Is a worker’s life worth about $11,300? (5,657 workers were killed on the job in 2007)

[Omaha Steve]

http://transitional.pww.org/article/view/15497/

Author: John Wojcik
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 05/05/09 11:40

Eleazar Torres-Gomez climbed onto a slow-moving conveyor to untangle a pile of wet laundry. Cintas, the laundry giant, encouraged workers at its Tulsa, Okla. plant to climb onto the conveyors to push items that were tangled into the dryers to meet production goals. He was then sucked into the industrial dryer on March 6, 2007 and drew his last breath inside its 300-degree chamber.

Internal memos revealed that company officials knew about the danger posed by the conveyor belts and that there were close calls before. But they never installed the protective guardrails that the memos suggest could have prevented the incident.

Three years earlier, in Ola, Ark., 19-year-old Jeremy Foster, headed out to work at the Deltic Timber sawmill in town. The temp agency sent him there. He never came home that night. Instead, his body was shipped to the local coroner. Because the mill’s wood chipper lacked a safety guard, it grabbed his shirt and strangled him to death.

Foster’s stepmother, Becky, told the World that the company sent two men to the family’s house to offer condolences and flowers and that they sent flowers to the funeral. “And that’s all they did,” she said. “His death actually cost the company only $2,250 because that is the amount the government finally fined Deltic for not having a protective guard on the wood chipper.”

Last year Darrell Richards of Junction City was killed at another Deltic sawmill in Waldo, Ark.

The labor movement has, for many years, complained about small fines and lack of jail terms for companies that willfully disregard safety standards.

This year, however, it seems that, from the halls of Congress to the offices of government regulatory bodies, the government is reversing course and moving to stop the carnage.

snip: The AFL-CIO says 5,657 workers were killed on the job in 2007, the most recent year for which figures are available. Another 50,000, the federation says, died from job-related diseases.

Seminario told the congressional committee that, “the average penalty for a serious violation of the Occupational Safety and Health Act is about $900. The average penalty for worker deaths is $11,300, but that’s only when there’s any kind of enforcement or penalty at all.


FULL story at link.

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