Subscribe(1) eight-hour work day * (3) shifts per day * (2) deaths per shift = (6) deaths per day.YOU ARE EDUCATED STUPID
Still doesn't add up.
In an investigative series on workplace deaths, The New York Times last year found 1,242 cases between 1982 and 2002 in which OSHA concluded workers had died because of "willful'' safety violations by employers.So over 20 years, they have 60 deaths per year where OSHA thinks the company was at least partly to blame for the death. This is less than 1% / year of the workplace deaths above, suggesting that "16 negligence deaths a day" is wildly overstated.
OSHA sought prosecution on 93 percent of those cases. There were only 11 convictions.So either OSHA is incompetent, most companies settled out of court, or very few of the places where OSHA found negligence were significantly at fault in the death.
As the Sun pursued the story, the newspaper reported on cozy relationships existing between safety regulators and builders. Angered by the revelations and continuing death toll, workers walked off the job at MGM Mirage's CityCenter, shutting down the largest private commercial development in U.S. history until the contractors agreed to safety improvements.I'll say this from private lab work experience, enforcement is definitely lacking and consequences of breaking safety laws aren't strong enough to deter management from breaking them.
Twelve workers had died in 18 months. But after the improvements, the deaths stopped. No workers have died since June 2008.
Warrants were issued on October 19, 1983 for five officials of Film Recovery Systems who were named in indictments charging them with murder and 21 misdemeanor counts of reckless conduct. The five top officers of the metals recovery firm faced unprecedented murder charges in the cyanide poisoning death of an employee who worked in a plant described by Dr. Robert Stein, as "a huge gas chamber."
The unfortunate workers, and the families of the 3 workers tragically killed will most likely not have a team of experts working for them. They are too much in shock to think clearly about how to protect their interest and keep incomes coming into the household to support their families.
You can be sure however, that the experts sent in by the insurance companies that insure ConAgra and any third party suppliers or contractors will be focused solely on how to protect themselves from claims which are sure to come from the victims and their families.
Of course, the injured employees and the families of the deceased employees are entitled to immediate workers’ compensation benefits. However, workers’ compensation benefits are extremely limited. Workers’ compensation insurance does not include payment for pain and suffering, punitive damages and other damages which have certainly been suffered by the employees and their families.
The formula is B>PL, where B is the cost (burden) of taking adequate precaution, P is the probability of injury, and L is the monetary amount of damages sustained due to an injury.A problem with this monetary approach to damages is that one can evaluate in a million plausibly reasonable ways the value of anything.
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posted by cavalier at 10:55 AM on November 16 [1 favorite]