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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (July 7, 2017)
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | July 7, 2017 | PAGE 9 ...Rampant safety violations contributed to near-fatal accident sand, paint chips and other ma- terial. The hose got stuck in a metal piece covering a gap in the scaffold, which caused him to lose his balance and fall through an unsecured 3-foot-wide ladder access opening in the scaffold. He fell 37 feet to a temporary platform below, landing on his son Christopher Montiel, who was scraping paint near the base of the ladder. After a fire depart- ment ladder rescue, both were taken to Oregon Health and Sci- ence University hospital with multiple injuries, including fa- cial and other fractures and bleeding on the brain. “In most cases this type of fall would have resulted in at least one of the two employees being a fatality,” OR-OSHA said in its report. Falls are the number one killer of construction workers, so OSHA rules are very strict about each shift, as required. Accord- fall protection. But as detailed in ing to the manufacturer’s speci- the OR-OSHA report, Abhe & fications, the scaffolds were sup- Svoboda’s Ross Island Bridge posed to be set up with diagonal project was ripe for a fatal acci- bracing for stability. None of the scaffolds had diagonal bracing. dent. Working 37 feet above the OR-OSHA found that no guardrail had been set up near next level, at least eight employ- the hatch to prevent Lilly’s fall. ees had been exposed to an un- Nor was he wearing the required secured edge and floor openings “personal fall arrest system” — with no kind of fall protection a body harness with a lanyard system. Workers had been using that’s attached to a securely an- a 14-inch-wide scaffold plank as chored safety line. In fact, no a walkway and working surface horizontal lifelines or fall protec- to do scraping, sanding, blasting tion anchors had been installed. and painting on multiple levels. Self-retracting lifelines had been OR-OSHA says workers aren’t installed at ladder access points, supposed to climb ladders more but employees were routinely than 35 feet high without a rest disconnecting from them once platform installed part-way up, they reached the upper level of but Abhe & Svoboda didn’t in- the scaffold. Even when workers stall any rest platforms. In fact, did wear and attach their har- workers often didn’t have lad- nesses, they were using — as an- ders at all: To access some work chor points — the aluminum areas, they had to climb up or braces on the bottom of the scaf- down the scaffolding system it- self, as well as fold plank. walk (foot to Those braces foot) along the weren’t rated “This is essentially an outside support for fall protec- of the scaffold. tion and would employer who ignored They also had most likely rules that we’ve had on to step over have failed if a the books for some holes ranging “shock load” time.” from 3 inches was placed on — Oregon OSHA to 24 or more them, such as spokesperson Aaron Corvin inches. In some when a person cases, workers falls. would avoid There was holes by side- much more. Scaffolds had not been set up stepping along scaffold ledgers under the direction of a compe- while holding onto the ledger tent person qualified in scaffold above their head. On top of scaf- erection, OR-OSHA found, nor fold platforms employees also were they inspected for defects routinely stood on top of by a competent person before makeshift 20-inch-tall wooden Graphic courtesy of Oregon OSHA From Page 1 OR-OSHA’s fines can’t undo the injuries suffered by Lilly and Martiel, but they do vindicate one labor union’s campaign to expose Abhe & Svoboda as a se- rial safety violator at bridge painting projects around the country. For years, the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades has tried to raise alarms about nonunion Abhe & Svo- boda. Then in 2016 it sent in or- ganizer Omar Rubi as an under- ground union “salt” on the Ross Island Bridge repainting project. At work underneath the bridge, Rubi and other workers wit- nessed and complained about se- rious safety lapses, but were ig- nored and even disciplined by company management. Rubi himself was sent home the day before the accident after telling co-workers at a company safety meeting that they have the right under federal law to talk to each other, and to government agen- cies, about safety concerns. A week later, he was terminated. A charge that his termination was unlawful is currently under in- vestigation by the National La- bor Relations Board. ODOT’s reaction: Safety is super-important to us. Really. Painters Local 10 member Orvin Dean — shown above at a union picket near the Ross Island Bridge — worked for Abhe & Svoboda three years ago in New Jersey and Florida, and says a company foreman chastised him for taking the time to put on a safety harness. boxes to increase their working height. Nearly every one of those vi- olations had been exposing workers to the risk of injury or death — eight hours a day, five days a week, for more than a year. “For them to have nine viola- tions, two of them ‘willful,’ is a pretty big deal,” said OR-OSHA spokesperson Aaron Corvin. “This is essentially an employer who ignored rules that we’ve had on the books for some time.” In Renton, Washington, Lilly and Montiel are still at home re- covering from their injuries. The accident that sidelined them could easily have been pre- vented. OR-OSHA investigators said the company’s site safety man- ager, Thurman London, said he knew that the scaffolding system was not set up per OSHA rules. [As we reported in our April 21 issue, London is a former federal OSHA compliance officer who was convicted of theft of gov- ernment property.] Meanwhile, Abhe & Svoboda’s corporate safety manager Rick Pendleton told investigators that the com- pany follows federal OSHA rules, but he doesn’t worry about the state’s OSHA rules because they “change too much.” OR-OSHA says Abhe & Svo- boda remedied some of the haz- ards shortly after the accident. The company was given until June 23 to remedy other viola- tions — such as having a quali- fied person to construct the scaf- fold. Oregon Department of Trans- portation reacted to news of OR- OSHA’s fines with an unattrib- uted official statement: “Nothing matters more to ODOT than en- suring the safety of workers on our projects, whether they are ODOT employees or contractor employees,” the agency said. Could OSHA’s findings lead to some loss of ODOT business for Abhe & Svoboda? ODOT spokesperson Don Hamilton said ODOT has the option to revoke or suspend a contractor from the “pre-qualified” bidder list. “We’re going to have to take a look at the report and make some decisions about that as we go forward,” Hamilton said. “One violation is generally not sufficient to remove someone from the pre-qualification list, but we have to look at the sub- stance of what OSHA has found here.” Abhe & Svoboda has been fined before for safety violations in Oregon: Nearly $30,000 in 2011 for dozens of OSHA vio- lations on the Astoria-Megler Bridge. The company was also fined $15,500 for three serious OSHA violations in Hawaii in 2012.
