This is the last installment of the 6-part Charlotte Observer Poultry Worker series. The entire series can be found here: http://www.charlotte.com/poultry/
Workplace inspections
at 15-year low
Poultry processors face few consequences when they ignore hazards that can kill and injure workers.
Weak enforcement, minimal fines and dwindling inspections have allowed companies to operate largely unchecked. An Observer investigation found:
• Workplace safety inspections at poultry plants have dropped to their lowest point in 15 years. The industry has kept steady employment over that time and has leaned heavily on illegal immigrants to fill jobs.
• Fines for serious violations -- including conditions that could cause deaths and disabling injuries -- are usually cut by more than half, to an average of about $1,100.
• It has been a decade since OSHA fined a poultry processor for hazards likely to cause carpal tunnel syndrome, tendinitis and other musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) that are common to the industry.
• The federal government has made it easier for companies to hide those MSDs. Regulators in 2002 stopped requiring companies to identify injuries associated with repetitive trauma.
Officials with the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration say poultry plants are safer than ever, pointing to a decade of declining rates of reported injuries. They credit enforcement programs and a growing recognition among industry leaders that reducing injuries is good for business.
But the Observer found that the official injury statistics aren't accurate and that the industry is more dangerous than its reports to regulators suggest. Current and former OSHA officials say the agency has made it easier for companies to hide injuries, and has all but abandoned its mission to protect workers.
Three stories of OSHA encounters
http://www.charlotte.com/poultry/story/494418.html
Regulators routinely slash fines and fail to pursue the toughest penalties against House of Raeford Farms, an Observer analysis shows.
• Since 2000, the N.C. poultry company has been cited for dozens of hazards that threatened safety and were linked to two workplace deaths. Inspectors proposed fines totaling $205,000. Following negotiations with the company, the fines were cut to $47,000.
• OSHA often cuts proposed fines, but it has been unusually generous to House of Raeford. For all N.C. poultry companies, the average fine is reduced about 50 percent; for House of Raeford, it's nearly 80 percent.
• Twice, N.C. OSHA collected evidence that workers in a company plant were suffering from repetitive motion injuries. They dropped both cases.
OSHA officials say they've tried to protect House of Raeford's workers while being fair to the company.
N.C. backs off poultry scrutiny
North Carolina bolstered its workplace safety program after a chicken plant fire killed 25 workers in Hamlet in 1991. But the state's focus on keeping poultry workers safe has waned since the mid-1990s, an Observer investigation has found.
Rules? What rules?
http://www.charlotte.com/poultry/story/492955.html After a conveyer broke her arm and ripped off the tip of a finger, a worker in a poultry plant in Greenville, S.C., was back on the job the next morning. Cornelia Vicente said the plant nurse told her at the hospital she had no choice.
Think that sounds right? Neither do we. Ms. Vicente, a former line worker for House of Raeford, is one of hundreds of poultry workers interviewed by the Observer during a 22-month investigation. It found weak safety rules and slack government oversight have made it easy for a dangerous industry to exploit illegal workers and underreport injuries.
