Two months after 51 construction workers plunged to their deaths at Willow Island, then-Assistant Labor Secretary Eula Bingham explained why her agency couldn't have inspected the construction site more frequently.
"Our area offices are constantly making very difficult choices in using inspection resources to respond to the most serious workplace problems," Bingham told a June 1978 congressional hearing held just up the river from Willow Island at St. Marys. "Even if this agency were to double or triple its compliance resources, we could never regularly visit the five million workplaces throughout the nation."
Today, staffing at OSHA's West Virginia office in Charleston is nearly a third smaller than it was when the Willow Island scaffold came crashing down.
Twelve OSHA officers must cover the entire state, inspecting power plants, steel mills, logging operations and all other workplaces except coal mines.
Only nine of those 12 are full-time inspectors. The other three are team leaders, supervisors who help out on more complicated investigations, OSHA officials say.
"We believe the agency has sufficient resources deployed in West Virginia to adequately protect employees," said Sharon Worthy, a labor department spokeswoman. Worthy cited 176 construction inspections across the state in 2007, 451 citations issued and $477,000 in proposed safety fines.
It is not all about citations. If there was 1/3 rd more inspectors, would the 451 citations remain or go higher?
3 comments:
Did you hear the news?? They changed the name from OSHA to OSHAM.
Ed in charge of OSHAM. Fits.
176 Construction Inspections? Construction isn't exactly booming in West Virginia. What about the chemical plants, the mills, the metal fab shops?
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