OSHA on Avian Flu

$2.3 Million Penalty

Federal OSHA cited Thomas Industrial Coatings Inc. of Pevely, Mo. for 33 willful and eight serious violations after two fatal accidents within two months on the same job. The proposed penalties total a whopping $2,362,500.

Both accidents occurred at the same bridge painting worksite in Kansas City and at the same suspended scaffold. One employee died when he fell through a hole in the platform while he was painting. The other employee fell to his death while dismantling the scaffold.

"Not only did two workers suffer fatal falls while working in Kansas City, but another employee of this company suffered a fatal fall in a similar accident earlier in the year in the St. Louis area," said Edwin G. Foulke Jr., assistant secretary of labor for OSHA. "Three fatalities in five months show gross plain indifference to employee safety. Employers must ensure that their workers are protected from unsafe working conditions."

The instance-by-instance willful violations alleged the lack of fall protection and training for employees especially in the use of fall protection and the safe dismantling of the scaffold. The single willful citation alleged the lack of safe scaffold access; that a qualified person did not design the scaffold; and that there were no competent persons to supervise the work. The citations also alleged that the employer failed to inspect the scaffold and its components and to secure the suspension cables properly. The serious citations addressed several other unsafe practices; such as, the employer allowed debris that employees could trip over to remain in front of the large platform holes and permitted the personnel lift to be overloaded.

Compare Your Injury Incident Rates to Others in Your Industry

Have you ever wanted to compare your incident rates to a national or state average?  There are two tools now available on the Bureau of Labor Statistics Internet site on its "Injuries, illnesses and fatalities" (IIF) page at www.bls.gov/iif/:  The Occupational injuries and illnesses profiles tool and the Incidence rate calculator and comparison tool. These tools provide you with the ability to statistically benchmark, monitor, and improve the safety and health systems in your workplace.

The rate calculator tool allows anyone to calculate an establishment's nonfatal injury and illness incidence rate(s) per 100 full-time employees for a given year, provided they have OSHA log data summary numbers available. Four different incidence rates can be calculated

• total rate = the total recordable injury and illness cases;
• days-away rate = the cases involving days away from work only;
• job transfer/restriction rate = the cases involving job transfer or restricted work activity only; and
• DART rate = the total cases involving days away from work, days of restricted work activity and/or job transfer.

The results can be compared to any industry in any available state. This tool is online at:  http://data.bls.gov/IIRC.

The profiles tool allows anyone to generate three types of survey results tables, available for the United States and for 44 states and territories:

• case and demographic numbers (Table 1);
• case and demographic incidence rates (Table 2); and
• annual survey summary numbers and rates (Table 3).

The tool can be accessed at:  http://data.bls.gov/GQT/servlet/InitialPage

Tables 1 and 2 provide information about the characteristics of injured workers and their injuries for cases with one or more days away from work. Tables can be created to select cases by industry, occupation, injury type, age, gender, and job tenure. Table 3 provides the complete set of numbers and incidence rate estimates for each selected industry.