General Dynamics Fined $615,000 by OSHA

The Labor Department fined General Dynamics, the nation’s largest defense contractor, $615,000 on Wednesday for willfully under-reporting job injuries and illnesses at its submarine shipbuilding yard in Quonset Point, R.I.

The department’s Occupational Safety and Health Adminstration assessed the company’s electric boat division $5,000 for each of 121 instances in which it said injuries or illness went unrecorded or incorrectly recorded in deliberate violation of the law.

In addition, OSHA lumped together as one violation carrying the maximum $10,000 fine another 53 cases in which the company is accused of failing to provide the required details of injuries or illnesses.

General Dynamics, which had $8 billion in Pentagon contracts in the last fiscal year, said it will contest the penalties and alleged violations. It repeated complaints by other major corporations recently fined by OSHA about changes in interpretations of agency guidelines.

“In reviews and investigations during the past 13 years, OSHA has given us no reason to believe that we were not satisfying their requirements,” said William Bennett, a General Dynamics vice president and manager of the Quonset Point facility.

“We are alarmed by what is perceived as a trend toward highly excessive fines against companies nationwide for paper work violations,” he said.

General Dynamics is the 18th major company that has been fined more than $100,000 in the past 16 months in an OSHA crackdown on alleged record-keeping violations.

Labor Secretary William E. Brock ordered the crackdown in early 1985 in response to widespread complaints by both unions and government officials that companies were not keeping accurate logs of job-caused injuries or illnesses.

OSHA uses those company logs as the primary means for determining which plants it will inspect. Those with above-average rates of illnesses or injuries are targeted for inspections in the belief that they likely have the most safety hazards.

Brock said in a brief interview Wednesday that a recent spate of penalties in the past two months is more a coincidence than anything else.

The General Dynamics fine levied Wednesday results from an OSHA inspection of the firm’s Quonset Point yard that began last January in response to worker complaints that the company was denying employees access to the injury and illness logs as required by law.

At the time of the inspection, some 8,000 workers were employed at the facility, which manufacturers components for the Navy’s Trident and fast-attack submarines.

The inspection, according to OSHA officials, showed several instances in which sprains, strains, bone fractures, burns, skin disorders and eye injuries were not properly reported.