Dispatches From the Front Lines of Workplace Safety & Health

OSHA Cites Tesla

OSHA has issued a citation against Tesla in Texas for violation of OSHA standard leading to the electrocution of contact worker Victor Gomez Sr. last August at the car maker’s Austin, Texas manufacturing plant.  Although no notice of the citation has appeared on OSHA’s website, the Department of Labor confirmed the citation to Reuters news service. The electric car maker is owned by billionaire DOGE-master, Elon Musk, who contributed over a quarter of a billion dollars to Trump’s election campaign.

No press releases have appeared on OSHA’s website since before the January 20th inauguration. During the first Trump administration, no enforcement-related press releases appeared on the website for several months after the inauguration, and issued only a few in subsequent months.

We’ll see what happens. The Department of Justice recently moved to drop discrimination complaints against SpaceEx. Hopefully, the OSHA citation won’t befall the same fate.

Some OSHA Burned Books Restored

We wrote a piece a couple of weeks ago about book burning at OSHA which resulted in numerous publications being removed from the web, allegedly because they had “offensive” wording that might have been interpreted of supporting DEI or transgender propaganda. Many of the removals were ridiculous, targeting the evil word “diverse,” for example, without any reference to the context in which the words were used.

The good news is that after an initial period of panic-induced over-reaction, many of these publications have been restored.

“OSHA best practices for protecting EMS responders during treatment and transport of victims of substance releases,” “Recommended Practices for Safety and Health Programs in Construction” and “Ergonomics for the Prevention of Musculoskeletal Disorders: Guidelines for Shipyards” have resurfaced, although “OSHA best practices for protecting EMS responders during treatment and transport of victims of substance releases” and “Caring for our Caregivers: Workplace Violence: A road map for healthcare facilities” are among the publications still among the missing.

On the Department of Labor Page, Worker.gov and Employer.gov are also still missing.

What’s Going On Inside CAL/OSHA?

For those interested in workplace safety and health, Cal/OSHA, California’s state OSHA program, has always been somewhat perplexing.  The state has many health and safety standards that federal OSHA lacks (e.g. ergonomics, heat, workplace violence), but the agency has always been plagued with budget and staffing issues that have hindered the enforcement of those standards.  For OSH people interested in following CalOSHA issues, there is no better source than Inside CalOSHA. The website is run by Garrett Brown, who retired from Cal/OSHA in January 2014 after 20 years with the Division — 17.5 years as a field compliance officer in the Oakland District Office and 2.5 years as Special Assistant to former Chief Ellen Widess in Headquarters.

As Garrett describes, “This website is dedicated to bringing to working people the essential documents on what Cal/OSHA does, what is working, what’s not working, and whether it has the resources and staffing to complete its mission. The documents posted here are public documents from inside the agency, news media reports and journal articles, and first-person accounts from current and former employees of Cal/OSHA.”

It’s just been updated to include the latest available staffing levels of Cal/OSHA field compliance inspectors, the current budget proposals, the latest Federal OSHA evaluation of Cal/OSHA, and the many articles in the news media about the adverse impact of inspector vacancies on worker health and safety in California.

OSHA’s Weakness

The Washington Post just ran an excellent investigative piece by Todd Frankel into the horrible working conditions, deaths and numerous OSHA citations against the Phenix Lumber Company, in Phenix, Alabama — “the deadliest workplace in America over the past five years. ”  One worker fell into an auger while it was spinning. His spine was shredded, liver ejected, and his heart never found.

The focus of the story was how, despite numerous deaths and injuries, and high OSHA citations, the Occupational Safety and Health Act does not give OSHA the authority to shut down workplaces.  As Frankel explains, OSHA “can request a shutdown from the court only in rare cases of “imminent danger,” such as a looming roof collapse. Causing the death of a worker by willfully violating safety rules is a misdemeanor under federal law. The maximum sentence is six months in prison, less than the penalty for killing an endangered animal.”

Elon on Firing 9/11 and Nuclear Weapon Security Employees: Oops. Never Mind.

Elon is indiscriminate blind firing federal workers in his insane effort to root out government corruption (of which he has found zero) and save enough money for an enormous tax cut for the rich (with which he’s not even close.) But in a few cases he’s gone way too far. He fired hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, and then decided to he’d better hire them back. That was easier said than done, as DOGE had also cancelled their email accounts, making it difficult to give them the good news that they had been rehired.

More recently, DOGE cancelled research grants and got rid of about 20 percent of 90-member NIOSH staff oversee the World Trade Center Health Program which administers medical treatment for those suffering from attack-related toxins. Congress created the program in 2011. It currently assists 137,000 people by providing treatment for emergency workers, cleanup crews and Lower Manhattan residents who became ill from being at or near ground zero.

But the heroes who still suffer the health consequences of cleaning up the 9/11 site were considered dispensable by Elon. But after Republican members of Congress in districts in and around New York City joined Democrats to condemn the cuts, Trump restored research grants that had been terminated and rehired 11 of the16 employees who had been fired. A letter from Republicans said that “To fulfill our moral obligation to 9/11 survivors and responders, we must ensure that the program not only has the necessary resources, but also is properly administered, so that program members receive the high-quality care that they need and deserve.”

Protecting Maryland’s Public Employees

The Maryland legislature is considering legislation that would strengthen protections for the state’s public employees after three preventable deaths in the last year. Ronald Silver II, a Baltimore Public Works employee died from heat stroke, city sanitation worker Timothy Cartwell who was killed collecting trash in a West Baltimore alley when the driver of the garbage truck backed into him, pinning him against a wooden light pole. And Davis Martinez, a Maryland parole officer, after whom the bill is named, was stabbed to death by a registered sex offender he was monitoring. The bill would create a separate Public Employee Division, allow the state to issue fines to public employers to violate the law and require the state OSHA to issue a workplace violence standard.

As a result of Martinez’s death, Maryland OSHA cited the state’s Department of Parole for exposing employees to physical threats of assaults by parolees, probationers and individuals on mandatory release such as being shot, punched, kicked, scratched, stabbed bit or spit on. But there was no penalty because current state law does not permit the state OSHA to issue financial penalties.