The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
OSHA shrinks worker death list, cutting most Ga. fatalities
Spokesman says new policy respects family privacy.
Detailed public information about U.S. workers killed on the job was removed in August from the homepage of the federal agency responsible for workplace safety, replaced with an abbreviated list elsewhere that omits many deaths and other details.
That new list, for example, includes the deaths of only two Georgia workers so far this fiscal year, which began Oct. 1. But information compiled by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows that at least 32 Georgia workers have been killed on the job in that time, with the latest death on Aug. 27 at a treated wood facility in Thomson.
Also removed from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration list are the names of victims. Instead, the list provides only the date, location and a brief description of the incident. To see where the victims worked, the public must click through to incident reports. Detailed information on some additional cases is available by searching summaries of fatality and catastrophe investigations, although locating the information on the website can be difficult.
The online news organization Politico, which broke the story, reported that the federal agency had changed its policy to report only fatalities where it had cited a company for violations. Such reports may be posted months after an accident.
Politico quoted a Labor Department spokesman who said the new policy will ensure that information is more accurate and that it respects the privacy of victims’ family members.
But publishing victims’ names was important to humanize the data and remind the public that more than 4,500 workers are killed on the job each year, said Jordan Barab, a former deputy assistant secretary for OSHA during the Obama administration. “In eight years of posting this information, along with the names, we never received one complaint from a family about privacy,” he wrote in an email to the AJC.
“Having the names does enable researchers and others to look further into the incident,” he wrote. “The inspection reports that are linked on the new list don’t provide much useful information beyond what violations were cited.”
He also noted that the OSHA list provided public notice of deaths of workers who don’t fall under OSHA’s legal jurisdiction, including most public employees, workers on small farms or small businesses where OSHA is prohibited from enforcing the law, and workers covered by other federal agencies, such as rail and mine workers.
The move is the latest under the Trump administration to de-emphasize enforcement actions and instead highlight safety measures.
In other moves, OSHA also has delayed the deadline for companies to electronically submit logs of serious work-related injuries and illnesses. The deadline had been July 1; it was delayed to Dec. 1.
In addition, as the AJC reported earlier this year, OSHA now issues fewer news releases, and most have been for safety events.
By this date last year, the agency had issued 55 news releases for the OSHA region that includes Georgia, with only about a half dozen announcing safety campaigns. The rest announced enforcement actions. This year, 13 news releases are posted for the region: nine for safety events and four for enforcement actions.
The agency’s homepage now highlights how companies can cooperate with OSHA on safety measures, Politico reported.
The two Georgia worker deaths shown on OSHA’s new fatalities list are the Jan. 5 death in Evans of a worker in a trench collapse, and the April 20 death in Flowery Branch of a worker when a wall collapsed.
News reports show that Joshua Price, 25, of Augusta, who worked for Hardy Plumbing, was the victim in the trench collapse. The victim in the Flowery Branch wall collapse was Francisco Reyes, who was listed as working for Atlanta Environmental Services.