Lockheed to Pay Full $1.49 Million in Safety Penalties
The Department of Labor announced Friday that Lockheed Corp. has agreed to pay $1.49 million in penalties--the full amount proposed by the federal agency--for 440 violations of workplace safety rules.
This is the highest fine to be paid by a company for health and safety violations in California and the second-largest fine paid by a company in the 19-year history of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
4-Month Inquiry
The citations issued in March followed a four-month investigation by OSHA of a section of Lockheed’s Burbank plant where highly classified Defense Department work is done. Lockheed is building the top-secret stealth jet fighter, designed to evade enemy radar.
As part of the settlement Friday, Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co., a Lockheed Corp. subsidiary, also agreed to correct all violations for which it was cited.
The company stated that it already had corrected a number of the alleged violations and agreed to correct the rest within 30 days.
“We’ve got an employer who seems to have turned the corner,” Frank Strasheim, OSHA’s regional director, said in San Francisco. “I compare the progress they’ve made now to what it was like when we went in, and I’d say they’re 80% of the way there. . . . They’ve made a commitment of resources (to correct the alleged violations) that are above and beyond our standards.”
Worker Complaints
The investigation was prompted by workers’ claims that dozens of Lockheed employees had become ill from exposure to hazardous substances at the plant.
OSHA asserted that Lockheed failed to properly mark which chemicals and other materials were dangerous and to adequately warn workers how to safely use them. The agency also alleged that Lockheed kept poor records about which workers became sick or injured at the plant.
By settling, Lockheed agreed to make significantly greater disclosures to workers about the nature and potential hazards of the chemicals they use, according to an OSHA official.
In March, OSHA also announced that it was launching a “wall-to-wall” investigation of all Lockheed facilities in Burbank, Palmdale and Rye Canyon. An OSHA official said Friday that he expected that investigation to last another four to six weeks. About 14,000 workers are employed in more than 200 buildings in Burbank alone.
The OSHA official, who requested anonymity, said the agency was finding “some problems.” But he stressed: “So far we’ve had outstanding cooperation. I’m impressed with the amount of money they’ve put into the correction of problems.”
About 90 Lockheed workers have filed civil suits against the company, alleging that they were injured on the job as a result of exposure to chemicals and that the company had failed to adequately warn them of the hazards. About 150 have filed workers’ compensation claims. The workers who have sued contend that they suffer from skin rashes, headaches, memory loss and cancer, among other problems.
Many of the workers also claim that they became ill after handling hazardous “composite” chemicals, which are lightweight yet strong plastic-like materials that are increasingly used in aircraft construction. Composites are essential in stealth planes because the materials do not reflect radar waves as readily as metals, making the planes harder to detect. At a U.S. Senate hearing in March, medical experts said composite materials pose a “widespread” health threat to workers exposed to them.
Some workers had hoped that the OSHA complaint against the company would aid them in their civil suits. But they will not get much comfort from the settlement.
There is detailed legal language in the agreement that Lockheed is not admitting that it did anything wrong. And the agreement goes on to say that “nothing contained” in the settlement can be “offered or admitted as evidence or an admission” in court that violations occurred.
Lockheed spokesman Jim Ragsdale said the company was pleased with the settlement. He stressed that the language of the settlement provided that none of the violations against the company were any longer classified as “willful” violations. Of the original 440 violations, 341 were deemed “willful,” which under OSHA’s rules means that Lockheed either knew that a workplace condition was a violation or was aware that an unsafe condition existed and made “no reasonable effort” to fix it.
Ragsdale said it was important to the company that the characterization of the violations be changed because it is the company’s policy “to abide by all the rules of OSHA. If we had known we were in violation we would have done something.”
However, a ranking OSHA official noted that “with the dollar amount of this penalty, the implicit message is that there were willful violations.” The official emphasized that the penalties were now characterized as coming under a section of the Occupational Safety and Health Act that says: “Any employer who willfully or repeatedly violates requirements of Section 5 of this act . . . may be prescribed a civil penalty of not more than $10,000” a violation.
It is unusual for OSHA to collect the full amount of a penalty that it proposes. In many negotiated settlements, OSHA has collected well under half of the original penalty that it proposed. The agency was criticized last week for its settlement practices in a report issued by the National Safe Workplace Institute, a nonprofit group based in Chicago.
