Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., held a hearing to examine how to prevent accidents like the one that killed Eleazar Torres-Gomez, who died last year at a Cintas Corp. laundry in Tulsa when a conveyer belt dragged him into an industrial dryer operating at 300 degrees.
It wasn't the first time such accidents had happened at facilities owned by Cintas, the largest uniform supplier in North America. Woolsey, chairwoman of the House labor subcommittee on work-force protections, released documents detailing three other "close calls" involving employees who fell into washers and a dryer.
"What do we have to do to get a company like Cintas to be responsible?" asked Rep. Phil Hare, D-Ill.
Cintas said it formed a safety council and trained employees to prevent future incidents.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration generally investigates plant by plant, rather than by corporation. That makes it difficult to identify hazards that might be common to a company in other plants.
In an investigation into injuries and deaths in the poultry industry, the Observer also found cases in which regulators failed to identify patterns of workplace hazards.
After worker Jerome Sullivan fell into an augur and died at House of Raeford's Greenville, S.C., plant in December 2001, S.C. OSHA officials cited the poultry company for numerous violations, including its failure to put a safety guard on the machinery and to install adequate railings on a nearby walkway.
Four months later, safety regulators in North Carolina visited the company's Raeford plant, about 200 miles to the east. They found, among other things, the same violations: The company failed to properly guard an augur and to install a top rail near the machinery.
In its citations, N.C. OSHA made no mention of the violations in South Carolina. And it slashed the proposed penalties. The fine for the improperly guarded augur, for instance, was cut to $640 from $2,800.
House of Raeford officials couldn't be reached for comment Wednesday.
When determining whether to issue citations for "repeat" violations, N.C. OSHA officials said it is agency policy not to look at a company's enforcement history in other states. Citations for repeat violations can lead to much stiffer penalties.
Officials said inspectors do routinely look at a company's nationwide compliance record to see whether the employer knew or should have known about hazards -- something OSHA officials need to prove before citing companies.
Federal OSHA oversees workplace safety in about half the states, while the others, including the Carolinas, operate their own programs. Other state-run programs generally operate the same way as North Carolina's, safety experts say.
"They all live in silos," said Eric Frumin, occupational safety and health director for Unite Here, a union that represents about 450,000 workers. "It's one of the fundamental flaws in the ... system."
Ronald Taylor, an attorney who represents employers, said a new OSHA program targets companies that repeatedly violate safety rules. That, he said, motivates employers.
"People don't want to be named as a bad actor," he said.
The Observer found House of Raeford has masked the extent of injuries behind factory walls and has racked up 130 serious safety violations since 2000.
In written testimony submitted to the House subcommittee Wednesday, an occupational safety attorney referred to the Observer's poultry series.
"House of Raeford's misrepresentation of its injury rates raises serious questions about OSHA's failure to enforce basic record-keeping requirements," said attorney Randy Rabinowitz, who works with unions.
