Blood, Sweat And Fears

Unlike the FORTUNE 500 or Standard & Poor's 400, there is a roster of U.S. corporations to which no self-respecting chief executive aspires: the dishonor roll of companies charged by the Federal Government with failing to monitor adequately the safety of their workplaces. The list has swollen every month or so in the past year, as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has imposed unprecedented penalties on some of the nation's biggest and best-known companies. Among them: Ford Motor and Chrysler (the No. 2 and No. 3 U.S. automakers), Caterpillar (No. 1 among makers of construction equipment), General Dynamics (No. 1 defense contractor) and IBP (No. 1 meat-packer).

Amid all this apparent vigilance, America's 112 million workers should be able to breathe easier, knowing that Uncle Sam is doing everything possible to ensure safer plants, factories, agricultural fields and offices. But perhaps not. The headline-grabbing cases imply that a watchful eye is being cast toward workers' safety; nonetheless, the companies involved were slapped mostly for keeping poor records of injuries and illnesses. This year's proposed fines, ranging from $477,000 for Ford to $2.59 million for IBP, were the highest ever levied by OSHA, but the penalties posed little financial hardship for the companies. Critics, including many union leaders, charge that OSHA is not taking enough action to combat the hazards of dangerous equipment and noxious chemicals that can lead to ailments, injuries and deaths. "OSHA laws are supposed to improve a worker's chance of getting home safely to his family," says Davitt McAteer, director of the Occupational Safety and Health Law Center, a public-interest law firm in Washington. "But the worker has less protection than he did eight years ago."

If that is true, some of the responsibility may rest with the President. In his 1980 campaign, Ronald Reagan attacked OSHA for imposing nitpicking, burdensome regulations on business. Within nine months after Reagan took office, the agency made a major policy shift. In the most dangerous industries, OSHA began to target its inspections. It stopped making surprise visits to factory floors and instead began relying on checks of the companies' own records. Only if employers' safety logs showed illness and injury rates to be above the national average in manufacturing did OSHA staffers consider wall-to-wall inspections. To lessen the chance of such unwelcome scrutiny, some employers apparently started doctoring their logs to underreport or hide serious accidents. But OSHA did not begin to crack down with heavy fines on major record-keeping violations until last year. Critics contend that only pressure from Congress and the approaching 1988 election galvanized the agency into action.