OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) is charged with ensuring American workers have a safe working environment.  Workers I’ve talked to in Central Illinois say OSHA is falling down on the job. Why?

Generally when a worker detects a unsafe condition he or she has the right to file a complaint with OSHA. OSHA investigates the complaint, orders the company to fix the unsafe condition and fines the company, let’s say $50,000. What happens next is that  the company fixes the problem and OSHA then lowers the fine to $300.  Sounds fair, but it’s not, not to the workers.

The net effect is that some corporations put off or never perform preventive maintenance, because they know that their only real penalty is going to be to fix an unsafe condition and pay a small fine.  Workers seeing this happen time and time again stop reporting dangerous conditions as it really doesn’t do them much good.   Workers who regularly call OSHA about unsafe working conditions that should be fixed, but aren’t, put their jobs at risk. It’s against the law, but management knows how to legally retaliate against the employee (whistleblower) who complains too much.

Companies should pay large fines for flagrant safety violations.  It’s the only way to guarantee workers safe conditions day in and day out. Unfortunately if OSHA were to do what it should do, Congressmen would intervene on behalf of the companies. All you have to do is look at the large amount of campaign contributions Ray LaHood and many other Congressmen receive from corporate PAC’s to know why OSHA doesn’t do its job.  It can’t, Congress won’t let it.

Workers shouldn’t have to put their lives unnecessarily at risk when they go to work, and the best way to help them is to vote for me.  As your Congressman I will do a top to bottom investigation of OSHA practices and actions in the last 10 years in the 18th Congressional District.  It’s time for OSHA to start working for workers.