Companies that initially deny OSHA entry into their workplace are charged with almost twice as many violations per inspection and are asked to pay on average nearly double the total penalties of those who cooperate with government inspectors.An examination of federal and state OSHA enforcement data for a one year period ending July 16, 1993 and limited to establishments engaged in manufacturing and construction revealed an average of 2.6 violations per inspection issued to those employers who chose not to deny the compliance officer entry into their workplace. In contrast, those employers who did initially deny OSHA entry were subsequently charged with an average of 4.6 violations per inspection. The data search was limited to manufacturing and construction establishments to eliminate bias that would be introduced if inspections where OSHA is not authorized to issue penalties, such as federal agency inspections, were included.
It was observed that uncooperative employers were assessed an average proposed total penalty of $3,224 per inspection compared to $1,862 for cooperative employers. Penalty reductions were greater for uncooperative employers presumably due to their attorney's shrewd negotiating skills. This advantage, however, was not enough to overcome the greater total penalty levied per inspection. Average total reduced penalties per inspection were $2,238 for uncooperative employers compared to $1,399 for those who were cooperative. Naturally, it can be argued that employers who deny OSHA entry do so because they have more problems to hide. Unfortunately, this thesis can be neither confirmed nor denied.
Much to OSHA's credit, the average proposed penalty per serious violation and number of serious violations as a percentage of total number of violations were almost identical for both groupings of employers. This speaks highly of the apparent uniformity in penalty calculation and violation classification policies as applied to individual alleged violations regardless of employer attitude. However, the data does indicate that an uncooperative employer will tend to be cited for more violations and accordingly pay a higher total penalty. These findings should not be surprising. After all, OSHA inspectors are human and can naturally be less compromising with uncooperative employers.
Copyright 1997 OSHA DATA (tm), Maplewood, NJ.
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