OSHA’s FY 2019 budget request reflects an emphasis on compliance assistance, an increase in enforcement and the elimination of a longstanding safety and health training grant program – a move sure to draw the hire of some in the occupational safety community.
The agency says its request for $549,033,000 for FY 2019 will allow it beef up its VPP initiative and restore 24 of the 33 compliance assistance positions that were lost in a five-year-long budget crunch.
His fellow workers could hear his voice – at first – then a construction worker buried in a trench collapse fell silent, and died.
The incident occurred at a suburban Detroit worksite at 1:30 yesterday afternoon – although emergency responders were not able to recover the man’s body for four hours, according to news reports. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
A team of surgeons were flown to the site of a construction accident in North Texas earlier this month, in order to amputate the leg of a worker who’d gotten caught in a trenching machine.
OSHA has cited R.A.W. Construction LLC for exposing its employees to trench collapse hazards. The Tallahassee-based company faces proposed penalties of $148,845.
During its investigation of the company’s Loganville worksite, OSHA identified two repeat and five serious violations, including failing to provide cave-in protection, and safe access and egress to employees installing gas lines at the excavation site, and not setting excavated materials at least 2 feet from the excavation.
“Touching” “Infuriating” and hopefully “Educational” and “Motivating” are all words that come to mind reading this amazing article, Death in the Trench, by veteran investigative reporter Jim Morris. You should probably stop here and read it, but I can’t help providing a few reasons why.
Morris, writing for the Center for Public Integrity, tells the story of the 2016 death of Jim Spencer, buried alive in an 8-foot deep trench.
A month after a 33-year-old worker died while working in an unprotected trench, OSHA inspectors found another employee of the same Missouri plumbing contractor working in a similarly unprotected trench at another job site.
First there was the National Safety Stand-Down to Prevent Falls in Construction. Now, contractors are being asked to stop work at their trenching operations in order to raise awareness of trenching and excavation hazards.
Acting on a complaint, OSHA officers in June 2016 found employees of one of the Verona, New York area's largest general contractors working in an unprotected 10-foot deep excavation at a suburban New Jersey high school, in violation of federal safety and health laws.
Employees of a Philadelphia contractor were exposed to fall hazards as high as 18 feet, according to OSHA enforcement personnel, who also found trenching dangers at the worksite they inspected.
