PART 2 OSHA Inspection Meadville Redi-Mix

[Omaha Steve]

Run time: 02:13 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqQ4iMWe9vk   Posted on YouTube: August 10, 2007 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: August 12, 2007 By DU Member: Omaha Steve Views on DU: 1058

 

Six years have passed since my brother, Gary Puleio, a cement truck driver was killed at Meadville Redi-Mix Concrete on 8/15/2001 after falling from a concrete tower. OSHA accepted the implausible excuse offered by Redi-Mix that Gary just "wandered up there on his own" at the end of the driving shift rather than, as a new employee, being assigned the dangerous task of cleaning the tower without any safety equipment. Meadville Redi-Mix had been cited for numerous serious violations only months before Gary was killed. For Gary ’s death, Redi-Mix paid a $6000 fine for REPEAT violations and accepted no wrongdoing.

Full access to Gary ’s case records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was denied. The appeal to obtain full access and to review the “substantive” issues of the case was stalled for months. Finally, no further action could be taken anyway as OSHA requires that any citations or penalties must be issued within 6 months of an “alleged violation” as the neglectful killing of worker is called. Corporations routinely negotiate with OSHA to have fines reduced and violations downgraded through a process called abatement while workers have no such access.

As I remember my brother today, I recall the terrible unjust circumstances surrounding his death, the inadequacies of the regulatory system designed to protect corporations not workers, the lack of accountability of corporations and the unbalanced scales of justice.

Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society"---Karl Marx

Details of Gary ’s case and the OSHA “investigation” are at http://garypuleio.blogspot.com.

Thanks to blogger Mick Arran for writing about Gary at:
http://puleiotower.blogspot.com

-Donna Puleio Spadaro

[Banned_Wagon]

1. As a Construction Business Owner..

I can tell you that abatement procedures happen all the time.. When OSHA issues you a fine for the first time, depending on the issue, The fine is usually around $10,000. This fine can be reduced to $100.00 if it was the first incident and if it was easily remedied. I do agree that OSHA is a protector of big business. It does seem strange to me that only the sub-contractors end up liable in these cases. I was on the job for less than 10 minutes, and was issued a $10,000 fine. It was later abated to $100.00. I am a small contractor.

You see, every big contractor should have a safety inspector that works for the contractor itself. Weekly safety meetings should be implemented. And if the company follows these procedures, and your brother happened to have signed any of these safety sheets, the company is covered. All they have to say is that your brother was addressed on the issue of Safety harnesses, blah blah blah, and they are in the clear. After paying a hefty fine that is.
You need someone that was there at the time to testify that your brother was, indeed, sent up there without any safety equipment. And also you need a witness to prove that they did NOT provide any safety equipment. You only need one witness. Are there any? If they have any safety equipment on site, they can say it was there, but that your brother ignored it of his own free will.

Sorry for your loss my friend, but this is a dangerous business. Things like this happen on a daily basis. Unfortunately, the law is on the side of Big Business. That's how they make their millions. At the cost of our lives.

[Divernan]

2. My deep sympathies for your loss - OSHA has been corrupted for decades

I made my daughter quit a job at a local dry cleaners (back in the 80's)when she told me about the lethal working conditions and how OSHA gave the owner a week's advance notice of an inspection so that the unsafe conditions could be temporarily remedied. There was some extremely toxic, concentrated chemical "goop" used in the dry cleaning process. It was occasionally spilled, and the workers were instructed to clean it up wearing extra thick industrial rubber gloves. This substance was so toxic it would eat through the gloves. And of course the workers were totally unprotected from the fumes. There were also other safety violations re keeping the furnace/water heater separated by doors from the area where the cleaning was being done (risk of explosion). The doors were routinely removed and only replaced right before OSHA inspected.

Your brother's needless and tragic death was quick and obviously occurred on the job. It is the case for many workers, the lethal substances to which they are exposed do not evidence themselves in illnesses and death until decades later (asbestos, silica, etc.) Without unions, STRONG unions, our workers are at great risk. Safety regs are meaningless if workplaces are not subject to UNANNOUNCED inspections, followed by punitive fines.

I lost my big brother about 15 years ago. I have not forgotten him, and I still miss him. You honor your brother's memory with your efforts.

[localroger]

3. My deepest condolances

Toward the end of the second video the cameraman is standing under the hopper where the accident occurred, looking down into another smaller hopper that discharges into the truck. He doesn't mention it but that smaller hopper is a scale; I can see all of the workings in the video. It's what measures the components of the ready mix batch.

I work for a scale company. I've never been in that plant but I've been in many like it, and in many other far more dangerous places. Yes, far more dangerous. Falling is a relatively minor hazard compared to others which are common.

I can't speak to the specifics of your brother's death. I can say the area where he fell is clearly dangerous, but I can also say from long experience -- I've been doing this almost 25 years -- not only employers but workers themselves will frequently step around safety regulations in order to get a job done more quickly and conveniently. When it is understood that you're paid to do a job, and both your employment and the viability of your company depend on getting it done quickly and efficiently, climbing down 40 feet to get the safety harness can start to look like a real annoyance.

Let me tell you a true story. I recently did a job for one of the largest chemical companies in the world, a place with positively rabid safety requirements. You don't get into the plant without nomex coveralls, hard hat, eye shields, the works. If you're more than six feet off the ground and you're not tied off, you're kicked out. It's like that everywhere in all their facilities, no exceptions.

The contractor who won the bid to build this little loading facility took one look at the requirements and said "it's not gonna happen." Not only was the bid based on what he considered a less unreasonable approach to risk, he claimed he would never be able to find workers who would adhere to such regs. Ever wear nomex in southern Louisiana in the summer? The risk of heat stroke is much higher than the risk of getting burned in an explosion in a facility that's under construction anyway. Not just management but workers themselves rebel against such rules. I've seen it time and time again.

So the compromise they arranged was that the chemical sompany sold the facility to the contractor for one dollar. Then, it being no longer their facility, the contractor was free to work under his own much looser guidelines. The work was completed quickly and on budget. Just before it opened for business, the contractor sold it back and the 15 MPH speed limit, respirator, hard hat, and nomex requirements all went back into place.

I'm not saying this is right, but it's the situation for thousands of people in industries like construction (of which ready mix is a significant subpart), food processing, and even some of the more marginal chemical processing and manufacturing operations. I've met many workers who are adamant that OSHA rules are excessive and just get in the way of them doing their jobs. I've gone to the hospital myself for my job, and thankfully it was covered 100% under Worker's Comp, but that doesn't help you much if the injury kills you.

I've written about this before, and I never know how to end it. When something horrible happens, whether it's Bhopal or your brother's death, there is a natural desire to find a reason or cause so it can be fixed. My experience is that when you deal with tall things, hot things, things under pressure, toxins, and high voltages, no matter how careful you are there are going to be mishaps. Entirely avoiding them is impossible. The only question is how much money do you spend trying to avoid them? Spending a little to protect a lot is good. Spending too much for something that doesn't provide so much protection isn't. As a human being it sounds weird and callous to make such judgements, but I can see why business itself wouldn't be possible without them.

I am not standing up for Meadville Redi-Mix here; from the video it looks like they may have handed your brother a broom and then tried to cover their tracks when things went wrong. That happens more often than it should. But the fines and abatement process reflect another reality, which is that some of these things are just plain dangerous and making them safe is impossible. If the company displays a good-faith effort it does make sense for OSHA to cut them some slack -- the first time at least. Having said that, I've been in facilities where my instant judgement was that the Corporate Death Penalty would be appropriate. Necessary maintenance wasn't done, leaky valves spewed toxins, those gratings the cameraman is walking on in your video were so rotten that there was a real danger of falling through, and so on. I don't see any of that in the video. I see one dangerous area which would be almost impossible to secure because of the rotating loader; nobody should ever be there without a harness, but even those aren't perfect. Even wearing a harness you could fall into one of those holes and hit your head on the way down. Oftentimes the calculus of such situations is that everyone says "hell with it anyway." It's easy to get complacent after years of it not resulting in a disaster.

You hear the cameraman remarking about a lot of guardrails; what he is seeing is that wherever possible, guard rails are in place. He's remarking on this because in a lot of places it's not the case. I have been in plants where the catwalk up beside the conveyor had no guard rail -- and even where there was no catwalk, and it was expected of maintenance men to walk up the conveyor itself in order to perform necessary service. Compared to many places I've been what I see in your video is a fairly safe facility.

That doesn't mean there wasn't a mistake and a coverup, but it is the reason OSHA went light on them.