Three stories of OSHA encounters

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.charlotte.com/716/story/494418.html

PENALTIES REDUCED IN VIOLATIONS INVOLVING DANGEROUS CHEMICALS
Three stories of OSHA encounters
AMES ALEXANDER, KERRY HALL AND FRANCO ORDOÑEZ
Staff Writers

Regulators routinely slash fines and fail to pursue the toughest penalties against House of Raeford Farms, an Observer analysis shows.

• Since 2000, the N.C. poultry company has been cited for dozens of hazards that threatened safety and were linked to two workplace deaths. Inspectors proposed fines totaling $205,000. Following negotiations with the company, the fines were cut to $47,000.

• OSHA often cuts proposed fines, but it has been unusually generous to House of Raeford. For all N.C. poultry companies, the average fine is reduced about 50 percent; for House of Raeford, it's nearly 80 percent.

• Twice, N.C. OSHA collected evidence that workers in a company plant were suffering from repetitive motion injuries. They dropped both cases.

OSHA officials say they've tried to protect House of Raeford's workers while being fair to the company.

N.C. Labor Commissioner Cherie Berry said companies sometimes contest large penalties, which can lead to long delays in fixing safety problems.

For that reason, she said, regulators often reduce fines in exchange for a company's promise to address hazards.

"I'm more interested in getting the hazards taken care of than I am in assessing penalties in greater dollar amounts," she said.

FULL story at link.

[acmavm]

1. OSHA is useless against big business. The government is NOT going to

enforce laws that carry penalties for violations if those violations are being committed by the biggest benefactors to campaign war chests, to political parties, etc.

It's like any law related to the American worker. Take employment law. Can you say that the average American worker has any rights at all today? Not only can business monitor and observe your every movement while at work, the can observe and control your actions at times that are supposed to be free, to be your own. They can control your personal life, they can wade through your personal information, they can invade your most basic personal properties, i.e. your body and your home.

You expect them to care about something like worker's safety? Shit, they want us dumb and servile and they want to scrap us like an old junker after they've squeezed the life out of us. And they have the government's full blessing and aid.