Work Crimes

In November 1988, S.A. Healy, a national construction contractor based in McCook, Illinois, was excavating a 10-foot wide, 40- foot deep sewage tunnel beneath Milwaukee as part of a $2 billion water pollution abatement project for the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewage District (MMSD). The tunnel contained methane, an extremely volatile, naturally occurring gas. Because the contractor failed to take appropriate preventive measures, the methane was ignited, producing a blast that killed three Healy workers.

In an extremely rare action, federal and state law enforcement agencies prosecuted Healy for criminal acts. But workplace- safety experts say the penalties meted out to Healy are insufficient to deter other construction companies from endangering workers by placing profits before safety.

After the blast, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited Healy for 68 wilful violations of federal workplace safety regulations and proposed that the company pay fines totalling $68,000. OSHA then recommended that the Justice Department bring criminal charges against the company--an action OSHA has taken in very few cases.

In June 1990, U.S. Attorney John Fryatt and Milwaukee District Attorney Michael McCann announced indictments of the construction company.

A state jury subsequently convicted Healy in December 1990 on two counts of reckless homicide. "We're hopeful that the conviction may stimulate those employers who may be lax on safety issues to adopt a more aggressive posture on safety," McCann told Multinational Monitor. "Our motivation definitely leans more toward prevention than punishment." For the state conviction, Healy was fined $15,000.

In February 1991, a federal jury followed suit, convicting Healy of three wilful violations of safety standards that led to the deaths of the three workers. The federal jury ruled that Healy was responsible for the deaths because it failed to instruct the tunnel employees in the recognition, avoidance and nature of the hazards when working in confined spaces; failed to shut off electric power in the area of the tunnel after high levels of methane gas were detected; and failed to install explosion deterrent electrical equipment in hazardous tunnel locations. The company was fined $750,000, half of the possible fines for the statutes under which it was convicted.

David Cannon, Healy's attorney, said the company is considering an appeal, but he refused to comment on the convictions. In court, Cannon called the explosion a "tragic accident" that "nobody, under any circumstances, could tell was going to happen."

In his closing arguments, Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Klumb countered that the accident could have been prevented if Healy had not displayed "corporate arrogance" by placing profits and work schedules ahead of worker safety, according to a Milwaukee Journal report. "This case is significant not just to attain justice for the three people who died, but to gain the attention of an industry whose attention needs to be gotten," Klumb said.

But critics say the penalties against Healy were minor for a company convicted of wilfully killing three workers. The $15,000 in state and $750,000 in federal fines which Healy was sentenced to pay constitute a paltry sum compared with the company's annual earnings of $200 million. And the charges against the only company official originally indicted were dismissed.

"It's awful that no one has gone to jail," says Joseph Kinney, executive director of the National Safe Workplace Institute. Kinney contends that unless the threat of jail time becomes a reality for employers, workers will continue to die needlessly. He said employers like Healy typically treat fines as a cost of doing business.

Although Healy may write the criminal fines off as a cost of doing business, it faces other sanctions that may be more significant. Many government agencies are refusing to award the company contracts because of its safety record.

In December 1989, despite Healy's submission of the lowest bid for another Milwaukee sewage contract, this one worth $40 million, the city declined to award the company the contract, citing its weak safety record. In February 1991, Los Angeles county officials voided all bids for a contract to build a section of the city's Metro Rail. Healy had submitted the lowest bid for the contract, $46.4 million. While they declined to say why the contracts were voided, the county officials said they planned to draft new regulations governing tunnel projects which would most likely bar Healy and companies with similar criminal histories from winning the job.

Debarment (government prohibitions against awarding contracts to deviant corporations) may be an important tool to force the construction industry to pay greater attention to safety. "The construction industry is the most hazardous industry in the country by way of deaths and serious injuries," says John Moran, executive director of the Laborers Health and Safety Fund. Moran estimates that while construction workers make up between 5 and 6 percent of the U.S. workforce, they suffer about 25 percent of the on-the-job fatalities. "OSHA's enforcement in the construction industry is severely lacking," he charges. But Moran says state and local jurisdictions are increasingly holding construction companies criminally liable for seriously injuring or killing their employees.

- David Lapp