John C. Brooks: OSHA still needs attention long after tragedy

Regarding the Sept. 2 editorial “Tragic memories”: After 25 years, The News & Observer still doesn’t recognize the facts about the tragic Hamlet fire that resulted in unnecessary loss of life and multiple injuries.

The Imperial Foods chicken processing plant was not registered with the secretary of state’s office as required by law and therefore not in the database available to the Department of Labor for scheduling OSHA inspections. Therefore, no OSHA inspection had ever been made at the plant. Had an OSHA inspection been made, locked doors would not have been cited as OSHA violations because building code violations are not included in OSHA standards.

Locked doors are a violation of the North Carolina Building Code and part of the enforcement responsibility of the local fire department under the jurisdiction of the North Carolina Department of Insurance.

Following the tragedy in Hamlet, the N.C. Department of Labor embarked upon both an inspection of the tragedy and an assessment of what, if any, laws should be inaugurated to hopefully prevent such a tragedy from reoccurring. After a series of public hearings, the Department of Labor adopted the North Carolina Building Code as an OSHA standard so that its inspector could cite locked doors and other building code violations when making inspections.

Upon taking office, Commissioner Harry Payne immediately repealed the new OSHA standards. The Democratic-controlled General Assembly then adopted a law forbidding the Commissioner of Labor from ever adopting the building code as an OSHA standard again. Therefore, should OSHA make an inspection of a facility today and find locked doors, it still cannot cite them as OSHA violations.

However, it can make a referral to the local fire department. There are no such referrals on record during the past 25 years.

Twenty-five years ago, the N.C. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s division was headed by two of the nation’s foremost OSHA administrators – Deputy Commissioner Mike Ragland and Dr. Jim Oppel. The department annually published a report, a copy of which was routinely sent to The News & Observer, showing the work of its OSHA inspectors compared with that of both other state-administered programs and the federally administered programs. This report regularly showed that North Carolina’s program was the most active and extensive in the nation.

Nevertheless, the annual report also demonstrated that North Carolina needed significantly more personnel in OSHA consultation, education and enforcement. The OSHA staff has not even grown proportionately to this state’s population growth. Unfortunately, it takes the occurrence of tragedies before the shortcomings of the state’s OSHA program gets any public attention.

The length limit was waived to permit a fuller response to the editorial.

This story was originally published September 6, 2016 at 4:44 PM with the headline "John C. Brooks: OSHA still needs attention long after tragedy."