There Goes Worker Safety

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Sam Gold
A California Injured Worker

The reality of current worker safety is that more Americans are killed at work each year than died in the twin towers on September 11th. Every day eighteen Americans die preventable deaths; preventable because mandated safety precautions go unheeded. When a preventable death occurs it means that someone, somewhere, dropped the ball. Possibly a safety measure was not followed by an employee or their supervisor. Or, an employer who has repeatedly and maliciously disregarded OSHA regulations has been allowed to literally “get away with murder!”

According to Webster’s Dictionary, an “accident” is defined as “an unexpected unusual event.” But, when an employer repeatedly breaks laws, there is nothing unusual or unexpected about an event that produces a tragic debilitating injury or death to an employee.

This is the dirty little secret of Workers’ Compensation: employers hold the ultimate “Get Out Of Jail FREE” card when it comes to their employee’s safety. Employers are immune from civil wrongful death actions and, for all practical purposes, criminal prosecution.

Prior to Workers’ Compensation laws employees had the right, just like any other citizen, to sue their employers if the employer’s tortuous behavior caused the employee an injury or worse, death. Unfortunately, very few workers prevailed in court. The employer’s ability to afford more lawyers and more investigators outmatched that of the resources of the workers.

Employers did not take safety precautions seriously or provide adequate safe working conditions because they had absolutely nothing to fear from the injured worker.

An idea that developed shortly after the turn into the 20th Century was the formation of state-created industrial commissions to establish health and safety regulations and to compensate injured workers. The various state commissions desired to make available a fund which would compensate workers for their injuries without draining the resources of the employers.

The general idea was that companies would contribute to a self-insurance fund; the fewer injuries there were, the less the fund would have to pay out and the lower the premiums would be to the employers. Thus, the initial Workers’ Compensation concept was a
preventive measure by individual states in reaction to the need to protect workers..