OSHA has reached an agreement with one of the country’s leading health and safety violators. For the second time in less than a decade. Will it work this time?<\/p>\n
All-out warfare between OSHA and one the country’s largest corporations doesn’t benefit anyone — especially the workers who continue to be exposed to hazards while the company refuses to comply with its legal obligation to ensure a safe workplace.<\/p>\n
Such has been the story of OSHA vs. Dollar Tree. Hopefully until yesterday<\/p>\n
Dollar Inc. is a huge company that operates more than 16,000 Dollar Tree and Family Dollar locations in 48 states and five Canadian provinces, employing more than 193,000 employees. The company is also infamous for ignoring OSHA standards and endangering its workers with blocked aisles and emergency exits, blocked electrical panels, unsafe walking\/working surfaces, dangerously stacked shelves and blocked or locked fire escapes — bringing back memories of the fatalities caused by locked and inaccessible exit doors in the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire<\/a> and the 1991 fire in the Imperial chicken processing plant<\/a> in Hamlet, N.C. which\u00a0 killed 25 workers.<\/p>\n OSHA has cited the company over 300 times since 2000<\/a>, amounting to almost $22 million in penalties. Yet those penalties seemed to have little impact.<\/p>\n The resulting pattern: Dollar Tree violates, OSHA inspects, OSHA cites, Dollar Tree pays (or contests), Dollar Tree violates. Rinse and Repeat.<\/p>\n Dollar Tree reported a gross profit of $7.7 billion in 2021 — almost 13 times OSHA’s annual budget. So OSHA penalties — even those reaching into the hundreds of thousands of dollars — don’t have much of an impact on their bottom line. And there is no way that OSHA can inspect more than a handful of the company’s 16,000 locations in any given year.<\/p>\n The health and safety problems in the stores seems integral to the company’s business plan, according to Time Magazine’s<\/a> Alana Semuels:<\/p>\n In some ways, the business model of dollar stores makes it difficult to comply with OSHA regulations. Stores are relatively small, compared to a Walmart or Target, and are low on both storage space and workers to save money. When new goods come in, there\u2019s nowhere to put them and no one to unpack them, leading to tall stacks that endanger workers.<\/p>\n Cry me a river. But such problems aren’t limited to companies with small stores. In recent years OSHA has also signed CSA’s with Target<\/a> and Walmart<\/a> addressing similar issues.<\/p>\n The resulting pattern: Dollar Tree violates, OSHA inspects, OSHA cites, Dollar Tree pays (or contests), Dollar Tree violates. Rinse and Repeat.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n OSHA’s frustration with Dollar Tree has been clear in the agency’s press releases over the last several years. This from a 2022 press release<\/a>:<\/p>\n Since 2017, the U.S. Department of Labor\u2019s\u00a0Occupational Safety and Health Administration\u00a0and state OSHA programs have conducted more than 500 inspections at Family Dollar and Dollar Tree \u2013 operated by their parent company, Dollar Tree Inc. \u2013 and found more than 300 violations. During these inspections, OSHA routinely find exit routes, fire extinguishers and electrical panels dangerously obstructed or blocked; unsafe walking-working surfaces; and unstable stacks of merchandise.<\/p>\n Following the Ohio inspections, OSHA proposed penalties of $1,233,364 for multiple violations.<\/p>\n \u201cFamily Dollar and Dollar Tree stores have a long and disturbing history of putting profits above employee safety,\u201d said Assistant Secretary for Occupational Safety and Health Doug Parker. \u201cTime and time again, we find the same violations \u2013 blocked or obstructed emergency exits and aisles, boxes of merchandise stacked high or in front of electrical panels and fire extinguishers. Each hazard can lead to a tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n And a more recent, 2023 press release<\/a> announcing a $294,000 penalty against Dollar Tree in Rhode Island:<\/p>\n For the third time in three months, the U.S. Department of Labor’s\u00a0Occupational Safety and Health Administration<\/a> has cited one of the nation’s largest discount retail chains, Dollar Tree Inc. for allowing hazardous conditions at one of its Rhode Island stores, this one in Coventry.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, a small, underfunded agency like OSHA has few tools to deter a large company with thousands of locations across the country from wantonly breaking the law. Criminal penalties under the Occupational Safety and Health Act can’t be used in these situations (unless a willful violation causes a worker’s death.)\u00a0 And, as former OSHA head Dr. David Michaels observed<\/a>:\u00a0\u201cThese fines are among the highest in OSHA\u2019s history, and they are still not having the desired impact. If employers can look at a fine and say, \u2018that\u2019s not going to impact us,\u2019 they have little incentive to make a change.\u201d<\/p>\n But the stigma of constant OSHA citations, if not the actual amount of penalties, seems to be having an effect on Dollar Tree.<\/p>\n Yesterday, OSHA and Dollar Tree signed off<\/a> on a corporate-wide settlement agreement<\/a> that<\/p>\n requires Dollar Tree and Family Dollar to conduct a comprehensive, nationwide assessment of the root causes of the violations OSHA has repeatedly cited at multiple stores, with a plan to identify causes and make operational changes to correct them within a two-year period. In the meantime, to ensure prompt abatement of any future violations related to blocked exits, access to fire extinguishers and electrical panels, and improper material storage at stores nationwide, the companies must correct hazards \u2014 within 48 hours of OSHA notifying them \u2014 and later submit proof the hazards were corrected. Failure to do so subjects the companies to monetary assessments of $100,000 per day of violation, up to $500,000, as well as OSHA inspection and enforcement actions.<\/p>\n Dollar Tree has also agreed to pay $1.35 million in penalties to settle existing contested as well as open inspections of similar alleged violations.<\/p>\n \u201cThese fines are among the highest in OSHA\u2019s history, and they are still not having the desired impact. If employers can look at a fine and say, \u2018that\u2019s not going to impact us,\u2019 they have little incentive to make a change.\u201d — Dr. David Michaels<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Corporate Wide Settlements (CSAs) are legal agreements reached between OSHA and employers that have shown a pattern of non-compliance or have similar OSH Act violations at multiple establishments or worksites.\u00a0 They come in especially handy in situations like this, where OSHA doesn’t have the capacity or resources to address problems in all of a company’s facilities, and the company seems interested in addressing their health and safety issues.\u00a0 In return for companies offering measures that go above and beyond OSHA requirements, OSHA agrees to a somewhat modified enforcement procedure and resolution of outstanding enforcement actions.\u00a0 (A list of all OSHA CSAs can be found here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n You can read the details of this agreement here<\/a>. But basically, if OSHA receives a report of a violation of any of the “covered standards” (fire exits, housekeeping, fire extinguishers, emergency access, walking working surfaces or access to electrical panels), OSHA notifies the company which then has 48 hours to fix the problem and send photographic or video proof to OSHA. Failure to abate can result in penalties of $100,000 per day of violation, up to $500,000. OSHA can conduct “monitoring inspections” of the covered hazards without issuing violations, but any other hazards (e.g. chemical spills) that are “in plain view” would be treated as normal violations subject to regular inspections and penalties.<\/p>\n The theory is that the stores find and fix their problems with fewer OSHA resources going into oversight of the company.<\/p>\n Dollar Tree will also form safety advisory groups with extensive employee representation (although Dollar Tree is not unionized), enhance hazard identification and control programs, develop an audit program, create a new employee training program, hire additional safety professionals and set up a 24-hour safety hotline.<\/p>\n In addition,<\/p>\n So far, so good.<\/p>\n There are a few problems with the agreement, however.<\/p>\n The CSA doesn’t cover Dollar Tree operations in the 21 state plan states<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n This agreement only applies to Dollar Store (and Family Dollar), which is a different company than Dollar General which is not part of this settlement. Dollar General has had the same problems — and OSHA has the same frustrations.<\/p>\n \u201cYears of OSHA inspections that have identified systemic hazards makes it clear that Dollar General values profits more than the safety of the people who work in their stores,\u201d OSHA regional administrator Kurt Petermeyer said, in a statement. \u201cThey are well aware of federal requirements, but they continue to ignore their legal responsibilities to protect their employees at stores throughout the nation.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0Just from from Feb. 1, 2022, through March 13, 2023, 27 Dollar General store OSHA inspections in Alabama, Florida and Georgia resulted in a total of nearly $8.5 million in penalties. Dollar General has been assessed $21 million in OSHA penalties since 2017 for workplace safety problems.<\/p>\n In addition to unsafe conditions, employees are at Dollar Store and Dollar General on the low end<\/a> of the nation’s pay scale:<\/p>\n The stores typically operate with lean staffing, and their employees, by some measures, are paid at the bottom of the retail industry\u2019s scale. According to a\u00a0survey by the Economic Policy Institute,<\/a>\u00a0a liberal think tank, 92 percent of Dollar General workers earn less than $15 an hour, lower than many other companies surveyed, including Burger King, Walmart and Dunkin\u2019. About 20 percent of Dollar General workers earn less than $10 an hour.<\/p>\n But that’s good news for the companies’ shareholders:<\/p>\n At the same time, the company is highly profitable. In December, Dollar General said its quarterly operating profit had increased about 10 percent from a year earlier while net sales had increased 11 percent, to $9.5 billion. Dollar Tree, which also owns the Family Dollar chain, is posting strong results as well. On Wednesday, Dollar Tree said its profit in fiscal year 2022 increased 23 percent to $2.2 billion and net sales rose 7.6 percent to $28.3 billion.<\/p>\n More than one-third of all stores that opened in the United States in 2021 and 2022 were dollar stores.<\/p>\n Time Magazine’s<\/a> Semuels reported on a few other problems at Dollar Tree earlier this year.<\/p>\n In 2021, FDA inspectors found 1,100 dead rodents \u201cin various states of decay\u201d in a Family Dollar distribution center in Arkansas, prompting recalls<\/a>\u00a0in stores across six states. Or that Dollar Tree has run aggressive anti-union campaigns in stores that have tried to organize,\u00a0closing a Missouri location<\/a>\u00a0where workers voted to join a union and\u00a0shelling out tens of thousands of dollars<\/a>\u00a0to convince a handful of workers at a Connecticut location to vote no in a union drive.<\/p>\nTruce<\/h2>\n
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A Few Problems<\/h2>\n
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What’s With This Industry?<\/h2>\n