OSHA: The People on the Other Side of Citations and Fines

 

OSHA: The People on the Other Side of Citations and Fines

John* has been a fixture in my life for as long as I can remember. While he wasn’t related by blood, he was always referred to as my “bonus uncle.” John was my favorite visitor, but he wore a pensiveness and a sense of sadness like a mantle of worries. Growing up, I could never quite figure out where it stemmed from, but as I matured, John became more open when sharing the anonymous work anecdotes he was willing to share with my parents in my presence. In truth, I didn’t understand much of anything the adults were speaking about for a long time. All I knew was that John held a position of responsibility in the U.S. government for OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration).

OSHA was never John’s dream job. He had courageously enlisted in the Vietnam War before he was drafted, despite wanting to continue his education to earn his Ph.D. After he was honorably discharged from service, the U.S. itself was in chaos. Because there was so much public anger and animosity against those who had served, it was very difficult for veterans to secure jobs outside of the U.S. Government. In 1970, President Nixon signed the Occupational Safety & Health Act as a response to the public anger surrounding the rising number of injuries and fatalities in the workplace. This newly created government agency and its associated benefits were the best option for John at the time, who also had a wife and two children to take care of. 

That fateful decision to work for OSHA turned into a 35-year career with the agency. It turned into thirty-five years of animosity, abuse, and regular death threats spewed from any employer that violated safety regulations and was caught doing it. He heard and saw the worst of the worst. There was the illegal Mexican migrant laborer who lost both legs and an arm when his employer decided that the built-in safety measures of the post digger for the fence weren’t important enough to replace. A man working at the local sugar beet processing plant who asphyxiated in sugar when his employer sent him in to clean the silos. A welder who was severely burnt over most of his body (internally and externally) when his employer allowed him to bring an oxygen tank on a skateboard with him into the closed area he was welding to keep him cool while he worked. His employer either didn’t recognize or care that an open flame next to an oxygen tank is highly combustible. 

The most memorable one was the scrapyard proprietor. A physician tipped OSHA off that employees from the scrapyard kept coming to him with a kaleidoscope of illnesses- some even fatal. John initially met with the proprietor in an informal conference to discuss the fines associated with the citations issued and heard the standard slew of obscenities and death threats lobbied against him. Additionally, he told John that if he ever came back to his business again, he would kill him. Unfortunately for him, that’s not how OSHA works- especially if illnesses and potential fatalities are involved. John showed up at the scrapyard the next day armed with a search warrant, two FBI agents, and sheriff’s deputies. They were met with the proprietor’s angry wife insisting that her husband was out of town. With the search warrant, they found the “traveling” owner hiding in a closet in one of the business' outbuildings.

They finally located the cause of the employees’ mysterious illnesses: extreme lead poisoning. The scrapyard owner had purchased an old bridge and asked his employees to dismantle it into scraps. This was a monumental task that took a significant amount of time. What was overlooked was the fact that the bridge girders had approximately 50 layers of lead paint from yearly upkeep. The mysterious illnesses were found to be a result of  lead poisoning, which could’ve been avoided had proper safety measures for workers been put into place (access to clean clothes and on-site showers). Even more tragic, lead can easily be transferred from one person to another. In this case, these employees were bringing it home with them on their clothes and skin and exposing everyone else in the house to lead toxicity and future illnesses.        

As angry and hateful as people get when you bring up OSHA, these are just a few of the experiences John encountered over his 35-year career. I, for one, have empathy for the OSHA employees that have worked tirelessly since 1970 make going to work safer. People cite outdated policies as the catalyst for that anger and hate, but they also forget that business owners have accountability for everything that an inspector finds when he walks in. It can’t be easy to be on the receiving end of all that animosity day after day, yet John did it with integrity. For every accident, illness, or fatality listed above, John was able to intervene to make sure it never happened again. There will always be a plethora of new ways people can get hurt on the job (see 2023 Accident & Fatality Incident Data for the U.S. ), but despite the shade thrown on OSHA, I will always be extremely proud of my Uncle John for the large scale difference he made in workplace safety when he was the one on the other side of the desk… just doing his job.