Edison: Minor Injuries Missed

Southern California Edison Co., which has admitted to using faulty workplace safety data to win performance bonuses from the state, Friday placed most of the blame for the flawed reports on its failure to track minor injuries such as cuts and bruises among its 12,000 employees.

In its most detailed analysis yet of the faulty data, Edison said it also had uncovered “several hundred” other, more serious injuries that had gone unreported between 1999 and 2004.

Those additional injuries -- which would have required more than minor treatment, such as a Band-Aid or an ice pack -- were supposed to be logged for the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health. They were in addition to 3,466 such injuries that Edison did report to Cal/OSHA at that time, Edison said in the analysis, prepared for state utility regulators.

Edison, a unit of Rosemead-based Edison International, said its failure to track and report injuries that needed no more than first aid -- not the underreporting of more serious injuries -- was the main reason it announced in October that it would forgo or return $35 million in state bonuses that were based on the faulty data.

“It’s important for us to get the Cal/OSHA log right, and I don’t diminish that, but that’s not the reason for giving up the bonus,” said Stephen Pickett, Edison’s general counsel. “This is not a case of people cheating or active fraud of any kind.”

Under a California Public Utilities Commission program, utilities are rewarded or fined based on employee safety as well as customer satisfaction, service reliability and financial results. In March, Edison revealed that employees had rigged customer satisfaction surveys, and the utility subsequently pledged to return $14.4 million in bonuses.

Edison said that even when the additional injuries were factored in, the company still had an acceptable safety record for a utility of its size. Reporting those additional injuries as required wouldn’t have deprived Edison of the performance bonuses, the utility said. Edison said that nothing in its probe revealed that it had operated unsafely.

In the safety probe, Edison conceded that even as it was qualifying for the PUC bonuses, it didn’t have the necessary internal controls in place to keep an accurate count of injuries.

“There was a fundamental management breakdown,” Pickett said. “It’s our fault and really regrettable that we don’t have this data, but in the broad sense of things, we’re talking about keeping track of paper cuts, bruises and sprains.”

Edison also blamed the faulty reporting on the company’s own program of awarding bonuses to employees based on staying free of injuries or illness. In some cases, that prompted employees and managers to underreport problems, Edison said.

The probe “uncovered at least four instances in which a supervisor pressured an employee to avoid reporting, or to delay reporting, an injury,” Edison said.

Pickett noted that the PUC, starting this year, no longer required small injuries to be monitored by utilities hoping to qualify for the performance bonuses. Even so, Edison said, it launched “widespread corrective action,” including restructuring its company bonus system and its corporate safety group, and the discipline of “some supervisory level employees for misconduct.”

Those steps, and Edison’s refund of the PUC bonus, aren’t likely to end the matter. The PUC expects to “follow up with our own investigation” after it reviews Edison’s analysis, said Robert Cagen, a PUC attorney.

Cal/OSHA spokesman Dean Fryer said only: “We’ve been in discussions with them regarding this matter.”