:: rawblogXport ::

:: Wednesday, May 04, 2005 ::

With Little Fanfare, a New Effort to Prosecute Employers That Flout Safety Laws By DAVID BARSTOW and LOWELL BERGMAN, New York Times
For decades, the most egregious workplace safety violations have routinely escaped prosecution, even when they led directly to deaths or grievous injuries. Safety inspectors hardly ever called in the Justice Department. Congress repeatedly declined to toughen criminal laws for workplace deaths. Employers with extensive records of safety violations often paid insignificant fines and continued to ignore basic safety rules.

Inside the Bush administration, though, a novel effort to end this pattern of leniency has begun to take root.

With little fanfare and some adept bureaucratic maneuvering, a partnership between the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and a select group of Justice Department prosecutors has been forged to identify and single out for prosecution the nation's most flagrant workplace safety violators.

posted 11:33 AM :: reference link :: 0 comments ::

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