Quote Of The Week

“The media is so sensitive to everything since the Sago disaster.”

-- Thomas Hoffman, vice president of External Affairs for Consol

More here.

Media "So Sensitive" After Sago: Two Miners Killed, Two Injured

Two more coal miners have been killed on the job over the past few days, both above ground.

In Pike County, Kentucky,

John May, 39, of Hardy, a road-grader operator, was struck by his machine about 7:30 p.m. EDT Thursday as it rolled backward "at a high rate of speed" at Cam Mining's Slate Branch Mine at Freeburn, according to the state's accident report.

And in Knott County, Kentucky,

On Tuesday, a Knott County miner died at a surface mine near Hindman. Jason Mosley, 28, of Hindman, was killed when a highwall collapsed on him at Hendrickson Equipment's Smith Branch No. 1 mine.

The total number of coal miners killed on the job this year now stands at 35, compared with 10 at this time last year, and 22 for all of last year.

Both mines have been cited numerous times by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration since they opened last fall.

The Pike County mine has been cited 16 times this year, mostly for machinery violations and for allowing combustible materials to accumulate. The Knott County mine has been cited eight times for faulty equipment and for allowing loose, hazardous materials to accumulate atop pits and highwalls.

Both mines were shut down this week, but Smith Branch was allowed to resume part of its operation Wednesday, Wolfe said.

The two deaths bring to 13 the number of Kentucky mining fatalities in 2006, according to the state safety office.

That would be the highest number of mine fatalities since 1993, when the toll was 18.

Meanwhile in Pennsylvania, three coal miners were taken to the hospital after being burned in a methane “flashback” at Consol Coal's Blacksville No. 2 mine They had been using a cutting torch to cut steel on a conveyor belt inside the shaft.

But it was no big deal, according to Thomas Hoffman, vice president of External Affairs for Consol.

Hoffman said he did not want to minimize the miners’ injuries but noted Thursday’s incident “was nothing major.”

“The media is so sensitive to everything since the Sago disaster,” he said

Really, chill out guys. Shit happens.

Never A Dull Moment For Anti-Worker Attorneys

I often joke about how there are a whole crew of high-priced attorneys at corporate law firms in DC who miss the good old days when OSHA actually did things like issue standards. No better opportunity to run up those billable hours than an OSHA standard that takes ten years to issue, and several more to run through the inevitable lawsuits.

But, of course, I was wrong to have worried. There's never any shortage of opportunities to screw workers.

You may have seen this unfortunate development in today's news:

A federal judge struck down a Maryland law yesterday that would have effectively forced the nation's largest employer, Wal-Mart Stores, to spend more money on health care for its employees here.

U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz ruled that the "Wal-Mart Law," which won overwhelming support in the General Assembly this year, ran afoul of a 32-year-old federal statute intended to protect corporations from having to navigate a patchwork of benefits requirements from state to state.

The ruling could stymie plans by labor unions and health-care advocates to replicate Maryland's law in states across the country and turn the legislation into a model for shifting more of the health-care burden onto large corporations.

The lawsuit was brought by the Retail Industry Leaders Association, of which Wal-Mart is a member.

And representing the retail association was none other than Eugene Scalia, known to most as the son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. But Gene is best known to us health and safety types as one of the leading lawyers in the fight to kill OSHA's ergonomics standard. To reward his services, President Bush nominated Scalia to be Solicitor of Labor, the Labor Department's chief lawyer. Fortunately, there were enough Senators who didn't understand how a strident opponent of regulating Americas biggest health and safety problem would fit in as the Departments chief attorney, forcing President Bush to go around Senate confirmation with a one-year recess appointment. But after a year Gene either decided he'd never be confirmed or that the job wasn't as much fun (or as lucrative) as private practice, so he packed his briefcase and headed back to his previous lair at the lawfirm of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher.

According to Wal-Mart Watch, Scalia is legal counsel to defend Wal-Mart against whistleblower claims, which must keep him busy -- and well paid.

At the Department of Labor, Scalia undermined whistleblower protections and supported the Bush Administration’s efforts to limit overtime pay.

Scalia’s actions at the Labor Department even concerned several of his fellow Republicans. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) sharply criticized Scalia’s application of whistleblower protection provisions of federal law: “If this is the way the Labor Department intends to enforce the new law, then most corporate whistle-blowers won’t be protected.” Unsure of his chances of being confirmed by the full Senate, the Bush Administration gave up on Scalia when his recess appointment expired in 2003.

But we still fondly remember Gene as the slightly nutty guy who attended almost every single (billable) day of OSHA's multi-week ergonomics hearings in 2000 and persisted in showing every ergonomics expert who testified a photo of a desk and computer, and asking them to determine whether the photo showed any ergonomics hazards. The usual response, of course, was that you can't evaluate ergonomics problems from a photo. But that never stopped Gene from coming to every hearing with his show-and-tell props.

And it all makes sense as my former partner-in-crime notes: First make sure musculoskeletal disorders like back injuries or carpal tunnel syndrome aren't considered to be work-related (or compensable), then make sure workers don't have health insurance so that taxpayers end up picking up their health care expenses for ergonomics injuries. It all makes perfect sense -- if you're a corporate attorney like Gene Scalia, an apple who clearly hasn't fallen far from the tree.

Stephan Colbert On NLRB's Threat To Nurses' Unions

I wrote an article last week at FireDogLake about an upcoming National Labor Relations Board decision that could take about the right of nurses and millions of other American employees to form a union. You can read that here.

Then check out this hilarious, but insightful July 18 Colbert Report on the issue. Just click on the arrow in the middle.



Hat tip to American Rights At Work for this.

Europe To OSHA's VPP: Thanks, But No Thanks

Sometimes it takes someone on the outside (in this case outside the country) to get an honest perspective on the problems we have in this country. In this case, Laurent Vogel, a researcher with the European Trade Union Institute, has written an article about OSHA's Voluntary Protection Programs. Why? Because the United States is trying to export this program to the rest of the world.

VPP, for those of you who don't know, is a voluntary safety program originally developed during the Reagan Administration that allows firms that maintain good health and safety records to escape routine OSHA inspection, other than worker complaints, large number of injuries or fatal accidents. Companies must have a health and safety management system, then OSHA audits the program, and a team of specialists conducts a full onsite evaluation. Thge participating companies must show that their recorded injuries and illnesses say below the industry average for the past three years.

Vogel notes OSHA's enthusiasm for this program:

OSHA's appetite knows no bounds. Since 1998, VPPs can now be run in the federal civil service. In October 2004, an agreement was reached between OSHA and the army to extend VPPs to military sites, among other things. In August 2005, an OSHA official, Jonathan Snare, floated the possibility of extending the programme to US armed forces' combat operations in Afghanistan.

We've written here about how OSHA has even established a VPP program at one of its own offices.

One of the most important points that Vogel makes is that even though a VPP program requires "worker participation," there's no requirement that "worker participation" means that VPP programs must have unions. (Although "direct participation" schemes that often involve disciplinary control mechanisms are smiled upon.) He also cites OSHA's figure that only a quarter of VPP participating sites and barely 15% of sub-contracting firms have trade union representation, which is particularly troubling considering that about half employ more than 200 workers.

One of OSHA's biggest selling point for VPP is that it allegedly saves money. But this "hard sell" raises a series of issues:

1. It is not easy to determine whether VPPs make firms perform better , or whether it is firms that already run better-performing HSW systems who sign up to VPPs.
   
   
2. The figures come from the firms themselves. There is no enforcement action to address under-reporting of work-related accidents and diseases.
   
   
3. Long-term health effects are all-but absent from the VPP indicators. The main indicator is total sick days due to work injuries and occupational diseases, which excludes long latency health damage and that which does not necessarily involve time off (reproductive health disorders, for example). That may add to pressure on workers to make the earliest possible return to work.
   
   
4. There is no assessment of preventive practices as such. More workers in industrialised countries now die of work-related cancer than work accidents. Evaluating cancer prevention practices would involve assessing the priority given to replacing carcinogens with safer substances. But there is no such indicator anywhere in the VPP literature. These voluntary programmes leave employers a generally free hand in setting prevention priorities. The business case emphasis is not really apt to promote long-term risk prevention.
   
   
5. There are cases of firms being awarded VPP Star status despite being in flagrant breach of their prevention obligations.

Regarding the last point, we've written in Confined Space about OSHA giving VPP status to W.R. Grace, which is under criminal indictment for knowingly exposing hundreds of workers and an entire community to asbestos. OSHA also gave TropicanaBeverages in Bradenton, Florida its VPP Star award (reserved for exemplary worksites with comprehensive, successful safety and health management systems.) OSHA later issued two willful citations to the company, with proposed penalties of $126,000, after two mechanics were seriously burned by a flash fire that occurred during maintenance operations. Yet OSHA allowed the company to keep its Star status.

"I have met with officials of Tropicana and parent company, PepsiCo, and believe this event was a wake-up call. I am convinced of their commitment to the high standards of the Voluntary Protection Programs," said Cindy Coe Laseter, OSHA's Atlanta regional administrator.

Vogel also points out that VPP is heavily tied to behavioral safety programs. Behavioral safety advocates argue that workers' misbehavior is the cause of most accidents and injuries. By punishing workers for not following rules or providing incentives for not getting hurt (or not reporting injuries), workplace safety is supposed to improve. OSHA's VPP system provides for disciplinary measures against workers who do not follow the safety directives, but does not require a thorough investigation of why they did not do so. The problem, as Vogel points out is that

"Behavioural safety" tends to steer away from any holistic analysis of work organisation. Faced with a discrepancy between actual work and prescribed work, it shies away from asking key questions like "were the instructions doable?", "did they conflict with production requirements?", "were they in line with the actual work?"

OSHA's VPP program also absorbs an enormous portion of OSHA's resources, a problem that the Government Accounting Office identified in 2004. Yet, as Vogel notes, most of these resources go to those who need them least:

Available figures for 2003 suggest that 2.3 million workers are affected by VPPs, the Strategic Partnership Program and States Consultation Program. But OSHA is meant to give coverage to more than 100 million workers, which raises reasonable questions about OSHA's budget priorities. The policy commitment to promoting an inspection system favourable to employers' interests has in fact produced an indirect wholesale subsidizing of big business. Pace their propagandists, VPPs do not help redirect resources towards the sectors most in need.

As if their workplace activities weren't troublesome enough, Vogel also points out the growing political influence of the

the VPPPA, the powerful VPP Participants Association, which systematically intervenes to see that OSHA policymaking reflects the employers' agenda. The VPPPA's role is illustrated by the thwarting of any attempt by OSHA to call time on practises that encourage the non-reporting of work injuries.

OSHA has planned during the Clinton administration to cite employers for safety incentive and disciplinary programs when it could be shown that they discourage workers from reportign injuries. Largely due to the influence of the VPPPA, that initiative was withdrawn.

What worries Vogel most, however, is the potential export of the VPP program to other countries, especially those with large American multinational companies. The US is not exactly seen as any friendlier to workplace safety issues abroad than it is at home. It has lead the charge to weaken the European Communities more preventive approach to chemical reguilations (REACH) and

In June 2005, the United States government voted against the adoption of an International Labour Organisation Convention for a Promotional Framework for Occupational Safety and Health 7, one strand of which is the need for a management systems approach to health and safety. The US government wanted a simple non-binding declaration.

The great fear from overseas, if the US is successful in exporting VPP is the creation of

a system shaped by the US labour relations model: low trade union participation (or even a non-union shop), a business case-based health and safety policy that tends to disregard long-term health problems. The extension of VPPs is also an argument for "relaxing" national regulations, portrayed as potential roadblocks to foreign investment. VPPs could be instrumental in the creation of "free zones" where multinationals are partially relieved of labour inspections.

There's much more good stuff in the article. Go read the whole thing before VPPA makes its way to your worksite (if it hasn't already).

SAGO Report Released: Disaster Avoidable

A report on the Sago Mine Disaster, commissioned by West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin, was released today. Although the report failed to identify the initiating cause of the explosion, it found that had the twelve miners would have lived if mine shaft seals had held, the rescue teams had gone into the mine sooner and if there were effective communications system. The report was directed by J. Davitt McAteer who headed the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) during the Clinton administration.

Most of the facts are well known. At 6:26 a.m., January 2, 2006, an explosion occurred in a blocked of chamber of the Sago Mine in Upshur County, West Virginia. The explosion pulverized the wall sealing off the chamber that was composed of "Omega blocks," constructed from a foam mixture of cement, foam, and fly ash instead of concrete. One miner was killed in the initial explosion, 16 escaped and 12 others tried, but failed to find their way out. As they had been trained, they barricaded themselves behind a curtain and waited for rescue. Rescuers didn't arrive for 41 hours, by which time 11 of the miners had died of carbon monoxide asphyxiation.

One thing the report was not able to verify is if the initial explosion was caused by lightning as Sago's owner, the International Coal Group (ICG) , argued. For that reason, the report is considered preliminary. But ultimately, the report argues, it didn't really matter what ignited the explosion.

It is important to make a clear distinction between what caused the explosion and what caused the disaster.

In other words, the 12 miners would have survived the explosion had other conditions been in place, namely, had the explosion been contained by explosion-proof seals, had the miners been able to make all of their oxygen-providing self-rescuers work, had it been possible for rescuers to communicate with the miners, had rescue teams been sent into the mine sooner, and had rescuers been able to pinpoint the location of the trapped miners and drill a borehole down to them.

The report placed no blame on the company, MSHA or any individuals, although it holds open the possibility of finding fault should new information reveal, for example, that ICG had failed to ground the electrical system, or that NIOSH and MSHA used faulty protocols to test the "explosion proof" seals. Nevertheless, the report argues

The failures we describe above and throughout this report were, in almost every instance, failures not of individual human beings but of systems: mine safety systems, mine emergency management systems, and mine rescue systems that are in desperate need of immediate help. One of the inescapable lessons of the Sago Mine disaster is that it could happen again tomorrow — and if it were to happen, the outcome next time might not be much different, regardless of who happens to be in the command center.

ICG was generally supportive of the report, but objected to the finding that the Omega block barricade had been improperly constructed:

ICG believes that the seals were built in compliance with the MSHA-approved plan using construction techniques that are consistent with industry practice. Furthermore, ICG believes the physical evidence demonstrates that the explosion forces at the seals significantly exceeded the 20 psi design strength requirement.

McAteer responded that "These blocks were pulverized,"

The report also made a number of recommendations -- but not, as some expected, recommendations for more laws or tougher enforcement. Whether for political reasons or pure pragmatism, McAteer's report acknowledges the political power of industry's arguments that we can't rush into laws and regulations mandating new technologies that haven't been fully proven, or where improvements may be "on the horizon." On one hand, the report rejects those arguments:

If we insist on waiting for perfect technological answers to the challenges facing us, we will wait forever. The unmistakable message of the Sago Mine disaster is that we cannot afford to wait. In this report we discuss technologies and techniques which are currently available, tested in underground mines in the United States and other mining countries, and which would immediately improve underground miners’ chances to escape or be rescued in an emergency. Incremental improvements should be adopted immediately while the search for better technologies goes forward.

But on the other hand, the report acknowledges and then moves beyond the obstacles:

We believe that it will be more productive and protective of miners’ safety to focus on what should be done immediately to address the largely systemic failures that unquestionably contributed to the tragic loss of life at the mine. While not ruling out the possible need for additional state or federal legislation at some point, this report does not call for more laws now. We find, rather, that West Virginia’s leaders and the state’s mining community have it within their power to implement all of the recommendations that we offer below.

The keys to immediate progress, in our view, are commitment, cooperation, and a willingness to pursue what we call ‘default options’ — that is, common-sense changes that can improve safety while we await the arrival of better technologies, equipment, and strategies. We have faith in miners’ ingenuity, and many of our recommendations are grounded in this approach.

The report then lays out examples of "default options," such as burying and protecting phone cables, which can be done immediately; making sure miners are fully trained in the actual use of the respirators while new, better functioning respirators are developed; building emergency shelters stocked with food, water, oxygen and communications gear while research is conducted into more sophisticated emergency refuge chambers; and the use of one-way text messaging systems already in use in Australia and in a few US mines while a two-way wireless communication system capable of surviving explosions is developed.

But many mine operators are reluctant to invest in such a system, because it may not work flawlessly in every part of the mine at all times, because it can only transmit one way, and because “something better” (wireless two-way voice communication) is on the horizon. Yes, but horizons can be deceptively distant. In the meantime, installing an interim system should be considered a ‘default option’ for safety-conscious West Virginia coal operators.

Other recommendations include improving measures to prevent lightning from entering underground mines, strengthening existing seals and developing better seals, improving electrical safety, improving emergency preparedness, finding better ways to communicate news to families, and encouraging the participation of miners "in all aspects of safety and health planning, design, management and enforcement."

The question, of course, is how all of this gets done.

For a variety of reasons, some in the coal mining industry have never seen fit to put safety on a par with production. That must change — and, we believe, is changing. All that is needed now is the will to accelerate the momentum for change that began building in the dark hours after the outcome of the Sago disaster, when the governor of West Virginia pledged that the miners lost in that disaster would not be forgotten in the way that so many thousands of miners lost in the past have been forgotten. We wholeheartedly support that pledge and seek to help fulfill it.

Excuse me for being a bit skeptical here, but that's my nature from being in Washington going on three decades. The history of workplace safety shows that progress is never made until there are bodies to count, and lots of them. Look at the last 7 months. Even after the Sago and Alma mine disasters, Congress didn't act. In fact, the House of Representatives had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, even to hold a hearing. It wasn't until the five miners were killed in the Kentucky Darby mine in May, in conditions shockingly similar to those at Sago, that Congress finally acted. And even then, many experts, family members and politicians (such as Congressman George Miller) thought those bills could have gone much further.

The reality of the situation is that the US Congress, as well as the state of West Virginia (which passed a mine safety law long before the US Congress), have done all they're going to do legislatively for now. The regulatory process may grind on. Improvements will be made slowly. (In fact, MSHA today ordered all mines to strengthen seals to withstand 50 pounds per square inch of pressure, more than double the current standard of 20 pounds. The new requirement was part of federal mine safety legislation passed earlier this year. )

But nothing about the current administration (particularly its choice of Richard Stickler for Assistant Secretary of Labor for MSHA) indicates that we're going to see any radical moves on the regulatory or enforcement fronts. The fact is that the fires of workplace progress need constant feeding, and in this case, the steam has gone out. And none of that would have changed had the McAteer report called for new laws, stronger enforcement or hanging ICG and MSHA officials by their heels in the public square.

All of this may change, of course, if/when there's another mine disaster. And when that happens, the McAteer report will stand as a strong reminder: We told you what needed to happen; we warned you, now reap the whirlwind.

But whirlwinds don't happen by themselves, or by divine intervention. We need to be organized and ready. Hopefully, this report gets us part way there.

More mining stories here.

"He Probably Screamed For Help"

You know how in the movies the hero is thrown onto the conveyor belt that's slowly moving him toward the jaws of death while he struggles to escape, saving himself at the last second?

Well, that's in the movies. Real life doesn't always have that happy ending.

For 100 yards, the conveyor belt pushed Alexis Rios' broken body along, jerking and twisting his limbs as he passed through piles of trash.

Police said he probably screamed for help, but the hum of machinery at the Solid Waste Authority plant was just too loud. No one heard a thing. By the time the horrifying ride was over, Rios had lost his left arm and an ear, broken his other arm and suffered internal injuries.

The belt spit him onto a heap of trash piled about 50 feet high where fellow workers found him near death.

Rios, 35, had been standing on a catwalk with his air hose about 8 a.m., cleaning debris off pipes near the conveyor belt. It was the same cleaning job he carried out each morning since landing his full-time job in December.

But Friday, his hose somehow became tangled in the conveyor belt — which should not have been running while he cleaned, police said. While trying to untangle the hose, Rios lost his balance and fell about 20 feet, slamming into the belt.

It carried the West Palm Beach resident up a steep incline, threw him down a sharp drop-off, shifted left, then right, punishing his body and forcing it through tight spaces meant to accommodate nothing but rubbish. Fellow workers didn't notice him amid the flow of trash.

Like the discarded paper and plastic around him, Rios traveled through a chute, passed through two buildings, climbed as high as 25 feet and was dropped onto the gigantic garbage pile, police said.

The trash heap was slated to be ground up, turned into steam and eventually converted into electricity. During the ordeal, which lasted less than two minutes, the conveyor belt became jammed and the operator halted it. A bit later, workers found Rios' plastic safety hat and another piece of his clothing or gear, police said.

Twenty workers set out to look for him. They found him motionless atop the pile.

Hotel Organizing Campaign at FireDogLake

I just posted a piece on FireDogLake about UNITE-HERE's hotel campaign and the right-wing response to it. Go over and check it out.

This is one of the comments I received:

I’m a career motel maid, currently out of work with a largely-unrelated disability. Every word is true, and it’s worse than that.

You can spend easily an hour every day folding your own linens because the hotels are so understocked that you have to grab it right out of the dryer to make up rooms you’ve already done and didn’t have any washcloths to put in.

And then there are the days where they drag you to mandatory staff meetings that have nothing to do with housekeeping, and are generally not in a language housekeeping speaks, and then you still have to get the same amount of work done in less time.

Injuries and illness are common, breathing the chemicals can actually kill you, and your supervisor will do anything to keep you from filing an accident report or getting workman’s comp, including threatening employees with legal work permits with deportation. It works, too.

A surprising number of hotel maids are in their fifties and sixties and beyond, and will work till they drop. Second (and third) jobs are not uncommon, either. It’s a minimum wage driven industry.

In the summer you can expect to work two or three weeks in a row with no time off. Off-the-clock work is common. It’s almost always classed as part time regardless of how many hours you work, so no benefits, and forget overtime. In fact, an increasing number of hotels play a cute little game where they pay you by the room–that is, you get your assigned list, and you have fifteen-to-forty minutes to do each room. You clock out when that time is up, and if you’re still not done with your rooms, you keep working off the clock. The quoted hourly wage is often inflated by weird assumptions about how many rooms you can do in an hour. Lunch breaks are virtually unheard of, and even the stated lunch break is generally no more than twenty minutes because of the “part time” schedule and the fact that your employers know you don’t know your rights.

I was once fired, a long time ago, for trying to unionize, which isn’t easy in the first place when you don’t all speak the same language and the rest of the staff is cowed with threats of deportation, but mostly I didn’t try because I was aware that my co-workers couldn’t take the risk of losing their jobs. There wasn’t a lot of support for maids trying to unionize back then, either.

This is nice to see, and I wish them success.

Schwarzenegger Saves Pennies At Expense Of Workers' Lives

This article would be funny if the joke wasn't at the expense of workers' lives.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger used his line-item veto to strike $1.5 million in funding for 15 new workplace safety inspectors, out of a $131.4 billion state budget. The excuse was that CalOSHA already has open positions that it can't fill.

Cal/OSHA spokeswoman Renee Bacchini said the agency was neutral about the state budget allocation for more inspectors.

She acknowledged, however, that the agency is having trouble keeping up the staffing levels it already has money budgeted for, mainly because the private sector offers better salaries.

"Not that we don't want to fill them," she said. "They're up there on the state job site. Please come apply."

Or... maybe we could pay them what they deserve. Right now the pay and benefits of a CalOSHA Industrial hygienist lag almost 40% behind comparable public sector jobs in other agencies in the San Francisco Bay area, and 20% statewide, according to CAPS. I mean, whatever happened to capitalism, supply and demand and all that?

Then there's this: The inspector's union, the California Association of Professional Scientists (CAPS), argues that it's the short staffing of CalOSHA that led to the injury underreporting that was recently exposed in Bay Bridge skyway project. An audit by the California state auditor earlier this year revealed the CalOSHA had not monitored the project well enough. The contractor, KFM Joint Venture, had claimed that the project was five times safer than the average heavy construction project. But the Oakland Tribune revealed that the company's amazing safety record was likely due to the $100 to $2,500 bonuses that depended on the number of worker hours logged without reporting a recordable injury, rather than safe working conditions. KFM and it's lead firm, Kiewit Pacific Company, also used the stick: suspending workers without pay for reporting injuries.

CAPS blamed Cal-OSHA's chronic understaffing for the serious enforcement problems detailed in the State Auditor’s office probe and Cal/OSHA officials have admitted that they do not have the resources to monitor the accuracy of those reports. Last month, CalOSHA issued three citations to KFM, A Joint Venture, including a "willful regulatory violation" for the unreported injuries, and fined the company a whopping $5,790.

Now here's the funny part. In an effort to justify it's short-staffed operations, CalOSHA spokesperson Bacchini

disputed that employers might routinely fudge their injury reports.

"If the employers are not reporting those things, then they're in violation of the law," Bacchini said, and subject to penalties and fines.

Asked how effective a $5,790 fine would be on a $1 billion contract, she said that fines "go up and up and up.

"If they have a horrible history, their fines get higher and higher."

Yeah, I'm sure they're all shaking in their boots that CalOSHA might double, or even triple that fine. Up and up and up. If the fines go up and up and up enough, maybe the state can even afford to give CalOSHA inspectors a raise a hire a few more.

Foulke: I Want My Slides Back

Last month we delivered a well-deserved thumbs-down to OSHA administrator Ed Foulke's slide show ridiculing workers for "doing the dumbest darnedest things." We were later joined in our raspberries by the Washington Post.

But it seems that poor Mr. Foulke may be lost without his slide show. This was delivered to me by an attendee at the recent conference of the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE):

As you may know, the ASSE recently had their annual Professional Development Conference in Seattle. One speaker after lunch was the new head of OSHA, Mr. Foulke. I am afraid that a poorer speaker could not be found. He never proposed solutions for the problems that he mentioned and he "ummed" and "hawed" during the entire speech. An hour speech could have been done in thirty minutes. Many people just walked out. It was not OSHA's finest time.

Perhaps a good, but vengeful fairy has put a curse on Mr. Foulke's tongue.

BP: Haunted By The Effects Of Short-Term Profit Maximization?

Every time I sit down to write something about the continuing trials and tribulations of poor BP, something else befalls the poor company (That would be "poor" as in "unfortunate," not "poor" as in "lacking money.)

Readers of Confined Space are well aware of the explosion at BP's Texas City plant last year that took the lives of 15 workers and injured 170, resulting in a record $21.4 million OSHA fine and possible civil and criminal prosecution. And the Chemical Safety Boards findings that BP's problems go way beyond the screw-ups at the Texas City plant which resulted in an unprecedented "urgent" recommendation that the company establish an independent panel to look into the safety "culture" at all of its North American plants. And let's not forget the $2.4 million OSHA fine against BP's Ohio plant for unsafe conditions.

And last May it was revealed that

BP's Texas City refinery released three times as much pollution in 2004 as it did in 2003, according to the most recent data from the Environmental Protection Agency.

The increase at BP was so large that it accounted for the bulk of a 15 percent increase in refinery emissions nationwide in 2004, the highest level since 2000.

Last months disaster came in the form of a little 267,000 gallon oil spill at BP's Prudhoe Bay field, the largest ever on Alaska's North Slope region. That spill may also bring criminal charges against BP.

Even Mother Nature seems to be angry at BP as Hurricane Dennis seriously damaged BP's new Thunder Horse offshore oil drilling platform. And after spending $250 million to repair it, there are still problems.

The latest news was that BP traders were accused of manipulating the price of propane two years ago by cornering the market, not good news to Americans who are facing record high energy costs.

Then there was this:

Earlier this month, the company said that its second-quarter production had fallen 2.5 percent from the period last year, to four million barrels a day of oil equivalent, its fourth consecutive quarterly decline. Also, BP said it would take a further $500 million charge for compensation claims for the Texas City blast, in addition to the $700 million it set aside last year.

Oy. While this hasn't quite affected the income of BP's CEO Lord Browne, something needs to be done. But what?

Find someone new to run BP's US operations, in the person of Robert A. Malone, a 32-year company veteran who until recently oversaw BP’s worldwide fleet of tankers. And what a challenge he has:

While he was not responsible for the problems, Mr. Malone will have to answer criticism that BP neglected basic safety rules, fostered a culture of excessive risk-taking and failed to invest enough in critical infrastructure. He also faces the challenge of restoring BP’s credibility not just with the public but also with regulators from the Justice Department and the Labor Department, among others.

The misfortunes already have led to lengthy delays in production, hundreds of millions of dollars in repairs and settlements, and civil and criminal investigations by state and federal agencies. The paradox is that BP — known for navigating successfully in much more challenging places like Siberia, the Caspian and Africa — has faltered in the most open of economic environments.

Mr. Malone is known for his good safety record and we wish him good luck (and well we should considering that BP employees 40,000 American workers and produces 10% of American oil output).

BP's spokesman Ronnie Chappel still insists that “These are unrelated incidents,” but lest anything thing BP is just having a string of bad luck, the financial analysts know better:

“It is difficult to say if this is a BP-wide issue,” said Craig Pennington, the director of the global energy group at Schroders in London. “But they appear to cut corners for the sake of short-term profit maximization. If you are a serial underspender in a refinery, it will come back to haunt you.”

Indeed.

Meatpacker's Treatment of Workers and Animals: Not Kosher

Something's not Kosher in Iowa.

Kosher beef is not only tastes better, according to many meat eaters, but it is good for the soul as well, because Jewish law requires that animals be killed quickly and humanely, and the processes must be approved by supervising rabbis.

Unfortunately, at least in one Kosher meat processor, AgriProcessors Inc in Iowa, not only are the cows allegedly not killed humanely, but the human workers aren't treated humanely either, according to a long article in last May's Forward:

One of those workers — a woman who agreed to be identified by the pseudonym Juana — came to this rural corner of Iowa a year ago from Guatemala. Since then, she has worked 10-to-12-hour night shifts, six nights a week. Her cutting hand is swollen and deformed, but she has no health insurance to have it checked. She works for wages, starting at $6.25 an hour and stopping at $7, that several industry experts described as the lowest of any slaughterhouse in the nation.

Juana and other employees at AgriProcessors — they total about 800 — told the Forward that they receive virtually no safety training. This is an anomaly in an industry in which the tools are designed to cut and grind through flesh and bones. In just one month last summer, two young men required amputations; workers say there have been others since. The chickens and cattle fly by at a steady clip on metal hooks, and employees said they are berated for not working fast enough. In addition, employees told of being asked to bribe supervisors for better shifts and of being shortchanged on paychecks regularly.

"Being here, you see a lot of injustice," said Juana, who did not want her real name used because of her precarious immigration status. "But it's a small town. It's the only factory here. We have no choice."

Now, the Washington Post reports that two Conservative Jewish organizations have created a task force to investigate the problems at the plant:

A month after the [Forward] piece ran May 26, the Rabbinical Assembly and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism launched a fact-finding study to find out what wrongs, if any, are being committed at the plant in Postville, Iowa.

Workers report being treated like animals:

On Manuel's first day, he said, he found himself slicing up chicken carcasses without even receiving the hour-long orientation that other workers had described.

"There's no training," he said. "You learn by getting chewed out."

Now, Manuel arrives each day at 4:45 a.m. Although the Supreme Court decided last year that meatpacking plants must pay their workers for donning and doffing — dressing and undressing before and after work — Manuel and the union organizers who lived in Postville said that the workers are not allowed to punch in until they take their positions on the line. Rubashkin responded by saying that the company did change the rules when the Supreme Court ruling came down.

Manuel works 10-hour days in the chicken department. Lunch breaks are 30 minutes, but after taking on and off the bloody smocks and masks at the beginning and end, there is closer to 15 minutes' time left for eating. Dozens of workers on a shift share the cafeteria, and the workers say there are only three microwaves, which short-circuit when used simultaneously.

"I've said, 'Why do you treat us like this?'" Manuel said. "We're human beings, not animals."

And People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals allege that the animals aren't treated very well either:

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has also campaigned against the slaughterhouse in recent years, alleging that workers, including rabbis, ripped the tracheas and esophagi out of the throats of fully conscious cows, which were left trying to stand three minutes after their throats were slit.

PETA cites a 2004 videotape it says was obtained by an undercover cameraman for the group. In the video, cows that have had their throats slit are shown writhing on the ground of the plant in pools of their own blood. AgriProcessors denied charges of inhumane slaughter then, telling PETA that its practices complied with kosher law.

Temple Grandin, a designer of livestock handling facilities and the author of several books on animal handling, welfare and facility design, saw the PETA tape but has not been allowed to visit the facilities.

"During my career I have visited over 30 kosher beef plants in the U.S., Canada and other countries . . .," she writes on her Web site. "Kosher slaughter without stunning can be done with an acceptable level of welfare when it is done correctly. When shehita [Jewish ritual slaughter] is performed correctly with the long knife, the cattle appear not to feel it. This tape shows atrocious procedures that are NOT performed in any other kosher operation."

OSHA also isn't pleased with the company's treatment of workers:

When it comes to outside regulatory agencies, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration have tagged AgriProcessors this year with six violations. That amounts to more than half the violations in all Iowa meatpacking plants during that time, according to OSHA statistics.

And the Agriculture Department isn't very happy about the plant's treatment of animals:

In March, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released a report finding that AgriProcessors had indeed violated provisions of the Humane Slaughter Act. The USDA did not, however, pursue criminal charges.

PCB's "For days, you would just be blowing that stuff out of your nose"

Yet another tragic story about the workplace victims of hazardous chemicals:

Dave Fowler spent a week in winter 1974 learning to fight fires inside a blackened structure called the Dollhouse. Trainers filled the basement with spent transformer oil and hay, and set them ablaze. Twenty trainees sat upstairs and ate smoke until they were about to vomit or pass out.

"It was like a macho thing -- who was the last one standing," Fowler recalled.

These days, Fowler feels as though he's the last one standing. Thirty friends from the Anne Arundel County Fire Department have died of cancer. Fowler's 19-year-old daughter, Amanda, lost the vision in her left eye to cancer as a baby. And he is dying of lymphoma.

At least 120 firefighters who graduated from the fire training academy in Millersville between 1968 and 1985 have been diagnosed with cancer, and at least 40 have died, according to a Montgomery County legal team that is assembling a potential case.

The firefighters believe they are a classic cancer cluster. A wave of premature deaths triggered memories of oil burned and fumes inhaled at the academy in the 1970s. The trainees didn't know then that the oil contained polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, compounds later found to cause cancer.

And as with too many of these stories, researchers at Johns Hopkins University conducted a small study but couldn't find any "definitive link" between the workers' exposure to cancer causing PCB's and the cancers that these men are suffering.

And how many times have we heard this type of story?

The old Dollhouse still sits on the grounds of the training academy, set against a sweep of forest behind fire headquarters. The academy opened in 1968. Firefighters from Anne Arundel, Howard and Prince George's counties, Annapolis, Fort Meade and the U.S. Naval Academy trained there, according to Ell.

Starting in spring 1971, the academy accepted annual shipments of used transformer oil from Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. Trainers pumped oil into the Pit, a pool of water that would be set ablaze; the Christmas Tree, a rectangular steel structure that spat flame; and the Dollhouse.

"For days, you would just be blowing that stuff out of your nose," Fowler recalled.

Production of PCBs ceased in 1977 after the government declared the substance a carcinogen. Two years later, state officials detected PCBs in a tributary to the Severn River and traced them to the academy, which is near a creek bed.

Katherine Farrell, a state health official at the time, made inquiries and learned recruits "were very heavily exposed" to the tainted oil, "kind of wading around in it, breathing it, with and without respirators." She asked the county to warn its fire department.

The firefighters knew about PCBs and had asked the utility as early as 1976 whether the donated oil contained them. According to an internal department memo, BGE officials repeatedly told them the oil did not. One fire official cited in the memo said a BGE official in 1977 told him, "That stuff won't hurt you anyway, my guys wash their hands in it."

Fearing that the illnesses suffered by these firefighters may not be limited to Maryland, Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) has called on the National Institute for Occupational Safety And Health (NIOSH) to "commence a study on the risk of cancer among firefighters." NIOSH has agreed to "an International Association of Fire Fighters initiative to implement a nationwide Hazardous Substance Training Program," but not yet to a full epidemiological study.

Related Stories

• Plant 666: Workers Are "Seriously Messed Up" July 8, 2006
• Industry Pushes Chemical Gag Rule To Keep Information From Workers and the Public, June 20, 2006
• SHOCKED! Chromium Industry Suppresses Data, Hides Risks, February 23, 2006
• Burying the Evidence -- And The Workers, November 22, 2005
• First, Kill The Historians, January 23, 2005
• The Canary Has Died: Trichloroethylene To Blame, January 11, 2005
• Dr. Thomas Mancuso 1912 - 2004, July 5, 2004
• Workers are Canaries, June 16, 2004
• Put 'em to work, poison 'em, then move to China and fire their asses, March 28, 2004
• Flash! Carcinogens Actually Cause Cancer, January 14, 2004
• Worker Trial Against IBM Toxic Chemical Exposures Begins, October 13, 2003
• Attention Farm Workers, Gardeners, Park Workers, Highway Workers, Groundskeepers, May 2, 2003

What Exactly Is Richard Stickler Doing At The Department of Labor?

Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) wants to know. So do the United Mineworkers. Stickler, Bush's nominee to head the Mine Safety and Health Administration was installed over at the Department of Labor last week as an "advisor" after a vote on his Senate confirmation had to be cancelled due to the fact that there weren't enough votes to confirm the former mine industry executive.

Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., sent a letter to U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao, asking her to confirm that President Bush's nominee to head the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration is not already running the agency.

Byrd is concerned that Chao is trying to get around her constitutional obligations:

Byrd wrote in his letter to Chao, "I want to make sure that Mr. Stickler is serving as an advisor only, and is not assuming any of the duties or functions of the Assistance Secretary of Labor for Mine Safety and Health."
Byrd cited the Senate's "advice and consent" role under the Constitution.

"To hire an individual as a consultant because the Senate has not yet confirmed his nomination creates the unsettling impression that the department is trying to circumvent the confirmation process," Byrd wrote to Chao.

The Mineworkers union is also trying to get information on Stickler's duties:

The United Mine Workers of America recently sent a Freedom of Information Act letter to Chao, asking about Stickler's duties. Chao and the Labor Department have not responded to that request.
Roberts said media reports indicate MSHA employees regularly travel between their own offices in Arlington, Va. and Labor Department offices in Washington to meet with Stickler.

On Thursday, Roberts said, "If Mr. Stickler is involved in directing or developing policy at MSHA through this consulting role, then there is a serious problem. He has not been confirmed by the Senate and is not likely to be. He has no business being involved in critical decision-making at the agency."

Wanted By Wal-Mart: Bomb Sniffing Employees

You've got to hand it to Wal-Mart. In these days when the whole world lives under the threat of terrorism, Wal-Mart in Canada is at least providing useful training for its employees -- as bomb sniffing dogs.

Why did Wal-Mart clear customers out of a Quebec store and then order 40 of its workers to stay in the store and search for a bomb? On July 5 workers at a Wal-Mart in St-Jean-Sur-Richelieu, Quebec were ordered by Wal-Mart to help police search for a bomb, even though police recommended to Wal-Mart that the store should be completely evacuated.

An investigation is underway and some of the workers continue to be traumatized from the forced search.

This was a pretty sad message about how much value Wal-Mart puts on the lives of its workers", says Wayne Hanley, national director of UFCW Canada (United Food and Commercial Workers Canada).

One area in which Wal-Mart neglected to train its employees was in their health and safety rights:

In case Wal-Mart hasn't told them, Wal-Mart workers should know they have the legal right to refuse dangerous work without fear of reprisal. If these workers had union representation they would have known they had the legal right to refuse. Did Wal-Mart tell that to the workers at St-Jean-Sur-Richelieu before they ordered them to search for bombs?"

Luckily, no bomb was found.

Au contraire, says Wal-Mart. They were all volunteers:

Yanik Deschenes, a Wal-Mart spokesperson, said in an interview with the Canadian Press news agency that the company was only helping police and not endangering employees. Deschenes confirmed that 40 sales clerks were asked to search for the bomb, but insisted nobody was forced to search the store.

"We will never put in jeopardy the security of our employees," he said. "Never, never, never (will) we force them to do such kinds of investigations. If this associate had said or all the associates had said, `We don't want to participate,' there would be no problem. They would have been able to leave the building without hesitation."

And without coming back, knowing Wal-Mart.

My Hometown

Bush To Appoint Anti-Regulatory Zealot To Run White House Regulatory Affairs Office

The Washington Post warns today of a possible Bush appointment that should send chills down the spines of anyone concerned about worker safety, the environment or consumer protection.

The job is director of the Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which approves all environmental, health and safety and other government regulations. Her name is Susan Dudley, director of the regulatory studies program at George Mason University's anti-regulatory Mercatus Center. According to Frank O'Donnell of Clean Air Watch, Dudley is "a true anti-regulatory zealot."

The Mercatus Center is notorious for far-fetched justifications to kill protective regulations. They are fond of exagerating the cost of regulations and attempting to incite anti-government rebellion by describing the amount of space that the Code of Federal Regulations takes up. (20 feet of shelf space, according to Dudley.)

I first wrote about a crazy Mercatus study that found that OSHA inspections kill workers.

Huh? You say. This is how it works:

When the firm increases its efforts because of OSHA enforcement, the worker rationally substitutes away from his own efforts. That is, if the firm is doing more to protect the worker, the worker has less incentive to protect himself. (emphases added)

I attempted to imagine how this works....

OSHA comes out to inspect a workplace and cites the employer after finding safety problems. So far, so good. But according to Mercatus,

The typical "rational" worker, figuring that OSHA has forced his employer to be more responsible, now "has less incentive to protect himself." No sooner does the employer finally get serious about safety then workers suddenly start jumping down into unshored trenches, crawling down into unmonitored confined spaces, sticking themselves with HIV-contaminated needles and climbing tall buildings without fall protection. "Respirators? We don't need no stinking respirators!"

That's Mercatus.

Like the rest of Mercatus, Dudley is known for conjuring up all kinds of reason why protective regulations are killing our country. She opposed OSHA the deceased ergonomics standard on the grounds that all employers really needed was more information and they would automatically do the right thing. Furthermore, OSHA's ergonomics standard would "discourage individual responsibility and hinder innovation into creative solutions."

Dudley also directed the Bush Administration's transition team for the Assistant Secretary designate of the Office of Environment, Safety, and Health at the Department of Energy. That would be former Assistant Secretary Bev Cook, who did such a good job trying to torpedo the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program (EEOICPA) that Republican Senators Jim Bunning and others had her fired. (The program seeks to compensate workers for the illnesses caused by their work on the nation's Cold War nuclear weapons complex. ) The Government Accountability Office recently found that the office, under Cooks supervision, had squandered 30 percent of the $92 million in total program funds in improper and questionable payments.

That DOE office, which is responsible for the health and safety of DOE contractors' employees, is the same program that current Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman is trying to abolish.

Dudley is also an advocate of incorporating "sunset" provisions into all regulations, which would mean they's be eliminated unless Congress votes to continue them. Goodbye OSHA, EPA, FDA.

Mecatus, meanwhile, is well known as a ""wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch industries and other corporate interests," as the Post article describes.

Koch (pronounced "coke") has given many millions to Mercatus, but other companies also have contributed a bit as well.

Over the years, those contributors have included Fannie Mae, Microsoft, Pfizer and Enron, which have donated about $50,000, plus $10,000 from the late Kenneth L. Lay and his wife's foundation.

According to the Center for Public Integrity, Koch money controls or strongly influences a number of leading conservative institutions, including the Cato Institute (co-founded by Charles Koch), the Tax Foundation, the Institute for Justice, the Federalist Society, and Citizens for a Sound Economy, which was founded in 1984 by Charles and David H. Koch and Koch executive Richard Fink .

What did Mercatus do for its corporate benefactors?

In the early days of President Bush's first term, when the OMB asked for public input on which regulations should be revised or killed, Mercatus submitted 44 of the 71 proposals the OMB received. And the OMB approved 15 of them, the National Journal reported at the time.

These recommendations critiqued onerous regulations such as a proposed Interior Department rule prohibiting snowmobiles in Rocky Mountain National Park, a Transportation Department rule limiting truckers' hours behind the wheel, and that silly EPA rule limiting the amount of arsenic in drinking water. (Hey! You don't want it? Don't drink it.)

If it's true, it should make for some interesting election-year Senate hearings.

Update: I missed this last week, but here's more on Dudley at Daily Kos.

Charleston Gazette: Give Miners Masks That Work

I wrote last week about findings that the self-rescuing respirators that the Sago and Darby miners were using may have been functioning "properly," but miners may have felt like they were suffocating when using them. The Charleston Gazette says to replace them with masks that work, instead of blaming the workers.

It’s painful to contemplate the possibility that the Sago miners perished because they had faulty equipment, and terrifying for today’s miners who still descend each day armed with the same devices.

We fear there’s a nasty implication that has lingered over this controversy — one no one has said explicitly: that the people who died at Sago were just incompetent miners who didn’t understand how to use the devices that could have saved their lives. The suggestion that operator error, rather than bad design, led to the deaths of these men is a dreadful insult to them and to their families.

Rather than blaming the victims, authorities need to focus on providing miners with breathing apparatus that works — before more lives are lost.

Trench Deaths: "90 mph hour in a 15 mph school zone"

Yet another case where a negligent employer gets away with murder -- two murders -- with a small fine.

The families of two workers who were crushed to death in the collapse of a 12 foot deep trench in Reno, Nevada are calling for criminal prosecution of the employer, Jon Winfield. Travis Cruz and coworker Clayton Gregory were killed in the collapse. Nevada state OSHA recently fined the now-closed Western States Equipment and Bobcat Service $49,000 after finding "serious" safety violations. The OSHA trenching standard says that a trench box or some other kind of protection has to be used if the trench is over 5 feet deep.

The families don't think the relatively small fine is enough: Cruz's brother Terry

said Jon Winfield, owner of the Reno company hired by Somersett to dig the ditch, should be prosecuted.

"He was very careless," she said. "I think he should be facing jail time. He caused two people to lose their lives."

***

Steve and Jo Gregory said criminal charges should be brought against Winfield because a financial penalty alone will not protect others from the safety abuses that are responsible for the end of their son's life.

"I think it is very important that criminal charges be filed against this young man," Steve Gregory said of Winfield.

Gregory said he's met Winfield twice since his son's death, and thinks Winfield was foolish, not malicious, in ignoring the safety issues that preceded the trench's collapse.

"But if this is allowed with only a fine, then the state of Nevada sends a message that it's OK to work in unsafe conditions and all you get is a $50,000 penalty. (Contractors) can make that up in a day."

Unfortunately, because OSHA didn't find any willful violations, Winfield can't be prosecuted under the OSHAct which requires a willful violation that results in a fatality.

But reading the article, I can't understand why Nevada OSHA didn't find a willful violation:

OSHA officials could not be reached to comment on the report, issued June 22 and obtained Tuesday by the Reno Gazette-Journal.

The report said on the day of the accident, Winfield and six employees were working on the project. Winfield's company had a verbal contract with Somersett Development Co. in Reno to install a French drain to "de-water" the area along the fairway of the second hole on the golf course.

The trench at the time of its collapse was 54 feet long and up to 12 feet deep with an average width of 40 inches.

"Mr. Winfield stated that his crew was under pressure from management at the Somersett Development to complete this job as soon as possible," the report states.

Attempts to reach a Somersett representative after working hours were unsuccessful.

"(Two employees) both stated that Mr. Winfield would yell at the employees to hurry up their work," the report noted. "(One employee) stated that Mr. Winfield repeatedly said, 'Move your ass,' to laborers."

According to the OSHA investigation, employees also asked Winfield to remove debris and told him of water seeping into the trench at shoulder height. One employee who asked if the trench would be shored was told it did not need it, the report states.

"(Another employee) stated that he never felt safe in the trench, but did not say anything to Mr. Winfield because he was afraid of being ridiculed or humiliated," the report states.

The report found that "Employees of Western States Equipment and Bobcat Inc., had not been trained in recognition of hazards of the environment they were exposed to. Protective helmets were not required for employees working in the trench and surrounding areas."

The report also found:

• Water was allowed to accumulate in the trench without proper precautions.
  
  
• The spoils pile was not maintained at the required distance from the trench.
  
  
• No inspections by a competent person were conducted prior to the start of work in the trench.
  
  
• There was not an adequate means of access or egress from the trench. With no ladders of other means of egress, there was no safe or quick method to exit the trench when the collapse occurred.
  
  
• There was no evidence of any protective system for employees working in and around the trench. No shoring or shielding system had been installed in or around the trench.

Gregory's father talked of how the death of his son had altered the lives of his family:

"I saw the hole where he made footprints where they dug him out," he said. "I went through his pockets, which were soaking. That told me the ground in that trench was wet. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know the conditions there weren't safe."

Winfield's employees shouldn't have been allowed to work in a ditch with soil that was more than 5 feet deep and wet, said Gregory, adding that he has 27 year experience in the construction field.

"That's not just fudging a little," he said. "That's doing 90 mph hour in a 15 mph school zone."

Good point. Does anyone think that a person driving 90 miles per hour who kills a couple of kids in a 15 mph school zone would get off with a $50,000 fine?

Remembering the Injured

We spend a lot of time in this blog talking about workplace death -- workers who never come home. We tend to neglect those who are injured -- sometimes seriously -- in workplace accidents. As little attention as fatalities get in the media, the injuries get far less, if any at all.

So it's appropriate once in a while for the media -- and the blogs -- to pay attention to those who lived through a workplace disaster, but will never be the same.

Michael Martin was the sole survivor of an explosion that killed two of his co-workers at the Bethune Wastewater Treatment Plant in Daytona Beach, Florida last January. Sparks from a cutting torch they were using to remove a damaged roof above a tank of methanol ignited vapors from the tank. Martin was severely burned in the explosion and was given only a 20% chance to live

Martin, 42, has seen a lot in the six months since a chemical tank blew up underneath him while he and two co-workers removed the metal roof above it with a cutting torch.

The longtime city maintenance worker watched his two friends die in the fiery accident -- and has struggled to cope with the guilt of being the sole survivor.

He also has witnessed his physical and emotional health crumble, along with the independence he had taken for granted. Once a handy, self-reliant, bear-sized man who was in the middle of fixing his own roof before the accident happened, Martin now has such badly burned and mangled hands he can't open a Gatorade bottle without help from his wife. The injuries could prevent him from working again, and he agonizes over how he will provide for his family.

Martin has many outside and inside scars that need to heal before he can move on with his life. But even then, he said, he isn't sure what to expect for the future.

"I need more time to get my life together," Martin said. "Everything I had planned, I'm going to have to reconfigure."

His financial future is also problematic:

The rock in the family has been his wife, Phyllis. To manage the house that's brimming with family members coming and going all day and get her husband to appointments with doctors and therapists almost every day, Phyllis had to quit her job at a nursing home.

Martin doesn't know what the future holds. He'd love to go back to work someday, but he has to get his strength back first. That's a day-to-day thing, he said.

Since the accident, bills have stacked up at the Martin house. His medical bills have been covered by worker's compensation, but he gets only half his pay from the city -- maintenance workers average about $30,000 a year -- as long as he's collecting the compensation. And Phyllis isn't working.

To help out, the city opened a bank account to raise money for the three affected families and the Martins opened an account of their own at Wachovia Bank.

Martin said he misses working at the city and even wakes up in the morning thinking he needs to get ready to go.

"I've worked all my life," he said. "I don't know what to do now."

As a child, Martin -- the youngest of 10 children -- would accompany his father to his many odd jobs, from demolishing houses to chauffeuring a local attorney. This is the first time he's been unemployed since starting his family as a teenager. He's been trying to figure out what he could do, but he knows his options are limited.

He's altered many plans he had made for his family. For example, he'll never make the 30-year retirement mark with the city of Daytona Beach now. He was seven years shy.

Happily, his spirit is good, for now:

Martin also has learned to laugh again. His sister recalled several times in the hospital when he would burst out with a joke -- like the time his family was eating ribs in his room -- against hospital rules -- and he told the staff on them because he still couldn't eat solid food and wanted a bite.

"He made so many jokes, he would bring us to our knees laughing," Gadson said.

Since he's gotten settled at home, he's become "Michael" again, they say. He's stayed positive and isn't "down-in-the-dumps" feeling sorry for himself as they expected, Gadson said.

He's trying, he said, for their sakes, but the pain is still there. He just hides it well.

His seven children have struggled with seeing the melted version of their once-hulking dad. After facing the possibility of life without him, his 18-year-old son, Michael Jr., admitted that he'd miss his father's guidance. Martin said that surprised him because the teen never took his advice.

He's unemployed, on workers comp and half salary, his wife isn't working, the bills are piling up, and he has a long recovery ahead of him.

There are lots of Michael Martin's in this country, some better off and some worse off. Many remember that 15 workers were killed at the BP Texas City plant last year, but the 170 injured -- many seriously -- have been largely forgotten.

Let's try to remember.