Friday, October 30, 2009
A Family Voice on Workplace Safety
A scathing critique of the Nevada state Occupational Safety and Health program
prompted a recent Congressional hearing that spotlighted how the agency’s
shortcomings have tragically affected workers and their families.
At the October 29 hearing of the U.S. House of
Representatives’ Education and Labor Committee, members examined many of the findings
from a special study by the federal Occupational Safety and Health
Administration (OSHA) after Nevada
experienced 25 workplace fatalities in 17 months, from January 1, 2008 through
June 1, 2009.
Nevada
is one of 27 states and American territories that take federal funding to
enforce workplace health and safety standards, in lieu of enforcement by OSHA
itself. OSHA has oversight responsibility for the state agencies and conducted
this review as the first in a series of studies to be conducted on the
performance of the 27 state agencies.
Among other findings, the special oversight review cited
repeated failures by the Nevada
agency to:
- impose
stiff penalties after potentially preventable accidents;
- issue
citations or notices of violations for previously identified hazards;
- ensure
that its investigators receive proper training; and
- allow
families of killed or injured workers to participate in investigations.
Many of these findings were also highlighted last year in a
Pulitzer prize-winning series by Alexandra Berzon in the Las Vegas Sun investigating deaths in construction accidents that
were also covered in the federal report.
The impact of the state agency’s failures on affected
families was demonstrated by Debi Koehler-Fergen, the mother of Travis Wayne
Koehler, who was killed at the Orleans Hotel in Las Vegas on February 2, 2007. Mr. Koehler had been sent by his supervisors to
help a colleague correct a problem for which neither man had proper training
and that was normally handled under contract by an outside company. When toxic
gasses were released, both men died and a third man was severely and
permanently injured.
Mrs. Koehler-Fergen told committee members that she was
treated disrespectfully by a top Nevada OSHA official, who was seated next to
her at the hearing and who had explained the results of the state report on her
son’s death in a public area of the agency while other employees watched her
cry, instead of taking her to a private office.
She also said that she was bitterly disappointed by the
agency leaders’ decision to downgrade the violations cited to serious from “willful
neglect” and “repeat serious” that the key investigator’s findings seemed to
warrant against the hotel’s owners. Her
complaint to the federal OSHA helped prompt its review of the state agency.
Mrs. Koehler-Fergen is a volunteer with United Support &
Memorial for Workplace Fatalities, a Public Welfare Foundation grantee that
helps bring the perspective of surviving family members into policy discussions
about improving workplace safety and health.
Rep. George Miller, who chairs the House committee and led
the hearing, expressed concern that families are often cut out of the
investigation process after a loved one has been killed or injured on the job.
He said that it’s “an ongoing effort” on the part of the committee to change
that, at both the federal and the state level.
To see Mrs. Koehler-Fergen testifying click here.
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