Calls to OSHA Rise During Labor Strife : Workplace: More than half from union shops turn up no serious hazards, analysis shows.

When labor negotiations heat up, federal safety inspectors often see a surge of complaints from workers.

But well over half of complaints from union shops turn up no serious safety hazards, and more than a third of the time inspectors find no violations at all, Occupational Safety and Health Administration records show.

When complaints come from non-union shops, a smaller percentage turn up with no violations--just over a quarter, an Associated Press computerized analysis of six years of OSHA records found.

Critics say the system is being abused.

“I thought all along there were corporate campaigns launched to use not only OSHA, but to use EPA and other parts of the government, just to harass management,” said Rep. Cass Ballenger, R-N.C., an OSHA critic who is pushing legislation to radically change the agency.

Union officials dispute that notion.

“Management always accuses labor of that,” said Arthur Coia, president of the 365,000-member Laborers International Union of North America. “I don’t think it’s a major problem.”

What is clear to OSHA officials is that inspectors frequently see their time consumed by worker complaints, leaving little leeway for surprise inspections at hazardous work sites.

Complaint inspections that turned up no safety violations used up more than 100,000 OSHA man-hours in 1994 alone, the AP analysis found.

“It’s possible for an organization to structure a complaint in such a way as to legally obligate OSHA to do an on-site inspection even if there are other workplaces that may have more serious hazards to be addressed,” said Joseph Dear, OSHA’s chief.

But Dear is reluctant to curtail workers’ right to complain. “Who better to tell you about a serious workplace hazard than the worker who may be confronting it?” he said.

Nonetheless, OSHA recently began experimenting with allowing inspectors to resolve complaints by phone and fax, rather than by launching on-site inspections.

By law, the agency must investigate all complaints.

Nationally, 31% of the 162,703 OSHA inspections conducted between Jan. 1, 1989, and May 5 of this year found no violations, and 56% found no serious safety hazards. For complaints at unionized companies, the percentages were 36% with no violations and 59% with no serious hazards, compared to 27% and 54% respectively at non-unionized companies.

Examples abound in the agency’s records of companies that have repeated inspections prompted by worker complaints this decade.

While locked in tough labor negotiations, Pacific Bell has also had to cope with more than 260 complaint inspections since 1989.

Two-thirds of those inspections found no violations at all, and just four found serious safety hazards, the analysis showed. More than half the cases at the West Coast telephone company arose during contract talks in 1991-92 and 1995.

“I think there have been instances in California where Cal-OSHA has been used by various unions in an effort to intimidate certain employers,” said Rick Rice, spokesman for California’s OSHA. He declined to be more specific.

The Communications Workers of America, which represents Pacific Bell workers, defended its right to complain. “Nine times out of 10, the company, to avoid a citation, will correct the problem before the inspector gets there,” said Janet Harmon, president of CWA Local No. 9503 in Los Angeles.

Proponents of the complaint process say it works, even when it is tied to labor strife.

United Parcel Service sites were inspected 572 times as a result of complaints since 1989.

There were more than 100 complaints in both 1993 and 1994, when the union and UPS were locked in a protracted dispute over plans to increase the maximum weight of a package.

Just half the UPS complaints uncovered safety violations, and only half of those were serious.

“There’s no question that we believe many of the worker complaints are union-motivated and not always based in fact,” said Ken Sternad, a spokesman at UPS.

But Teamsters spokesman Craig Merrilees said UPS has a “dismal and dangerous record” with about 1,300 OSHA citations this decade and thousands of its workers injured each year.

Merrilees said UPS needs more regulation and “not nit-picking over whether employees are calling OSHA too often.”