How OSHA Failed Its Biggest Test Ever With COVID-19
Last week, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined Smithfield Foods for failing to protect workers at its Sioux Falls, South Dakota pork processing plant from coronavirus. The plant had been the site of one of the country’s worst COVID-19hotspots in the country. Four workers died and more than 1,200 others were infected.
The fine: $13,494.
When Sandra Sibert clocked-in at the pork plant after the fine became public, she was curious to know what her colleagues thought of the long-awaited penalty.
“They said, ‘It seems like a joke,’” said Sibert, 47, who works in the ham-bone department and serves as a union shop steward. “Thirteen thousand dollars? That’s nothing for Smithfield.”
Indeed, the fine is nothing more than a rounding error ― budget dust ― for an operation of Smithfield’s size, whose parent company, China-based WH Group, had profits of nearly $1.4 billion last year.
Nonetheless, a Smithfield spokeswoman called the OSHA fine “wholly without merit,” and said the company plans to appeal.
The coronavirus pandemic has confronted OSHA with its biggest test since the agency was created in 1971. But workplace safety experts say that under the Trump administration’s leadership, the agency is shirking its oversight of employers and leaving workers to fend for themselves amid a health crisis that has killed roughly 200,000 Americans, many of whom contracted the virus at work.
“This is far and away the most significant worker safety crisis in OSHA’s history, and OSHA has failed to step up to the plate,” said David Michaels, who ran the agency during the Obama administration. “OSHA has failed to use really any of its powers to address it.... It’s hard to take OSHA seriously.”
The agency, part of the Labor Department, has declined to issue any temporary emergency standards to deal with the pandemic, despite pleas from experts like Michaels. Such standards would help OSHA crack down on dangerous employers....
