Blood, Sweat And Fears

By Gordon Bock

Unlike the FORTUNE 500 or Standard & Poor's 400, there is a roster of U.S. corporations to which no self-respecting chief executive aspires: the dishonor roll of companies charged by the Federal Government with failing to monitor adequately the safety of their workplaces. The list has swollen every month or so in the past year, as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has imposed unprecedented penalties on some of the nation's biggest and best-known companies. Among them: Ford Motor and Chrysler (the No. 2 and No. 3 U.S. automakers), Caterpillar (No. 1 among makers of construction equipment), General Dynamics (No. 1 defense contractor) and IBP (No. 1 meat-packer).

Amid all this apparent vigilance, America's 112 million workers should be able to breathe easier, knowing that Uncle Sam is doing everything possible to ensure safer plants, factories, agricultural fields and offices. But perhaps not. The headline-grabbing cases imply that a watchful eye is being cast toward workers' safety; nonetheless, the companies involved were slapped mostly for keeping poor records of injuries and illnesses. This year's proposed fines, ranging from $477,000 for Ford to $2.59 million for IBP, were the highest ever levied by OSHA, but the penalties posed little financial hardship for the companies. Critics, including many union leaders, charge that OSHA is not taking enough action to combat the hazards of dangerous equipment and noxious chemicals that can lead to ailments, injuries and deaths. "OSHA laws are supposed to improve a worker's chance of getting home safely to his family," says Davitt McAteer, director of the Occupational Safety and Health Law Center, a public-interest law firm in Washington. "But the worker has less protection than he did eight years ago."

If that is true, some of the responsibility may rest with the President. In his 1980 campaign, Ronald Reagan attacked OSHA for imposing nitpicking, burdensome regulations on business. Within nine months after Reagan took office, the agency made a major policy shift. In the most dangerous industries, OSHA began to target its inspections. It stopped making surprise visits to factory floors and instead began relying on checks of the companies' own records. Only if employers' safety logs showed illness and injury rates to be above the national average in manufacturing did OSHA staffers consider wall-to-wall inspections. To lessen the chance of such unwelcome scrutiny, some employers apparently started doctoring their logs to underreport or hide serious accidents. But OSHA did not begin to crack down with heavy fines on major record-keeping violations until last year. Critics contend that only pressure from Congress and the approaching 1988 election galvanized the agency into action.

Directing OSHA's current policies is Assistant Labor Secretary John Pendergrass, 62, a former 3M industrial hygienist. Pendergrass argues that OSHA's emphasis on encouraging companies to upgrade their record keeping has fostered self-regulation and a new spirit of cooperation between Government and business. "Playing policeman wasn't working," Pendergrass says. "We are nonconfrontational. We can't be the safety director at every plant." Since 1980, he asserts, 1.5 million safety hazards have been eradicated in America's 7 million workplaces. Indeed, Labor Department statistics suggest that workplace safety has improved substantially since OSHA was created in 1970. The rate of job-related illnesses and injuries declined from 11 per 100 full- time workers in 1973 to 7.6 per 100 in 1983. But then progress seemed to stall. The rate was back up to 7.9 per 100 full-time workers in 1985.

A study by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health indicates that Labor's figures, which rely exclusively on reports from companies, might badly understate the dangers in American factories. Between 1980 and 1984, for example, Labor reported 19,700 occupational fatalities. But by examining death certificates, NIOSH discovered about 27,500 on-the-job fatalities in the same period.

Less disputed is the idea that hazards abound in several occupations. Leading Labor's list of the most dangerous industries is meat-packing, where more than 3 out of 10 employees get hurt or become sick in work-related incidents every year. Also exceeding the national average: companies that make mobile homes (a 27.6% annual injury-and-illness rate in 1985), truck- and auto-body manufacturers (23.4%), building construction firms (15.1%) and farmers (12.2%).

When Americans report to work each day, many of them encounter hazards as endemic to the job as lunch pails and the morning coffee break. In July OSHA penalized Chrysler, alleging that workers at a Newark, Del., assembly plant were exposed to high levels of arsenic and lead in the paint and soldering areas. (The company plans to pay the $1.6 million fine.) In Chicago, ten of the 5,000 workers who have helped build the so-called Deep Tunnel project, which has created 50 miles of underground passageways for flood and sewage control, have died in construction accidents since 1975. Grain Belt workers face combines with sharp blades that sever fingers and limbs, foul-smelling air in hog-farrowing barns that can cause lung disease, and an array of possibly carcinogenic herbicides.

Nowhere is danger more obvious than in the meat-packing industry, which will be the focus this week of congressional hearings on its safety practices. AFL- CIO officials estimate that more than one-third of the nation's 175,000 packinghouse workers -- 160 victims each day -- will suffer a serious injury or illness this year. Because meat-packing employees must work swiftly with sharp knives and cleavers, severe cuts and fractures are common. So is carpal- tunnel syndrome, a painful wrist condition caused by a repetitive chopping motion that swells tendons, pinches nerves and sometimes requires corrective surgery. Many workers in IBP's Dakota City, Neb., plant "stand on treacherously slippery floors covered with animal fat," contends Lewie Anderson, vice president of the 1.3 million-member United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. But an IBP spokesman says the company annually pours 1 million lbs. of salt on plant floors to combat such slickness.

California's Silicon Valley, home of many of the nation's newest high-tech companies, boasts a far cleaner image, but its workers face perils as well. In semiconductor plants, where a single speck of dust can destroy a computer chip, employees must don gloves, caps, gowns and shoe covers. But these chipmaking facilities, known as "clean labs," seem misnamed when workers relate the litany of health problems they encounter by being exposed to the acids, gases and solvents used in chip manufacture. California's division of labor statistics and research has found a high incidence of disabling illnesses among the state's 64,000 semiconductor workers: 21% had job-related ailments in 1985, vs. 6.7% of the state's 2.1 million manufacturing employees.

One reason for the decline in job-related ailments in the past 15 years has been the rapid growth of employment in service industries compared with manufacturing jobs. In 1972, 26% of the nonagricultural work force was employed in manufacturing; that proportion is now down to 19%. But even office workers face health-related uncertainties, particularly in the age of widespread computerization. Some employees who sit in front of video-display terminals all day complain of neck and shoulder soreness and eye-strain; they may also worry about possible long-term effects on their sight. More and more companies are mandating regular breaks for VDT workers and paying for periodic eye examinations.

As American workplaces have become more diverse, the task of regulating safety practices has grown complex. Meanwhile, though, OSHA's staff of inspectors has shrunk to 1,125, from 1,336 in 1980, and the agency has been notoriously slow to set standards. OSHA has issued only 18 health and 23 safety rules in its 16-year history, which even Pendergrass calls "embarrassing."

The agency's increasing reliance on self-regulation by companies has obvious shortcomings. At a John Morrell meat-packing plant in Sioux Falls, S. Dak., inspectors found 69 record-keeping infractions in a company log. On a list of injuries that supposedly resulted in no lost workdays: an amputation and a chemical burn. OSHA proposed a $690,000 fine on Morrell in April. After meat-packer IBP learned that its records would be inspected last January, OSHA alleges, the company assembled 50 employees to revise its logs. IBP, which is fighting the case, has been charged with 1,038 instances of underreporting injuries and illnesses.

OSHA's rules will remain ineffective until they are backed by prosecutorial zeal and judicial commitment. Since Reagan took office, the Justice Department has brought to trial only one of the 24 cases OSHA has recommended for prosecution. Although laws provide for prison sentences of up to six months, "nobody has ever gone to jail for violating safety standards," says Joseph Kinney, director of the Chicago-based National Safe Workplace Institute. He adds, "A stretch in the slammer could have a powerful deterrent effect."

With reporting by Jerome Cramer/Washington and Lee Griggs/Chicago