Personal Injury Law

Toughen the Federal Worker-Safety Law: Make It a Crime

Although it is certainly too early to cast blame, if any, for this past Friday’s fatal crane collapse on the East Side, with the Manhattan district attorney?s office having opened a criminal investigation into the collapse, the death and injuries sustained in the accident is perhaps just the lastest example of why the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the primary federal worker-safety law in the United States, is in need of more powerful enforcement penalties. So cogently argues David M. Uhlmann, a law professor at the University of Michigan, in a recent New York Times op-ed article. About 6,000 workers are killed on the job each year, many in cases where the deaths could have been prevented if their employers followed the law.

Full post as published by Legal Blog on June 02, 2008 (boomark / email).