Incentives To Cheat: OSHA Recordkeeping And Its Toll On Workers

[Omaha Steve]

Get hurt on the job? Get FIRED!

FULL story: http://spewingforth.blogspot.com/2006/08/incentives-to-cheat-osha-recordkeeping.html

Incentives To Cheat: OSHA Recordkeeping And Its Toll On Workers

Injury and illness recordkeeping is one of those seemingly boring, but extremely important topics. Who OSHA targets for inspections, funding for workplace safety programs, companies' insurance rates and their ability to secure contracts all depend to some extent on where the injury and illness numbers are. And as with any such system, when significant finanical implications are matched with inadequate oversight you have a predictable result: lots of cheating.

The Contra Costa Times takes a deep look into how KFM, during its project to rebuild the Bay Bridge, systematically lied about workers' injuries on the project:

Doctors who scanned Bay Bridge skyway carpenter Ramon Martinez's brain prohibited him from working with machinery after he was struck on the head.

They declared mechanic Keith Bates totally disabled after he fell from a truck on the bridge construction site.

Workers had to lift pile driver Arne Paulson, hobbled by a knee injury, onto a boat daily for months to transport him to a bridge pier.

According to injury records provided to state worker safety authorities, none of these workers missed a day of work or required anything more than first aid. Many injury victims, including Bates and Paulson, were fired shortly after they received independent medical care.

The contractor building the Bay Bridge's $1 billion replacement segment concealed worker injuries behind a sophisticated curtain of bonuses, pliant medical workers and a don't-ask-don't-tell policy of handling workers' compensation claims and safety conditions, a review of state records shows.

Workers for KFM, A Joint Venture, were routinely fired when their injuries were too severe to hide, according to official interviews with workers, foremen and safety officers, as well as a state Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) review of injury logs and medical records.

How did they do it? First, KFM has a classic safety program that rewarded workers who had not experienced (or reported) an injury, and punished those who were injured on the job. Even when workers reported injuries, the company made sure that no one missed a day of work -- no matter how serious the injury -- and if the injury was too severe, the worker was simply fired.

Whenever Cal/OSHA safety inspectors arrived on the bridge site, KFM safety managers would offer up a "dog and pony show" during which they withheld their own misgivings about worker safety, according to a statement by Winston Peart in the state audit. He is a former KFM safety manager and former Arizona state worker safety compliance officer.

Peart, a 40-year safety veteran, told a state auditor in October that he "witnessed a pattern of deliberate underreporting of injuries," which were routinely minimized as requiring only first aid so workers could return to work. Missed work is one of the criteria for determining that an injury is severe enough to include in logs kept for state authorities.

When injuries occurred, Peart reported, his supervisor "would accompany the victim to a KFM-controlled medical clinic" where he "knew the doctors there and had some degree of influence in persuading them to classify injuries in a way as to not make them either reportable or recordable, depending upon the severity of the injury."