Iron Worker Says OSHA’s Safety Failure Behind Brother-in-Law’s Fall to Death

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/06/25/iron-worker-says-oshas-safety-failure-behind-brother-in-laws-fall-to-death/

by Mike Hall, Jun 25, 2008

George Cole, a retired Iron Workers member who spent 42 years on construction job sites, told a congressional hearing yesterday that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA’s) “failure to enforce safety standards” is likely what killed his brother-in-law in a fall at a troubled Las Vegas construction site.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0BaVNpEt4M

The U.S. House Education and Labor Committee hearing probed whether OSHA is doing all it can to protect construction workers—including strong enforcement of the safety rules on the books and development of new workplace safety standards.


The hearing was spurred by the recent deadly crane collapses that killed 10 construction workers and a bystander in New York City, Miami and Las Vegas and the mounting death toll on the massive Las Vegas site that has claimed the lives of 12 workers. Said committee chairman Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.):

This committee has repeatedly raised serious concerns about OSHA’s inability or unwillingness to issue needed health and safety standards for a number of different industries. We have the same concerns about the construction industry.

Cole said on high-rise construction sites, OSHA rules require solid decking or a net every other floor or 30 feet, whichever is less. But OSHA issued what is called a compliance directive, allowing the contractors at the MGM Mirage’s CityCenter site to ignore the decking and net rule if other safety procedures were followed.


There are some 5,000 construction workers on the huge hotel, casino, condominium and retail project. Says Cole, whose brother-in-law Harold “Rusty” Billingsley was one of them:

The compliance directive eliminated this safety provision for Rusty. On Oct. 5, 2007, Rusty fell over 59 feet to his death. On that day I lost my brother and gained a statistic….After 42 years, I know for a fact that Iron Workers have survived 30-foot falls, but I don’t know of one who has survived a 60-foot fall.


FULL story at link.