Spring Lake Drive in Itasca, Illinois is home to the internationally renowned nonprofit safety advocacy group, the National Safety Council. For over a century, the NSC has sought to end preventable deaths on the job as well as in our neighborhoods and on our roads.
Under a 1913 Congressional Charter, the NSC not only provides valuable research studies, including its annual Injury Facts publication, it also hosts a yearly meeting called the National Safety Council Congress and Expo.
The NSC Congress & Expo is the largest annual gathering of safety professionals in the world. The 2018 safety conference was held last week in Houston, Texas, where on October 23, 2018, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced its Top 10 List of the Most Frequently Cited Workplace Safety Violations.
From National Safety Council President and CEO Deborah A.P. Hersman:
“Knowing how workers are hurt can go a long way toward keeping them safe. The OSHA Top 10 list calls out areas that require increased vigilance to ensure everyone goes home safely each day.”
2018 OSHA Top 10 List of Employer Safety Violations
As advocates for workers and employers who are seriously injured or wrongfully die in on the job work accidents, monitoring companies who fail to abide by federal safety regulations is important.
Over the years, the OSHA Top 10 List of Safety Violations has confirmed our perception that companies all too often put profits over people. Why? The OSHA Safety Violation list rarely changes: the same risks and dangers keep showing up time and again.
In last week’s announcement by NSC Deputy Director Patrick Kapust, there was only one new entry on the most common safety violations list: “Eye and Face Protection” (29 CFR 1926.102).
To read more in some of past discussions of the annual Top Ten Safety Violations List, see:
- Top 10 Workplace Safety Violations in 2013 Announced by OSHA: How Dangerous is Your Job?
- Osha Top 10 Safety Violations In 2014: Companies Still Put Profits Over People
- 2017 OSHA Top Ten List of Safety Violations.
Top 10 Employer Federal Safety Law Violations in 2018
- Fall Protection – General Requirements (29 CFR 1926.501);
- Hazard Communication (29 CFR 1910.1200);
- Scaffolding – General Requirements (29 CFR 1926.451) ;
- Respiratory Protection (29 CFR 1910.134);
- Lockout/Tagout (29 CFR 1910.147);
- Ladders (29 CFR 1926.1053);
- Powered Industrial Trucks (29 CFR 1910.178);
- Fall Protection – Training Requirements (29 CFR 1926.503);
- Machine Guarding (29 CFR 1910.212); and
- Personal Protective and Lifesaving Equipment—Eye and Face Protection (29 CFR 1926.102).
This list reflects only those violation of the federal requirements found in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). The list does not include additional safety dangers to workers posed by employers failing to obey state and local safety requirements.
No Real Change in the Danger of Serious Injury or Preventable Death on the Job
Consider the following Top Ten List presented by OSHA in 2014. Notice how little things have changed in the past four years.
Here is OSHA’s 2014 Top Ten Most Frequently Cited Violations:
- Fall protection
- Hazard communication
- Scaffolding
- Respiratory protection
- Powered industrial trucks
- Lockout/Tagout
- Ladders
- Electrical: wiring
- Machine guarding
- Electrical: systems design.
The following safety violations appear in both lists:
- Fall protection
- Hazard communication
- Scaffolding
- Respiratory protection
- Powered industrial trucks
- Lockout/Tagout
- Ladders
- Machine guarding.
Most employer violations remain at the same spot within the top ten. The same eight work site dangers remain on both lists.
In the past four years, “powered industrial trucks” moved down two spots on the Top Ten List. Between 2014 and 2018, the two electrical dangers were replaced by another fall danger and violations involving eye and face protection.
Worker Injury or Death on the Job: Federal Regulation versus Company Revenue
Reviewing these annual lists of the most common federal safety regulations violated by employers does more than hint of the need for greater federal scrutiny of company compliance. It also warns of the higher risk of injury or death to workers in certain kinds of work (like construction or commercial trucking).
For instance, construction workers who work from heights, or who need scaffolds or ladders as part of their job, are not only at a higher risk of injury than workers in other lines of work, but these construction workers cannot assume that federal safety laws work to protect them from harm.
The OSHA Violation List released last week at Illinois’ National Safety Council annual symposium confirms construction workers face a particularly high risk of on the job work injuries from falls. (See the 2018 Top Ten List Nos. 1, 3, 6, and 8.)
The latest federal violation list also validates the concerns and worries of those who work on behalf of victims of on the job accidents on the work site: safety regulations are not doing enough to make workers safer on the job. It appears that revenues continue to be more important than regulations in the eyes of the companies responsible for keeping their employees safe from harm.
We’ll discuss this in more detail in our next post. Please be careful out there!
