What’s the bad outcome if your business plan involves exposing workers to hazardous materials and it kills two of them? The Occupational Safey & Health Administration (OSHA) will seek some money from you. In the case of Victor & Carlos Diaz, who died Dec.1, 2007 in a dilution tank at North East Linen of Linden NJ, OSHA seeks $79,250 in penalties. Killing workers certainly seems cheaper than killing pedestrians. Based on what I’ve been told, I think the OSHA charges and proposed penalties understate the wrongs that North East Linen and its owner committed.

For links to my prior posts on this click here.

North East Linen is an industrial laundry. It washes table clothes, napkins, uniforms. It discharges the used wash water to Linden NJ sewers. That water would be too corrosive because the washing process uses alkaline chemicals to clean, so North East adds sulfuric acid to the water to neutralize it. Sulfuric acid, itself, is a dangerous chemical to work with. When you buy it, you get a “material safety data sheet (MSDS)” which tells you about the dangers.

Tuesday updates at the end

The crane collapses are unrelated – said the mayor in a strong sign that he just doesn’t get it. "It would appear that there is no connection whatsoever between the two accidents," Bloomberg said

What he’s saying (incorrectly, I think) is that the immediate causes of the crane collapse and deaths on 91 Street are likely not the same immediate causes of the crane collapse on 51 Street. (While defective equipment seems to be at fault in both, there is more.)

What seems plain to some of us is that Mr. Bloomberg and his falling-down Building Department are common threads here. It is Mr. Bloomberg who gave the marching orders and funding priorities which were directed away from inspections to his (now former) Buildings Commissioner. Did she do wrong? No one I’ve talked to in the construction community thinks so. She was marching to the beat of Mr. Bloomberg’s drum.

All the fun of ridiculing Mayor Bloomberg’s (all-fall-down) Building Department has subsided as yet another Crane collapse killed two, injured one, and damaged nearby buildings on East 91st Street Friday. (See also the NY Daily News excellent team report.). Ironically, (can I still use that word?) Mr.Bloomberg’s Building Dept. had just eased-up stringent rules requiring crane movements to be supervised by a DOB inspector . Dead at the scene was Donald Leo, 30, crane operator of Staten Island, who was in the cab as it fell. Sewer worker Ramadan Kurtaj, 27, of the Bronx and Kosovo, died in the hospital and a third was gravely injured. (For more on the lives of the fallen here is Lisa W. Foderaro's well researched follow-up.) "Union carpenter Simeon Alexis survived a gash to the chest," Newsday reported He was released from the hospital Saturday.

Update: The Manhattan DA's office is said to be investigating a possible crime in the crane collapse premised on the reuse of the cracked rotating plate (see below). More updates at the end of the post.

This was, of course, not the first crane trouble at this site and – in case you forgotten—not the first fatalities from falling structures like cranes around NYC In response to criticism Mr. Bloomberg suggested that perhaps the crane’s steel was defective, that construction was a dangerous job, that it wasn’t the DOB which had fallen down on the job, but the Contractor and finally, that the situation was “unacceptable and intolerable” --without explaining what he didn’t accept and what he wouldn’t tolerate.

You may have forgotten but, almost six months ago, two work-place incidents resulted in three deaths:

At the Linden NJ industrial laundry “North East Linen,” on Dec. 1, 2007, Victor & Carlos Diaz, a truck driver and a laborer, died while cleaning a 20,000 gallon dilution tank without respiratory protection or supervision. (As I read the facts, their employer apparently knew about the violation of OSHA rules see prior reports, below).

In New York City, at the East 62nd Street, Solow Residential Tower, window washers Alcides & Edgar Moreno fell 47 storeys when the permanent scaffold from which they worked collapsed. Edgar Moreno was killed on the scene, but his brother Alcides, survived the fall.

For some earlier reports click here, here, here, and here

I remind you of these now somewhat ancient tragic tales because six months is the total time the Federal Occupational Safety & Health Administration gives itself to investigate a case. Before six months, OSHA won’t comment. After six months, OSHA still may not comment, but enforcement actions, if any, will be announced. One outcome of this policy of silence is that people following the issues lose track of them. So here are three related updates: one hopeful, one business-as-usual for Mayor Bloomberg’s Buildings (all-fall-down) Dept., and one concrete proposal for improving OSHA criminal enforcement.

This Thursday, March 20, 2008, people will gather at Washington Place & Greene Street and remember the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire which took place 97 years ago. In that fire (which actually occurred on March 25, 1911) 146 people mostly women and children of Manhattan’s Lower East Side died in a horrific factory fire. (Did you want to know more or review the events? Cornell’s ILR school has a great link & photo filled web site . Read also
M. Patricia Smith, NYS Labor Commissioner’s statement .)

Sponsored by the United Hebrew Trades/Jewish Labor Committee the event this Thursday will remember the fallen and the struggles for workplace safety of the past.

But we can and should do more.

Friday, February 1 marked, among other things, two months since the work-place deaths of Victor & Carlos Diaz, which occurred while they were cleaning out a 20,000 gallon dilution tank inside the North East Linen plant, an industrial laundry in Linden NJ -- with no respiratory protection at all. (For those who are new to the story and want prior stories with hot links , try my prior posts here , here, here and here . )

Since last I wrote about the Diaz deaths, I’ve learned more both about the state of work site danger and illness and about the events of Dec. 1 at North East Linen. I’ve talked to experts, studied the testimony of witnesses at a Congressional hearing and listened to the stories of individual current and former employees. All of the current and former employees demanded that I not identify them and I won’t. Most of them spoke much more Spanish than English and I heard their stories with the help of translators. So what I know so far is not complete and relies, in part, on third-parties. In addition, management of North East Linen has, thus far, declined to respond to my requests to talk to them. If, as a result, I’m making a mistake, tell me and I’ll try to fix it.

Do you ever get so interested in a subject you chatter on about it while everyone’s eyes are glazing over? This may have happened to me here. So, if you are not interested and only want the punch line it is this: Workers are more at risk of injury, disease and death at work if they work in non-union settings. Unions, which represent an ever shrinking portion of US workers, help workers force management to focus on safety and health issues. I conclude from that that national safety & health improvements on the job will come only after we drive from office Mr. Bush and his Congressional supporters.

There are two parts to the story – unions and safety audits & training.