Revived Cal/OSHA Fails to Inspect Most Factories : Safety: Preventive checks have plummeted along with funding. But the state agency insists its presence is felt.

The California Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1973 is hereby enacted for the purpose of assuring safe and healthful working conditions for all California working men and women.

--State Labor Code

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Twenty years after it was created to help protect all workers in California, the state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) does anything but.

Perhaps nowhere is the void between rhetoric and hard reality more apparent than in gritty factories and assembly plants in and around Los Angeles County that rely on Latino laborers.

In examining dozens of cases in which Latinos were killed or seriously injured in factories throughout the region, The Times found that Cal/OSHA, with rare exception, had not inspected the site for possible safety violations in the three years before the accident.

Routine Cal/OSHA inspections intended to prevent accidents have plummeted during the past decade. And many laborers who have worked 10 years or more at local factories said they had never seen a Cal/OSHA inspector.

In recent months, Cal/OSHA has been able to increase routine inspections--but only by declining to investigate many complaints the agency receives of possible health and safety hazards.

Inspectors increasingly put aside health and safety complaints that once would have been considered urgent. “If you rip off an arm or a leg, they might respond,” said safety consultant Jerry Hildreth, who spent 13 years as a Cal/OSHA inspector before retiring as head of the agency’s Bureau of Investigations.

Although most California manufacturing is located in and around Los Angeles, the region has proportionately far fewer Cal/OSHA inspectors than the agency’s other three administrative areas. There are 42 inspectors and industrial hygienists for an area including all of Los Angeles and Ventura counties--one inspector for every 490 manufacturing facilities.

Last year, about 4% of all factories in Cal/OSHA’s Los Angeles administrative region were inspected, compared to 10% in the agency’s San Francisco region and 16% in its Sacramento region, records show. In the region encompassing San Diego and most of Orange counties, about 5% were inspected.

Moreover, when inspections are conducted, Cal/OSHA personnel nearly half the time miss obvious health and safety violations, according to a federal study released last year.

Few Cal/OSHA inspectors based in the heavily Latino Los Angeles area speak Spanish. Thus, according to sources, they must often rely on the companies they are investigating to provide translators after a worker injury or death.

Administrators defend the agency, saying it has been hamstrung by hiring freezes and budget constraints. Even with unlimited resources, they say, Cal/OSHA could never guarantee the safety of all who work in local manufacturing.

“With 640-some-odd thousand employers in California,” said Cal/OSHA’s chief, Dr. John Howard, “you could never possibly expect to have enough government enforcement no matter how many people you had.”

Howard noted that legislation passed in 1989, requiring all workplaces to have an injury and illness prevention program, places the primary burden of enforcing worker safety on employers.

Robert Garcia, Cal/OSHA’s Los Angeles regional manager, said he is confident that the agency’s local efforts have been effective in protecting Latinos and others who work in hazardous occupations.

“I can guarantee you that there’s not many people that don’t know about Cal/OSHA,” Garcia said. “They know who’s been cited and what they’ve been cited for and so, therefore, they’re going to try to get their act together.”

Many manufacturers and other business operators insist that Cal/OSHA is so aggressive in enforcing safety regulations that it stifles business.

“No wonder we can’t be competitive,” complained Chris Raab, whose small plastics company in Gardena suffered a fatality last year when one of his workers, Joaquin Guerrero, was crushed by a hydraulic press.

Unlike many other business operators, Raab did not contest the $3,850 in fines imposed by Cal/OSHA and voluntarily implemented thousands of dollars in safety improvements.

“One accident like that,” Raab said, “and you have to be safety conscious.”

To crack down on manufacturers in an effort to limit workplace hazards, Cal/OSHA last year more than tripled the fines levied against employers found to have violated state health and safety standards.

“It used to be you could kill a person and the fine was two or three hundred bucks,” said Francis Bechely, a former Cal/OSHA district manager for Los Angeles. “Now you can’t kill anyone for anything less than 5,000 or 10,000 bucks.”

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Homero Valencia worked nearly 13 years making plastic buckets at Bennett Industries in San Fernando before he saw a Cal/OSHA inspector. He had to nearly die to meet one.

Valencia, 33, was helping another Bennett employee, Arturo Alva, 30, fix a bucket-making machine on June 12, 1992, when it began spewing molten plastic, dousing both men’s heads and arms and burning them extensively.

The workers spent a month in the hospital, where they were questioned by a Cal/OSHA inspector. Both have undergone repeated skin grafts and remain horribly scarred.

Bennett Industries’ plant manager, Gary Kephart, declined to discuss the incident, citing a pending lawsuit Valencia and Alva have filed. Records show that Cal/OSHA fined the company $410 for allowing employees to work without “appropriate safety equipment.”

“Maybe if they came around more often,” Valencia’s wife, Tatiana, said bitterly, “these kinds of accidents wouldn’t have to happen.”

The fact is, Cal/OSHA inspectors do not come around very often, if they come around at all.

Of 75 job-related accidents investigated by The Times in which Latinos were killed or injured, at least 65 occurred in factories that had not been routinely inspected by Cal/OSHA in the previous three years. (The agency only keeps records of safety inspections for three years.)

Odds are that when an inspector visits a factory today, it is in response to an accident or a complaint.

The frequency of preventive or “programmed” inspections of factories and other workplaces has declined markedly, according to records and interviews. In 1984, Cal/OSHA conducted 17,226 inspections statewide of all types of workplaces. Of the total, 38% of inspections were preventive. By 1991, total inspections had dropped to 15,433--only 7% of them preventive.

At the present rate, an AFL-CIO study found last year, it would take Cal/OSHA 46 years to inspect each workplace in California at least once.

The decline in preventive inspections may have had an especially profound impact on Latinos who work in small, non-unionized factories, said Cal/OSHA chief Howard. Such workers, he said, typically do not contact the agency, so the first time many of them see an inspector is after an injury has occurred.

“When you’re dealing with individuals who have come to this country recently and are fearful of interacting with government, you have to be able to leave your office and go out and find them,” Howard said. “Unfortunately, the resources that the agency has right now do not allow it to do that.”

Cal/OSHA has attempted to increase preventive inspections in recent months, Howard said, but has done so, The Times found, by ignoring many of the safety and health complaints it receives.

Under the state’s labor code, Cal/OSHA is required to investigate within three days any formal complaint alleging a “serious” hazard, such as those that could cause death, amputations or severe burns. The agency has 14 days to respond to “non-serious” complaints.

But with the agency so short-staffed, complaints that once would have been deemed serious are increasingly downgraded, according to inspectors who spoke on condition of anonymity. Today, it may be weeks--or months--before an investigation is launched when workers complain of hazards such as dangerous machinery and overexposure to toxic substances.

Anonymous tips and other so-called “informal” complaints can elicit even less response. Increasingly, they end up in the trash, sources said.

“You get some worker from Salvador or Mexico . . . and by some miracle he calls us but won’t leave his name, I can tell you what’s going to happen to that complaint,” said one Cal/OSHA employee. “It gets canned.”

Instead of sending an inspector to investigate informal complaints on such allegations as improper electrical wiring and unsanitary working conditions, Cal/OSHA now sends a letter to the employer in about one in four cases, alerting them to the complaint. Inspectors follow up only one in 10 of the letters to determine if corrective action was taken.

“By reducing our workload in that area,” Howard said, “it allows us a little extra time and resources to devote to programmed inspections in high-hazard industries.”

Employers are obligated to keep annual records of workers injured on the job, but there is no requirement that those records be sent to Cal/OSHA. Nor does Cal/OSHA monitor state compensation claims filed by injured workers.

As a result, a factory can sustain an inordinate number of injuries or illnesses and Cal/OSHA may never know unless a worker dies or is severely injured. At that time, an employer is required to notify the agency immediately.

In January, 1991, a worker was killed at the Westlectric Casting Inc. foundry in the City of Commerce. Maintenance mechanic Johnny Zermeno, 31, became trapped in the hopper of a sand-mixing machine while cleaning it and was crushed to death. Cal/OSHA’s investigation resulted in the company being fined $1,800 for failing to install a device that would have prevented the mixer from being turned on while someone was inside.

Records indicate that Cal/OSHA had not inspected the Westlectric plant in the three years before Zermeno’s death. Records show that the plant employs about 90 workers. At least 25--all but two of them Spanish surnamed--were hurt on the job in the 12 months before Zermeno was killed. Injuries ranged from burns and a broken foot to crushed ribs and fingers.

Westlectric Vice President Karen Buraglia declined to discuss Zermeno’s death or safety issues at the plant. Records show that the company began an incentive program in January, 1990, to reward its workers for reducing injuries.

Garcia, Cal/OSHA’s Los Angeles regional administrator, acknowledged that factories in the area can easily escape scrutiny until catastrophe strikes.

“Our mandate,” he said, “is not to make inspections at each and every place. We approach it from a different perspective--awareness, prevention and advertising that we’re here and that this is what can happen to you, the employer, if you don’t get your house in order.”

For years, Cal/OSHA maintained a reputation for aggressive and thorough investigation of even minor health and safety violations. The program was seen as a model for other states.

But in 1987, as a cost-saving measure, Gov. George Deukmejian all but eliminated Cal/OSHA, arguing that the job could be done effectively by the federal government.

With Cal/OSHA’s demise, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration took over enforcing worker health and safety programs in California.

Critics angrily accused Deukmejian of pandering to big business by disregarding the interests of workers. Labor leaders warned that job-related deaths and injury would rise.

In 1989, after California voters narrowly approved a proposition calling for Cal/OSHA’s revival, the agency was restored--but as a virtual shadow of its former self.

“It’s like two different OSHAs,” said Joseph A. Kinney, executive director of the nonprofit National Safe Workplace Institute in Chicago. “The old Cal/OSHA was much tougher, dominated by a regulatory mentality . . . versus the new Cal/OSHA which . . . doesn’t seem to have that kind of gumption.”

A 1992 U.S. Department of Labor evaluation found that Cal/OSHA inspectors typically missed 44% of the types of violations spotted by their federal counterparts in other states.

The agency has fewer than 160 compliance inspectors--20 fewer than in 1982. Ten years ago, there were 17 Cal/OSHA inspectors for every 1 million workers in California. Today, the ratio is 12 for every 1 million workers.

If staffing seems thin throughout California, it is even more so in Southern California.

The agency, records show, assigns as many compliance inspectors to its Sacramento region as there are based in the entire Los Angeles region--an area with more than 2 1/2 times the work force.

There is one inspector for every 490 manufacturing facilities in the Los Angeles region. In the Sacramento region, the ratio is 1-to-102.

Staffing, according to Howard, the agency’s chief, is based largely on worker safety complaints: The more complaints received, the greater the number of inspectors assigned to a given Cal/OSHA field office.

Immigrant laborers, however, rarely complain about even the most atrocious working conditions. That, officials say, is one reason there are proportionately far more inspectors assigned to less-industrialized places such as Sacramento and San Franciso, where white collar workers are more inclined to speak out, prompting better protection.

“Government workers in Sacramento are very aware of their right to complain about things like indoor air quality and they do so,” Howard explained. “San Francisco happens to be a city which is very well represented by labor unions, and they also complain.

“But when you’re talking about dealing with immigrants, particularly in the smaller shops, these are not . . . employees that will call up and complain. . . . They don’t know their rights, maybe they don’t perceive the hazards or they come from place where they’re used to working in those kinds of conditions.”

Howard said Cal/OSHA needs more inspectors in Los Angeles--but there are none to spare. A state hiring freeze has been in effect for more than a year. Cal/OSHA’s Los Angeles region is allocated 52 safety engineer and industrial hygienist slots, records show. Fewer than 45 positions are filled.

Of the total, about eight inspectors speak Spanish--not enough, critics say, to protect or even communicate with the overwhelming number of Latinos in the area who are subject to work-related hazards.

“If you call Cal/OSHA and you speak Spanish and they don’t, who are you going to talk to?,” asked Pam Tau Lee, an immigrant specialist with the Labor Occupational Health Program at UC Berkeley.

Cal/OSHA sources said the shortage of Spanish speakers on staff is so acute that safety engineers and hygienists must sometimes rely on the companies they investigate to provide them translators.

Inspectors who cannot communicate directly and candidly with witnesses run the risk of having their investigations improperly influenced, some critics say.

“Employees are reluctant enough as it is to talk,” said Prof. Mark Rothstein, director of the University of Houston’s Health, Law and Policy Institute. “How many would have the guts to complain about working conditions when the boss is right there filtering the information?”

Garcia, Cal/OSHA’s regional manager, denied that his inspectors rely on companies to provide translation. “We never do that,” he said.

Cal/OSHA’s own files contradict his assertion.

On June 11, 1992, an employee of the Easton Aluminum Co. in Van Nuys, Juan Infanzon, 50, reached into a machine to steady a newly milled aluminum baseball bat and had his right hand crushed. Records show that he had been given about 30 minutes of training on the machine.

Days afterward, a Cal/OSHA safety engineer, Ken Prior, visited the Easton factory to inspect the machine and to interview Infanzon’s co-workers, nearly all of whom are Spanish speakers. Prior needed a translator. Records show that he got one: Danny Coss, Infanzon’s superior.

With Coss translating, a worker who trained Infanzon told the Cal/OSHA inspector that Infanzon was responsible for his injury: He ignored instructions and pushed a button starting the machine, according to records.

When interviewed at home by another inspector who spoke Spanish, Infanzon insisted that he was injured while doing exactly as he was trained, records show.

Cal/OSHA disregarded the question of who was to blame and fined the company $5,000 for not having a guard on the machine to prevent injuries like the one Infanzon sustained.

Easton officials declined to be interviewed about Infanzon’s injury. Cal/OSHA’s Van Nuys district manager Edward Grimes said that Prior, the inspector, could not discuss the case.

A Cal/OSHA spokesman said the matter was not compromised by the inspector’s use of an Easton supervisor for translation.

“Basically, when (Prior) went to the site (of the injury), he was given the management side of the story,” said spokesman Rick Rice. “When they went out to the house to see the injured worker, they got his side. From that perspective, it makes a lot more sense.”

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California, along with 20 other states that administer their own occupational safety and health programs, is required by federal law to maintain standards and fines that are at least as stringent as those imposed by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

When federal OSHA increased its fine schedule last year, Cal/OSHA followed suit by more than tripling its own. A “serious” violation of California’s worker safety regulations today can cost an employer $7,000; repeat and willful violations can bring $70,000 or more in fines.

But as an indirect consequence of getting tough, Cal/OSHA has been limited even further in its ability to protect Latino factory workers and others.

Rather than paying increased fines, more companies are appealing them to the state’s Occupational Safety and Health Appeals Board. In 1991, the board docketed 1,367 appeals; in 1992, the total climbed to 1,923. The number this year is expected to top 2,500.

As a result, health and safety inspectors now spend less time than ever uncovering workplace hazards and more time processing paperwork to fight the appeals in court.

The problem, sources say, is compounded by the fact that the agency has no more than about seven staff lawyers, often forcing compliance inspectors to defend their own cases before the appeals board.

“We should be out there doing the job, making sure accidents don’t happen,” said one staffer, “instead of playing attorney.”

Garcia said the increase in appeals has not reduced the presence of inspectors in the workplace because he has two senior staff members help to prepare the appeals.

Garcia, whose own Spanish immigrant father died of work-related lung disease, said he believes that most employers in the Los Angeles area do all they can to abide by safety standards because they want to keep their workers healthy and productive.

Still, he said, there are industries where unskilled Latinos and others will continue to do the grimiest, most dangerous work.

Some will be injured, no matter what Cal/OSHA does, Garcia said, but their plight may be “the price we have to pay” to maintain a vibrant economy.

“All these horrible businesses out there . . . would just vanish if there wasn’t anybody to do their work,” he said. “And the work has to be done to keep the engine driving.

“I’m not condoning it because it’s, you know, morally wrong, but if society wants to protect everybody, then society has to do something,” Garcia added. “Regulatory agencies are only part of the answer.”

Where Does the Money Go

Cal/OSHA’s budget is dwarfed by other select, state-funded programs, records show. (Figure does not include supplemental federal funding for Cal/OSHA programs or money spent by individual companies to maintain their own worker safety and health programs). State-funded programs: Annual budget Public schools (K-12): $16.2 billion Department of Health Services: $5.7 billion Department of Corrections: $2.34 billion Forestry and Fire Protection: $279.4 million State Legislature operations: $116.6 million Benefits to retired judges: $57.7 million Worker safety and health (Cal/OSHA): $44 million Department of Aging: $32 million Calif. Maritime Academy: $6.7 million Source: Estimated 1992-93 California budget

Cal/OSHA Inspections: Where and How Often?

Although there are more manufacturing workers in Southern California and Los Angeles County than anywhere else in the state, Cal/OSHA assigns proportionately far fewer safety and health personnel here than in other areas. Agency officials say that inspectors are primarily assigned on the basis of complaints received. Latino factory laborers often do not complain about working conditions. This is one reason that factories in Southern California, which have a greater percentage of Latino workers, are inspected far less often than those in Northern California.

CalOSHA Number of Inspectors Percentage Number of manufacturing assigned to of facilities Area workers* facilities region inspected** Region I 184,867 6,050 35 10% Santa Rosa San Francisco Oakland San Jose Region II Redding 131,050 3,870 38 16% Sacramento Stockton Fresno Bakersfield Region III San Bernardino 444,837 11,009 38 5% Riverside Anaheim San Diego Region IV Ventura 911,912 20,581 42 4% Los Angeles Van Nuys Covina STATEWIDE 2,167,133 41,510 153 6.2%

* Estimates based on U.S. Department of Commerce’s 1990 County Business Patterns

** Estimates based on a Times comparison of the total number of facilities and the number of inspections in 1992.