Failure to eliminate hazards yields big fines
How much do pigeon droppings cost? A New Jersey manufacturer is learning that they cost $48,000, 40 days after you promised federal safety officials that you’d clean them up.
The manufacturer of steel doors and frames in Hoboken is facing fines of $530,500 for failure to clean up the pigeon droppings and carry out promises to correct other workplace hazards.
The Occupational Safety and Health Admini-stration imposed the fines recently, saying that BRS Products did not keep its promises to correct several deficiencies found in previous inspections. BRS Products claimed in March that it had corrected safety and health problems OSHA found nearly two years earlier, including unguarded machinery that could injure or kill employees, but a follow-up inspection in April showed many of these hazards still existed.
OSHA issued the company 14 failure-to-abate notices, which can carry penalties for every day a company does not take corrective action. Six of the 14 were deemed egregious and assessed penalties for 40 days, because OSHA alleges the company knowingly failed to abate these conditions:
• unguarded press brakes and unguarded points of operation on power presses (one employee lost a finger tip in an accident);
• excessive noise in the workplace that can cause deafness;
• lack of a lockout/tagout program to protect against sudden start-ups of machines while they were being serviced;
• no training of employees in the use of fire extinguishers;
• lack of vermin control in the workplace (severe accumulations of pigeon droppings);
• unprotected spray painting.
"This employer’s failure to fulfill its promises to protect its employees is so outrageous that stiff penalties are warranted," Charles Jeffress, assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health, said in announcing the penalties. "BRS Products and a now-defunct firm owned by BRS’s operators have a long history of OSHA violations."
Nineteen additional OSHA citations were issued to BRS Products, with proposed penalties of $142,900. They allege two willful safety violations, 10 serious safety and health violations, five repeat violations, and two other-than-serious violations. Proposed penalties — including those for the notices of failure to abate — total $673,400.
Violations go way back, OSHA says
According to statements released by OSHA, the principals of BRS have a long history of OSHA violations dating back to another company, Bilt-Rite Steel Buck Corp. in Westbury, NY. OSHA inspected that company 11 times from 1974 to 1994. The agency found violations during seven inspections and issued 55 citations.
That firm, which made the same products as BRS Products and was managed by the same principals, went out of business in 1996.
In May 1997, responding to a formal complaint about hazardous conditions, OSHA began a safety inspection of BRS Products and issued multiple citations with $72,000 in total penalties on Sept. 24, 1997. BRS Products contested the citations and reached an agreement with OSHA in January 1999 in which the severity of the citations was downgraded and the penalties reduced to $32,000.
The agreement, which became a final order of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission on March 11, included a statement from the company that all hazards had been corrected.
The company employs about 90 workers. Calls seeking comment on the penalties were not returned.
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