Houston OSHA Law Blog

If you have ever been a temporary worker for a company, you may have felt like you were treated differently than full-time employees. Maybe you didn't get the same attention from leadership or didn't get as much training as other employees. Unfortunately, it seems that many employers neglect their temporary workers, not only leaving them disconnected, but also sometimes putting them in harm's way.

According to the Center for Public Integrity, temporary workers are injured on the job more often than permanent employees. These incidents, however, could be easily prevented if employers treated temp workers like other employees by making sure they received adequate training and were not viewed as lesser employees. Fortunately, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is taking a stand to protect these individuals. 

Employees in Texas and throughout the country deserve to be protected by their employers. We've written about several instances in which companies in Texas and elsewhere have received fines and citations after a worker is injured or killed on the job. While a company should certainly be held responsible for this, it would better if the safety violation had been caught before anyone was harmed. Fortunately, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration keeps an eye out of this as well.

In fact, OSHA announced yesterday that a roofing company in St. Louis was slapped with a dozen safety violations and more than $120,000 in fines for failing to protect its workers. Last year, an OSHA investigator noticed that workers who were doing construction on a commercial shopping site did not have fall arrest systems in place, and the workers that were wearing harnesses were not wearing them correctly.

We all know the many hazards that exist in workplaces in Texas and throughout the country. Despite their known existence, however, some employers still do not take the necessary precautions to keep their employees safe. Unfortunately, we have yet another sad story to tell of an employee who was permanently injured in a machine accident.

The accident happened at a tire recycling plant in Kansas City. The 40-year-old worker had been on the job for about month when a friend came to visit. The worker was doing maintenance work on a tire shredding machine when his friend accidentally turned the shredder on. The employee's legs were caught in the machine, and he lost both of them. While it is certainly fortunate that he survived, we have to wonder if there is something the company could have done to prevent this tragic workplace injury from occurring.

Hearing about someone in Texas getting injured on the job can be nerve-wracking, and may lead some to start thinking about their own jobs. Texas workers know to exercise good judgment in their workspaces, but sometimes workplace injury is out of their control. Employers are responsible for ensuring that conditions in their workspaces are reasonably safe for employees. If they fail to do this, they could face consequences.

Today, news broke that Ecorec Rio Grande Valley, a recycling company in Edinburg, has been cited by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for failing to maintain a safe workplace. According to OSHA, a five-month investigation determined that the company is guilty of 17 violations. Among the most severe of the violations is that Ecorec apparently failed to protect workers from amputation hazards. The recycling center will be fined $75,000 if it does not respond within 15 days.