Companies Kill 16 Workers A Day (In the USA)

[KurtFF8]

Source (http://www.alternet.org/workplace/144003)

also from the AFL-CIO blog (http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/11/12/16-deaths-per-day-highlights-weak-penalties-for-worker-fatalities/):



Every day, 16 workers go to work and don’t come home. They are killed on the job. But far too often, employers that have created or ignored dangerous workplace conditions are not held accountable. Civil penalties are weak and criminal prosecutions rare.
Now, “16 Deaths Per Day (http://16deathsperday.com/),” a new video from Brave New Films (http://bravenewfilms.org/), shines a spotlight on the weak deterrence and penalties of the nation’s workplace safety laws.
Along with the video, Brave New Films has created a website (http://16deathsperday.com/) and Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/16-Deaths-Per-Day/137403688536) page to build support for the Protecting America’s Workers Act (H.R. 2067 (http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/04/29/hearing-highlights-need-for-tougher-penalties-for-job-safety-and-health-violations/)), which would toughen enforcement of the Occupational Safety and Health Act and penalties for violating the law.

In a post on Firedoglake (http://news.firedoglake.com/2009/11/10/16-deaths-per-day-video-urges-passage-of-osha-reform/), David Dayen of Brave New Films writes:
The video takes a look at the stories of several workers. Travis Koehler-Fergen, an employee at the Orleans Hotel in Las Vegas, and Tina Hall, from Toyo Automotive Parts USA, both died at their workplaces in accidents. The Orleans was found by OSHA [the Occupational Safety and Health Administration] to have broken the law, but was never referred for prosecution. Sixteen safety violations were found at the Toyo plant prior to the accident that killed Tina Hall, but the highest fine ever levied on the company was $7,000.
The maximum penalty for a serious violation that injures or even kills a worker is $7,000, and $70,000 for willful and repeated violations. But those are rarely assessed. The average penalty for a serious OSHA violation is less than $1,000, and the average penalty when a worker is killed is $11,300, Peg Seminario, AFL-CIO director of health and safety, told a House hearing (http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/04/29/hearing-highlights-need-for-tougher-penalties-for-job-safety-and-health-violations/) this spring.
Current OSHA enforcement and penalties are far too weak to provide any meaningful incentive for employers to address job hazards or to deter violations. As a result, workers are exposed to serious hazards that put them in danger and cause injury and death.
In “16 Deaths Per Day,” David Uhlman, director of the University of Michigan’s Environmental Law and Policy Program, notes that the maximum criminal penalty an employer faces for a willful violation of safety laws causing a worker’s death is just six months in jail.
Now, if that same employer who commits that violation goes out over the weekend and shoots a deer without a state permit and transports that deer across state lines, it’s a five-year felony….The problem with our worker safety laws is not the rule; the problem is there are no consequences for breaking the rule.
Along with strengthening the penalties for OSHA violations for the first time in nearly 20 years, the Protecting America’s Workers Act would bring more workers under the protection of OSHA, protect workers who blow the whistle on employers that break the law and strengthen workers’ safety rights.
You can view “16 Deaths Per Day (http://16deathsperday.com/)” here and sign a petition demanding that Congress act swiftly to pass the Protecting America’s Workers Act.


Quite intense.

[Dr. Rosenpenis]

Americans are penalized more severely for killing non endangered animals than for killing workers

[The Red Next Door]

Maybe for companies, work safety is too expensive.

[Robocommie]

Americans are penalized more severely for killing non endangered animals than for killing workers

Well sure, people are a dime a dozen.

But in all seriousness, this is probably a case of the fine being less expensive than the cost of compliance. Those damn parasites.

[Stranger Than Paradise]

Workers are better off dead to the companies in some cases.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate-owned_life_insurance

[proudcomrade]

I would not be surprised to find the real numbers far, far higher than what this study revealed. So much of what is done, is successfully done underground. They get away with it. I have heard my fair share of horror stories involving practices that go on at certain local companies; while it never ceases to disgust and depress me, it no longer surprises me. Still, I applaud studies like these, because they bring the subject into the light of public discourse, something which is still desperately needed, perhaps now more than ever.

[cyu]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpora...life_insurance (http://www.anonym.to/?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate-owned_life_insurance)

If the employee doesn't die from attempts to work him to death, the capitalist profits. If the employee does die from attempts to work him to death, the capitalist also profits. Also, excerpts from http://everything2.com/user/Lometa/writeups/Dead+peasant+insurance

When an employee dies, sometimes years after the employee has left the company, the company receives the death benefit.

What Reynolds did not know during her lifetime, and her family did not know after her death, is that her employer had taken out another life insurance policy on her with itself as the beneficiary. When she died, her family received the $21,000 while her employer received an insurance payout form the "dead peasant policy" of $180,000.

during the last years of Reynold's battle with Lou Gehrig's Disease, the family had "begged C.M. Holdings for $5,000 to pay for a specialized wheelchair so they could take her to church," a request the company refused.

Some COLI policies even cover part-time and short-term workers and, in some cases, workers' relatives.

Companies listed by The Examiner as taking out "Dead Peasant" policies include American Electric Power, AT&T, Ball, Basset Furniture, Eaton, Nestle USA, Olin, Pitney Bowes, PPG Industries, Procter & Gamble, Trans World Entertainment and Walt Disney.

[ellipsis]

Add to this the countless workers who suffer and sometimes die due to the nature of their work and what they are exposed to. See black lung in coal workers and blue lung disease in banana workers.

[KurtFF8]

Exactly, and things like stress and other causes of death or at least illness can originate in the workplace, and I would imagine this isn't counted in this (although I haven't seen the methodology so perhaps it is).

The "Dead Peasant" insurance is yet another example of how the most powerful section of the capitalist class has increasingly used finance as a tool of exploitation over the past thirty or so years.

[GatesofLenin]

Add to this the countless workers who suffer and sometimes die due to the nature of their work and what they are exposed to. See black lung in coal workers and blue lung disease in banana workers.
Add Asbestos mining and production as well. Canada still mines and exports that cancerous fiber for over $1 billion a year even though most countries banned it a long time ago. Who buys it you might ask? Poor countries that cannot afford better insulation materials.

[CommunistWaffle]

My job only awards like 10,000$ to the families of workers killed on the job. And even then you have to pay like 25 cents a month for it.