. Bailey and the Sheriff's Office Detective Division are investigating," Farmer said.


Worker Crushed To Death By Forklift

SPARTANBURG, S.C. -- A Simpsonville man was killed after a forklift rolled over onto him and crushed him to death, according to the Spartanburg County Coroner's Office. Stephen Stacy Davis, 41, died a short time later at Spartanburg Regional Medical Center. Davis, a forklift operator, was working at the Central Transport trucking company in Duncan when the accident happened about 3 a.m. Tuesday morning.


Colorado Man Dies In Fall From New Hampshire Tower

NEW BOSTON, N.H. -- A 55-year-old Colorado man was killed Monday evening after plunging more than 100 feet from an Air Force tracking station tower in New Hampshire. Investigators said Frank Gantt, of Peyton, Colo., was performing routine maintenance on the tower for Honeywell Corp., at about 6 p.m. "Some other workers that were with him," State Police Sgt. Bill Jepson said. "He was just leaning back against his harness taking a break while he was secured with his rope. At some point, the harness let go, and as a result, he plunged down." Gantt died on the way to a hospital.


Employee Dies After Small Explosion At Lakeside Mall

NEW ORLEANS, LA -- A jewelry store employee who was burned in a May 5 explosion at Lakeside Mall has died, according to the Jefferson Parish fire investigators. Firefighters said the employee, Steven Michael Muller, 30, of Violet, was working with a jewelry-cleaning machine inside Bailey Banks & Biddle when it exploded. Muller received serious burns and was taken to East Jefferson Memorial Hospital. He died Sunday at Baton Rouge General Medical Center. Firefighters will give further details at a Wednesday news conference.


D.C. Mayor Honors Volunteer Officer Killed in Georgetown

WASHINGTON, DC - Mayor Tony Williams is offering condolences to the family of Joseph Pozell. The reserve police officer died Tuesday after being taken off life support. Police say Pozell's death while directing traffic at Wisconsin Avenue and M Street in Georgetown was an accident and that the 19-year-old woman behind the wheel had a green light. Williams says Pozell's loss goes on the books as a line of duty death. The mayor has ordered flags on District government buildings flown at half staff to honor the volunteer officer. Williams says he and other city officials will attend Pozell's funeral, which is expected to be held Saturday at Washington National Cathedral.


Construction worker dies after fall

SANFORD, FL -- A 50-year-old construction worker was killed Wednesday when he fell about 15 feet from a rafter of a home under construction west of Sanford. The man was a subcontractor working on a home on Brackenhurst Place in the Carisbrooke subdivision off Markham Road, Seminole County Sheriff's Office spokesman Steve Olson said. The accident occurred about 1:50 p.m., and the man was pronounced dead a short time later at Central Florida Regional Hospital in Sanford. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration also is looking into the accident. County investigators had not released the worker's name because relatives had not been contacted, Olson said


AmerenIP worker dies while repairing storm damage Thursday morning

DECATUR, IL - An AmerenIP electric emergency troubleman was electrocuted about 6:27 a.m. Thursday as he worked in the 1500 block of Riedel Avenue, just southeast of the Decatur-Macon County Fairground. James L. Stevens of Mount Zion had been employed with Illinois Power Co. and then AmerenIP for 25 years, said Shirley Swarthout, an AmerenIP spokeswo, man. "It's been many years since we had a fatality," Swarthout said. "It affects all of us. Our condolences go to his family and the people who worked with him." Exactly what occurred to cause Stevens' death may never be determined, said Michael Day, Macon County coroner. AmerenIP officials are investigating the death, but no one had been found as of Thursday afternoon who witnessed the entire event, he said. Stevens had a reputation as a consummate electrical worker, not a person to cut corners or violate safety rules, Day said. Stevens was in the raised bucket of a power company truck working on the lines near a transformer at the time of his death, he said.


Two killed in college tour bus crash

CASTLE CREEK, N.Y. A third construction worker died today after a bus carrying a Missouri college group crashed along a highway work zone near Binghamton. Eleven other people were injured Friday morning when the bus crashed into construction vehicles on Interstate 81, just north of Binghamton. Authorities say the bus may have been going too fast through the construction zone. Thirty-year-old Jason Pessoni of Cininnatus was killed when he was hit by the bus. Thirty-two-year-old Jonathan Randall was pronounced dead later at a nearby hospital. Thirty-nine-year-old Wayne Bonsell of Binghamton died Saturday morning, according to officials at Wilson Memorial Regional Medical Center. The bus driver was in critical condition today. The tour bus was carrying about three dozen students from Central Bible College in Springfield, Missouri. The students were members of a choral group on tour in New York.


OSHA probes worker's death-Questions raised on permit, reporting

UTICA, NY -- The U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration is investigating a West Utica accident in which a heavy-equipment machine tumbled three stories out of a building -- with its operator still inside. OSHA also is questioning whether it was properly notified of the fatal May 12 accident at the former Mele Manufacturing site along Erie Street. Steve Rzepka, a 28-year-old from Whitesboro, died Wednesday of blunt-force injuries he suffered at the site. His funeral is this morning.


Witnesses say fall killed worker-Allentown man was working on balcony at Lehigh Riverport site in Bethlehem.

BETHLEHEM, PA -- Federal investigators released no new information Friday about the accidental death of a construction worker at the Lehigh Riverport site, but witness accounts included in a city police report indicate the victim fell from a ladder. Marivan Khouri, a 40-year-old Allentown man, was working on an enclosed, third-floor balcony at 11 W. Second St. Wednesday when the ladder he stood on "kicked out" from under him, the report says.


Wadena officer dies of heart attack

Wadena, Minn- A 47-year-old police officer in Wadena, Minn., responding to a domestic disturbance call collapsed and later died of an apparent heart attack. Peter Resch collapsed after he and another officer arrested a 19-year-old man Thursday night. The man briefly struggled and was handcuffed and searched. As officers took him out of an apartment, Resch collapsed in the hall, police said. Officers and emergency medical personnel administered CPR and other life support measures, but Resch was pronounced dead at Tri-County Hospital, police said.


Truck accident kills Farmer City man

Bloomington, IL -- A Farmer City man died in a two-truck accident Wednesday afternoon on Interstate 55 about five miles south of the Illinois River. J.E. Shaw, 46, died in the accident that happened about 12:50 p.m. on northbound Interstate 55 near mile marker 242, state police said. His obituary is on page A10 Shaw's semitrailer truck rear-ended another semi driven by Joseph W. Brown, 59, of Harmon.


Construction Worker Dies After Dump Truck Backs Over Him

Rose City, TX- Construction worker from Houston was killed Thursday morning after a dump truck backed over him. The accident occurred on the east bound lanes of Interstate 10 at mile marker 857 near Rose City. The construction site was not open to the public. KBTV-4 News is not releasing the identity of the victim until his family can be notified.


A young gunman killed a 19-year-old female cashier

NEW ORLEANS, LA — A young gunman killed a 19-year-old female cashier in a small family run supermarket on Saturday in broad daylight, police said. Van Le Heim was shot in the head at about 1:28 p.m. and died shortly afterward at the Medical Center of Louisiana. The suspect, who was described as being in his late teens or early 20s, fled on foot and police were looking for him on Saturday. State owes Hornets more money because of poor attendance.


Kentucky officer dies in crash - Two riders airlifted in other mishaps

Lexington, KY- A Lexington, Ky., police officer was killed and Lifestar airlifted two other motorcyclists to University of Tennessee Medical Center in three separate accidents Saturday. None of the accidents were on the heavily patrolled Dragon section of Calderwood Highway. At 7 p.m. Officer Dwayne Pidcoe, 45, of Lexington, Ky., was riding his motorcycle east on Tenn. 72 in Monroe County toward U.S. 129. Tennessee Highway Patrolman Brent Cagle said that as Pidcoe approached a sharp right-hand curve, he drove through the curve and wound up in the left-hand lane. Pidcoe collided head-on with a Ford F150 truck.


Mill worker killed by falling debris

Munster, IN -- William Maffitt enjoyed fishing with his sons and never shied away from work that was dirty, hazardous or hard.

While working on just such a job Friday, Maffitt, 45, was killed when a chunk of debris fell on him from above, slamming his head against the 30-foot high hopper he was working in.

"He was just an excellent worker, which is what probably got him killed in the first place," his mother, Toni Maffitt, said Saturday.

Maffitt, 45, who lived in Gary's Miller neighborhood, died of blunt force trauma to his head and neck, which was broken by the force of the blow, according to Porter County Deputy Coroner Martin Moeller.

He then fell into the fine powder he had been vacuuming out of the hopper, which had a "quicksand effect" and swallowed him up, Moeller said.

It took hours for Portage firefighters to extract the body. They finally had to cut a hole in the side of the hopper to pull him out.

It was the 12th fatal accident at an area steel plant in the past five years. Four of those occurred last year.

Maffitt was working for subcontractor Eagle Service Corp., of Valparaiso, along with at least two others to clean out what is known as the "bag-house" facility at the mill, according to Beta Steel President David Pryzbylski.


MIDTOWN MOBIL GUARD IS CLUBBED TO DEATH

New York, NY -- A PAKISTANI IMMIGRANT was bludgeoned to death overnight inside a Manhattan gas station, police said yesterday.

Waqar Ahmed, 50, a night watchman at the W. 51st St.

Mobil station, was found at 6 a.m. lying face-down on a bloody mattress inside the station, cops and relatives said.

"They killed an innocent," said Ahmed's distraught nephew, Kami Ali, 25. "He was just trying to support his family, his wife back home. And someone breaks in and hits him in the head and shoulder. There is no reason."


TRAFFIC FATALITY - TAXI DRIVER

Portland, OR -- A taxi driver died Wednesday after his cab crashed into the back of a YMCA building on Southwest Barbur Boulevard in Portland. The Broadway Cab driver had suffered a heart-related medical episode and lost control, said Sgt. Brian Schmautz, a Portland Police Bureau spokesman.

Raye Miles, Broadway Cab president and general manager, identified the driver as Terry McNulty, 52, of Troutdale..

Labels: taxi drivers, Weekly Toll

All those chemical plants looming just across the Hudson River and New York Bay are clearly making the editors at the NY Times mighty nervous, if today's lead editorial is any indication. The editorial, titled "Inside the Kill Zone" re-tells that oh-so-familiar story, this time highlighting a chemical plant near New Orleans:

There is a park outside New Orleans with rows of old oak trees and the ruins of a colonial plantation. It is a pleasant place to take a stroll - and it would be an ideal staging ground for a terrorist attack on Chalmette Refining. An attack on the refinery, which has 600,000 pounds of hydrofluoric acid on hand, could put the entire population of New Orleans at risk of death or serious injury.

Chalmette Refining, a joint venture of Exxon Mobil, is one of more than 15,000 potentially deadly chemical plants and refineries nationwide. More than 100 of them put a million or more people at risk. These time bombs are everywhere, from big cities like Los Angeles to small towns like Barberton, Ohio. Many are so inconspicuous - a chlorine plant may be a couple of tanks and access to a railroad line - that the people in the kill zone do not even know to be worried.

The worst possible outcomes are chilling. A successful terrorist attack on a chlorine tank could produce, according to a Department of Homeland Security report, 17,500 deaths, 10,000 severe injuries and 100,000 hospitalizations. In Bhopal, India, in 1984, when methyl isocyanate escaped accidentally from a chemical plant, at least 3,800 people were killed and as many as 600,000 injured.

And then there's the obligatory story that we've heard over and over again about how, three and a half years after 9/11, reporters are still able to enter chemical plants unmolested and spend hours dancing a jig, naked, on top of highly hazardous chemical tanks, while toting backpack that could easily be filled with high explosives.

The measures suggested by the Times to prevent a terrorist-inspired Bhopal should be noted. Leading the list is the one and only proposal actively promoted by the American Chemical Council: tigher plant security, also known as more guns, guards and gates.

The other ideas are more important: using safer chemicals, reducing quantities of dangerous chemicals where safer substitutes can't be found, limiting chemical facilities in highly populated areas, and government oversight of chemical safety. Government oversight means requiring plants to identify their vulnerabilities to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, and to meet federal safety standards, as opposed to meeting industry-created voluntary standards.

Aside from the first item, the best part about the other proposals is that they would not only contribute to ensuring our safety against terrorist attacks on our refineries and chemical plants, but they would also protect us from ourselves. Because we don't need no stinkin' terrrorists to blow our plants up. The biggest refinery disaster in recent years was at the Texas City BP Amoco plant where an explosion killed 15 workers at the end of March. Happily, that incident had no offsite consequences -- happy indeed, considering that plant undoubtedly contains considerable quantities of chemicals that could have impacted surrounding communities, including the quaint nearby village of Houston, Texas. The jury may still be out on the offsite consequences of the Formosa Plastics vinyl chloride plant that blew itself sky high last year, killing 5 and spewing viny chloride and possibly dioxins into the night air. And then there's the rail accidents whose chemical fallout kill a few here and there.

The Times editors note that a bill introduced by Senators Jon Corzine (D-NJ) and Susan Collins (D-ME) include these proposals, but could be watered down to only the first if an industry-supported bill introduced by Senator James Inhoffe (R-OK) prevails. The ACC boasts that it is supporting chemical safety legislation. But the devil, as they say, is in the details. And the industry/Inhoffe details don't go far enough -- in times of "war" or in times of peace.

Related Articles

• WMD Found! Look Over Your Shoulder, May 9, 2005
• "We can't protect ourselves if we are not part of the plan", February 20, 2005
• NY Chem Company Decides Terrorism Threat Is Over, February 6, 2005
• Department of Homeland Security: Buddy Can You Spare a Dime?, September 27, 2004
• Weapons of Mass Destruction Found -- In Our Backyards, November 17, 2003
• The War for Chemical Plant Safety, May 4, 2003

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Labels: Chemical Plant Security

On April 23, 2004, Formosa Plastics' PVC plant in Illiopolis, Illinois, blew up, killing five workers, causing the evacuation of four towns and spewing a large amount of cancer-causing vinyl chloride into the atmosphere. But vinyl chloride, a component of plastic and vinyl products such as garden hoses, shower curtains, bath toys, sewer pipe, carpeting and siding, as well as the ingredients that go into it present dangers up and down the production line, dangers we don't completely comprehend:

BACK IN NEW YORK, I sweep my kitchen floor. Bending down to separate the dropped crayons from the day's crumbs, I wonder if Bradford Bradshaw—or any of his five dead co-workers—might have had a hand in stringing together the molecules that make up this floor. It's not a remote possibility. Prior to April 23, 2004, the Formosa plant in Illiopolis made fully half of all the flooring-grade vinyl in the United States.

Now when I look at my floral-patterned floor I think of emergency sirens that fail to go off. I imagine the hushed urgency of evacuees taking to the roads. I see tanker cars rattling through towns where unsuspecting citizens sleep. My visit to Illiopolis was a vivid illustration of how the manufacture of PVC is an ongoing source of terror for the workers and the people living in the communities where it is made. And yet, phasing out chlorine-based chemical manufacturing, in which PVC plays a starring role, will require a federal government uncorrupt enough to place the chemical security of the nation, as well as the health of all its citizens, above corporate interests.

In the U.S. Congress, the substitution of alternative, less toxic materials is not even part of the dialogue. Instead, the biggest trend since 9/11 is growing secrecy about which chemicals are used where and how they are transported. Public knowledge about chemical manufacturing is becoming increasing limited.

At the local level, by contrast, there are some hopeful signs. In January 2005, the Washington, D.C., city council voted to ban train and truck shipments of deadly chemicals within two miles of the Capitol. Other cities are considering similar bans. One railroad company has already filed suit, and others are likely to follow. Legislation that reroutes trains carrying explosives, extreme flammables, and cargo that is known in the transportation business as TIH—toxic by inhalation—will raise the cost of transporting such poisons and may encourage a shift toward alternative materials. It also may indicate that the public is beginning to wake up to the widespread risks of large-scale toxic production, which we have, so far, passively or unknowingly accepted.

And how can you not read an article subtitled "Why Your Kitchen Floor May Pose a Threat To National Security."

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Labels: Chemical Plant Security

A jury has found electrical contractor L.E. Meyers

guilty of willfully breaking OccupationalSafety and Health Administration regulations in the death of Blake Lane, 20, who was killed on his second day working for the company.The Rolling Meadows-based company was acquitted of a second charge inthe 2000 death of Wade Cumpston, 43.

Prosecutors say L.E. Myers willfully ignored workplace regulations that would have kept both men alive.

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L.E. Myers faces a maximum sentence of 5 years' probation and a $500,000 fine for the misdemeanor charge, prosecutors said.

I've written a couple of times before about L.E. Meyers, a company that has an unfortunate habit of killing its employees.

OSHA had originally gone after the parent company, MYR Group, but a court ruled that MYR was not liable because the parent company didn't actually control the workplace, although it determined the health and safety programs of its subsidiaries.

Lane, of Sullivan, Ill., was a rookie in the power-line construction industry when he was jolted by 2,400 volts of electricity atop a 120-foot steel tower in Mt. Prospect on Dec. 28, 1999.

Prosecutors said Lane, who was inexperienced, was not warned by his foreman that the line was live.

Cumpston, of Ashland, Ky., was an experienced lineman who was electrocuted while working in a bucket at a Plainfield ComEd tower. He tried to remove one end of a ground wire while the wire's other end was still attached to a live power line. Prosecutors alleged that the line had not been properly grounded.

The deaths of Lane and Cumpston were the latest in a long history of workplace fatalities for L.E. Myers, a company that builds and repairs high-voltage power lines.

A Tribune investigation in 2003 showed the company had had 35 work-related deaths and 200 violations of federal and state safety rules since 1972.

L.E. Myers still can't figure out what they did wrong:

"We deeply regret that two of our employees lost their lives in these tragic accidents," L.E. Myers President William Koertner said in a statement. "We do not believe that the company did anything intentionally or willfully that caused either of these accidents and are, therefore, disappointed in the outcome today."

An earlier statement by the company blamed human error:

“Neither L.E. Myers nor MYR Group believe there is any criminal wrongdoing with these unfortunate accidents caused by human errors” by the workers who died, says Corey Rubenstein, an attorney for the contractor. Myers carries out extensive safety training, he says. “Obviously, it’s a very dangerous industry and all participants have accidents from time to time,” he says.

Yeah, just one of those things. Dangerous industry. Accidents happen. Workers screw up. Unfortunate. Damn.


Related Stories
L.E. Myers and MYR Group: Losing Lives 'While Winning With Safety', February 24, 2004
Electrocutions at L.E. Myers: Safety Last?, November 25, 2003

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Judge Joan H. Lefkow, whose husband and mother were murdered, has criticized certain politicians and right-wing religious leaders for "condoning a climate of 'harsh rhetoric' about the judiciary that she said could incite violence and endanger judges' lives."

She called on the panel to "publicly and persistently repudiate gratuitous attacks on the judiciary."

Lefkow was testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the need to increase security for court employees. She was referring to a number of statements made by Republican politicians in the wake of the Terri Schiavo controversy subtly hinting that "activist judges" may face a violent fate.

"We need your help in tempering the tone on the debates that concern the independence of the judiciary," Judge Lefkow said. "I have come to know scores of judges during my 22 years as a magistrate judge, bankruptcy judge and district judge. Whether a liberal or conservative, I have never encountered a judge in the federal judiciary who can remotely be described as posing a threat as Mr. [Pat] Robertson said, 'probably more serious than a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings.' "

Mr. Robertson had criticized the federal courts during a recent appearance on the ABC program "This Week," saying, "They're destroying the fabric that holds our nation together." He continued: "Over 100 years, I think the gradual erosion of the consensus that's held our country together is probably more serious than a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings."

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Ha, ha. Those guys over at the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) have such a sense of humor. Of course, I'd probably be yucking it up more too, if I controlled both houses of Congress and the guy I elected bought was sitting in the White House.

NAM's "Workplace Watch" this month has a hilarious list compiled by Careerbuilder.com of "pretty weird excuses" that people have used to play hooky from work. Things like:

• I was sprayed by a skunk.
  
• I tripped over my dog and was knocked unconscious.
  
• My bus broke down and was held up by robbers.

Yupp, workers say the darnedest things!

A little further down, NAM gives a ringing endorsement to H.R. 739, one of the four OSHA deform bills introduced by Congressman Charlie "OSHA Killed the Tooth Fairy" Norwood (R-GA). H.R. 739 gives employers a little extra time in case they accidentally forget to appeal OSHA citations by the 15 day deadline if they can show "mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect" as the reason.

(Surprise?!)

Well, guess what? The Humor Department over here at Confined Space world headquarters has come up with its own top ten list of excuses employers give for not appealing their OSHA citations on time:

• My secretary lost it.
  
• My computer's memory isn't big enough to download the whole thing.
  
• I was too busy providing hours of comprehensive safety and health training to my most valuable resources.
• I thought it was junk mail.
  
• I was too busy disciplining employees for injuries suffered because they weren't working safely.
• My lawyer was busy working on my tax fraud case
  
• It was too heavy, I was afraid I'd get a back injury.
  
• I took it on a hunting trip and my dog vomited on it so I had to throw it out.*
  
• I gave it to one of my employees to hold on to, but he was crushed in a trench collapse and it was too messy to read.
  
• Give me a break! I've had traffic tickets that cost me more than this.
• But I gave money to President Bush's re-election campaign last year!

*This was an actual excuse given by former OSHA Director of Health Standards, Leonard Vance, in the mid-1980's for not being able to provide his meeting records to a Congressional committee investigating possible illegal meetings with company representatives.

Labels: Charlie Norwood

• The alternative to using the blowdown stack is a flare system that burns off the excess material. In fact, the report states that “Blowdown stacks have been recognized as potentially hazardous for this type of service, and the industry has moved more towards closed relief systems to flare” and that ”The investigation team also concluded the use of a flare system, instead of a blow down stack, would have reduced the severity of the incident." In fact the report noted that there were several times over the past ten years when the relief line could have been tied into a safer flare system, but that “the true level of the hazard was not seen.” In fact, use of the blowdown stack was increased and changes were made to reduce its effectiveness over the past several years.
  
  
• The reason so many people were killed is that they were located in trailers directly adjacent to the blowdown stack. Turns out that the Texas City Refinery has a management of change process to evaluate hazards associated with the placement of temporary structures. This process was designed to ensure that the trailers were safe to use and that they were put in a safe place. Although these hazard reviews were conducted prior to placing the trailers, they “did not recognize the possibility that multiple failures by ISOM unit personnel could result in such a massive flow of fluids and vapors to the blow down stack.” Pillari noted that “Plans could have been made to move them away before the startup operation”

Now, let’s go back for a moment to the “surprising and deeply disturbing” worker error elements. The company stated that there should have been a plan to move non-essential personnel away from the area before the startup operation, and that operators failed to sound the evacuation alarm at crucial times which led to personnel remaining in place and being exposed to the hazard. Supervisors failed to provide appropriate leadership and hourly workers failed to follow written procedures. Supervisors did not verify correct procedures were being used or followed by unit operators. Furthermore supervisors were absent from the unit during critical periods and there was confusion about who was in charge.

Consequently, BP is firing several workers and disciplining others.

Crucial to any root cause investigation, however, is one word: “Why?” Investigators need to keep asking “why?” until the root causes are identified. For example, why didn’t workers follow proper procedures? Were they lazy and incompetent, smoking weed and napping? Or were the procedures too complicated? Were the procedures normally followed to the letter, or generally ignored or circumvented? Were workers adequately trained to respond to this type of emergency even though it had never happened before and, according to the report, was never anticipated? Were the operators too overwhelmed with handling the emergency itself to think about sounding the alarm? And why were supervisors absent during critical periods? Was it common practice for them to be absent? And whose responsibility was it to address “confusion about who was in charge.”

I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, but the need to be asked.

One of the few reporters who seem to have actually read the report was Dina Cappiello of the Houston Chronicle who wrote an article, based on BP’s report, about the company’s failure to replace the blowdown stack:

BP continued to release dangerous and flammable vapors from a ventilation stack at its Texas City refinery, despite chances over the last decade to replace it, an internal investigation by the company has found.

While other refineries swapped the outdated stacks with more modern flares that burn off gases, BP passed on two opportunities — in 1995 and 2002 — to replace the 50-year-old vent stack that erupted into a geyser of flammable vapor and liquid March 23 after a nearby tower was overfilled and overheated.

That choice likely led to the explosion being called one of the deadliest industrial accidents in U.S. history, said Ross Pillari, president of BP Products North America at the investigation's release.

"The report notes that ... use of a flare system, instead of a blowdown stack, would have reduced the severity of the incident," said Pillari. "There was other work going on in the refinery and these would have been opportunities to take this unit to a flare. There is no documentation as to why this didn't happen."

Another Chronicle article covered the reaction of the union and others critical of the BP report:

Union officials, victims and attorneys representing dozens of injured workers or the families of the deceased, said Pillari made scapegoats of the low-level refinery workers while sidestepping management's own responsibility.

"Blaming workers doesn't solve the problem of unsafe conditions in that refinery," said Gary Beevers, Region 6 director of the United Steelworkers union.

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Then there was the article about Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta blaming worker error for the Graniteville, South Carolina accident last January that released chlorine, killing 9 workers.

Preliminary findings in the Jan. 6 Graniteville wreck, which killed nine people and injured hundreds, have placed the blame on the crew of a Norfolk Southern train who failed to switch the main track into its proper position. An oncoming train then crashed into the parked cars on the side spur, rupturing a chlorine tanker and releasing a toxic cloud over the tiny textile town about 60 miles southwest of here. Some 5,400 residents were evacuated.

That type of human error, the largest single factor that accounted for 38 percent of all train accidents in the past five years, is not addressed by Federal Railroad Administration regulations, Mineta said. Railroad company operating rules address human error, and employees who violate those rules can be disciplined or dismissed.

The plan that Mineta proposed contained a number of measures that go far beyond just preventing workers from screwing up, including requiring

more training from the federal agency and possible civil penalties. In the worst case, employees could be barred from certain train assignments, said Dan Smith, the federal agency's associate administrator for safety.

The plan also would address crew fatigue, help develop technology that can alert crews to broken rails and improve hazardous materials safety by letting local emergency workers know immediately what material could be involved in a crash.

Again, the headline and Mineta’s main message focus on worker error, although reading deeper you find mention of fatigue and lack of warning devices. I wrote last week about how rail scheduling issues and antiquated regulation put train crews in a permanent state of jet lag.

Rebecca Schmidt of West Columbia, who lost her son, 28-year-old train engineer Chris Seeling, in the accident, had a pretty good handle on the problems faced by train crews:

"I'm really excited about this and hope something positive comes out of it - especially the electric signals and I know that fatigue is a huge issue,...I definitely think that you cannot rely on human judgment, especially when a crew has worked 12 hours and they're tired. There needs to be some type of electronic signal," she said, as a train roared through the city of Columbia, blasting its horn.

She also said there should be a clean air supply on trains and more should be done to reduce speeds.

The point is that human error may be one of the "direct causes" of an incident, but it’s almost never one of the root causes. A direct cause is the action that directly results in the occurrence, while root causes are usually management system problems which, if corrected, would not only have prevented that specific problem, but other similar problems as well.

The problem with solely blaming (and firing) workers, you’re taking actions that will prevent future incidents. If, as in the BP case, the root causes had more to do with the management systems that allowed the continued use the blowdown drums and located the trailers in the danger zone, then just firing a few workers who didn’t follow proper procedures (which may have been confusing) isn’t going to keep the same incident from happening again. And disciplining workers for not following proper rail procedures isn't going to be too effective if scheduling issues mean that no on is getting enough sleep.

Despite the "headlines" from their report, BP itself obviously knows better than to just blame the workers. In addition to firing and disciplining employees, they announced that they will modify or replace all blow down systems which handle heavier-than- air hydrocarbon vapor or light hydrocarbon liquids and locate trailers far from any danger areas.


BP News release here
PIllari Statement here

More BP Texas City Explosion Stories.

Related Stories

• "Engineers and conductors sleep on trains. Anyone who tells you different is not being straight with you," May 9, 2005
• Deaths and Injuries at US Steel: Blame the Workers?, Feb 24, 2005
• Behavioral Safety Comes To The Railroads, November 15, 2004
• Blame the Worker: Chinese Style, January 3, 2004
• Worker Error Department (cont'd), April 14, 2003
• Worker Error Department, Part 2 April 11, 2003
• Worker Error Department, April 10, 2003
  
  

Labels: Behavioral Safety, Blame the Worker, BP, Railroad Hazards

By: OSHA Gadfly

OSHA's public image took a beating last year after a devastating series of articles in the New York Times reported how, thanks to the agency’s lame criminal enforcement effort, some employers are essentially getting away with murder.

So you would think that when the agency takes steps to improve its enforcement record, OSHA's communications office would trumpet the news from the rooftops.

A recent article in Confined Space pointed out that over the past two years OSHA's criminal referrals to the Department of Justice are at a 14-year high. In that same article we learned about a new compliance directive designed to help agency inspectors improve criminal enforcement of the OSH Act. Why did this news come not from OSHA communications, but from the Occupational Hazards Web site?

You could add to this, "we’re embarrassed to talk about it list," information about OSHA’s Enhanced Enforcement Program (EEP). Why not tell the public what companies are on the EEP list? What did they do to get there and what are the consequences?

Last year OSHA also kept quiet a $77,000 fine against Weyerhaeuser for failing to record dozens of injuries and illnesses. Why does this matter?

Broadcasting tough enforcement actions would not only help repair OSHA's battered reputation. More importantly, getting the word out that employers who break the law will pay a high price is a question of not wasting the precious money of taxpayers, something that used to be an important part of the Republican agenda.

Because it lacks the resources to inspect more than a tiny infraction of the nation's workplaces, OSHA - like the Internal Revenue Service - relies largely on voluntary compliance with its regulations. It would take over a hundred years for OSHA to inspect every workplace in America, and don’t think U.S. employers don’t know it. Quite obviously, you get a "bigger bang for the buck" when you publicize the large enforcement actions. The idea is to use publicity to expand the deterrent, striking fear into the hearts of employers who otherwise might be tempted to cut corners that cost lives but save money.

Publicity, or rather bad publicity, is even more critical when it comes to deterring big companies from violating OSHA rules. Even when caught, an OSHA fine of $50,000 or $100,000 is chump change for the big boys. What they care about is the damage to their reputation that results from an OSHA citation. But if no one finds out about it...

Burying the Weyerhaeuser case seems especially odd. Given how little enforcement OSHA does of the recordkeeping rule, how hard it is to catch records cheaters, and the critical role accurate OSHA logs play in the agency’s Site Specific Targeting program, you would think they would want to play up the few big fish they do catch. It’s like being audited by the IRS – only rarer.

Of course OSHA does publicize some of its big enforcement cases, sending out national press releases, often with apparently ready-made quotations from Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao about how the tragic loss of life could have been avoided if only the employer had followed OSHA regulations.

But the publicity is selective. The most serious cases that receive publicity typically involve worker fatalities in construction or trenching operations. Ironically, the employers tend to be small and without national reputations.

Here's what you will be less likely to read about in OSHA press releases:

• OSHA's internal institutional effort to overcome the hurdles to aggressive enforcement of the OSH Act.
• Anything having to do with criminal enforcement of the OSH Act.
• Enforcement actions taken against large employers with national reputations, especially if they are involved in OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Program, like Weyerhaeuser.

Why would OSHA not want to talk about these successes? Perhaps I’m too suspicious, but I think it has a lot to do with the political people now running the show. (Another old Republican complaint about Democrats: they politicized everything.)

Republicans like to talk about being the party of small business, tough law enforcement, and the frugal management of taxpayer dollars. But OSHA’s apparent unwillingness to tell us about many of its enforcement successes raises questions about whether these priorities are a match for another GOP principle: the money and influence of big business.

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Journalist and former labor organizer Brendan Coyne has written an article about the AFL-CIO's restructuring for The New Standard, highlighting the evisceration of the Health and Safety Department. Read it, it contains an interview with AFL-CIO Health and Safety director Peg Seminario as well as some of the same old tripe from me. Of special interest are observations by soon-to-be-laid-off AFL-CIO staffer Rob McGarrah on the effect that the restructuring will have on injured workers:

McGarrah is the AFL-CIO’s point man on workers’ compensation issues. A lawyer with a Master’s in Public Health, he travels the country to meet with legislators at the state and national levels, attempting to counter the actions of lobbyists in the employ of insurance companies and other well-funded industries. It is, he said, an uphill battle since there are many of them and only one of him.

"I’m just one person and we don’t have that large of a budget," McGarrah said. "Every time I travel to a state over workers’ comp issues, I run into at least dozen [insurance] industry lawyers." As the national organization’s only workers’ compensation specialist, McGarrah said he is concerned that the cuts will have a detrimental effect on workers’ ability to be fairly compensated when they are injured at work. Most injured workers are forced to subsist at or near the poverty level by state compensation laws, he said.

According to a 2003 study by the capitol-based think tank National Academy of Social Insurance, Workers’ Compensation payments in many states barely meet the poverty level. Sixteen states allow injured workers to live in poverty, with Mississippi bringing up the rear, compensating them at slightly higher than 70 percent of the poverty level, according to the study.

With his function soon to disappear, McGarrah worries that unions lack the resources and expertise to adequately combat the insurance industry at the political level. "The difficulty, from the very beginning, is that the AFL-CIO is outspent right now, plain and simple," McGarrah said. "The industry has billions of dollars to spend on this at the state and national level. We don’t. With these cuts… well, it only gets worse for unions."

Roger Cook, director of the Western New York Council on Occupational Safety and Health (WNYCOSH), summed up the significance of the demise of the AFL-CIO’s Health and Safety program:

If nothing else, Cook said, the AFL-CIO currently sets the agenda on health and safety issues. Now he has no idea who will.

"The AFL-CIO has been a unifying voice for safety and health nationally," he said. "And the AFL-CIO's commitment to this issue through the department filters down to state and local affiliates that workplace injuries, illnesses and deaths are unacceptable and that this is something that rank and file members and would-be members in organizing drives care about. It sets a tone for the labor movement."

"Basically, the Safety and Health department has been organized labor's voice on safety and health in Washington, DC and around the country," Cook said.

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Labels: AFL-CIO

Halliburton shareholders meet tomorrow in Houston. In addition to the $7.1 billion revenue the company has made off its recent work in Iraq last year, there are several other things to note, like FBI and SEC investigatoins into Halliburton's work in Nigeria, Iran, Iraq, and the Balkans, investigations into systematic accounting fraud, and continuing investigations into widespread systematic overcharging in Iraq.

But, according to a new report by Corpwatch, "Houston: We Still Have a Problem," there is an item of special concern to families of Halliburton employees:

Sixty Halliburton employees were killed in Iraq in 2004. This tragic number is compounded by allegations by victims' families that say Halliburton misrepresented the true nature of their loved ones' duties and intentionally placed them in harm's way. These families are now suing Halliburton in both Texas and California.

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Want to hear something "funny" about the BP Amoco explosion that killed 15 workers last March? BP's official death rate at the Texas City plant looked the same the day after the explosion as it did the day before the explosion. That's because companies are required by OSHA only to keep logs of the employees on their payroll; employees of contractors working at the site go on logs of the employer of the contractor, which often aren't even in the same industry as the main employer.

The problem was identified almost 15 years ago in a so-called "John Gray Report," or "Managing Worker Safety and Health: The Case of Contract Labor in the U.S. Petrochemical Industry." The John Gray report was commissioned by OSHA in the aftermath of the 1989 Phillips 66 explosion that killed 23 workers, injured 130 and did $750 million in damage. The John Gray Report contained a variety of recommendations regarding the use of contractors in the petrochemical industry, among which was that "OSHA should require plants to collect and record site specific injury and illness data for all workers on site (except for separate an distinct, engaged in new construction)." OSHA never acted on this recommendation.

The Houston Chronicle has picked up on this bit of not-so-ancient history and applied it to the current investigation of the Texas City BP Amoco explosion:

Long considered one of the nation's most dangerous industries, oil refining suddenly seemed one of the safest when the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported no refinery deaths in 2002 or 2003.

But at least nine people were asphyxiated, burned or fell to their deaths at our nation's refineries during those years, according to a Houston Chronicle review of media accounts, industry statistics and fatal accident reports to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Twenty more have died since then — 15 in the March 23 BP Texas City accident alone.

How do the refinery dead disappear?

The answer is fairly simple.

Increasingly, the accuracy of government safety statistics is undermined by the changing work force. These days, up to half of refinery workers are contractors, who generally get some of the most dangerous jobs.

Since these folks do not work directly for petroleum companies — even though some toil for years at the same refinery — their deaths get diverted to several catch-all construction or maintenance categories, such as "1799, Special Trade Contractors, Not Elsewhere Classified."

"They'll show up in the statistics but not as refinery workers," explained retired Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) economist Guy Toscano. "The more dangerous an occupation, the less likely a company would want to hire those people directly — they want to boost their own safety rates and decrease their liability."

Nor are such deaths generally counted in the refineries' individual injury and accident logs, which OSHA uses to determine its "hit lists" of dangerous facilities targeted for more frequent inspections. The way the U.S. safety statistics are kept, a work site will not generally get a black mark if contractors from other companies are killed or injured there — only if a permanent employee dies or gets hurt.

For former OSHA Administrator Patrick Tyson, that's a real hole in the workplace safety net. Without contractor fatality and injury data, OSHA inspectors may not pick up a problem refinery, said Tyson, now a safety consultant with the Altanta firm of Constangy Brooks & Smith.

"If the site gets picked up, it's going to be almost a fluke," Tyson said.

John Miles, the OSHA administrator for the five-state region that includes Texas, agreed in an interview that reporting that emphasizes the employer over the site of an accident can affect OSHA's ability to both find and target dangerous businesses in some cases. But he said right now no one is pushing for reforms in the reporting system.

Industries such as petroleum refining justify their heavy use of contractors by arguing that for highly specialized work such a "turnarounds," it makes more sense to bring in specialists as needed, rather than employing them when they aren't needed or using less skilled regular employees.

While there may be some truth to the specialization justification, the fact is that the petroleum industry, along with other hazardous industries such as steel, are increasingly contracting out their more dangerous jobs to make the main company look safer.

In refineries, contractors are often assigned to do the most dangerous jobs, including maintenance "turnaround" — cleaning and repairing and restarting equipment — as well as hot work, like welding. Some are self-employed who are exempt from many OSHA rules.

If the usual guidelines are followed, none of the 15 people who lost their lives in the refinery fire in March in Texas City — one of the worst refinery accidents in decades — would be counted as refinery deaths since none worked directly for BP, the refinery owner.

Ultimately, if enough deaths are factored out because they're contractors, the entire industry may drop off the official federal count of fatalities by industry. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, in its annual Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, does not list any industry with less than three fatalities "to protect the privacy of the families of those who died and to honor confidentiality agreements made with states that provide the data."

Which brings us back to the 1989 John Gray report. The bottom line is that unless and until injury, illness and fatality data is kept and publicized on a site (rather than company) basis, it will be difficult, if not impossible for federal authorities or employers to gain a realistic sense of hazards in any given industry.

Related Articles

• BP Kills More Than Any Other Refining Firm, May 15, 2005
• "I Should Have Been Killed" -- Survivors of Texas City BP Blast, April 19, 2005
• BP Amoco Texas City Update: Plant Owners Aware of Venting and Trailer Location Hazards, April 10, 2005
• Workplace Safety Enforcement: A Tale of Two Countries, April 5, 2005
• Transparency? Or PR Savvy?, March 26, 2005
• BP In California: "callous and intentional noncompliance purely for economic reasons", March 24, 2005
• BP, site of fatal explosion, is Nation's Leader in Accidents, March 24, 2005
• At Least 14 Dead, Hundreds Injured In Huge Refinery Explosion, March 23, 2005
  
  

Labels: BP

They never give up, do they?

In opposing any and all efforts to issue regulations to protect workers' safety and health, industry often argues that the inevitable contentious atmosphere that accompanies inflexible one-size-fits-all regulations and punitive, unfair enforcement actions are self-defeating and, well, just plain unAmerican. It would be much more effective and friendly and cooperative if we all just sat down together and reached a consensus on flexible voluntary standards.

Or so they say. At least until a voluntary standard is almost issued. Then all bets are off. Especially if we're talking about ergonomics. As Jordan wrote a year and a half ago:

The foes of ergonomic protections for workers often remind me of the Barbarian hordes early in the first part of the last millennium.

You know, behead the men, rape the women, enslave the children, burn the village, mow down the crops and then sow the earth with salt. Kill the farm animals and throw them down the wells. And eat their pets.

That was right before the anti-ergonomic barbarians succeeded in killing a consensus ergonomics standard, American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Standard Z365 standard, which was buried under threats of litigation from industry.

Shortly after gutting of that standard, the ANSI A10 committee which develops all the construction standards began to develop their own standard on ergonomics in construction (A10.40). The standard was drafted and approved last Fall by over 2/3rds vote of the entire committee. Then, last month the full ANSI A10 committee narrowly reversed its Fall decision. Under the program-oriented standard, employers would have been required to assess the ergonomic risks of worksite tasks, identify and implement solutions for those with significant risk and evaluate the outcomes.

The standard had passed in a close vote last December, but members had a 30 day period this spring to change their votes, and successful lobbying by a small minority of industry trade associations swayed several members. After delays, their switches became official in May. Though 62 percent of committee members still favor adoption (see votes below), ANSI rules requires that at least half the committee vote in favor and that, among those voting, two-thirds support the standard’s adoption. In this case, all 61 members of the committee voted (not including a few abstentions), but 23 voted against -- 3 too many opposition votes. Several people changed their votes after an arm twisting campaign by industry associations, like the Mechanical Contractors Association of America (representing plumbing contractors). More than one association which switched their vote at the last minute said they were told by their Association president, we are voting No, despite the fact they believed in the standard and supported it themselves.

Objections to the new standard varied but none were new or factually-based. Some opposition was based on the view that the standard will impose new costs on contractors. Some was based on the fear that the voluntary standard would open companies up to law suits. In addition, some employers continue to claim that sprain and strain injuries are not real, that workers fake them to get time off with compensation or that the injuries are not work-related. When queried about what changes in the standard would make it acceptable, their response was “dropping it.” In fact, they accused the standard’s supporters of being “ideologically motivated.” The industry continued to claim there was no “sound science” to support it. One of the most vocal opponents was the Department of Energy, which is odd because they have done quite a bit at their own facilities.

Many contractors, however, do accept the need to address these kinds of injuries and have been active – on their own worksites as well as in ANSI – in establishing programs and committees to address the risk. The Army Corps of Engineers requires employers on their sites to address ergonomic risk factors. INTEL requires all contractors on their sites to have an ergonomics program. The Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation has published a document showing the return on investment from ergonomics changes in construction. But facts can be conveniently ignored.

The ergonomics subcommittee will meet again in July and consider whether any changes in the proposed standard might shift the three votes needed to adopt the standard. If that appears promising, changes will be made and the full committee will vote again in August or September.

It ain't over till it's over. And it ain't even over then. For the industry fold, it ain't over until any ergnomics standard -- voluntary or mandatory -- extinct as a unicorn.

Stay tuned for the next round....

Voting against the standard

• Associated Builders and Contractors
  
• Associated General Contractors
  
• Barton-Malow Company
  
• Chicago Bridge and Iron
  
• Clark Construction
  
• Cole-Miller Safety
  
• Construction Users Roundtable
  
• ECI Safety Services
  
• Edison Electric Institute
  
• Gilbane Building
  
• Mechanical Contractors Association
  
• National Association of Home Builders
  
• National Association of Professional Engineers
  
• NEA- Association of Union Contractors
  
• National Roofing Contractors Association
  
• Ryland Group
  
• Safety and Quality Plus
  
• Scaffolding, Shoring and Forming Institute
  
• TIC- The Industrial Company
  
• Turner Construction
  
• US Department of Energy
  
• ZBD Constructors

Voting for the standard

• Aegis Corporation
  
• Allegheny Power System
  
• American Insurance Services Group
  
• Black and Veatch
  
• Phil Colleran
  
• Dupont Company
  
• Richard Hislop
  
• Institute of Makers of Explosives
  
• International Safety Equipment Association
  
• Jack Mickle
  
• Maryland OSHA
  
• National Association of Railroad consultants
  
• Dan Paine
  
• Power Consultants
  
• PCIAA (Alliance of American Insurers)
  
• Sigma Associates
  
• SINCO
  
• US Army Corps of Engineers
  
• West Virginia University
  
• And 14 Union votes

Related Articles

• Industry Butchers Perform Back-Alley Late Term Abortion on ANSI Ergonomics Standard, October 31, 2003
• Ergo Barbarians Pillage ANSI Ergonomics Standard, October 16, 2003.

Labels: Ergonomics

BP Amoco, the company that owns the Texas City refinery where an explosion killed 15 workers last March, leads the U.S. refining industry in deaths over the last decade, with 22 fatalities since 1995, according to an investigation by the Houston Chronicle. Those 22 deaths account for more than a quarter of those killed in refineries nationwide.

Nineteen of BP's 22 deaths came in the last 18 months, including two separate explosions in Texas City and the fall of a worker through a rotted railing in 2004 at the refinery water plant in Whiting, Ind. Earlier this month, a maintenance worker was found dead inside a tank in BP's Cherry Point refinery in Washington, an incident under investigation as either asphyxiation or natural death, according to Whatcom County Medical Examiner Gary Goldfogel.

Naomi Brimer, whose husband, Terry, fell when a corroded railing gave way at the Indiana refinery last year, said she didn't think BP or OSHA took safety violations seriously enough.

OSHA fined the company $1,625.

"I have a BP paper that says we will provide our employees with a safe work environment, but there wasn't one for my husband," Brimer said. "I don't feel like a $1,625 fine is enough of a motivator for them."

In fact, BP's record has been so bad, that just weeks before the March explosion, OSHA had put them on a special "enhanced enforcement" watchlist, because of a September 2004 explsion that killed two pipefitters and injured a third.

BP is the only major oil company on that list, said John Miles, OSHA's regional director.

Although the list is not made public, it is an exclusive club that includes construction contractors and industrial employers such as McWane Industries, the Alabama company with one of the nation's highest totals of workplace fatalities.

The petroleum industry, and BP Amoco often boast of low injury and illness statistics. For example, BP's Website boasts that

We achieved a reduction of over 10% in our Days Away From Work Case Frequency (DAFWCF) in 2004. A DAFWC is recorded when an injury results in an employee missing a day or more of work. Since 1990 our DAFWC rate has dropped from 0.09 per 200,000 hours worked to 0.08 in 2004. This performance exceeded our target set for 2004 and 2005, which is to achieve a DAFWCF across the BP group of better than 0.09.:

But injury and illnesses statistics, which include a lot of slips, trips, falls, strains and sprains miss the point when it comes to overall facility safety.

In Texas City, at least, BP officials might have focused so much on individual worker safety that they missed problems with overall system safety, said Glenn Erwin, a former Texas City refinery employee who monitors refinery safety nationwide for the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union.

"They spend all their time saying, 'Don't strain your back, don't get dirt in your eye,'" he said. Safety statistics improve because more workers are avoiding minor injuries, but lurking problems, such as the outmoded ventilator stack cited in the March blast, have been neglected.

"A good company will investigate all accidents, incidents and near misses and say: 'We'll fix what we find, and we'll follow it to completion,' " Erwin said. "In BP's case, they found the problem years ago — the vent stack — but they never fixed it."

Miles, the OSHA regional administrator, called the unit that blew up in Texas City "antiquated equipment that is no longer used."

And it's not just that refinery work is inherently dangerous:

Texas City's BP refinery, the nation's third-largest, has reported three fatal accidents in the past decade.

In contrast, the nation's two largest refineries in Baytown and Baton Rouge, La., both of which are owned by Exxon Mobil Corp., have had no fatal accidents since 1995.

All of the Exxon Mobil refineries in the United States reported only two work-related deaths, both involving contractors at a Torrance, Calif., refinery.

One man was electrocuted there while installing air-conditioning equipment because of an error by an electrical contractor working for another outside company. In the other death, a contractor was asphyxiated after an air line became twisted when he went inside a storage area where liquids are stored under pressure, according to Exxon officials.

In both cases, workers for contracting companies were found to have made errors or failed to follow Exxon policies. Two of the three companies involved no longer work for Exxon Mobil, said Exxon Mobil spokesman Russ Roberts.

Even the Chronicle's business columnist, Loren Steffy, is appalled at BP's record:

In response to all of this, we get a canned statement from Lord Browne: "We want BP to be a safe place to work. So as well as mourning for those we have lost, we are determined to learn from this tragedy and improve our safety record."

His words ring hollow.

BP's reputation, the statistics and government inspectors all tell a different story. BP hasn't learned from past tragedy. It hasn't updated equipment, such as the vent stack where the March explosion started. It hasn't enforced its own safety rules, such as those that restricted the location of a contractor trailer where most of the victims
died.

It seemingly has done little to change its habits. It simply offers empty words that fall like cold, hard rain on the memories of those who died.

Safety, the company says, is a priority.

Twenty-two graves in Texas City and around the country say otherwise.

Related Articles

• "I Should Have Been Killed" -- Survivors of Texas City BP Blast, April 19, 2005
• BP Amoco Texas City Update: Plant Owners Aware of Venting and Trailer Location Hazards, April 10, 2005
• Workplace Safety Enforcement: A Tale of Two Countries, April 5, 2005
• Transparency? Or PR Savvy?, March 26, 2005
• BP In California: "callous and intentional noncompliance purely for economic reasons", March 24, 2005
• BP, site of fatal explosion, is Nation's Leader in Accidents, March 24, 2005
• At Least 14 Dead, Hundreds Injured In Huge Refinery Explosion, March 23, 2005
  
  

Labels: BP

AIHA has graciously given me permission to post the .pdf of the article I wrote for the Synergist about blogging. My mother liked it, so it must be good.

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I once did a trench safety workshop for some public works employees in New England. I asked them to raise their hands if they had received any trenching safety training. Only a few reaised their hands and I asked them to tell me about it.

"Well," one said, "They taught us how to dig someone out when the trench collapses."

That wasn't exactly what i was talking about. The problem is that a cubic yard of soil weights about 2700 pounds, the weight of a mid-sized automobile. A trench collapse may contain three to five cubic feet of soil. Do the math. Even if you're only buried up to your waist, successful rescue is unlikely; you're probably going to die.

This was the unfortunate lesson learned by rescuers in Pinellas County, Florida and an unfortunate B&B Professional Plumbing Inc employee, Charles Michael Morrison, 48:

Trapped Worker Dies Despite Rescuers' Efforts

PINELLAS PARK - A man working in a deep ditch as part of a sewer project Thursday was trapped when a wall of dirt collapsed on him and he died roughly an hour later, police and fire officials said.

Morrison was working in an unshored 12 to 15 foot deep trench.

He was buried anywhere from his waist up to his belly button, and he was conscious. Fire fighters were reluctant to go in to the ditch themselves to rescue the man, for fear of jeopardizing their own safety, Lewis said.

This was a legitimate fear, considering the fact that as many as 65 percent of all deaths from trench cave-ins are of would-be rescuers.

So, if we now all of this, why do people die in trench collapses week after week?

More here.

UPDATE:

The plumber killed in a trench accident Thursday died from blunt trauma caused by the heavy, fast-moving wall of dirt that collapsed on him, the Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner's Office said Friday.

The force broke Charles "Mike" Morrison's ribs and fractured his pelvis, setting the stage for the cardiac arrest he suffered as workers tried to free him from the 15-foot-deep trench behind Intrepid Powerboats Inc. on Belcher Road.

Bill Pellan, the medical examiner's director of investigations, said cardiac arrest could have been brought on by various factors, including internal hemorrhaging and shock.
Morrison's family said Friday they were devastated by the death and attributed it to "other people's negligence."

"This was preventable," said Morrison's stepdaughter, Jennifer Butson, 24. "What we're just not understanding is how was this man placed in such a dangerous situation?"

Related Articles

• Just Another Trench Death: Well Covered For A Change , May 5, 2005
• Slow Death By Trench Collapse, May 19, 2004
• CDC: Trench Collapse Still a Major Problem, May 4, 2004
• Intro to Death By Trench Collapse, January 21, 2004
• This is getting tiresome..., November 29, 2003
• "Just a Horrible Accident", September 18, 2003

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Labels: Trench Hazards

The Los Angeles Times reported the other day that:

The Environmental Protection Agency has quietly delayed work on completing required rules to protect children and construction workers from exposure to lead-based paint, exploring instead the possibility of using voluntary standards to govern building renovations and remodeling.

Well, isn't that special. Dwight Meredith over at Wampum has distilled the Bush perspective to its essence:

Why would the EPA consider weakening the protections against lead poisoning? They are worried about the cost of the mandatory regulation to business, of course.

EPA officials emphasize that they are concerned about lead exposure and its effect on children. They also point to an internal study showing that the cost of the regulations — $1.7 billion to $3.1 billion annually — could be an overwhelming burden for the mostly small businesses that renovate buildings. However, an agency estimate showed that such rules would provide health benefits of greater value, from $2.7 billion to $4.2 billion annually.

In other words, we can save money by having mandatory standards and we can save children by having mandatory standards, but the administration is balking at doing so because mandatory standards cost contractors some money. Please note that the voluntary standards are just as expensive for any contractor who abides by them. The only purpose in making the standards voluntary is to permit some workers and some kids to continue to be exposed to a known neurotoxin.

Basically, what we have here is avictory of ideology over public health.

Thanks to Susie for the reference.

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As I reported last week, the AFL-CIO has announced the elimination of its safety and health department, the layoff of half of its professional staff, with the rest being folded into the new Government Affairs department.

Now, I’m just a guy with a blog, but I’m also a proud member of the National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981, so I thought AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and UAW President Ron Gettelfinger should know how I feel. I don’t know how many of you who are union members are communicating your feelings to your union leadership, but it probably wouldn’t hurt for them to hear the opinions of a few (thousand) of you. Feel free to plagiarize my letter or anything else you find in Confined Space, but for those of you outside of Washington who are facing real health and safety struggles, your own stories are probably most effective. (Also, I tend to run on a bit; if you're inclined to write, feel free to be shorter.)

John Sweeney
President
AFL-CIO
815 16th St. N.W.
Washington D.C. 20006

Dear President Sweeney:

I am a member of the National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981. I have worked for the past 22 years in occupational safety and health – 16 of which were spent running AFSCME's health and safety program, as well as two years as a consultant and temporary employee in the AFL-CIO Safety and Health Department. I have also spent five years in government, including three as OSHA’s national labor liaison during the Clinton Administration. In my spare time, I write a weblog devoted primarily to workplace safety and labor issues. (Confined Space: http://spewingforth.blogspot.com/, if you’re interested.)

I was very disappointed to hear about the elimination of the AFL-CIO's Safety and Health Department last week, coming just a month after the tragedy at the BP Amoco refinery in Texas City, Texas that killed 15 workers, and only a week after Workers Memorial Day.

I am not writing to ask you to reinstate the AFL-CIO’s Department of Occupational Health and Safety and its full staff. Given the serious problems facing the labor movement today, I am writing to request that you reinstate and expand the department.

First, I completely agree that the first priority of the labor movement must be organizing. In fact, health and safety issues are major reasons that workers join unions. As you have said, one of the biggest challenges facing the labor movement today is making unions relevant to workers -- both to activate current members and, most important, to organize new members who are looking for some good, concrete reasons why they'll be better off if they organize a union and pay dues.

Working conditions, and workplace health and safety concerns can play an important role in almost every organizing campaign and can play a prominent role in political mobilization as well. There is little doubt (and numerous polls have confirmed this) that working conditions – particularly safety and health conditions – are an area of high concern for American workers and one that they look to labor unions to protect. For many members, union resources that are used to train rank and file activists in how to investigate and organize around health and safety issues is a service well worth paying some dues money for. A larger safety and health department could assist affiliates to develop strategic organizing programs focusing on health and safety issues.

Unfortunately, folding what’s left of the safety and health department into Government Affairs leaves the impression that health and safety is just about lobbying Congress, writing testimony and commenting on regulations. While these are certainly important functions for the AFL-CIO (as shown most recently by the current activities around asbestos compensation legislation), they are far from the only function of the AFL-CIO’s safety and health department.

Perhaps the most important function of health and safety departments – either at the AFL-CIO or at the affiliates – is to provide the knowledge, tools and organization that workers can use to defend their rights, their health and their lives when they go to work every day. This support takes a variety of forms that are crucial to maintaining and expanding union membership. The ability to translate local health and safety issues into a larger political context is also important in political mobilization.

It is well known fact that workers are the proverbial canaries in the coal mines: Almost every major workplace health problem was initially discovered by workers (by their illness and death) and their unions, and then brought to the researchers and government regulators. Again, the AFL-CIO has played a crucial role in this process – and more than ever needs the resources to continue to play that role in the future.

I write every day about the health and safety of American workers, how they get hurt, how they die, and what they're doing to fight back. I see them not only dealing with “traditional” workplace safety and health issues (hazardous unregulated chemicals, falls from scaffolding, communicable diseases, trench collapses, amputations, etc.) but they’re also facing growing threats in areas that haven’t been adequately addressed by oversight agencies or by researchers: stress, workplace violence, ergonomics, increased workloads, fewer employees and faster production rates, excessive overtime, short staffing and the exploitation of immigrants.

The “good news” is that the lack of attention to these issues makes them ripe for mobilizing and organizing workers – if the AFL-CIO puts adequate resources into using these issues for organizing and political mobilization.

In addition, the AFL-CIO Safety and Health Department has been the only worker organization in the country addressing workers compensation problems from a national angle, identifying trends, developing effective strategies to fight off attacks and communicating important information to affiliates and state federations. The national fight against the cruel mistreatment of injured workers by failing workers compensation systems has now also fallen victim to this reorganization.

On the national political front, my years at OSHA proved to me that there will never be any movement on a political or regulatory front – even in a Democratic administration -- without constant pressure from labor. Convincing OSHA to issue effective health and safety standards or to enforce the law is no longer a simple process of writing testimony or lobbying Congress or administration officials. To be successful, unions need to organize massive grassroots political action campaigns. It takes coordination from the AFL-CIO and national unions, it involves identifying and organizing the victims of health and safety problems on the local and national level and it takes political action in Washington and in the states. And clearly, this requires adequate staff and resources in Washington to coordinate these activities. Otherwise, how can working people and individual unions working alone be any match for the well funded power of the Chamber of Commerce, NAM, NFIB and other industry associations who have an almost unlimited ability to hire high-priced attorneys, scientists, public relations experts – and legislators. Now, at the time when our members need help the most, we seem to be taking health and safety out of the game, leaving the playing field our enemies.

Look back at the proud history of the American labor movement and everywhere you look, you'll find workplace safety and health concerns. In fact, there is probably no issue more central to the founding of the labor movement in this country than the issue of safety on the job.The history of the Mineworkers, the Steelworkers, the Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers and many other unions is also the story of workplace safety. Karen Silkwood died defending the health and safety of her members. The 1968 Memphis sanitation workers strike was sparked by two workplace fatalities. This is not just dead history, but an indication of how health and safety issues can be used to build a new labor movement. What message are we sending to American workers (and the enemies of American workers) if we devalue the importance of the issue upon which the labor movement was founded?

My great fear is that eliminating the AFL-CIO Department of Health and Safety will send the wrong message -- both to American workers and American corporations. Workers will assume that the labor movement no longer cares about their health and safety on the job while the corporate community will assume that we’ve given up the battle. By eliminating the health and safety department and downsizing its staff, it appears as if unions care more about the health of unions than the health of the workers they represent. Both are clearly important, but workers appear to have gotten the short end of this reorganization.

As a long-time union activist, I fully understand that our backs are up against the wall, and I applaud the efforts you are making to turn things around. Health and safety issues can play an important role in this effort, but in order to effectively use health and safety issues to build the labor movement, we need not only strategic leadership and coordination from the AFL-CIO and national unions, but also the capacity and resources to plan and implement these campaigns. The small staff of the AFL-CIO’s Department of Safety and Health have done amazing work over the past decades. Now is the time to expand those activities, not cut them back. To do less than this would be a serious disservice both to workers’ health and safety to our hopes for a stronger labor movement, and to the progress our members have fought and died for.

In solidarity,


Jordan Barab


cc: Ron Gettelfinger, President, UAW
Gerard Colby, President, National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981

Related Stories

• AFL-CIO Kills Health and Safety Department, May 3, 2005
• The New AFL-CIO: Wither Safety and Health?, March 2, 2005
• Workers Memorial Day 2005, April 28, 2005
• Union Health and Safety Programs: Organize and Die?, August 28, 2003
• The Great Debate I: Union Health and Safety Programs vs. Organizing, April 7, 2003

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Labels: AFL-CIO

I'm having trouble figuring out what's going on at OSHA. They're behaving like a little kid with a bad reputation who does something good, but hides it out of embarassment -- or perhaps because he feels like his "friends" will beat him up if they find out he's done something slightly upstanding.

Last month OSHA issued a new directive on Fatality/Catastrophe Investigation Procedures. I didn't find this out by reading an OSHA press release. I discovered it in an article in Occupational Hazards which also notes that

Amid increasing signs that OSHA is ramping up enforcement against what it considers "bad actors," the agency referred a total of 18 cases to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for criminal prosecution during 2003 and 2004, a level not seen since 1990-1991.

A 2-year period is more indicative of trends in OSHA's criminal referral record, because the number often fluctuates greatly from year to year.

The new compliance directive covers all fatality and catastrophe investigations and states that such investigations must be done with extreme care to determine if they can be considered willful, "because of the potential for criminal referral by OSHA/DOL to the Department of Justice." A catastrophe, according to OSHA, is where three or more workers is hospitalized.

A willful violation has occurred when

There is reason to believe that the employer was aware of the requirements of the standard and knew that he was in violation of the standard, or that the employer was plainly indifferent to employee safety.

The directive also notes that

In addition to criminal prosecution under Section 17(e) of the OSH Act, employers may potentially face prosecution under a number of other sections of the United States Code, including, but not limited to:

• Crimes and Criminal Procedures, for actions such as conspiracy, making false statements, fraud, obstruction of justice, and destruction, alteration or falsification of records during a federal investigation
  
  
• The Clean Water Act
  
  
• The Clean Air Act
  
  
• The Resource Recovery and Conservation Act (RCRA)
  
  
• The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA)

In fact, this is the same program that David Barstow and Lowell Bergman wrote about last week in the New York Times. The reason it's important to use the environmental laws listed above is that monetary penalties and potential jail time for violation of environmental laws are far stiffer than penalties for willfully violating the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHAct) -- even when it leads to the death of a worker. Under the OSH Act, when a worker is killed, employers can only be charged with a misdemeanor and up to six months in jail, but violating environmental and fraud laws can lead to felony convictions with substantial jail terms.

So are we seeing a major change in the way workplace deaths are prosecuted in this country? That's unlikely. Eighteen prosecutions is certainly better than previous years, but they're only a small fraction of the willful citations involving deaths or multiple injuries that occur every year.

Second, as Occupational Hazards notes,

Although the numbers of criminal referrals is up, it is too soon to tell whether the increase will lead to more convictions. So far, DOJ has handed down indictments in one of the 18 cases and decided not to prosecute eight others; no decision has yet been made on the remaining nine cases, according to information supplied by OSHA. In previous years, DOJ has typically declined to prosecute almost half the cases referred to it by OSHA.

As I've written before, this new program is clearly the result of the embarrassment suffered by OSHA as a result of the two 2003 New York Times series by David Barstow and Lowell Bergman that exposed the failure of OSHA and the Department of Justice to pursue criminal charges against employers who willfully kill their employees.

The odd thing is that OSHA acts almost embarrassed about the new program. As Barstow and Bergman pointed out last week, the administration has been reluctant to publicize its efforts. It cancelled a press conference to announce the program, demoted it from a “Worker Endangerment Initiative” to a “policy decision,” and neither acting OSHA Assistant Secretary Jonathan Snare, nor DOL’s head attorney, Solicitor Howard Radzely would speak to the Times about the program.

As I said above, the new compliance directive just appeared on the OSHA website without any announcement or press release. Given the time of year it appeared, a savvy P.R. person might have thought that the announcement of an aggressive new enforcement program would have made a much better Workers Memorial Day event than the half-assed press release issued by OSHA.

On the contrary, according a mysterious OSHA/DOL employee code-named "Walking Shadow" who left a comment on my article about OSHA's WMD "observance,"

OSHA's National Office took no notice of Worker Memorial Day--there was no message or e-mail from the Secretary or the Acting Assistant Secretary to OSHA staff. 28 April was also the occasion of the Department of Labor's annual honor awards ceremony, but neither Secretary Chao nor anyone else said a word about Worker Memorial Day.

So are they afraid their friends over at the Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers or National Federation of Independent Business will beat them up if they find out OSHA's been acting like a goody-two-shoes by actually making an effort to fulfill some of its mandate?

Or are they afraid that too much talk about the need to use environmental laws to get significant workplace penalties will lead people to ask why we don't just amend the OSH Act to increase penalties so that OSHA doesn't have to wait for an employer to kill fish and birds before he can be effectively punished. That would make too much sense (and ex-exterminator Tom Delay and his friends in Congress probably wouldn't go for it.)

Curious.


Related Stories

• OSHA, Feds Take A Step Toward Real Workplace Penalties
  May 2, 2005
  
• Of Fish and Men, Corporate Penalties And The Law, March 19, 2005
• OSHA To Beef Up Criminal Prosecutions, March 9, 2005
  
• W.R. Grace Execs Indicted For Asbestos Coverup, February 8, 2005
• "You done killed my boy!" December 21, 2003

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Attention American Industrial Hygiene Association members. Check out page 76 of the May edition of the Synergist for an article about Confined Space by ME. There's even a sexy picture of ME a sample page of Confined Space.

UPDATE: AIHA has graciously allowed me to post the .pdf here.

It's late, I'm tired and I'm still writing. At least I'm not driving a train.

Here we have a story of well-known fatigue problems among workers responsible for carrying the 1.7 million carloads of the nation's hazardous materials every year, and the Association of American Railroads who would rather deny that obvious fatigue issues exist despite clear evidence to the contrary:

When a Union Pacific freight train thundered into tiny Macdona, Texas, just before dawn June 28, the engineer and conductor had clocked more than 60 hours in the previous week, working the long, erratic shifts that are common in the railroad industry.

They flew through a stop signal at 45 mph and slammed into another freight train that was moving onto a side track. No one even touched the brakes.

Chlorine gas from a punctured tank car killed the conductor and two townspeople, while dozens of others suffered breathing problems and burning eyes as the toxic cloud drifted almost 10 miles. Hundreds were evacuated within a 2-mile radius of the accident.

Federal investigators suspect that both of the Union Pacific crewmen had fallen asleep. In the weeks before the crash, each man's work schedule had at least 15 starting times at all hours of the day.

The Macdona crash illustrates a grim fact of life for thousands of engineers, brake operators and conductors who guide giant freight trains across the country: Exhaustion can kill.

Two decades after federal officials identified fatigue as a top safety concern, the problem continues to haunt the railroad industry, especially the largest carriers responsible for moving the vast majority of the nation's rail-borne freight.

"Engineers and conductors sleep on trains. Anyone who tells you different is not being straight with you," said Diz D. Francisco, a veteran engineer and union official who works out of Bakersfield for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp.

I've written about this incident before, but in the context of transporting hazardous cargo. Combined with hazardous material problems (like the train crash that killed nine in South Carolina several months ago), the incidents cited in this article are chilling:

National Transportation Safety Board records show that entire crews have nodded off at the controls of mile-long freight trains weighing 10,000 tons, some of them loaded with hazardous materials.

In a 1984 Wyoming crash, a Burlington Northern engineer had only 6 1/2 hours of sleep in the 48 hours before the accident; his conductor had five hours of sleep.

Outside St. Louis in 2001, a Union Pacific engineer who had been up for 24 hours with only a short nap failed to heed three warning signals and orders to limit his speed before triggering a chain-reaction crash involving two other trains. The wreck injured four and caused $10 million in damage.

A year later, in Des Plaines, Ill., a Union Pacific engineer fighting to stay awake after more than 22 hours without sleep blew past warning signals and broadsided another train, severely injuring two crew members.

After a Chicago & North Western train collision in March 1995, engineer Gerald A. Dittbenner sued the railroad — and received a $500,000 settlement, his lawyers say — over his incessant 12-hour shifts and irregular work schedules.

Dittbenner, 49, misread a stop signal after being awake almost 30 hours and hit the rear of an empty coal train outside Shawnee Junction, Wyo. Seconds before the impact, Dittbenner jumped from the locomotive and broke his neck. Unable to do strenuous work because of persistent pain, he now works as a locksmith in Scottsbluff, Neb.

As happens in so many other accident investigation, the root causes of these problems have been covered by conclusions that essentially blame the worker for falling asleep or "poor judgment, miscommunication and failure to follow operating procedures — errors that experts say can be triggered by fatigue."The root cause of the fatigue is not careless workers, but scheduling problems:

A 1997 survey of more than 1,500 freight crew members by the North American Rail Alertness Partnership — a group of industry, government and union officials — found that about 80% had reported to work while tired, extremely tired or exhausted.

Though fatigue can affect passenger train crews, it is primarily a problem for the 40,000 to 45,000 engineers, brake operators and conductors assigned to unscheduled freight service.

Many put in 60 to 70 hours a week, sometimes more. They can be called to work any time during the day or night, constantly disrupting their sleep patterns.

The irregular shifts often place bleary-eyed crews at the controls between 3 and 6 a.m., when experts say the body's natural circadian rhythm produces maximum drowsiness.

Engineers, brake operators and conductors liken on-the-job fatigue to being in a constant state of jet lag.

"There is no set rest schedule. It changes all the time, and it is hard to adjust," said Doug Armstrong of Huntington Beach, a veteran Union Pacific engineer who often works 12-hour days, six days a week. "People have a normal rest cycle, but a railroad is anything but normal."

And the problem here is antiquated laws, in this case, the 98 year old federal Hours of Service Act. The act requires train operators to have 8 hours off, but that doesn't allow for commuting, family obligations, meals -- as well as adquate sleep. In addition, it's legal for engineers, conductors and brake operators to work 432 hours a month, as opposed to truckers who are allowed to drive no more than 260 hours.

And it seems that no story of workplace -- or community -- hazard is complete without an industry association trying to deny that the problem exists. The Association of American Railroads (AAR), the industry's trade organization and lobbying arm, commissioned a study of the fatigue problem and finding ways to reduce accidents. But the study was canceled in 1998 when it found that "engineers who put in more than 60 hours a week were at least twice as likely to be in an accident as those working 40 hours."

"They did not want this finding," said [the former AAR analyst Donald]Krause, who once studied rail safety for the federal General Accounting Office and is now a business writer living outside Chicago. "The railroads fear it could lead to restrictions on hours and government regulation, which could cost them money. But something needs to be done. One of these days, they are going to wipe out a town."

Association officials say Krause's research was halted because of budget cuts, not out of a desire to bury the conclusions.

Yeah, I'm sure.

Among the reasons for the ARA to not want to see those results:

Hiring has not kept pace with a steady increase in rail freight volumes, about 4.4% a year on average since 1991, federal data show.

Corporate mergers and cost-cutting during the 1990s led to staff reductions. In 2002, a change in pension rules led to 12,000 railroad worker retirements, twice as many as the year before.

Since 1990, overall railroad employment has declined more than 25%. Department of Labor statistics show that, until recently, the hiring of engineers has been flat for years.

There seems to be some dispute about the role of unions. According to the article, rail unions have supported the resulting overtime:

Railroad unions have at times resisted proposed solutions to the fatigue problem if they threatened to limit the freedom of their members to work long hours and maximize earnings. With overtime and high mileage, salaries for engineers can reach $100,000 a year.

"It is a two-edged sword," said Brian Held, 47, a Burlington Northern Santa Fe engineer for 10 years. "The company wants to save money and doesn't hire what it needs to. Union members don't want the boards so full of workers they can't make the money they want. It makes for a dangerous situation."

Although, on the other hand:

In December 2003, Union Pacific unsuccessfully sued a group of unionized conductors alleging that they were taking too much time off during weekends and holidays, disrupting commerce along a major Kansas line in violation of the Railway Labor Act.

The United Transportation Union countered that the railroad was severely understaffed in the area and many conductors were exhausted from working for weeks — sometimes months — without a day off.

"We were running with a skeleton crew," said union official Greg Haskin. "Guys were burned out and calling in sick. They were working 12- to 16-hour days up to 90 days straight. You can't expect people to work like that and be safe."

Union Pacific declined to discuss the case.

In 1999, the NTSB recommended that the Federal Railroad Commission

Establish within 2 years scientifically based hours-of-service regulations that set limits on hours of service, provide predictable work and rest schedules, and consider circadian rhythms and human sleep and restrequirements.

But, of course, we are faced with the usual debate in this administration about whether or not the railroads should be left to voluntary programs to reduce fatigue, or whether there should be regulations.

Guess which side is winning.

The FRA has announced that it

will continue to monitor the results from these various cooperative arrangements and research projects on fatigue and, as the need arises, take relevant regulatory action and/or recommend legislative action.

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Labels: National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), Railroad Hazards

This is more like it:

Coal mine operator sentenced to prison
Safety violations cited in fatal blast in 2003

PIKEVILLE, Ky. -- In a rare move, a federal judge sentenced a former coal mine operator yesterday to 60 days in prison for safety violations that led to an explosion in 2003, killing a miner and injuring two others.

Robert Ratliff Sr., 52, is the first miner convicted of safety violations in Eastern Kentucky sentenced to prison in more than a decade, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Davis Sledd, who prosecuted the case.

The sentence comes after Ratliff's company, Cody Mining, was fined $536,050 last year -- the largest federal penalty ever in Kentucky -- for safety violations related to the explosion.

The penalty is a result of the the June 2003 death of Paul Blair Jr., 21, who was hit by debris from an underground wall during blasting to clear an area for mining. The tunnel where Blair hid was not cut correctly, leaving him and four other miners too close to the explosion. The other miners were injured.

Ampersand at Alas a Blog shoots down the myth that the wage gap between men and women is due to the "fact" that the wage gap reflects men getting paid more for hazardous jobs or dangerous jobs.

Quoting academic studies and the Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys, Amp concludes that:

The anti-feminist argument that the gender wage gap is (partly or fully) caused by justified higher pay for men who take on riskier work is not true. Evidence shows that taking on risky work isn’t associated with higher pay.

Second conclusion: The widely-shared conservative assumption that the market produces just and fair outcomes is not supported by looking at how the market compensates for risk. Workers who risk their lives often receive very low compensation, and for non-unionized workers they may be paid even less than similar workers in less risky jobs.

Interesing, go read it, as well as the comments.

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This same article about this nation's failure to secure its 15,000 chemical plants, -- 123 of which pose a threat to at least 1 million people -- has been written over and over again every few months since 9/11/2001.

It is the deadliest target in a swath of industrial northern New Jersey that terrorism experts call the most dangerous two miles in America: a chemical plant that processes chlorine gas, so close to Manhattan that the Empire State Building seems to rise up behind its storage tanks.

According to federal Environmental Protection Agency records, the plant poses a potentially lethal threat to 12 million people who live within a 14-mile radius.

Yet on a recent Friday afternoon, it remained loosely guarded and accessible. Dozens of trucks and cars drove by within 100 feet of the tanks. A reporter and photographer drove back and forth for five minutes, snapping photos with a camera the size of a large sidearm, then left without being approached.

That chemical plant is just one of dozens of vulnerable sites between Newark Liberty International Airport and Port Elizabeth, which extends two miles to the east. A Congressional study in 2000 by a former Coast Guard commander deemed it the nation's most enticing environment for terrorists, providing a convenient way to cripple the economy by disrupting major portions of the country's rail lines, oil storage tanks and refineries, pipelines, air traffic, communications networks and highway system.

Port security isn't much better:

As for the ports, the federal Homeland Security Department's inspector general's office recently criticized the agency for directing much of its $517 million in port security money to relatively low-risk sites in places like Kentucky and Tennessee, and not giving enough to busy, vulnerable facilities like Port Newark. Although the Port of New York and New Jersey recently received an additional $42 million for counterterrorism efforts, Port Newark lacks the up-to-date equipment now used to search cargo at ports like Hong Kong.

"We put more resources into securing the average large bank in Manhattan than we do for the entire security of Port Newark," said Stephen Flynn, a former Coast Guard commander who is now a security analyst for the Council on Foreign Relations and who conducted the study that first identified this part of North Jersey as the nation's most terror-prone two miles. "That's just irresponsible."

The problem at chemical plants is that the federal government won't face up to the fact that strong regulations are needed to force the plants to implement more security and less hazardous processes:

A spokeswoman for the [American] Chemistry Council, an industry group representing 150 of the nation's largest chemical plants, said the group's members had already invested $2 billion in improved security and were working with Congress to establish standardized federal safety guidelines.

"We want to work with the Department of Homeland Security and Congress to make these plants safer in a way that works for everyone," Kate McGloon, the spokeswoman, said.

Michelle Petrovich, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said agency officials had visited more than half the nation's 300 most dangerous plants and urged the companies to enhance perimeter security and switch to less hazardous chemicals and processes. As a result, Ms. Petrovich said, she believes North Jersey is "one of the safer areas because it has received the most attention in terms of protective measures."

But Richard A. Falkenrath, a former deputy homeland security adviser to the White House, said that effort has done little to make the public safer. "Saying that you're doing something doesn't mean you're actually making a difference," said Mr. Falkenrath, who recently testified before Congress, urging tighter regulation of the chemical industry.

Since 2001, at least two major efforts to bolster chemical plant security have been stalled, in part by industry lobbyists.

The latest proposal to tighten security at chemical plants, which appears to be gaining support in Congress, would establish safety guidelines. But Senator Jon S. Corzine said that it is only a half measure because it would not mandate that plants in densely populated areas stop using highly dangerous chemicals like chlorine gas and switch to more benign alternatives, like sodium hypochlorite. The plants use such chemicals to make antiseptics for water purification plants.

What's happening is that the American Chemical Council is favoring federal regulatoins that would essentially codify the ACC's voluntary "Responsible Care" security code, which consists of more guns, guards and gates. Environmental organizations (and Senator Corzine's bill) argue that perimeter security will never be perfect (and three and a half years after 9/11, it's not even close), so the answer is to reduce the hazard itself by implementing inherently safer processes wherever possible.

Meanwhile, nothing happens on Capitol Hill, and reporters (and who knows who else) continue to be able to wander unmolested around plants that have the potential to kill millions.

Update: New York Times editorial:

Senator Corzine's persistent efforts to upgrade chemical plant security have been thwarted by the chemical industry and by the Bush administration's lack of support. He is now working on a new bill, in collaboration with Senators Susan Collins and Joseph Lieberman, that is likely to make some concessions to the chemical industry to improve its chances of passage. If Congress and the White House are serious about protecting the nation, they will make sure that his bill becomes law in the strongest possible form. There is an urgent need for greater security at the plant sites. The industry should also be required to replace dangerous chemicals with safer alternatives. These steps may sound like common sense, but they have run into entrenched political opposition. The Bush administration's antiregulatory philosophy makes it reluctant to impose rules on private industry. And the chemical industry, a major campaign donor, seems intent on not spending the money that a strong safety law would cost it. Christie Whitman, the former E.P.A. administrator, became so frustrated by her inability to make any progress that she asked to be relieved of responsibility for chemical plant safety.

Related Articles

• "We can't protect ourselves if we are not part of the plan", February 20, 2005
• NY Chem Company Decides Terrorism Threat Is Over, February 6, 2005
• Department of Homeland Security: Buddy Can You Spare a Dime?, September 27, 2004
• Weapons of Mass Destruction Found -- In Our Backyards, November 17, 2003
• The War for Chemical Plant Safety, May 4, 2003

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Labels: Chemical Plant Security

Burtonsville resident killed in workplace accident in Laurel, Man crushed by falling section of railcar

JEFFERSON, Pa. - A section of a derailed coal car fell onto a worker taking it apart with a torch, crushing him to death, authorities said. John Edward Thompson, 43, of Greenville, was dismantling derailed coal cars with a cutting torch in Jefferson Township, Greene County, when a large piece of one fell on him Saturday morning, state police said.


Cherokee County worker killed in highway accident

Birmingham, AL- A Cherokee County employee was killed this morning when he was hit by a logging truck south of Gaffney. Ronnie Lee Dukes, 43, was standing on the rear platform of a sanitation truck when he was struck and killed on state Highway 18 about 10:30 a.m., county administrator Ben Clary said. The garbage truck was stopped in a blind spot when the logging truck being driven by Jason Smith, 30, of Union, came around a curve, Highway Patrol Lance Cpl. Bryan McDougald said. The truck swerved, striking the left side of the garbage truck and platform where Dukes was standing, McDougald said. The logging truck then hit a car driven by 39-year-old Beverly Davis of Gaffney.


Dolton store manager charged in deadly robbery

Chicago,IL — A Dolton store manager is charged with murder for allegedly plotting an attempted robbery which turned deadly. Dolton police charged Sandrell Allen with robbery and murder. Police say she did not pull the trigger, but she is accused of plotting the robbery which turned deadly. The case is still being investigated. The police chief said the husband of the woman who was shot inside will not be charged because he shot the suspect in self defense. "She had a discussion. She decided that somewhere along the line they were going to rob the store she worked," said Chief Ronald Burge, Dolton Police Department. The gunman, 32-year-old Thomas Perry, Allen's boyfriend, shot the clerk, Tiffany Ellis, who was five months pregnant, twice in the stomach as he tried to rob the store.


Big Cedar worker dies in horse and wagon accident

RIDGEDALE, Mo. – A longtime employee of Big Cedar Lodge died in an accident on Tuesday morning near the stables where she worked. The Taney County coroner says Eileen Beatty died from a broken neck. Beatty cared for horses at resort, which is owned by Bass Pro Shops. Another employee found her body about 9:30 a.m. when they noticed the horses with which she worked weren’t tied up as usual. Coroner Randall Vest says there was no reason to suspect foul play. He says Beatty appears to have fallen while she was trying to corral some horses, which may have become spooked while she was harnessing them to a wagon. Beatty was 49. She lived in Omaha, Ark., about 10 miles south of Big Cedar.


Arkansas plant worker dies of Bromine toxicity; others being tested

Shreveport, LA- 11 plant workers in Arkansas have become ill, and one of them has died. 53-year-old William Atkinson of Magnolia died early Friday morning in a Little Rock Hospital. He was admitted with Bromine toxicity. Atkinson worked for Great Lakes Chemical Corporation in El Dorado, which produces Brominated flame retardants. The other workers also went to the hospital with similar symptoms of burning eyes and nostrils, vomiting and diarrhea. Company officials aren't sure why the employees became ill. There were no signs of chemicals in the air.


Worker found dead after fall from ladder

Charlotte, NC- A man was found dead Monday afternoon after apparently falling from a ladder at a work site in southwestern Charlotte, police said. The man was working on a building in the 9800 block of Southern Pine Boulevard off Arrowood Road when he fell, said Keith Bridges, a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police spokesman. A crew from Medic, Mecklenburg County's ambulance service, was called to the scene about 2:15 p.m. about a cardiac arrest. They did not need to transport anyone to the hospital. It was not clear Monday if the fall killed the man or a medical problem killed him first. The man's identity was withheld pending notification of his family, police said.


LAX Police Officer Killed as Stolen Patrol Car Drags Him

Los Angeles, CA- He strikes a hydrant while trying to regain control of the cruiser from the suspect. Authorities arrest a homeless man. Los Angeles International Airport police officer was killed Friday after a pedestrian commandeered his patrol car and dragged him down the road, over a curb and into a fire hydrant. Authorities allege that 46-year-old William Sadowski, a transient known to live in Venice, crashed the cruiser and then hijacked a passing SUV, which he maneuvered over a security gate and onto airport property. Officer Tommy Scott's death is the first in the 59-year history of the close-knit airport Police Department, which patrols the sprawling facility. Colleagues described Scott as a friendly person who relished helping passengers navigate the airport.


Stillwater electrician fatally crushed in Nye mine

Billings, MT- A 52-year-old electrician was killed about 10 p.m. Thursday at Stillwater Mining Co.'s Nye mine while working underground on ventilation air doors. The company said Cody Mathewson, an electrician with 30 years of experience in underground mining, was fatally injured while working in an area just off a main shaft in the mine. He was working on some air doors and he was crushed," said Brad Shorey, president of the Local 8-0001 Paper, Allied Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International. "We know what happened, we just don't know how."


Silo worker dies under 20 feet of grain

Brownsville, Texas— A 29-year-old man has died after he was buried by more than 20 feet of grain in a silo at the Port of Brownsville. The accident happened as workers worked atop a large pile of grain, loading it onto a conveyor belt that leads to the top of a silo. Two other men were injured in the incident. "He sank into it like quicksand," Port of Brownsville Police Chief George Gavito said of the dead man, whom he would not identify pending notification of relatives. "The other man fell in, but did not go as deep." It took rescue workers 45 minutes to find the dead man's body, Gavito said.

This is the second death at the port this month and the third death in 16 months.


Crane operator saved ground crew

Naples, FL- As the crane involved in a fatal accident on Sanibel Causeway began to lurch Monday afternoon, its operator swung the listing machine to the right, away from a ground crew working nearby, according to a report released by the Lee County Sheriff's Office on Tuesday. Kent A. Crappell, 54, of Morgan City, La., died shortly after, having been thrown from the crane's cab. Another worker, John T. Collins, 57, of Carrabelle, who had been on board a barge struck by the crane's boom, was injured. Sheriff's Office spokesman Larry King said after an initial investigation conducted with the U.S. Coast Guard, deputies believe what happened was accidental, though they're awaiting the report by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. That could take as long as six months to complete, according to Lee County officials. Work on the phase of the project where the accident happened may be delayed as long as a month, according to the county transportation department.


Wounded Pittsburg Police Officer Dies

Pittsburg, Calif. -- Officer Larry Lasater Shot While Pursuing Armed Robbery Suspects. A Pittsburg police officer who was shot in the line of duty over the weekend has died, officials at John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek confirmed early Tuesday. Officer Larry Lasater, 36, was shot twice Saturday night. He and another officer were pursuing two people suspected of holding up a cashier at a Raley's store on Buchanan Road, as well as a Wells Fargo bank branch inside the store.


Second man shot to death in a cab this month

St Louis, MO- A man was shot to death early toay in a cab at nearly the same spot in the Walnut Park neighborhood where a student from Lithuania was killed on Friday, St. Louis police said. Homicide detectives say the incidents may be drug related, and ballistics tests are being conducted to determine if the same semi-automatice weapon was used in both shootings. In the most recent shooting, the body of Ernest Harper, 49, was found in a Chesterfield Taxi and Cab shortly before 2 a.m. Harper was shot in the 4900 block of Beacon and apparently tried to drive off because the cab had come to rest against a porch in the 5000 block of Beacon Avenue, near Lillian Avenue. Several bullets had been fired into the driver's side of the cab. About 5:30 a.m. Friday, the body of Julius Backys, 21, was found in his car in the 4900 block of Beacon. Backys, a Lithuanian, was a student at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He had been shot to death.


Burtonsville resident killed in workplace accident in Laurel

Laurel, MD- A Burtonsville man has died in Laurel after the embroidery machine he was trying to move crushed him, police said. Police are waiting to release the name of the 59-year-old man, until his family has been notified, said Laurel police Lt. Rich McLaughlin. An employee returned from lunch Aril 24 and found the man pinned under the machine at O.K. Embroidery in the 300 block of Main Street. "Apparently he was trying to move an embroidery machine, which we estimate to weigh in excess of 2,000 pounds," McLaughlin said. Police got the call at about 11:45 a.m., McLaughlin said. The employees had been trying to move the machine using jacks to lift it, said police spokesman Jim Collins.


Riverhead Ambulance Corps Shaken by Deaths of 2 Volunteers After Crash Into Tree

Riverhead, NY -- The deaths of two ambulance volunteers from Long Island, killed on Tuesday when the ambulance in which they were carrying a patient crashed into a tree, have torn a jagged hole through the close-knit Riverhead Volunteer Ambulance Corps.

Fellow volunteers rushed to the crash scene on Route 25 shortly after the 1:34 p.m. accident. Hours later, they were still stopping by, crying and hugging one another, as the police gathered evidence near the demolished ambulance. That night, they and their families thronged to the Osborn Avenue ambulance barn and watched mournfully, many holding hands, as a cherry picker was used to drape black bunting over the front of the building.

They spent yesterday there, too. "We're all together, trying to get our bearings, trying to stick close so we can support each other," Kim Wilkinson, a captain, said.

The corps, which has about 100 volunteers, responds to 2,500 calls a year. It was founded in 1978 and had never lost a member before this week, she said. The deaths of Heidi Behr, 23, and William Stone, 30, will leave an enormous gap, she added.

Hyatt employee dies after being electrocuted

Dededo,Guam, USA- A 32-year-old man died as a result of being electrocuted on Saturday. Guam Fire Department medics responded to the Hyatt Regency in Tumon after receiving a call of a possible electrocution late yesterday afternoon. GFD spokesperson Phyllis Blas says the Hyatt employee grabbed a conduit for unknown reasons. The man was found lying on the ground and was believed to have been down for about twenty minutes prior to medics transporting him to the Guam Memorial Hospital in Tamuning. Blas says CPR was given en route to the hospital, and GMH nursing supervisor Bill Toves tells KUAM News that the victim was pronounced dead about 30 minutes after arrival to the Emergency Room. The cause of death won't be made official until the autopsy is performed by medical examiner Dr. Aurelio Espinola. Authorities are not releasing the man's name pending notification of his family. Representatives from the Hyatt did not return our request for comment.


One killed and one injured in industrial accident

Adel, Ga. - One man was killed and another injured Tuesday evening during the construction of a south Georgia feed mill, police said. Workers were erecting precast concrete panels when one toppled, killing one of the workers and pinning the other, police said. The $96 million feed mill was being built by Sanderson Farms, a major supplier of poultry products for consumers and restaurants. Police declined to identify the workers pending notification of relatives. The accident was being investigated by the Adel Police Department, the Cook County Sheriff's Department and the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.


Police: Two fatally shot in Garden Grove parking lot

GARDEN GROVE, Calif. - Two people were fatally shot early Saturday in the parking lot of the Korea Times in what police said appeared to be a murder-suicide. The two men were inside a parked vehicle when people walking by at around 3 a.m. reported hearing three shots coming from the vehicle, said Garden Grove police Sgt. Cole Grove. Cole said investigators suspect one of the men was a newspaper employee and shot the other victim before turning the gun on himself. Police said they believed a financial dispute was the motive for the shooting. James Bang, an attorney for the paper, said the alleged assailant was an independent contractor who delivered papers for the Korea Times, and that the victim was his employee. Korea Times Orange County bureau editor Tae Gi Moon identified the private contractor as Suk Joo Choe of Garden Grove, according to the Orange County Register. Choe runs the Orange Delivery Service and has delivered newspapers for the Korea Times for seven years, the newspaper reported. The independent contractor sustained a gunshot wound and was still alive when police found him. He was rushed by emergency crews to University of California, Irvine Medical Center, where he later died. The employee was found dead at the scene.


Steel worker dies in accident

Roanoke,VA- Christopher Hemstock was working on an overhead bridge crane, but no details about the accident were available. A Roanoke Electric Steel employee died Saturday afternoon in an accident at the plant. Christopher Hemstock, 35, of Venton, was conducting routine maintenance on an overhead bridge crane when the accident occurred shortly before 1:50 p.m., Roanoke Electric Steel spokesman John Lambert said in a news release. A company emergency medical technician and Roanoke Fire-EMS tried to revive Hemstock, but he was pronounced dead at 2:45 p.m., the release said.


Wheatland worker dies in tractor flip

Marysville,CA- A Wheatland man died Saturday after a farm tractor rolled on top of him near Wheatland, according to the California Highway Patrol. Before the accident, Jamie Enrique Cecena Estrada, 35, was driving southbound along Oakley Lane near Dairy Road at an unknown speed at about 7:30 a.m. According to a preliminary investigation, Estrada was an employee of the Whitney Warren Ranch, said Sgt. Scott Klocker. For unknown reasons, Estrada's right side tires went off the right shoulder of the road. The tractor continued down into a ditch and flipped atop Estrada, pinning him, according to Klocker.


2nd man dies after manure accident

ANDOVER, Iowa — The young farmhand who tried to rescue a Clinton County farmer overcome by manure pit gases has died, too. Justin P. Faur, 23, of Teeds Grove, died Saturday at University Hospitals in Iowa City, more than a week after the April 20 death of cattle farmer Dwight Johnson, 52, of Andover. Faur called the 911 emergency phone number and then jumped into an underground manure pit April 16 to rescue Johnson, who neighbors believe went in to retrieve a chain before it got wrapped up in a pump on the Andover farm.Steel plant employee died of electrocution.


A worker was critically injured Monday afternoon after being pinned by large granite slabs at a business in the city’s Westfield section.

MIDDLETOWN -- Emergency personnel were called out at approximately 2:02 p.m. to Ferazzoli Imports of New England in the Galleria Design Center at 234 Middle St., according to reports. Middletown Police were called out to investigate the industrial accident in which an employee was injured by large pieces of granite. A 42-year-old male employee was working in a container outside, and he was moving out a bundle of granite slabs, Middletown Police Capt. Christopher Barrow, detective division commander, said. At that time, a bundle of granite slabs slipped and fell, pinning the worker the worker across the chest, Barrow said.


Worker crushed to death in N. Bellport

Long Island, NY- A mold weighing close to 1,000 pounds fell from a forklift yesterday and killed a worker at a North Bellport cement products company, Suffolk County police said. "This is just a tragic accident," homicide squad Lt. Jack Fitzpatrick said. Fitzpatrick said the worker was one of five employees at the Corinthian Cast Stone company on Station Road at 1:45 p.m. when the mold fell, crushing him. He was pronounced dead at the scene. His body was taken to the Suffolk County medical examiner's office.


Boxes crush worker, Man dies at recycling plant

ORANGE CITY, FL -- A 35-year-old man died Tuesday afternoon at a landfill when a bale of cardboard and paper fell off a forklift and crushed him, officials said. Pascual Hernandez was on break eating lunch in the recycling center of GEL Corp. when the bundle toppled over, Orange City spokeswoman Linda White said. The bale weighed between 1,600 and 2,000 pounds, she said.


Valley farm worker killed by falling hay bales

Phoenix,AZ- A farm worker was killed Tuesday near Tonopah when one-ton bales of hay being unloaded from a truck fell and crushed him, authorities said. The accident occurred at an alfalfa field near 387th and Orangewoods avenues in the far west Valley, said Lt. Joe Blake, a spokesman for the Tonopah Valley Fire District.


Regions cited in scalding, State finds three violations in hospital technician's death

ST Paul, MN- A walk-in washer that fatally scalded an employee of Regions Hospital last fall violated three safety standards, according to Minnesota's workplace safety agency. The washer should have had an escape route or panic bar, should have had an accessible off switch, and shouldn't have been able to activate while a worker was trapped inside, according to citations issued by the state's Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The agency fined Regions $75,000 for the three "serious" violations, which were made public Monday. Regions has appealed the citations and the fine. The amount represents $25,000 for each violation, the minimum allowed for serious citations directly resulting from a work-related fatality. It is among the largest fines the agency has issued in recent years. Minnesota OSHA will now try to negotiate a settlement with the hospital, said spokesman James Honerman. If that fails, the agency will give the results of the investigation to the attorney general's office for further action, he said. The investigation started after a Nov. 4, 2004 accident in which Tracy Kraling, 31, became trapped in the washer while it was running. The research technician was working alone.


Gruesome end for man killed in wood chipper

New Windso, NY – An immigrant from Guatemala working for a tree-cutting service was sucked into a wood chipper and killed yesterday.

Police identified the victim as Julio Hernandez, 42, of Highland Mills, an employee of Timber Care Tree Service, based in Campbell Hall.

Supervisor George Meyers said the owner of the tree service and Hernandez were clearing land behind the home. The owner was up in a tree chopping off limbs and dropping them to Hernandez below, who was putting them into a commercial wood chipper.

When the owner heard the wood chipper stop operating, he climbed down to investigate. He found a gruesome scene – one of Hernandez's hands was sticking out of the machine.

"His whole body got stuck in the machine," Meyers said.


Worker Found Dead At Washington Oil Refinery

BELLINGHAM, Wash. -- A maintenance worker was found dead inside a tower at the BP oil refinery near Ferndale in Northwest Washington. A spokesman says the man had been pressure washing, and the body was found by another worker about midnight. The victim is identified as 58-year-old Nick Karuza of Blaine. He was an employee of Cascade Refinery Services. The cause of death is not immediately available. The Whatcom County sheriff and medical examiner offices and the state Department of Labor and Industries are investigating.


Pizza driver beaten to death while delivering pizza

LONDON, Ky. - A Magoffin County man has been charged with killing a pizza deliveryman by beating him with a baseball bat.

Police said Christopher Neal Wages, 25, attacked Gregory W. Rowe Tuesday night as Rowe was bringing a pizza to a camper in the community of Pittsburg, north of London in Laurel County. Rowe, 36, of London, was a driver for Papa John's Pizza in London.

Wages, of Salyersville, was charged Wednesday morning with murder and robbery.

Rowe died at the scene around 10 p.m. Tuesday as a result of the beating, said Det. Johnny Phelps of the Laurel County Sheriff's Office.

Phelps said Wages attacked Rowe to rob him.


One dead, one critical after shooting on Harwin

Houston,TX- A southwest Houston banquet hall was the scene of a deadly shooting overnight. It happened in the 6600 block of Harwin. Two employees went to the Pavillion to drop some equipment off at 11 p.m. Tuesday. When they went inside, they found two fellow employees had been shot. One of the victims had been shot twice in the back and was dead. The other employee suffered a gunshot wound to the eye and was taken to the hospital in critical condition. Police are questioning the owner and some other employees to determine more about who might have shot the two people, and why.


I-80 tire repair turns deadly - Freak accident kills local man

Grass Valley, CA- A Grass Valley tire technician died this week when a big-rig tire exploded while he was installing it along Interstate 80. Les Schwab Tire Center employee Richard Riley, 24, had been called out Monday morning to replace the tire on a truck that had a flat on Interstate 80, near Gold Run. Riley was killed on impact, according to the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration.


Man killed in welding accident

UXBRIDGE, MA -- A 21-year-old Whitinsville man is dead after a welding accident inside a tanker truck yesterday, police said. George Couillard was pronounced dead at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, where he was taken by medical helicopter for his injuries, Uxbridge Police Chief Scott Freitas said. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is now investigating, Freitas said. Couillard was working in a tanker truck at Allen W. Welding on North Main Street when something went wrong shortly after 1:30 p.m., Freitas said. He believes the accident may have been caused by pressure, not a fire explosion. Firefighters had to cut out a spot on the side to remove Couillard, Freitas said. No further information was available last night.


Window washer's death ruled accident

NY- A man washing windows at a Dauphin County office building lost his footing and accidentally hanged himself with his safety harness, authorities said. Bernard Johnson, 53, of Franklin Avenue, Susquehanna Twp., died after a safety rope wrapped around his neck Monday morning, leaving him dangling from the side of the Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania building, authorities said. His coworkers lowered him to the ground.


Man kills co-worker, self in office building

Denton,TX- Police investigating a murder-suicide at an oil-equipment company said Friday they still don't know why a patent lawyer decided to kill a co-worker and then himself. Police identified the gunman Friday as Jackie Lee Duke, 52, of Houston. He was working for Cameron, a division of Cooper Cameron, on contract as a patent lawyer. He had once been a full-time employee of the company that makes equipment for oil exploration. The victim was identified as Michael Paul Hartmann, 54, of Ingleside, near Corpus Christi. Hartmann, also a patent lawyer, was a full-time employee of Cameron, police said.


Two Suspects Arrested in Murder of Liquor Store Owner

Los Angeles, CA -- The Los Angeles Police Department's Newton Homicide detectives arrested two men yesterday, April 26, 2005, in connection with the robbery-murder of Sang Yum Kim at the Kimbo Liquor Store.

The arrests were made after a tip to police led them to Larry Stewart, 45, and Amfryan Swasey, 57, both residents of Los Angeles. A search warrant at one suspect's residence resulted in the seizure of evidence that tied the suspect to the victim. Both suspects were booked for murder.

Police officers answering a radio call on April 24, 2005, had found the victim in his store at 1:30 p.m. He had been working alone. While it was initially reported that the victim had been shot, the coroner's autopsy showed the victim had died from blunt force trauma over his body. The victim sustained no gunshot wounds. The victim's gray Dodge van was stolen from the liquor store and found the next day by police in South Los Angeles.


Minnesotans react to shooting death of St. Paul officer

St. Paul, MN - Minnesotans react to the fatal shooting of St. Paul police Sgt. Gerald Vick, a decorated officer who was killed early Friday: "This is a grim day. It's a day that the lights of one of the great heroes have gone out." St. Paul police Chief John Harrington.


Authorities investigate fatal train-cement truck accident

WOODBINE, Iowa -- Harrison County authorities are investigating a fatal cement truck and train crash that left the truck driver dead and a railroad employee with minor injuries. 74-year-old Wilfred Buter, of Dunlap, was driving the cement truck and was killed in the accident, which happened about 11:50 a.m. today (Friday) about three miles northeast of Woodbine. That's according to Harrison County Sheriff Terry Baxter. Baxter says a southbound Union Pacific train struck the cement truck Buter was driving as it crossed the railroad trucks. Buter was pronounced dead at the scene. A railroad employee who was in the cab of the train at the time of the crash and was transported to Missouri Valley Hospital and was treated for minor injures.


Man crushed by machinery at Gresham brickyard

GRESHAM, OR -- William Dee Lanus, a maintenance worker, is killed while checking repairs at Mutual Materials Co. A 55-year-old Cornelius man was killed Thursday morning at a Gresham brickyard when his head was crushed by a piece of machinery, officials said. William Dee Lanus, a maintenance worker at Mutual Materials Co., was pronounced dead shortly after 8 a.m. at the plant at 2300 Hogan Road. Lanus was underneath a platform where most of the moving parts for a brick-moving machine were located, said Rob Boggs, chief deputy medical examiner for Multnomah County. He was checking a previously repaired part of the machine when the accident occurred.


Berrien County farmer killed by tractor

Berrien County, MI - An elderly farmer is dead after his tractor rolled on top of him. The Berrien County sheriff tells NewsCenter 16, the victim is 82-year-old Herman Klug. He was apparently working on his tractor off Bailey Road in Eau Claire. Police say the tractor rolled back on him and pinned him underneath. He was found at least an hour later and pronounced dead at the scene.


Worker dies as pond water surges through storm drain system

CHARLOTTE COUNTY, FL -- A man working in an underground drainage system was killed Friday when a piece of safety equipment failed, allowing thousands of gallons of water to rush into the pipe and trap him. After an hourlong search through a maze of muddy, debris-filled pipes, rescuers recovered the body of Carmen Villafuerte, 33, of DeSoto County.


Station manager died of gunshot wounds

Salem, OR- A man whose body was found Thursday morning at a Lancaster Drive gas station died of gunshot wounds to the head, the Marion County District Attorney's Office said Friday. The victim, Howard Edward Culver, 56, of Aumsville, was the manager of the 76 station at 102 Lancaster Drive NE. Culver's slaying was the first reported homicide in Salem this year. The station remained closed Friday afternoon, crime-scene tape still wrapped around the gas pumps with a second layer of tape around the perimeter of the lot.


Construction worker killed in accident

NC- A 40-year-old construction worker was killed Thursday morning in an accident at old Suffolk High School, now being renovated to house the $21 million Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts. Robert Simon of Jarvisburg, N.C., died from injuries suffered in a 35-foot fall from scaffolding attached to the rear of the building at Saratoga and Clay streets downtown, according to Lt. D. J. George of the Suffolk Police.


Highway worker killed in Charles County

Gaithersburg, MD- A Maryland State Highway Administration contractor was killed Thursday morning when she was struck and killed by two motorists on Route 5 in Bryantown. Maryland State Police said Jennifer M. Martz, 31, of Boonsboro was hit once by a sport-utility vehicle as she was removing a construction sign from the northbound lanes and struck again by a car as she was lying in the roadway.


Clerk killed in city robbery

Richmond, VA-Richmond police are looking for two males they believe fatally shot a clerk during a robbery last night at a service station on Brook Road. Details were sketchy, but police said a 53-year-old employee of the Exxon station in the 5000 block of Brook Road was found shot to death about 11:45 p.m. He was identified this morning as Robert Lamont Rush, of Richmond.


Two employees of N.C.-based contractor killed in Iraq blast

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two American security contractors were killed after two explosives-laden cars plowed into a security convoy in the heart of Baghdad, their North Carolina-based employer said Sunday. The attack came a day before Iraq's parliament approved six Cabinet nominees, taking the country a step closer to completing its first democratically elected government. The Saturday explosion killed at least 22 people, leaving a busy traffic circle strewn with burning vehicles and mutilated bodies. Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the group detonated a booby-trapped car as a "convoy of CIA passed." The claim in a statement posted on an Islamic Web site couldn't be verified. The U.S. Embassy said two suicide car bombers were involved in the attack in Tahrir Square, which also injured at least 36 Iraqis, including children from two nearby schools, three Americans, an Australian and an Icelander. The two dead Americans were employed by CTU Consulting, a Fayetteville, N.C.,-based security consulting firm. Another North Carolina firm, Blackwater Security of Moyock, also employs security contractors in Iraq. CTU issued a statement identifying the victims as Brandon Thomas and Todd Venette, but did not say where they were from in the United States.


NAPA Road worker dies in roller accident

Napa, CA-- A 20-year-old street construction worker was killed Saturday in Napa when he was run over by a resurfacing vehicle. Police said Christopher David Meeks of Escalon (San Joaquin County) had been working on a resurfacing project at Foothill Boulevard and Elm Street at 9:15 a.m. when a fellow worker driving a rubber-wheeled roller ran over him. The victim, an employee of Western State Surfacing in Modesto, sustained major upper body injuries.



Trucker killed while loading posts

WHITEHALL, MT - A bundle of wooden fence posts fell from a semitrailer, killing a North Dakota man who was loading his truck at a post and pole plant west of here, Jefferson County authorities said Wednesday.

Arthur A. Rabe, 52, of Dickinson, N.D., was struck by the posts Tuesday morning and died at the scene, said Deputy Sheriff Topper Giono.


Man Charged in Rancher's Death

Hidalgo County, TX -- A man who said he was shooting at stray cats has been charged with manslaughter in the death of a man shot while herding his sheep and goats.

Benito Casarez of Monte Christo surrendered to police after his attorneys learned a warrant had been issued for his arrest.

Hidalgo County deputies found the body of Miguel Arcangel Garcia, 71, late Sunday afternoon. Deputies found a weapon on Casarez and confiscated it, telling him to come to the Sheriff's Department to reclaim it.


Clerk is killed in heist at store

FORT WORTH, TX - Syed Karim often took little surprises home from work for his 1-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son, a co-worker said.

Thursday morning, Karim didn't make it home.

He was fatally shot late Wednesday by one of two masked robbers at Terry's Food Mart in far south Fort Worth.

"There was no apparent reason, other than he may not have had as much money as they wanted," homicide Sgt. J.D. Thornton said.

Karim, a Euless father of two, was working in the store at 5500 Hemphill St. about 10:40 p.m. when two men approached and demanded money. He "had complied with the demand and even removed the till from the cash register and placed it on the couClerk is killed in heist at storenter," Thornton said.

But the robbers wanted more, police said. Karim was shot in the abdomen after telling the robbers he had no more.


Man killed by beam at construction site

ROANOKE, TX -- A 23-year-old man died Wednesday when a falling beam struck him in the head at a construction site, officials said. Felipe Yescas of Dallas was helping build the framework on a recreation center in the 500 block of Roanoke Road when the beam came loose about 1:45 p.m., police said. Paramedics were unable to revive him. Preliminary investigation indicates his death was an accident, but representatives of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration are looking into the matter. The Durango, Mexico, native is survived by a son, who lives with Yescas' mother and sister.


Officer and suspect killed in Atlanta shootout

ATLANTA, GA — An Atlanta narcotics officer and a suspect were killed during a shootout in southwest Atlanta Saturday night, police said.

Officer Mark Cross, 31, died from a gunshot wound to the head, said Atlanta police Sgt. John Quigley.

Cross and two other members of the city’s Red Dog unit, which focuses primarily on narcotics activity, pulled over a car on Lexington Avenue, and as Cross approached the car, the 19-year-old driver, Brandon Williams, began shooting, Quigley said.


Denver Police Detective Shot, Killed

DENVER, CO -- A decorated Denver police officer was shot and killed early Sunday morning. The incident happened while Detective Donald R. Young was working in an off-duty capacity.

Police described the suspect as being Hispanic with very short hair, a thin moustache, "lightly heavy set wearing white shirt with sleeves down to the elbows and either Kaki or light brown pants," between 5-foot-6 and 5-foot-10 and "possibly in his mid 20s."

The incident happened at about 1 a.m. at 1733 W. Mississippi at a hall that is rented out for private functions called Solano Ocampo.

According to police, Young and another officer who was also working off-duty were monitoring a crowd of people when the suspect fired at them from behind. Neither officer was able to return fire, and two other officer nearby ran to the scene and saw a "male suspect fleeing the area armed with what appeared to be a weapon."


Worker trapped in Portage hopper, dies

PORTAGE, IN – A worker died Friday after he was trapped in a hopper he was cleaning at Beta Steel, fire officials said.

Portage fire officials did not immediately release the name of the 45-year-old man, who was a subcontractor for Eagle Service Corp.

Portage Assistant Fire Chief Ray Blazek said the man was inside the 30-foot-tall hopper cleaning it when he was partially buried in fine, dustlike material that was stirred up inside.


Window Washer, 68, Falls to Death as His Harness Snaps 9 Stories Up

A window washer whose harness gave way nine stories above a Midtown Manhattan sidewalk tumbled to his death yesterday morning from the window of a residential building.

The police identified the man as Joel Gillum, 68, and said he died later at a Manhattan hospital.

Witnesses said the accident occurred about 10:15 a.m., shortly after the man had climbed out of a ninth-story window at 430 East 57th Street in Sutton Place. As he leaned back to clean the window panes, they said, his leather straps snapped, causing him to plunge backward. Paramedics arrived about four minutes later and tried to revive the victim, who appeared to be dead, witnesses said.

Labels: taxi drivers, Weekly Toll

Until relatively recently, the words "Los Angeles" and "labor's clout" never appeared near each other in the same article. The growth of Los Angeles as a labor stronghold over recent years was largely due to Miguel Conteras, head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, who died Friday of a heart attack at age 52.

As head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, an association of 345 local unions, Contreras built a formidable coalition, in part by pulling diverse unions together through strikes and contract campaigns.

Actors walked picket lines with supermarket strikers, janitors supported locked-out port workers at rallies, and Los Angeles politicians courted union workers largely because of behind-the-scenes work by Contreras.

"The Los Angeles labor movement, like labor movements everywhere in the country, was waning in power and visibility," said labor writer and friend Harold Meyerson. "Miguel managed to turn that around by harnessing the rise of immigrant labor. And by so doing he changed the politics of Los Angeles."

This is just another addition to the rest of the depressing news surrounding the labor movement of late. Contreras was a labor leader who grew up in the fields of California, became active in the United Farmworkers with Cesar Chavez and worked to build strong labor coalitions that managed to win a living wage ordinance in Los Angeles, substantial wage increases for workers and helped defeat a state initative aimed at destrying labor's political clout.

With all of the political gamesmanship going on among the unions in Washington D.C., it was people like Migues Contreras that helped remind me that the labor movement exists not to sustain unions, but to help workers. He will be missed.

Update: More here.

And this from Harold Meyerson in the Washington Post:

Chiefly by mobilizing the city's immigrant workforce, Contreras transformed L.A. into a liberal stronghold in which the labor movement is a dominant force. In a city whose deepest belief is in the makeover, Contreras was the ultimate nip-and-tuck man, remolding the onetime home of the open shop into a city where workers have some real political power.


***

Over the years, hundreds, and at times thousands, of union activists flooded into congressional, legislative and council districts, electing liberals in Democratic primaries and Democrats of all stripes in the swing districts on the county's peripheries. Such long-established Republican bastions as Pasadena began electing Democrats. By 2000 L.A. County -- home to 30 percent of California voters -- voted for Al Gore and Dianne Feinstein at the identical percentage that the San Francisco Bay Area did. Ultimately, it was demographics that were driving California's transformation from the home of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan to the bluest of blue states. But by making the new-model labor movement the vehicle of mobilization for the state's new Latino voters, Contreras put that transformation on fast-forward.

The politics wasn't an end in itself. During their epochal strike in 2000, the city's janitors were accompanied at every demonstration, and even at the bargaining table, by elected officials cheering them on. The fact that the strike had been preceded by a primary election in which labor had ousted Marty Martinez, a lackluster Democratic congressman, in favor of pro-labor firebrand Hilda Solis had not been lost on L.A.'s political class. Similarly, the unionization of 74,000 Los Angeles home care workers in 1999 resulted from the election of public officials willing to write ordinances enabling those workers to organize. And the living-wage ordinances enacted by cities throughout Southern California are the direct consequence of labor's newfound clout.

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Labels: AFL-CIO

Political Animal Kevin Drum understands why unions are important -- and why Republicans and the corporate crowd hate them so much. (Hint: it's not because they're weak and corrupt.)

But the right wing never rests, and for any of my liberal readers who harbor suspicion of labor unions as an "old" liberal cause — just another one of those special interest groups that Democrats are always pandering to — ask yourself this: why are conservatives so hellbent on breaking them? Why did Ronald Reagan fire those air traffic controllers in 1981? Why did George Bush make union busting a key issue in the 2002 midterm election? Why the relentless opposition to using card checks to organize workers in new industries? Why the continuing demonization of unions from a party that's otherwise so conscientious about building its appeal to the working and middle classes?

It's because unions are the only truly effective check on the sine qua non of modern conservatism: corporate power. For all their faults — and they have plenty, just as corporations do — unions are the only organizations that have the power to bargain effectively for the interests of the middle class. Union power in the private sector began to wane in the 1970s, and it's not a coincidence that this was exactly the same time that middle class wages began to stagnate, CEO pay began to skyrocket, and income inequality began increasing inexorably.

Many liberals seem to believe that these grim trends can be fought with tax and regulatory policy, but those are blunt instruments with plenty of drawbacks and unforeseen consequences. Collective bargaining, which is essentially a market based approach in which the government's job is simply to make sure that unions have enough authority to ensure serious bargaining and then get out of the way, is far more reliable, effective, and flexible. It actually works, which is why conservatives have always hated unions so bitterly.

Hat tip to Susie for the link.

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A few days ago I wrote about a new federal program that was using violations of environmental and other laws to generate huge fines and jail terms against employers whose willful violation of OSHA regulations ended in the death of a worker. Laws other than the Occupational Safety and Health Act had to be used because the OSHAct itself doesn't allow for large enough penalties to deter serious and willful violations of OSHA standards.

But the question I asked at the end of that review was

Where does this leave the guys crushed in collapsing trenches or who fall two stories from an unsafe scaffold -- and no environmental law as violated? OSHA handed down 446 willful citations in Fiscal Year 2004 (compared with 607 in FY 1999). It is unclear how many of those involved the death or serious injury of a worker, but the handful of cases that OSHA is able to prosecute with the assistance of the EPA or Postal Service will mostly likely not apply to more than a small handful of these.

This is one of those stories, covered in an excellent article in the Staten Island Advance:


Lorenzo Pavia was buried alive in a West Brighton trench collapse 16 months ago. His oldest son is now head of the family:

Jesus was saddled with one intractable burden: facing the reality that the gruesome death of his father -- a 39-year-old Mexican worker who was buried under thousands of pounds of earth when a deep trench caved in because it was unshored -- will not automatically lead to jail time or a multi-million dollar settlement.

"My father never wanted to go in," said Jesus of the trenches that were a common part of his father's job for Formica Construction. Polite and soft-spoken, Jesus' eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched as he recalled the evenings his father would return from work complaining. "If they don't do the job, they don't get out of work. So what's my father gonna do?"

For Jesus, justice will likely amount to little more than $550 paid to his mother, Paula Pavia, every 15 days in workers' compensation. The yearly sum of $13,383 will come until she remarries or passes away.

An investigation by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration revealed that Ken Formica, the site supervisor and Pavia's employer, made a conscious decision to violate the safety standard that all trenches deeper than five feet must be shored or sloped.

"It was my mistake," Formica told OSHA in his deposition, two months after the accident.

Yet the company was fined just $14,000, about $3,000 less than what the city fines firms for posting signs without a permit.

The City of New York, as well as OSHA are increasing the amount of outreach and training they are doing to try to prevent trench collapses. But there are problems:

Experts say the agency lacks the manpower to widely enforce its rules. This is a problem since small construction firms trying to cut costs will often choose time over safety, they add.

For instance, the simplest, quickest type of shoring is a box that can be dropped into an open pit known as a trenchbox, said Jordan Barab, an ex-official with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration who writes extensively about the issue on his worker safety Web log.

But when there are multiple utility lines, as there were in the trench that killed Pavia, shoring becomes a much more painstaking, time-consuming process, said Barab. Workers need to install separate braces as they dig further down.

"There are a lot of little construction companies around, everyone's trying to underbid everyone else, time is money," he said. "Everyone thinks maybe my luck will hold out this time."

Ken Formica may have been relying on luck on a cold December afternoon in 2003, when he and his men set about hooking up a sewer main for new townhouses at the corner of Taylor Street and DeGroot Place. Lorenzo Pavia and a second man, John Paci, then 66, descended a 15-foot trench that was muddy at the bottom from heavy rain and snow that fell just two days before.

In his OSHA deposition, Formica said he often chose Pavia for trench work because he was "my most skilled." When asked what his policy was for excavation safety, he told the investigator, "Make it safe. Make a safe hole."

But when pressed for details, he revealed that his company had no written safety and health program, and that he lacked basic knowledge required to ensure a safe trench, such as soil types.

At about 3 p.m., the workers were done, and Formica, watching his men from the driver's seat of an excavator, told them to come out of the hole.

"They were walking towards the ladder, and that's when it collapsed," he told OSHA.

Horrified at seeing Pavia swallowed entirely by earth, Formica grabbed the wheel of the excavator. But instead of scooping out Pavia, the backhoe decapitated him. The autopsy showed that by that time, Pavia had already been asphyxiated.

Pavia's is not, of course, an isolated case:

The percentage of construction fatalities in which the victim was Hispanic more than doubled between 1993 and 2003, to 23 percent from 11 percent, according to the U.S. Dept. of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"There's all these safety rules and regulations, and they're never followed," said Jeffrey Manheimer, a Manhattan-based personal injury lawyer who specializes in workplace injury cases among day laborers.

Citing the statistic that most fatalities happen on non-union job sites, he added that the workers "certainly don't have the clout to complain about any conditions."

Staten Island hosts its share of Mexican workplace tragedies. In September, 2003, Port Richmond resident Pedro Munoz de Leon was crushed and killed by the boom of a crane that snapped off, as he was working on dry dock in West Brighton. Not long before that, Librado Velasquez, a 44-year-old worker from Port Richmond, had his right arm and leg crushed in a forklift accident while working in New Jersey.

Lorenzo Pavia died in a notorious type of construction accident, a trench cave-in. In 2003, 15 of the country's 48 trench cave-in fatalities, or 31 percent, were Hispanic, according to BLS data. OSHA's analysis of internal investigations puts the percentage even higher, at 44.

Experts say trench cave-ins happen in part because people underestimate the soil's speed and power.

"It's like a car falling on you," said Scott Schneider, director of occupational safety and health for the Labors' Health and Safety Fund of North America. "It can collapse in about half a second. You don't have time to get out."

Finally, I want to extend some much deserved praise to the journalist who wrote this article, Heidi Shrager of the Staten Island Advance. You all know that one of my pet peeves is preventable trench collapses -- and the other is journalists who write short formulaic articles about workplace deaths that leave the impression that these "accidents" are somehow surprising, unexpected and just plain bad luck.

Those few journalists who take the time to talk to people and do the research necessary to show that most of these tragedies are preventable, and that the safeguards this society has established are not working effectively -- deserve our praise, our support and our thanks. I believe it was David Barstow's two series in the New York Times that forced the federal government to finally start looking for more creative ways to issue meaningful penalties against some employers. And if we have any hope of making more significant changes in this country,it will be journalists like Heidi Shrager writing similar stories in small papers around the country about the thousands of preventable deaths that happen every year.

Good journalism and organizing.

But with the demise of the AFL-CIO's health and safety department and total corporate/Republican control in Washington, the media may be our best hope for now.

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Labels: Immigrant Workers, Journalism, Trench Hazards

Cal/OSHA handed down citations today in the November 2004 explosion at a Walnut Creek pipeline project that killed five workers and injured four others. Killed in the explosion were Tae Chin Im, 47, Javier Ramos, 36, Israel Hernandez, 36, Miguel Reyes, 43, and Victor Rodriguez, 26.

Four firms were cited.

• Kinder-Morgan received two serious willful citations and a $140,000 fine, the maximum that Cal/OSHA is able to issue for willful citation.
• Carollo Engineers, the firm that designed the route for the water main that was being built at the time of the explosion, received one serious citation for a penalty of $22,500.
• Mountain Cascade, Inc. whose backhoe operator struck the line, received one serious citation and was fined $22,500.
• The East Bay Municipal Utility District, which was overseeing the project, received one serious citation for $6750.

A separate criminal investigation into the explosion continues, as do at least three wrongful death lawsuits and one injury lawsuit in Alameda and Contra Costa Superior Courts.

According to Cal/OSHA Acting Chief Len Welsh:

The primary cause of the incident was that the location of the petroleum line was not known by the employees working in the area. Several employers failed to take required action and committed errors that contributed to the failure to determine and mark the location of the utility line.

According to the San Jose Mercury News,

In the report to be released today, investigators found Kinder Morgan failed to mark a sharp bend in the pipe. Instead, flags along South Broadway continued in a straight line as if the bend didn't exist.

Although Carollo's drawings showed the bend -- where the pipe veered to avoid the roots of a long-removed oak tree -- workers digging the trench for the water main followed the markings on the ground.

In the days after the explosion, officials at the utility district pointed to Carollo's drawings as evidence that Mountain Cascade was responsible for taking extra precautions in the area.

But shortly after 1 p.m. Nov. 9, a Mountain Cascade backhoe struck the petroleum pipe. The explosion was the country's deadliest liquid pipe disaster in two decades.

Now these are all what we (in the "safety profession" ) call these explanations the "immediate causes." Last March, however, based on a Contra Costa Times series, I summarized the incident as:

a virtual perfect storm of industrial disaster that swallowed the lives of five men and left fourteen children without fathers -- a pipeline company that had recently purchased too many aging pipelines to keep track of, a low-bid contractor with a terrible safety record and a municipal utility, unaware and unconcerned about the contractor's safety record driving the contractor to hurry and get the job done.

These are what are known as the root causes of the incident -- those causes that need to be addressed if similar incidents are to be prevented.

Mountain Cascade, Inc. was a Northern California construction firm with a terrible safety record, a company that routinely resisted investigators and intimidated employees who witnessed accidents out of talking to CalOSHA inspectors.

Kinder Morgan is the nation's largest owner of liquified fuel pipelines and had drawn a number of record-setting fines over the 21 months prior to the accident for numerous pipeline ruptures and spills.

The East Bay, meanwhile is criss-crossed with hundreds of miles of buried petroleum arteries carrying millions of gallons of toxic, highly dangerous fuel each day.

The Office of Pipeline Safety, a small unit within the Transportation Department which has authority over the nation's fuel pipelines, has only recently begun to comprehensively investigate the condition of the nation's pipelines. In the first 25,000 miles of petroleum pipelines examined, inspectors found 20,000 "integrity threats," 1,200 of which required immediate repair.

Finally, California's fire marshal's office, which oversees pipeline safety, has no enforcement authority even when it identifies violations of the law or unsafe conditions and the state government spends billions of dollars on construction projects without evaluating the safety records of the firms they hire.

As I concluded before:

What we have here is failures in multiple systems: the inability to sanction companies with unsafe workplace safety records, the inability to factor safety records into contracting systems, the inability to address serious problems of our crumbling infrastructure and the inability of government assume its most basic responsibility -- assuring the safety of its citizens.

It's the workers -- and their children -- who suffer from these failures.

Until the state(and federal) governments are able to assess much higher fines, and until the root causes are addressed -- the ability of unsafe firms to win government contracts, and the failure of state and federal agencies to provide adequate oversite -- these accidents will continue to happen.


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This is a speech given by Elisabeth Milos, an interpreter for injured workers, at a Workers Memorial Day rally at the state Capitol in Sacramento, California on April 28, 2005

I am speaking here today as an independent interpreter in the Workers Compensation system to address my concerns about Non- English speaking injured workers.

Non-english speaking workers have the right to neutral qualified interpreters yet according to an article from the the New York Times on April 21, 2005 by Nina Bernstein "People are dying because of their language." Non english speaking workers such as a construction worker, had to rely on the interpreting abilities of his 7-year-old cousin, to tell him that he needed an amputation.

"The child said, 'I'm not sure if they said foot or said toe,'" Later it was learned that it was the man's third trip to the emergency room after a construction accident that had crushed his toe weeks earlier. Unable to explain his symptoms in English, he reported, he had been handled dismissively until he returned with his big toe blackened by gangrene.

Later, after the toe was amputated, he had to rely on a patient in the next bed to translate the doctors' instructions for postoperative care.

Another patient, a newly pregnant immigrant from Mexico with life-threatening complications, doctors pressed her to sign a consent form in English for emergency surgery. Understanding that the surgery was needed "to save the baby," the young married woman awoke to learn that the operation had instead left her childless and sterile.

Typical were cases like that of a woman who had to rely on her English-speaking Korean cabdriver to translate a doctor's directions for treating her 11-year-old son, or the woman who minimized her symptoms of depression because the person translating was her 13-year-old son.

These are the dangers that non-english speaking patients in general and injured workers in particular face without the right to a neutral, qualified interpreter.

As an interpreter in the workers compensation system, I have met countless injured workers who stated that they did not have access to qualified interpreters to explain their symptoms to the insurance doctors, or to interpret the claim forms which state what body parts were injured and how the injury occurred.

In some cases, workers have complained that the insurance company has refused authorization for doctors to treat certain body parts because they were not listed as part of the original injured body part on the claim form or during the first trip to the emergency room.

Some have undergone expensive and debilitating back surgery without realizing that the possible consequences of that surgery could result in severe chronic back pain and even paralisis.

Why? Because some of the insurance claims adjusters, hospitals and/or the employers did not comply with the law and did not provide neutral, qualified interpreters for the non-engllish speaking injured workers.

In some medical legal settings, doctors try to coerce the non-english speaking worker into speaking English, however limited his english speaking skills may be, even in the presence of a neutral, qualified interpreter, because they believe that this might make it faster for them and become annoyed with the worker when they are unable to answer their questions.

In other situations, providers have been known to use their bilingual clerical staff to interpret in order to cut down on medical legal expenses.

What is a qualified interpreter?

A qualified interpreter is a language interpreter who is certified, or deemed certified according to certain government codes. A qualified interpreter has had to undergo a certain amount of training and/or have passed a written/oral State examination in order to be qualified to interpret in medical/legal settings.

What does a neutral, qualified interpreter do?

Qualified, neutral interpreters provide the Workers Compensation system with a clarity and transparency which result in less litigation that would otherwise arise out of misunderstanding due to language barriers.

Bilingual clerical staff no matter how well they may speak the language whether they are employees of the provider, the applicant’s attorney or the insurance company are not neutral, because they are not bound by the ethics of the Judicial Council. I would even go further to state that even if this staff were to become certified, if they are employees of any of the parties involved where there are financial interests derived from the rendering of interpreting services, this constitutes a conflict of interest.

Non-English speaking workers have the right to a neutral and qualified interpreter. This is a right that should be preserved.

Thanks to Steve Zeltzer for the source

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There is a nursing blog carnival going on over at Thinking Nurse. A blog carnival is kind of a one-day group blog that migrates from site to site.

The very first carnival dedicated to the ways of thinking, feeling and acting we call 'nursing', an activity of 'Head and Heart and Hand', the place where science and art meet, clash and fuse in the strange and wonderful synthesis of daily life.

Managers of health services say that they see nurses as 'valuable human resources'. These pieces of writing demonstrate that we are more than human resources, we are 'human beings', engaging on a daily basis with other human beings in a way that no other health profession can - people see nurses for the most crucial and intimate of reasons, at all stages of the lifespan, at all times of day and night. Nursing is about life and quality of life, about health and human potential, about the mutual support and solidarity of the human species.

It includes my 30 Minute Promise article about the hospital policy breaking the backs of nurses, as well as other stories by and about nurses and nursing. And they're looking for contributions for future nurse carnivals.

Check it out.
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Revere (and all of us here at Confined Space) wish Pete Seeger a very happy 86th birthday.

Mourn

AFL-CIO staff wore black to work today, and for good reason. Coming only a few days after Workers Memorial Day, 169 positions were eliminated, including half of the four-person Health and Safety Department's professional staff. Deborah Weinstock and Rob McGarrah have been given notice that their positions will no longer be funded, although it is unclear when these changes will take place. What's left of the department -- Director Peg Seminario, Bill Kojola and Toni Keightley-- will be merged into the newly-created Government Affairs Department. 52 new positions will be created at the federation.

This is a sad day for workers, for the labor movement and for all those who care about the health, safety and working conditions of American workers. Workers in this country are faced with going to work every day knowing that the government agency mandated to watch over their lives in the workplace is becoming increasingly irrelevant, the tort system (the ability of people to sue corporations that harm them) is under fierce attack, the advocates of reducing compensation for injured workers are winning in state after state, chemicals continue to pour into the workplaces that destroy workers' health with no government agency able to do anything about it, an asbestos compensation bill that promises to ensure that thousands of workers with asbestos disease don't get compensated is moving through the Senate, "new" issues like ergonomics, longer working hours, speed-ups, stress, work organization changes are being ignored -- and the only voice standing up to this mess -- or even recognizing that all is not well for the health and safety of American workers -- is being dismantled by its own family.

And as I asked before, how can working people and individual unions working alone be any match for the well funded combined power of the Chamber of Commerce, NAM, NFIB and individual industry associations who have the ability to hire high-priced attorneys, scientists – and legislators? Indeed, champagne corks must be popping in corporate suites all across America. The AFL-CIO's Health and Safety Department has been one of the only forces standing between workers' ability to come home safely at the end of ever day and complete corporate domination of workers' lives and health. And now it's gone.

So much for fighting for the living, and the dead are rolling over in their graves.



Jonathan Tasani at Working Life has more details about the AFL-CIO restructuring:

Field Moblization will be merged with the Political Department into a new department called Political Mobilization, with current Political Dept. head Karen Ackerman heading up the merged department; one of her deputies will be Mike Cavanaugh, who was the acting head of the Field Mobilization after Welch removed Marilyn Schneiderman last year. This is the area that took a huge hit. Every permanent position in the Field was defunded, except for a couple of positions working in Capital Strategies. At the management level, all deputy directors for regions were eliminated, as were all the regional coordinators.

A new region will be created--in the Southwest--to add to the other four regions. Gerry Acosta will head up the new region; Joe Alvarez, who heads up the Northeast region, is headed to a job at headquarters, with Paul Lemon being made acting director for the Northeast.

In addition, International Affairs will be folded and all the international work moved to the Solidarity Center, which will continue to be headed up by Barbara Shailor. A new department called Government Affairs will scoop up the previous departments of Legislative, Public Policy and Safety and Health. It's not clear to be at this writing what the staffing will be in those two departments but I'll pass it along ASAP. The magazine, American@Work, will be closed and public affairs will be downsized--that department was funded at $6.1 million last year so that number will likely come down some.

Related Stories

• The New AFL-CIO: Wither Safety and Health?, March 2, 2005
• Workers Memorial Day 2005, April 28, 2005

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Labels: AFL-CIO

The hazardous work that goes into putting fresh fruit, vegetables and flowers on our tables is largely hidden from the American public, as well as government officials who are supposed to be addressing the problems. Most of the workers are immigrants and are reluctant to file complaints, assuming they even know what the rules are and where to go for help. The regulatory agencies, not receiving many complaints, take not action, allowing the companies to do whatever they want. Fortunately, there are a few people – in this case, the Farmworker Association of Florida, who have stepped in to break this vicious circle by trying to make the public aware of the farmworkers' working conditions and are training workers in safe(r) pesticide application techniques.

The skin on Ciro Diaz's arms, neck and torso looks like the skin of a burn victim.

Covered with scarring pustules, redness and a maze of paper-thin wrinkles, Diaz, a 27-year-old from Miami, said the symptoms began about six months ago after he worked for a company that had him spray weed killer on plants.

The herbicide was in a container strapped to his back.

"When I crawled under trees, the chemical would come out all over my body," he said. "It felt very cold, kind of refreshing."

When his skin began burning and redness appeared, he said his supervisor told him he needed to be more careful. Diaz had to pay to go to a clinic when his skin broke out in an angry rash.

That's when he lost his job.

"When I talked to the boss man, he said it happened because I didn't take care," Diaz said. "He said, 'You're fired, so that next time you'll learn better.' "

Diaz is a farmworker in Florida, one of the thousands of mostly immigrant workers employed in vegetable farms, nurseries and citrus fields in Hendry, Collier, Dade, Volusia and Orange counties.

Diaz’s case is typical of problems identified by the Farmworker Association of Florida which recently made public its health assessment of dangerous violations on farm and nursery sites in South Florida.

They found 123 violations ranging from a lack of required warning signs that pesticides had been sprayed to actual spraying of dangerous chemicals directly behind a worker.

***

Most troubling, the association said, is the ongoing misuse of pesticides near untrained farmworkers by companies that violate state regulations.

They are trying to make the public aware of the problems faced by Florida farmworkers and also train farmworkers in proper pesticide handling techniques.

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Giant to Lay Off 500 Workers


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We get mail. (Excerpted from the comments):

Home Depot is killing my husband! Their policy is "Do whatever it takes to get the job done" and when you're hurt and can't lift more than 10# they say "The customer doesn't want to hear that you can't lift that." When you file a workers comp claim, they file it as an incident report with no medical attention required so that it gets filed with the insurance carrier and no claim is ever started. My husband was lifting a 250# bronze gazebo with a wimppy lot attendant and the kid dropped his end, the weight on my husband's end ruptures 3 neck vertabra and Home Depot is lying about the incident so that he can't get workers comp. I would like to right this injustice.

I have written before that if you expect to die in the workplace, you’ll have more assurance that your killers will receive the appropriate punishment if you take a few fish and crabs with you. That’s because penalties -- monetary and potential jail time -- for violation of environmental laws are far stiffer than penalties for willfully violating the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHAct) -- even when it leads to the death of a worker.

Writing in the New York Times, David Barstow and Lowell Bergman, authors of the 2003 NY Times/Frontline Pulitzer-winning series on the crimes of the McWane corporation, identify the increased use of laws other than the OSHAct to bring large fines and long jail terms down upon employers who have killed workers.

This little noticed, but much welcomed policy change of the Bush administration seeks to address the problem of low OSHA penalties even for willful – knowing – violations of the law that result in the death of workers. The initiative involves cooperation between OSHA, EPA, the Department of Justice and other agencies:

The initiative does not entail new legislation or regulation. Instead, it seeks to marshal a spectrum of existing laws that carry considerably stiffer penalties than those governing workplace safety alone. They include environmental laws, criminal statutes more commonly used in racketeering and white collar crime cases, and even some provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley act, a corporate reform law.

The article notes the large environmental fine against a Delaware, Motiva refinery (that dissolved a worker in sulphuric acid while killing large numbers of fish and crabs.) Confined Space has also noted the large potential clean air act fines and jail sentences against W.R. Grace for exposing workers and the entire community to asbestos, and the Workers Memorial Day article included a short mention of large fines and potential jail sentences for mail fraud in a case where a worker was killed while working construction on a building under contract with the U.S. Postal Service. In that case, a Brooklyn contractor lied to the Postal Service (through the mail) about what it was paying its workers, thereby committing mail fraud which carries a possible 20 year jail term. The longest possible jail sentence for willful violation of an OSHA standard that results in the death of a workeris 6 months.

The initiative is clearly a response to the pressure generated from the two 2003 New York Times series that noted how the McWane corporation got away with corporate murder for years without any significant penalties, and the second series that focused on OSHA’s historical statutory inability (combined with political reluctance) to prosecute employers who deliberately ignored the law and killed employees. The Times series

described a bureaucracy in which aggressive enforcement was thwarted at every level. But as the series also demonstrated, OSHA’s reluctance to seek prosecution had also been fed by an assumption inside the agency that federal prosecutors have little interest in cases that have rarely resulted in prison sentences.

That assumption was correct -- if prosecutors focus exclusively on the OSHAct. In fact, of the 170,000 workplace deaths since 1982, the Times series found that only 16 convictions involving jail time had resulted—although 1,242 cases involving work deaths were determined by OSHA to involve “willful” violations by employers.

But despite the weaknesses in OSHA’s legislation,

All federal environmental crimes carry potential prison sentences, including up to 15 years for knowingly endangering workers. And unlike OSHA, the EPA has some 200 criminal investigators with extensive experience building cases for federal prosecutors. In 2001 alone, the agency obtained prison sentences totaling 256 years.

In addition, the Justice Department has 40 prosecutors in its environmental crimes section, compared to only one who focuses on workplace safety crimes.

This whole story has a bit of a “man-bites-dog" flavor to it:

The effort is noteworthy in an administration that has generally resisted efforts to increase penalties for safety and environmental violations It has declined to support such steps as making it a felony for employers to commit willful safety violations that cause a worker’s death. Such violations are currently misdemeanors, punishable by up to six month in jail. Instead, the administration has emphasized a more collaborative approach, offering companies increased technical assistance, for instance, on how to comply with new regulations.

But despite the success of this program in several cases, the administration has been reluctant to publicize its efforts. It cancelled a press conference to announce the program, demoted it from a “Worker Endangerment Initiative” to a “policy decision,” and neither acting OSHA Assistant Secretary Jonathan Snare, nor DOL’s head attorney, Solicitor Howard Radzely would speak to the Times about the program.

For those of who frequent (and write) Confined Space, these developments are welcome and encouraging, but ultimately barely even half a loaf. First, the Administration’s reluctance to publicize the program indicates that they’re rather intimidated by backlash from their corporate friends. One wonders about the longevity of the program if significant corporate resistance develops. One also wonders about how effective the program's deterrent value will be if it's not widely publicized.

Finally, while I certainly welcome the large fines and jail sentences in the cases mentioned, these will only apply when investigators can identify other laws – environmental, mail fraud, securities, etc – that have been violated. Where does this leave the guys crushed in collapsing trenches or who fall two stories from an unsafe scaffold -- and no environmental law as violated? OSHA handed down 446 willful citations in Fiscal Year 2004 (compared with 607 in FY 1999). It is unclear how many of those involved the death or serious injury of a worker, but the handful of cases that OSHA is able to prosecute with the assistance of the EPA or Postal Service will mostly likely not apply to more than a small handful of these.

The only answer here is to pass legislation that strengthens OSHA’s ability to impose large fines and jail sentences even where no environmental or securities law has been violated -– penalties that will actually create some real deterrence for employers who would seek to cut a few corners and save a few bucks on the lives of their employees.

Congressman Major Owens (D-NY), along with Senators Jon Corzine (D-NJ) and Ted Kennedy (D-MA) have introduced the "Protecting America’s Workers Act of 2005" (S 947) and the "Workplace Wrongful Death Accountability Act", which increase the penalties that OSHA is able to impose. Until this administration – and Congress – get serious about workplace killing by passing these bills, workers in this country will remain dependent on momentum generated by the few reporters like David Barstow and Lowell Bergman who take the time to do the research and describe the tragedies that too many workers still face and that too many employers still get away with.

Until then, the main message heard by employers may be “Try not to kill your workers, but for God’s sake, protect those fish!”


Related Stories

• Of Fish and Men, Corporate Penalties And The Law, March 19, 2005
• W.R. Grace Execs Indicted For Asbestos Coverup, February 8, 2005
• "You done killed my boy!" December 21, 2003

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Labels: Criminal Prosecution

You may be familiar with the ongoing "scandal" involving Congressman Roger Wicker's (R-MS)successful effort to stop OSHA from enforcing annual fit testing of respirators for workers exposed to tuberculosis. Well, the chickens may be coming home to roost -- in the form of infected workers. One state, at least, is doing something about it.

OSHA's respirator standard require annual fit-test of all workers who must wear respirators to protect themselves from air-borne contaminants. Without a good fit, respirators don't work. For some reason (probably having to do with campaign contributions from the American Hospital Association (AHA) and Association of Professionals in Infection Control (APIC), Congressman Wicker has decided that workers exposed to tuberculosis should not receive the same protection as all other workers, and managed to pass a rider to federal OSHA's 2005 appropriations bill forbidding the agency to use any funds to enforce the respirator standard against employers who do not fit-test their employees exposed to TB. He has so far been unsuccessful in convincing OSHA to permanently change the respirator standard.

Washington state, one of the roughly two dozen states that run their own OSHA programs, is not bound by Congressional riders, however. Last week, WISHA cited a laboratory for failing to protect its employees from being exposed to TB. Three workers in a downtown Seattle research laboratory were infected with tuberculosis while working on a vaccine for the deadly disease, although none have contracted the active disease.

Among the citations against the lab was one

for not making sure respirators worn by the employees fit properly. But Webster said he was assured when he bought the chamber that respirators weren't needed because the chamber operates under a vacuum. He said he doesn't remember who told him that.

Webster and Dr. Rhea Coler, lead researcher, said workers now are required to wear powered respirators that force air out of the mask, rather than the fiber, surgical-type masks they previously used. They said a protection program for workers is now in writing and each worker is required to undergo a medical evaluation before using the new respirators.

For the life of me, I can't figure out why Congressman Wicker, AHA and APIC think that health care workers and lab workers -- unlike every other employee in the United States that uses a respirator (including hospital employees that use respirators to protect themselves against toxic chemicals) don't need proper respiratory protection.

And I can't see why putting these workers at risk from a deadly disease isn't a bigger scandal than a certain Congressional leader going on golf trips paid by his lobbyist friends.


Related Articles

• Rep. Wicker Continues War On Health Care Workers, April 19, 2005
• How Did Workplace Safety & Health Fare in the Budget?, November 23, 2004
• Major Owens on Congressional TB Language, September 15, 2004
• House Passes TB Restrictions, September 9, 2004
• Shameless Congressman Continues To Oppose TB Protections, July 14, 2004
• OSHA Wavers On Protections for Health Care Workers, June 8, 2004
• OSHA Announces "Enhancement" Of Worker Protection by Withdrawing TB Standard, January 3, 2004
• OSHA TB Standard: R.I.P. -- Public Health System Approaching Breakdown?, June 5, 2003
  
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Senators Edward M. Kennedy, Jon Corzine and Congressman Major Owens introduced the "Protecting America’s Workers Act of 2005" (S 947)and the "Workplace Wrongful Death Accountability Act" on Workers Memorial Day.

The Workplace Wrongful Death Accountability Act would stiffen sanctions for worker deaths caused by an employer's willful violations of basic safety standards. According to Owens' floor speech:

This bill would make corporate manslaughter a felony offense, with the possibility of sentences that might range from no time behind bars to up to 10 years in prison. Upon a second offense, the maximum sentence could be doubled. Second, this bill would double the penalty for illicitly warning of an OSHA inspection, from a maximum of 6 months to up to 2 years in prison. Third, my bill would increase the penalty for lying to or misleading OSHA, from a 6 months maximum to 1 year's imprisonment. In all three instances, fines would be decided upon in accordance with title 18 of the U.S. code, which is standard criminal law and longstanding criminal procedure.

Th "Protecting America’s Workers Act" would correct a number of problems with the current OSHA law.

• First, it would extend OSHA coverage to state, county and municipal employees, as well as federal employees, such as flight attendendants who receive inferior coverage from other federal agencies.
  
  
• The bill would require OSHA to investigate any workplace incident that results in the death of a worker or the hospitalization of 2 or more employees.(The current law only requires OSHA to investigate upon the death of a worker or the hospitalization of 3 or more employees.)
  
  
• It would give surviving family members of workers who are killed greater participation rights in OSHA’s workplace investigation and "penalty negotiation" process with the respective employers responsible for these fatalities. Currently family members have no role in OSHA's negotiations with employers.
  
  
• It prohibits OSHA from downgrading willful citations in worker fatalities to "unclassified" citations. Downgrading a willful ciation to an "unclassified" citation removes the threat of criminal prosecution from employers, as well as reducing their risk of lawsuits.
  
  
• The bill requires employers to cover the costs of personal protective equipment for their employees. This would, in effect, force OSHA to issue its long-awaited "Payment for Personal Protective Equipment" standard that has been languishing since the last days of the Clinton administration over four years ago.

Owen also praised that New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health and other COSH groups for launching a national campaign against corporate killing.

In introducing the bills, Owens stated:

The reason we need this bill is very clear: the federal government is itself guilty of gross negligence in efforts to deter corporate manslaughter. As David Barstow of the New York Times noted last year in his remarkable investigative series on worker deaths in this country, OSHA has an astonishing 20 year track record of failure to seek criminal prosecution when an employer’s willful and flagrant safety violations lead to worker deaths. It isn’t that the Department of Labor (DOL) doesn’t know how to seek criminal sanctions. Anyone who visits the DOL website will see an exhaustive list of prosecutions undertaken by staff in the Office of Labor Management Standards (OLMS). From 2002 to 2005, the prosecutions sought by OLMS fill up 111 pages, typewritten with a very small font. The difference is that these are prosecutions against union officials for a vast array of minor offenses. Contrast that with OSHA’s failure to seek criminal prosecution in a staggering 93 percent of worker death cases, investigated by the agency over the past 2 decades. These deaths were caused by an employer’s gross negligence or willful safety violations. In other words, the employer placed a profit motive far, far above any concern over peoples’ lives. In some instances, the same unscrupulous employer’s pattern of egregious safety violations has caused multiple worker deaths over several years. In such cases, a misdemeanor penalty has no deterrent value whatsoever.

Holding certain local union officials criminally liable for minor instances of alleged record falsification versus handing employers who commit corporate manslaughter an automatic "get out of jail free" pass is a real statement of values and priorities. We hear a great deal from this Republican Administration about the importance of affirming a "culture of life." Well, American workers deserve a "culture" of workplace safety that ensures they will live to go home at night and return to their jobs the following morning. When Congressman Tom Delay was asked by an Associated Press (AP) reporter last year about the "Workplace Wrongful Death Accountability Act," he replied: "The worst thing you could do – telling a small business person that they could go to prison over an OSHA violation." But such ridicule and exaggeration offends any surviving relative of a victim of corporate manslaughter.

According to Corzine:

In recent years, the Senators from both sides of the aisle have joined together to focus on a shocking succession of corporate scandals: Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, to name a few. These revelations of corporate abuse raised the ire and indignation of the American people. But corporate abuses can sometimes go further than squandering employee pension funds and costing shareholder value. Sometimes, corporate abuses can cost lives.

My legislation is based on the simple premise that going to work should not carry a death sentence. Annually, more than 6,000 Americans are killed on the job, and some 50,000 more die from work-related illnesses. Many of those deaths--deaths that leave wives without husbands, brothers without sisters, and children without parents--are completely preventable.

Labels: Criminal Prosecution

So, suppose you're the American Petroleum Institute (API) and among your guiding principles are:

• To operate our plants and facilities, and to handle our raw materials and products in a manner that protects the environment, and the safety and health of our employees and the public.
  
  
• To make safety, health and environmental considerations a priority in our planning, and our development of new products and processes.
  
  
• To advise promptly, appropriate officials, employees, customers and the public of information on significant industry-related safety, heath and environmental hazards, and to recommend protective measures.

And suppose a couple of studies had come out showing that a wideley used cancer-causing chemical, benzene, may have serious health effects at levels well below OSHA's current standard.

Would you quickly notify all of oyur members that they need to take measure to reduce exposures to workers and the public, or would you quickly commission new studies in an effort to disprove the other studies?

Two guesses.

An oil industry trade group is challenging a U.S. government study about the dangers of benzene exposure by financing a study of its own.

The $27 million study undertaken by the American Petroleum Institute aims to give the industry leverage against any consequences of a study by the National Cancer Institute, a division of the National Institutes of Health, that suggests occupational exposure to benzene is more dangerous than previously believed.

The industry fears the possibility of tighter regulations or lawsuits from cancer patients, according to documents found in boxes of evidence in an unrelated lawsuit.

Benzene, long known to be carcinogenic, is a chemical used throughout the petrochemical industry. It is a widespread contaminant in the air and groundwater and comes from industrial sources, cigarette smoke, gasoline and automobile emissions.

The API insists that the study is being done only to get a better understanding between the relationship of benzene to cancer, and that the study is being done independently of the API or its member companies.

But a draft of the committee structure for API's China Benzene Research
Consortium shows that a Business Oversight Committee, made up of one member from each sponsor company, would have final approval over protocol decisions made by the Scientific Review Board.

The companies funding the study are BP PLC, ChevronTexaco Corp., ConocoPhillips Co., ExxonMobil Corp., and Shell Chemical, a unit of Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Cos.
[Houston lawyer Lance Lubel, who is suing Dow on behalf of a worker who now has leukemia]said the documents provide vital insight to what the oil companies will do to protect themselves.

"The API's involvement in these benzene studies raises the same concerns of the fox in the henhouse as we've seen with the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries," Lubel said.

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