North Carolina Labor Dept Found To Be Extremely Slack On Workplace Safety

Federal Reports Chide North & South Carolina On Workplace-Safety Programs


Workplace safety programs run by North Carolina and South Carolina downplay serious safety problems, issue weak fines to violators and fail to properly handle whistleblower complaints, according to reports released by the federal government.

South Carolina's problems are so severe that auditors said increased federal oversight may be needed.

The audits, conducted by the U.S. Labor Department, are part of the federal government's pledge to strengthen its oversight of states that run their own workplace safety programs. About half the states - including the Carolinas - run their own programs, which the law allows as long as they are as effective as the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration in protecting workers.

South Carolina has the nation's lowest average penalties for workplace safety violations, noted Jordan Barab, deputy assistant secretary of labor for OSHA.

"We're very concerned that with the low penalty number, they're not presenting a credible deterrent to employers around the state who cut corners on workplace safety," Barab said.

Lawmakers and officials have grown concerned in recent years over the ability of some state-run programs to protect workers.

In a 2008 investigation into workplace safety in the poultry industry, the Observer found that weak enforcement, minimal fines and declining inspections have allowed companies nationwide to ignore hazards that can kill and injure workers. The series examined injury records from 2003 to early 2007.

Federal audits conducted this year were more intensive than those done in previous years. Auditors examined case files from October 2008 to September 2009.

Both states praised their low injury and illness rates in written statements and said they work hard to protect employees.

Penalties are weak

Among the U.S. Labor Department's findings:

Both Carolinas impose weak penalties when violations are found - an average $281 per serious violation in S.C., compared with $512 in N.C. and $970 by federal OSHA.

North Carolina shaves 10 percent off fines for "cooperation," and state policy "results in lower penalties for serious violations," the report says.

South Carolina cuts fines by 60 percent in exchange for the employer's promise it will improve safe working conditions. But auditors found the state rarely checked to see if problems were fixed, and employers who got the discount were not required to take more steps than other companies to ensure safety.

Compliance officers in the Carolinas understate the severity of problems by misclassifying violations and rarely label problems as "willful" - the most serious degree.

N.C. compliance officers issued only one willful violation in 2009 "due to the belief that it would be too difficult to pass the review process," auditors said. South Carolina had five willful violations.

Auditors said of the N.C. program: "Some violations that would most likely have been classified as serious by federal OSHA were classified as non-serious by the state, and some violations categorized as low or medium severity would have been categorized as high severity by federal OSHA."

Companies receive higher fines when they are cited for serious or willful violations.

North Carolina lets bureaucrats purge documents from case files when they are closed. Removing the documentation limits the state's ability to review a company's history and properly investigate future violations, auditors said.

South Carolina files, meanwhile, lacked narratives explaining items such as a description of the hazard and didn't have contact information for employees interviewed. The report said the files involving one fatality, for example, "did not provide a complete picture of how the accident occurred."

The federal government took both states to task for failing to properly handle cases involving workers who had complained about their employer. It criticized North Carolina for doing only phone interviews, for example.

The Observer investigation found that of the roughly 800 people a year who filed complaints under N.C.'s Retaliatory Employment Discrimination Act, about 1 percent get their jobs back. The state had not taken a case to court on behalf of a worker in seven years. And investigators dismissed cases without interviewing workers. The act prohibits employers from firing or punishing workers for filing worker's compensation claims or complaining about unsafe working conditions.

The reports show little is being done in the Carolinas to deter companies from shortchanging safety, said workplace safety advocate Tom O'Connor, executive director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health.

"Unfortunately, sometimes the only way to get people's attention is with a significant dollar fine. And there just isn't an adequate deterrent from the low penalties assessed," said O'Connor, who lives in Chapel Hill.

"And if discrimination programs are not effective, then workers don't feel able to express themselves and will keep quiet if they find themselves in a dangerous situation."

The reports, released in the last two weeks, could prove troubling for South Carolina, as auditors noted "inadequate enforcement documentation and state policies that potentially render the program less effective than the federal program."

S.C. official defends program

An S.C. OSHA spokesman, Jim Knight, said in a statement Thursday the state is proud of its record in occupational safety and health.

"Evaluations during the past eight years indicate that we have exceeded expectations and have an effective state program. Nothing has changed in the program, whether staffing levels or enforcement procedures, since the last evaluation in 2009," the statement said.

N.C. OSHA said in a written response it "will make adjustments that are in the best interest of North Carolina. It appears (recommendations included in the report) are procedural in nature and do not directly impact our workplace safety efforts."

The report noted some achievements for N.C. OSHA, including an increase in the number of health inspections, which are more time-consuming and complicated than safety inspections, and for reaching out to Spanish-speaking workers. Construction deaths also fell to 10 in 2009 from 17 in 2008.

The states must respond to OSHA this month.

If states don't adequately address the concerns, Federal OSHA can increase its oversight - or even start proceedings to take over a state program.

"South Carolina has more problems than most of the states," Barab said. "We'll focus very carefully on their corrective action plan and their progress on addressing the problems."


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Sources: McClatchy Newspapers, WRAL, Youtube, Google Maps

Urban American Workers Being Cheated Of Their Full Wages...Federal Enforcement Is Needed!

NY Times----

(Is your Employer ripping you off?)



Workers in America, Cheated


An important new study has cast an appalling light on a place where workplace laws fail to protect workers, where wages and tips are routinely stolen, where having to work sick, injured or off the clock is the price of having a job.

The place is the United States, all across the lower strata of the urban economy.

The most comprehensive investigation of labor-law violations in years, released Wednesday by the Center for Urban Economic Development, the National Employment Law Project and the U.C.L.A. Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, surveyed 4,387 workers in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.

Its researchers sought out people often missed by standard surveys and found abuses everywhere: in factories, grocery stores, retail shops, construction sites, offices, warehouses and private homes. The word sweatshop clearly is not big enough anymore to capture the extent and severity of the rot in the low-wage workplace.

Workers told of employers who ignored the minimum wage, denied overtime, took illegal deductions to pay for tools or transportation, or forced them to work unpaid before or after their shifts. More than two-thirds of them had endured at least one wage violation in the previous workweek. More than a quarter had been paid less than the minimum wage, often by more than $1 an hour. Violations typically robbed workers of $51 a week, from an average paycheck of $339.

The report paints an acute picture of powerlessness. Of workers who had been seriously injured on the job, only 8 percent had filed for workers’ compensation — a symptom, researchers said, of the power of employer pressure. Although 86 percent of respondents had worked enough consecutive hours to be entitled to time off for meals, more than two-thirds had had their breaks denied, interrupted or shortened. Workers who complained to bosses or government agencies or tried to form unions suffered illegal retaliation: firing, suspension, pay cuts or threats to call immigration authorities.

It is, of course, morally abhorrent that the American economy should be so riddled with exploitation. But it is also powerfully evident that there are practical consequences when the powerless are abused. Low-wage workers spend a high proportion of their income on necessities; when their paychecks are systematically bled by greedy employers, an entire community’s economic vitality is sapped as well.

The answers are basic, though too long ignored. Government needs to send more investigators to back rooms, offices and factory floors, and to enlist labor organizations and immigrant-rights groups as their investigative eyes and ears. Penalties for Wage-Law Violations need toughening. Employees who have historically been denied basic Labor Rights — domestic workers and home health aides — need to finally be given the protection of wage-and-hour laws. Companies must not be allowed to skirt their legal obligations by outsourcing hiring to subcontractors, letting others break the law for them.

The report has particular significance for immigrant workers, who made up 70 percent of the survey (39 percent of them were undocumented). Workplace abuses are flourishing in the absence of a working immigration system, where illegal immigrants are vital to the economy but helpless to assert their rights.

The report upends the argument that the way to help American workers is to make illegal immigrants ever more frightened and exploitable. Only by protecting all workers will the country begin to rebuild a workplace matching its ideals of decency and fair play.



Street-Level Groups Enlisted to Report Labor Violations

To crack down on businesses that pay less than the minimum wage, fail to pay overtime or to pay wages altogether, steal tips or commit other labor violations, the New York State Department of Labor is starting an experimental program that will rely on community organizations to monitor compliance with labor laws.

In an announcement, the state labor commissioner, M. Patricia Smith, called the program, the New York Wage Watch, a “one-of-a-kind grassroots tool in the fight against illegal labor practices.”

The six-month pilot will begin with six participants: the Chinese Staff and Workers’ Association, which will focus on Chinatown, Flushing and parts of Long Island; Make the Road New York, which will focus on Bushwick; the Workplace Project, based on Long Island; the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which will look at high-end supermarkets; the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which will focus on retail stores in Lower Manhattan, Bushwick, the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx and parts of Queens; and the Centro del Inmigrante, based on Staten Island.

The six groups will conduct know-your-rights training, providing employers with information about compliance and distributing brochures to workers in supermarkets, laundromats, nail salons, day-labor sites and other work areas. They will have a designated contact in the US Labor Department’s Division of Labor Standards which enforces wage and hour laws, to whom they can refer violations or questions.

The department is to provide training and materials to the groups starting on Feb. 7.

After the first experiment in New York City and on Long Island, the Labor Department will seek additional groups for the program. The groups must be nongovernmental and nonprofit, and can include religious organizations, student groups, labor unions, business associations or neighborhood groups.

Ms. Smith said the program was loosely based on the Neighborhood Watch programs that began in Queens in the 1960s. In December 2007, she said, the Labor Department investigated a commercial strip in Bushwick. Two of the six groups now taking part in the pilot project — Make the Road New York and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union — maintained a presence in the Bushwick area, staying in touch with workers and employers, and the number of labor-law violations went down, Ms. Smith said.

The Labor Department has documented numerous labor-law violations at a variety of workplaces in recent years, from restaurants and car washes to sites like the Saratoga Race Course and the Erie County Fair.

Amy Carroll, a supervising lawyer at Make the Road New York, said, “The Department of Labor can’t be in every nook and cranny of the city and the state all the time. We want employers to know there are costs for violating the law. They can’t get away with it.”



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Sources: NY Times, Chicago Suntimes, Whitehouse.gov, US Dept of Labor, OSHA, Charlotte Observer, News & Observer, WRAL, Ultimate Wealth, Milwaukee World, Youtube, Google Maps