The government is a weak enforcer of worker-safety laws, fining major companies for less than one-third of the citations issued against them over the past 14 years, according to a study released Tuesday.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration "has more bark than its bite," said Jim Dona-hue, who wrote the study for Essential Information, a Washington-based group founded by consumer activist Ralph Nader.OSHA imposed penalties for only 32 percent of the citations issued against the nation's 50 largest corporations from 1977 to 1990, the report said.
OSHA spokesman Doug Fuller said the agency had not reviewed the report and could not comment on it. But he noted that over the past year, OSHA has had several multimillion-dollar settlements, including a record $10 million fine in October from the operator of a Louisiana fertilizer plant where eight workers died in an explosion.
Donald Savelson, a New York management attorney who has represented large corporations in OSHA cases, said the study was "way off base" because it did not mention that in many worker-safety cases, employers do not pay as big a fine if they agree to implement better safety standards.
"The larger companies have been spending more on compliance and abatement," Savelson said. "I think OSHA, in return for that, has decided to reduce the penalties," he said.
But Donahue said the government "is practically hesitant to impose violations," and that, in turn, hurts workplace safety.
"This hesitancy is contributing to the injury and killing. If they imposed a greater fine, companies would pay attention to workplace safety. As it is now, there is no incentive to abide by the regulations," Donahue said.
Donahue's study reviewed enforcement documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The documents showed that the 50 largest of last year's Fortune 500 corporations were required to pay only a little over half of the penalties initially proposed by OSHA, the report said.