With Little Fanfare, a New Effort to Prosecute Employers That Flout Safety

[Rose Siding]

With Little Fanfare, a New Effort to Prosecute Employers That Flout Safety Laws

snip>
With little fanfare and some adept bureaucratic maneuvering, a partnership between the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and a select group of Justice Department prosecutors has been forged to identify and single out for prosecution the nation's most flagrant workplace safety violators.

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 result, those involved say, should be to increase significantly the number of prosecutions brought against dangerous employers, particularly in cases involving death or injury.
....
The value of that coordination became obvious, he and other officials said, during a recent federal investigation into a New Jersey foundry owned by McWane Inc., the nation's largest manufacturer of cast-iron pipe. The investigation was prompted by articles in The Times and a companion documentary on the PBS television program "Frontline" that described McWane as one of the most dangerous employers in America....

http://nytimes.com/2005/05/02/politics/02osha.html?hp&ex=1115006400&en=0c7d797b5e29996c&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[Kagemusha]

1. Watch DeLay have it killed first thing tomorrow.

Ugh.

[DulceDecorum]

2. Yeah, before the Justice Department

gets sued over judges getting croaked.

[Joebert]

3. Why would he do that?

When the organization can be used to bankrupt businesses who fund his opposition?

Or they could be unleashed on the competitors of his financial backers.

When I heard Bush saying they were going after lawyers and bloated settlements, I wondered if large law firms tended to support the Democrats.

Yep.

If your opponent cannot raise money, they cannot compete.

You win by default.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

4. WOW!!!

These guys are right near me, in Phillipsburg NJ. They have been killing and maiming people for years. They talk lots of talk, but the bodies keep piling up.

It's about time these thugs got it in the short ribs. Hard. Their safety record is atrocious.