WASHINGTON -- House Democrats today introduced a sweeping bill to beef up worker protections laws under the Occupational Safety and Health Act that lawmakers believe have been too lax...The Protecting America’s Workers Act would stiffen fines for violations of workplace safety law and create a new felony category for criminal violations....read more here.
There are many workplaces that are safety conscious, who treat their employees as assets. However, as noted recently, there are also companies with a flagrant disregard of worker's safety and treat their workers as expendable. Unfortunately, those are the companies that caused OSHA to need the felony charge teeth proposed within this bill.
While I don't think that OSHA should be only a regulatory agency, I do believe that gross, and willful negligence of workplace safety leading to the death of a worker should carry the force of a felony charge. I also believe that the investigation should include the decision makers within the company instead of merely the managers who are forced to carry out out those decisions.
While this is a good effort to prosecute companies that don't get it, the result of this legislation could be that companies that do get it are caught up in the net.
ReplyDeleteWe need to remember that around 90% of work place injuries are attributed to human behavior and only around 9% are attributable to physical hazards.
It would be unfortunate if OSHA does not give credit where credit is due when companies embrace STAR and VPP programs. The only way to be successful in those programs is to ensure there is a focus on human behavior.
In fact, this could spell the end of the consulting side of the OSHA business which in my opinion saves more lives than writing tickets.
Sadly, this seems more of a capitulation to labor groups who do not believe their members should be personally responsible for unsafe behavior. I really hope that congress is careful when dealing with this issue, but I fear politics as usual is at play rather than a search for the moral high ground.
I agree that Congress will have to be very careful with this bill. However, as the recent posts showed, there is a need when all of the consulting and encouragement fails.
ReplyDeleteThe focus will need to be on the ongoing, willful neglect of safety mandates rather than injuries or even death.