20. Safety and Health

20.1 Create a comprehensive list of safety or health actions taken against the company.
20.2 Can you identify any patterns in OSHA activity?
20.3 What is the major safety and health problem?

The safety and health record of a firm is an indi­ca­tion of their cor­po­rate respon­si­bil­ity. The infor­ma­tion you gather will help you assess what kind of firm they are, and may be impor­tant in a pub­lic campaign. For example, the deteriorating health and safety conditions in Bridgestone/Firestone’s facilities were a major part of the contract campaign by the Steelworkers.

Good Jobs First’s Violation Tracker may provide information on a company’s OSHA violations. Good Job First also provides detailed information on which firms received COVID-19 subsidies with the COVID Stimulus Watch.

You can also search the OSHA website directly for violations, but the information can be sparse at times. You can also search by industry to get a broader sense of what is happening. If your company has made recent acquisitions, you will need to search under that name as well.

The most detailed information is available on the OHSA 300 Logs (log of work-related injuries and illnesses) that employers must keep on-site. Current employees, former employees, and union representatives have Access to the OSHA 300 log.

Some states may have health and safety departments.  For example of a state with private employer coverage, see California’s Cal/OSHA. Some state health and safety departments only cover public employees, such as the one in Massachusetts.

NIOSH also provides more general information and you can search by industry.

A general news search may also supplement what you find on the OSHA web site. Serious accidents or injuries are newsworthy, especially in local papers. You can also use news information to make sense of the more formal OSHA data.