Last fall, four workers were
killed by a gas leak in a Texas DuPont plant. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has investigated and
concluded that:
Those workers “would be alive today had their employer, DuPont, taken steps to protect them,” according to the release announcing the end of the investigation. “Four people lost their lives and their families lost loved ones because DuPont did not have proper safety procedures in place,” said Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health David Michaels. “Had the company assessed the dangers involved, or trained their employees on what to do if the ventilation system stopped working, they might have had a chance.”
What's the penalty for four lives lost and 11 safety violations, nine of them serious? A whopping $99,000—plus the "scores of safety upgrades the company must undertake to prevent future accidents." But with penalties like that and a plant that had last been inspected in 2007 before these deaths, DuPont doesn't have enormous incentives to follow through. Why would we expect companies to invest in safety when they know the penalties for killing workers will be so low?