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IMPROVING WORKPLACE SAFETY:

STRENGTHENING OSHA ENFORCEMENT

OF MULTI–SITE EMPLOYERS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON WORKFORCE PROTECTIONS 

COMMITTEE ON 

EDUCATION AND LABOR

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, APRIL 23, 2008

Serial No. 110–88

Printed for the use of the Committee on Education and Labor

(

Available on the Internet: 

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/house/education/index.html 

(II)

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR 

GEORGE MILLER, California, Chairman

Dale E. Kildee, Michigan, Vice Chairman 

Donald M. Payne, New Jersey 

Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey 

Robert C. ‘‘Bobby’’ Scott, Virginia 

Lynn C. Woolsey, California 

Rube ́n Hinojosa, Texas 

Carolyn McCarthy, New York 

John F. Tierney, Massachusetts 

Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio 

David Wu, Oregon 

Rush D. Holt, New Jersey 

Susan A. Davis, California 

Danny K. Davis, Illinois 

Rau ́l M. Grijalva, Arizona 

Timothy H. Bishop, New York 

Linda T. Sa ́nchez, California 

John P. Sarbanes, Maryland 

Joe Sestak, Pennsylvania 

David Loebsack, Iowa 

Mazie Hirono, Hawaii 

Jason Altmire, Pennsylvania 

John A. Yarmuth, Kentucky 

Phil Hare, Illinois 

Yvette D. Clarke, New York 

Joe Courtney, Connecticut 

Carol Shea-Porter, New Hampshire 

Howard P. ‘‘Buck’’ McKeon, California, 

Senior Republican Member 

Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin 

Peter Hoekstra, Michigan 

Michael N. Castle, Delaware 

Mark E. Souder, Indiana 

Vernon J. Ehlers, Michigan 

Judy Biggert, Illinois 

Todd Russell Platts, Pennsylvania 

Ric Keller, Florida 

Joe Wilson, South Carolina 

John Kline, Minnesota 

Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Washington 

Kenny Marchant, Texas 

Tom Price, Georgia 

Luis G. Fortun ̃ o, Puerto Rico 

Charles W. Boustany, Jr., Louisiana 

Virginia Foxx, North Carolina 

John R. ‘‘Randy’’ Kuhl, Jr., New York 

Rob Bishop, Utah 

David Davis, Tennessee 

Timothy Walberg, Michigan 

[Vacancy]

Mark Zuckerman, Staff Director 

Sally Stroup, Republican Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON WORKFORCE PROTECTIONS 

LYNN C. WOOLSEY, California, Chairwoman

Donald M. Payne, New Jersey 

Timothy H. Bishop, New York 

Carol Shea-Porter, New Hampshire 

Phil Hare, Illinois 

Joe Wilson, South Carolina, 

Ranking Minority Member 

Tom Price, Georgia 

John Kline, Minnesota 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

Hearing held on April 23, 2008 .............................................................................. 1

Statement of Members: 

Hare, Hon. Phil, a Representative in Congress from the State of Illinois, 

Wall Street Journal article dated April 23, 2008 ....................................... 8

Wilson, Hon. Joe, ranking minority member, Subcommittee on Workforce 

Protections ..................................................................................................... 5

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 6

Woolsey, Hon. Lynn C., Chairwoman, Subcommittee on Workforce Protections ................................................................................................................ 1

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 3

Additional materials submitted: 

Letter from Cintas, dated May 7, 2008 ............................................ 10

Statement of Errol Ingram, former Cintas maintenance supervisor ................................................................................................. 13

Statement of Maria Espinosa, current Cintas worker .................... 13

Statement of Santa Ana Ventura, current Cintas worker .............. 13

Letter from the Textile Rental Services Association of America, 

dated May 2, 2008 .......................................................................... 14

Internal Cintas memo and safety bulletin ....................................... 16

Official documents on Cintas Corp. OSHA violations, Central 

Islip, NY, 2005–2006, submitted by UNITE HERE .................... 20

Statement of Witnesses: 

Rabinowitz, Randy S., attorney in private practice ....................................... 54

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 56

Taylor, Ron, partner, Venable LLP ................................................................. 43

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 45

Torres, Emmanuel, son of Eleazar Torres-Gomez, worker who died at 

Cintas plant ................................................................................................... 36

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 37

White, Frank A., senior vice president, ORC Worldwide .............................. 38

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 40

(1)

IMPROVING WORKPLACE SAFETY:

STRENGTHENING OSHA ENFORCEMENT 

OF MULTI–SITE EMPLOYERS 

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

U.S. House of Representatives 

Subcommittee on Workforce Protections 

Committee on Education and Labor 

Washington, DC

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 11:34 a.m., in room 

2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Lynn Woolsey [chairwoman of the subcommittee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Woolsey, Payne, Shea-Porter, Hare, 

Wilson, and Kline. 

Staff Present: Aaron Albright, Press Secretary; Tylease Alli, 

Hearing Clerk; Jordan Barab, Health/safety Professional; Jody 

Calemine, Labor Policy Deputy Director; Lynn Dondis, Policy Advisor, Subcommittee on Workforce Protections; Peter Galvin, Senior 

Labor Policy Advisor; Brian Kennedy, General Counsel; Sara 

Lonardo, Junior Legislative Associate, Labor; Michele Varnhagen, 

Labor Policy Director; Robert Borden, Minority General Counsel; 

Cameron Coursen, Minority Assistant Communications Director; 

Ed Gilroy, Minority Director of Workforce Policy; Rob Gregg, Minority Senior Legislative Assistant; Alexa Marrero, Minority Communications Director; Hannah Snoke, Minority Legislative Assistant; Linda Stevens, Minority Chief Clerk/Assistant to the General 

Counsel; and Loren Sweatt, Minority Professional Staff Member. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. A quorum is present. The hearing of the 

committee will come to order, and I will yield myself as much time 

as I need for an opening statement and then I will yield to Ranking 

Member Wilson for his opening statement. 

Welcome, everybody, to this very important hearing. On March, 

2007, Mr. Eleazar Torres-Gomez, a 46-year-old washroom employee 

at Cintas, was killed at the company’s Tulsa, Oklahoma plant 

when he stepped onto a conveyor to remove a jam of wet uniforms. 

He was then caught by a large robotic conveyor and dragged into 

a drier as it continued to operate for 20 minutes at 300 degrees before he was discovered. The death of Mr. Torres-Gomez was a preventable tragedy, and that is probably the most tragic part about 

all of this. It did not need to happen. 

Emmanuel Torres is here today, the son of Mr. Torres-Gomez, 

and we want to thank you for being here. We know this is hard, 

but we will learn a lot from you and we thank you for your courVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:44 Nov 17, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 G:\DOCS\110TH\WP\110-88\41811.TXT HBUD1 PsN: DICK
2

age. It is crucial that we hear from you today to understand what 

happened to your father and to look at ways to prevent similar 

tragedies. 

Many of us on this subcommittee, in fact every single one of us 

on the subcommittee, were outraged that Cintas initially sought to 

blame Mr. Torres-Gomez for his own death. Imagine that, especially since Cintas has its own history of unsafe working conditions. 

It is for that reason that from the very beginning we have been 

concerned with this fatality and the implications that come along 

with it. 

In fact, only days after the death of Mr. Torres-Gomez, we sent 

a letter to OSHA asking for a nationwide investigation of Cintas’ 

facilities. One of the reasons we wanted OSHA to investigate was 

because we discovered that Cintas, the largest uniform supplier in 

North America with more than 400 facilities, employing more than 

43,000 people, was actually well aware of the hazard that caused 

this tragedy and failed to take the necessary steps to prevent such 

an incident. We have documents, here they are, showing that years 

before this tragedy Cintas had experienced at least three close calls 

involving almost the exact same scenario that killed Mr. TorresGomez. Yet the company had failed to effectively address the problems. 

An internal memo dated April 30, 2004, notified company officials, including regional health and safety coordinators of—and I 

quote them—an incident that could have resulted in serious injury 

and possible death. Accompanying this memo was an attachment 

from then Cintas President, Scott Farmer, who is currently the 

Chief Executive Officer, describing two other incidents in the year 

2000 where employees had climbed onto working laundry conveyors 

to clear jams and both fell into a running washer. The problem the 

company faced was that to shut down the shuttle or conveyor belt, 

the drier and the unloading conveyor, is something that the company was apparently reluctant to do every time there was a jam. 

Among other measures designed to reduce the risk, the memo 

promised to discuss with manufacturers retrofitting the equipment 

so that the shuttle could be completely shut down without shutting 

everything else down. None of these promises were acted upon at 

the Tulsa facility. 

We also know that OSHA was aware of those hazards. We have 

a July 7, 2005 OSHA letter of interpretation alerting employers, 

workers and inspectors about the need for fixes such as barriers 

and barrier guards with interlocks to protect employees from 

robotic laundry shuttle equipment like that used at the Tulsa 

plant. And on August 8, 2005, one month after the letter of interpretation was issued, OSHA inspectors investigated the company’s 

Central Islip, New York facility and cited the company for the very 

violations which the bulletin addressed, the violations that are defined in this stack of documentation. 

The OSHA citation against Cintas for the tragedy in Tulsa is 

more than $2.7 million, actually the largest OSHA fine ever assessed in the service sector. It included a repeat citation based on 

the hazards uncovered 2 years ago before in Central Islip, the hazards that were not isolated to Cintas in Tulsa. For example, the 

Tulsa citation was accompanied by a $117,000 penalty against the 

3

Cintas facility in Columbus, Ohio and later a $196,000 citation 

against Cintas in Mobile, Alabama. In August 2007, Washington 

State OSHA fined Cintas over $13,000 after a worker’s arm was almost torn off. California OSHA also cited Cintas for similar violations. 

Our main purpose here today is to explore ways to assist OSHA 

and ways to assist employers to better protect their employees, but 

today we are also interested in looking at the problem of corporations with multiple sites in multiple States because somewhere the 

T’s aren’t being crossed, the I’s aren’t being dotted and what happens in one part of—one company in one part of the State or another State just doesn’t transfer to the other part of the company. 

It is really short sighted. 

Additionally, Cintas officials have visited us. They have come 

here. They have assured us that they have made significant 

changes in the company’s safety policies. Well, we wanted to hear 

about those changes and we regret that scheduling problems made 

it impossible for any Cintas official to appear before us to describe 

the actions that they have taken before and after the death of Mr. 

Torres-Gomez. We are also aware that Cintas has challenged 

OSHA’s citations, and we are following with great interest and a 

lot of concerns the progress of settlement negotiations with OSHA. 

The problem of assuring safety at all facilities at large corporations is not, of course, just a problem at Cintas. So as I said earlier, 

we are looking at corporate-wide investigations and problems. We 

think that OSHA—we know that OSHA can do better and that corporate America must do better. We want to know if there are ways 

to enable OSHA to more effectively hold large employers accountable for compliance throughout their operations and ensure broader 

abatement of hazards. Are there problems with the Occupational 

Safety and Health Act itself or in OSHA’s regulations that prevent 

OSHA from effectively addressing corporate-wide safety and health 

problems? We need to know those answers. Can changes in the law 

or OSHA regulations address these issues? And in addition, we 

need to know what a good corporate-wide health and multiple location safety program would actually look like. 

Finally, what else can OSHA do to encourage companies to take 

more responsibility for their workers’ safety and health? I hope we 

find the answers to these questions, if not today, over time. This 

will not be our only hearing. This is not the only time we are going 

to be interested in what is going on with the safety of workers in 

our country because it is a very important issue. 

And now I would like to yield as much time as he may consume 

to the ranking member, Joe Wilson. 

[The statement of Ms. Woolsey follows:]

Prepared Statement of Hon. Lynn C. Woolsey, Chairwoman, Subcommittee 

on Workforce Protections 

On March 6, 2007, Mr. Eleazar Torres-Gomez, a 46-year old washroom employee 

at Cintas, was killed at the company’s Tulsa, Oklahoma, plant when he stepped 

onto a conveyor to remove a jam of wet uniforms. 

He was then caught by a large robotic conveyor and dragged into a dryer as it 

continued to operate for 20 minutes at 300 degrees before he was discovered. 

The death of Mr. Torres-Gomez was a preventable tragedy. 

Emmanuel Torres, thank you so much for being here today. 

4

It is crucial that we hear from you today to understand what happened to your 

father and to look at ways to prevent similar tragedies. 

Many of us on this subcommittee were outraged that Cintas initially sought to 

blame Mr. Torres-Gomez for his own death. 

Especially since Cintas has its own history of unsafe working conditions. 

And it is for this reason that, from the beginning, we have been concerned with 

this fatality and its implications. 

In fact, only days after the death of Mr. Torres-Gomez, we sent a letter to OSHA 

asking for a nation-wide investigation of Cintas facilities. 

One of the reasons we wanted OSHA to investigate was because we discovered 

that Cintas, the largest uniform supplier in North America, with more than 400 facilities employing more than 34,000 people, was well aware of the hazard that 

caused this tragedy and failed to take the necessary steps to prevent such an incident. 

We have documents showing that years before this tragedy, Cintas had experienced at least three ‘‘close calls’’ involving almost the exact same scenario that 

killed Mr. Torres-Gomez. 

Yet the company had failed to effectively address the problems. 

An internal memo dated April 30, 2004 notified company officials—including regional health and safety coordinators—of ‘‘an incident that could have resulted in 

serious injury and possible death.’’

Accompanying this memo was an attachment from then Cintas President Scott 

Farmer (currently the CEO) describing two other incidents in 2000 where employees 

had climbed onto working laundry conveyors to clear jams and fell into a running 

washer. 

The problem the company faced was that in order to shut down the shuttle, or 

conveyor belt, the dryer and the unloading conveyor also had to be shut down, something that the company was apparently reluctant to do every time there was a jam. 

Among other measures designed to reduce the risk, the memo promised to discuss 

with manufacturers retrofitting the equipment so that the shuttle could be completely shut down without shutting everything else down. 

None of these promises were acted upon at the Tulsa facility. We know that 

OSHA was aware of these hazards! 

We have a July 7, 2005 OSHA Letter of Interpretation alerting employers, workers and inspectors about the need for fixes—such as barriers and barrier guards 

with interlocks—to protect employees from robotic laundry shuttle equipment like 

that used at the Tulsa plant (where Mr. Torres Gomez was killed.) 

And on August 8, 2005, one month after the Letter of Interpretation was issued, 

OSHA inspectors investigated the company’s Central Islip, NY, facility, and cited 

the company for the very violations which the bulletin addressed. The OSHA citation against Cintas for the tragedy in Tulsa is more than $2.7 million, the largest OSHA fine ever assessed in the service sector. 

It included a ‘‘repeat’’ citation based on the hazards uncovered two years before 

in Central Islip. The hazards and citations were not isolated to Cintas in Tulsa -for 

example: 

The Tulsa citation was accompanied by a $117,500 penalty against a Cintas facility in Columbus, Ohio, and later a $196,000 citation against Cintas in Mobile, Alabama. 

In August 2007, Washington State OSHA fined Cintas $13,650 after a worker’s 

arm was almost torn off. 

California OSHA also cited Cintas for similar violations. 

Our main purpose here today is to explore ways to assist OSHA and employers 

to better protect employees. 

We are also interested in solving the problem of corporations with multiple sites 

and multiple states. 

Additionally, Cintas officials have visited us and assured us that they have made 

significant changes in the company’s safety policies (after Mr. Torres-Gomez’s 

death). 

We want to hear about that, but we regret that scheduling problems made it impossible for a Cintas official to appear before us to describe the actions they took 

before and after the death of Mr. Torres-Gomez. 

We are also aware that Cintas has challenged OSHA’s citations and we’re following with great interest and concern the progress of settlement negotiations [with 

OSHA]. 

And the problem of ensuring safety at all of the facilities of large corporations is 

not, of course, just a problem at Cintas, so, as I said earlier, we are looking at corporate inside investigations and problems. 

We think that OSHA can do better and that corporate America can do better. 

5

We want to know if there are ways to enable OSHA to more effectively hold large 

employers accountable for compliance throughout their operations and ensure broader abatement of hazards. 

Are there problems with the Occupational Safety and Health Act itself or in 

OSHA regulations that prevent OSHA from effectively addressing corporate wide 

safety and health problems? 

Can changes in the law or OSHA regulations address these issues? 

In addition, we need to know what a good corporate-wide health and multi-location safety program would look like. 

And finally, what else can OSHA do to encourage companies to take more responsibility for their workers’ safety and health? 

I hope we find the answers to these questions and develop goals we can all work 

toward to keep our workers safe. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you, Chairwoman Woolsey. First, I would 

like to thank you for changing the time of this hearing in order for 

me to attend a very important South Carolina delegation meeting. 

I appreciate your willingness to honor my request and your staff’s 

and the witnesses’ efforts to rearrange the schedule in order to ensure I could participate in this subcommittee hearing today. 

I, too, want to offer my condolences and sympathy to Mr. Torres 

for the terrible loss he and his family have experienced. His testimony will be difficult, and we thank him for coming today. The 

hearing today focuses on larger corporations with many work sites 

and how to make sure that a safety message is ingrained in everyone’s workday. 

At the subcommittee’s field hearing in New Jersey in January, 

in which we focused on a different industrial laundry tragedy, I believe a three-part message became clear. First, employers must 

educate employees about the hazards that exist in the workplace. 

Second, companies need to continue to build safety into the corporate culture. And finally, employees need to be encouraged to ask 

questions and to provide valuable input into safety programs. Of 

course the question is how can we achieve all three of these goals. 

Workplace safety and workplace success enhance each other. The 

fact is by using the right approach it is possible to put in place 

strong protections for workers that promote a company’s ability to 

be productive, job creating and important in the community or communities it serves. For any worker to be injured or killed in a 

workplace is a tragedy, And I believe I speak for everyone when 

I say that the most important thing for us to do in the wake of 

such an event is to focus on prevention for the future. 

Today’s hearing may provide discussion about the role of OSHA. 

It is often easier to point fingers than to ask tough questions about 

what went wrong. But if we really want to ensure a safe workplace, 

we must examine if any of OSHA’s regulations are in fact not 

working. 

One of the issues we will discuss is OSHA’s Enhanced Enforcement Program. Is this program effectively targeting workplaces? 

Are there other ways that OSHA could focus its resources? Another 

question we need to ask is are the regulations governing lockout, 

tag out procedures in confined places easily understood and effectively communicated? 

I am hopeful that we will remain focused on these issues today. 

Ultimately our shared goal is safer workplaces. The panel before us 

will highlight a variety of important issues that we must carefully 

6

consider. I welcome our witnesses and I look forward to their testimony and, Madam Chairwoman, I yield back my time. 

[The statement of Mr. Wilson follows:]

Prepared Statement of Hon. Joe Wilson, Ranking Republican Member, 

Subcommittee on Workforce Protections 

Good Morning, Chairwoman Woolsey. 

First, I would like to thank you for changing the time of this hearing in order 

for me to attend a very important South Carolina delegation meeting. I appreciate 

your willingness to honor my request and your staff’s and the witnesses’ efforts to 

rearrange the schedule in order to ensure that I could participate in the Subcommittee hearing today. 

I, too, want to offer my condolences to Mr. Gomez for the terrible loss he and his 

family experienced. His testimony will be difficult and we thank him for coming 

today. 

The hearing today focuses on larger corporations with many worksites and how 

to make sure that a safety message is ingrained in everyone’s work day. At the Subcommittee’s field hearing in January, in which we focused on a different industrial 

laundry tragedy, I believe a three part message became clear. First, employers must 

educate employees about the hazards that exist in a workplace. Second, companies 

need to continue to build safety into the corporate culture. And finally, employees 

need to be encouraged to ask questions and to provide valuable input into safety 

programs. Of course, the question is how can we achieve these three goals? 

Workplace safety and workplace success enhance each other. The fact is, by using 

the right approach it is possible to put in place strong protections for workers that 

promote a company’s ability to be a productive, job-creating engine in the community or communities it serves. For any worker to be injured or killed in the workplace is a tragedy, and I believe I speak for everyone when I say that the most important thing for us to do in the wake of such an event is to focus on prevention 

for the future. 

Today’s hearing may provide discussion about the role of OSHA. It’s often easier 

to point fingers than to ask the tough questions about what went wrong. But if we 

really want to ensure a safe workplace, we must examine if any of OSHA’s regulations are, in fact, not working. 

One of the issues we will discuss is OSHA’s Enhanced Enforcement Program. Is 

this program effectively targeting workplaces? Are there other ways that OSHA 

could focus its resources? 

Another question we need to ask is, are the regulations governing lock-out tagout procedures and confined spaces easily understood and effectively communicated? 

I am hopeful that we will remain focused on these issues today. 

Ultimately, our shared goal is safer workplaces. The panel before us will highlight 

a variety of important issues that we must carefully consider. I welcome our witnesses and look forward to their testimony. 

Madam Chair, I yield back. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Thank you, Mr. Wilson. Now I yield to 

Mr. Hare for an opening statement. 

Mr. HARE. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I appreciate your 

holding this hearing. It will give me the opportunity to speak this 

morning. 

Let me first acknowledge the workers who came from all over the 

country to participate in today’s hearing. I know some of you took 

a great risk in coming here. Your presence and personal stories are 

invaluable to this discussion. The issue of workplace safety is very 

personal to me. Before being elected to Congress, I was a lining 

cutter at Siefer Clothing Company in Rock Island, Illinois. I am 

one of the lucky ones to leave that job with all 10 of my fingers. 

It was very dangerous work. 

The timing of this hearing is particularly relevant not only because statistics tell us that 16, 16 workers die every day from 

work-related injuries, but also because next Monday, April 28th, 

7

marks the 20th annual Workers Memorial Day where we honor 

those who have lost their lives or were injured at their jobs. April 

28th also commemorates the creation of the Occupational Safety 

and Health Administration. 

Since 1970, OSHA has been a driving force in improving workplace safety and health conditions across this country. However, 

the Bush administration has sought to stifle that progress by 

downsizing OSHA, favoring employer voluntary programs over real 

enforcement. A weakened OSHA has real life or death consequences for American workers. 

One such worker is Cintas washer employee Eleazar TorresGomez, whose son Emmanuel will testify this morning. Mr. TorresGomez died March 6, 2007 in Tulsa, Oklahoma when he reportedly 

was dragged by a conveyor belt into an industrial drier. He was 

trapped in temperatures of 300 degrees for more than 20 minutes. 

I had the honor of meeting Emmanuel last April and was appalled by the total lack of responsibility Cintas took for this accident and the way this company treated the Torres-Gomez family. 

Cintas, the largest uniform supplier in North America, blamed Mr. 

Torres-Gomez for his own death, yet Cintas was aware of the safety issues with the machinery and even encouraged employees to 

climb on top of the equipment to fix jams that slowed down operations. Moreover, OSHA’s Directorate of Compliance issued a special interpretation letter in 2005 alerting employers, workers and 

inspectors about the need for special guarding around robotic laundry shuttles. Tragically, OSHA did not act at the Tulsa plant and 

now 1 year later Cintas workers are still in danger. Safety inspectors found the same unguarded machines at Cintas facilities in 

Ohio, in Washington, in Alabama, California and, most recently, 

my home State of Illinois. Something must be done to allow OSHA 

to deal with hazards corporate-wide. 

Right after Mr. Torres-Gomez’s accident, our subcommittee asked 

OSHA to conduct an immediate nationwide investigation resulting 

in a historic $2.8 million citation against Cintas involving 46 illegal 

hazards and 42 willful—let me repeat that—willful violations. 

Sadly Cintas is not the only example of corporate disregard for 

workers. We have a real problem in American industry. Employers 

are exposing their workers to serious health and safety hazards 

and defying worker safety and health regulations. 

As I hope will be revealed by our witnesses this morning, we 

must strengthen OSHA and give it the tools it needs to conduct 

corporate-wide investigations, enforce safety and health regulations 

at multi-site corporations and mitigate hazards so that companies 

like Cintas are held accountable for the safety of their employees. 

We also need to build a corporate culture in this country that 

puts our workers first. Last year, Chairman Woolsey and I, along 

with Senator Ted Kennedy, introduced a Protecting America’s 

Workers Act, which amends OSHA to cover more workers, increases penalties and strengthens protections and accountability. I 

hope as we move forward in the discussion of workplace safety we 

can consider this legislation. 

Let me again thank you, Madam Chair. I look forward to hearing 

from our witnesses and working with the members of this subcommittee to ensure that our Nation’s workers come home safe and 

8

sound to their families every night. That is the bare minimum that 

any corporation and every corporation in this country owes to the 

workers that work so hard each and every day. 

And one last thing. This is very difficult work that these workers 

have to do each and every day. This is not easy work. We heard 

this at a conference call this morning. And I just had to say from 

my perspective anything that I can do to assist you, Madam Chair, 

on this subcommittee, not just to make sure that Cintas, but that 

all corporations, play by the rules, I will do that. I thank you very 

much and I yield back the balance of my time. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Thank you, Mr. Hare. Actually, you are 

a perfect straight man for me because I was going to suggest and 

share with the audience that this morning we—Mr. Hare chaired 

a press conference where we heard stories from Cintas workers. 

They were amazing stories. And without objection, I would like to 

include their statements in the record with today’s hearing. Thank 

you. Without objection, all members will have 14 days to submit 

additional materials for the hearing record. 

[The information follows:] 

[Article from the Wall Street Journal, dated April 23, 2008, submitted by Mr. Hare follows:]

[From the WALL STREET JOURNAL, April 23, 2008]

House Panel to Examine Cintas Plants’ Safety Record

By JAMES BANDLER and KRIS MAHER

TULSA, OKLA.—Last year, Eleazar Torres-Gomez fell from a conveyor belt into an 

industrial dryer at a Cintas Corp. laundry here and was killed before anyone realized what happened. The accident prompted the federal government to propose the 

largest safety-related penalty ever against a service-sector company. 

New details about the case—from internal company memos, Cintas surveillance 

videotapes and people close to the federal investigation—indicate that the dangerous 

practices that led to Mr. Torres-Gomez’s death occurred frequently in Tulsa and at 

other plants operated by Cintas, the biggest uniform supplier in North America. 

A person familiar with the probe said U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration officials believe Cintas workers climbing on moving conveyors and 

jumping atop stuck laundry were ‘‘standard work practices at a number of facilities.’’

Cintas spokeswoman Heather Trainer denied that it’s standard practice. ‘‘In fact, 

every employee at the Tulsa facility, including the receptionists, was trained to 

never get on an energized conveyor at any time,’’ she said. 

On Wednesday, the House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections will hold a 

hearing on how well OSHA is policing employers like Cintas that have multiple facilities across the country. Although other companies will be mentioned, Cintas is 

expected to be exhibit A, according to people familiar with the hearing. The Democratic controlled committee is investigating allegations that Cintas didn’t protect 

workers at all of its facilities from previously known hazards. 

An OSHA spokeswoman said the agency couldn’t comment on pending cases. 

The federal government fined Cintas $2.8 million for the Tulsa accident. Cintas 

has appealed the fine. Shortly after the accident, Cintas CEO Scott Farmer said Mr. 

Torres-Gomez wasn’t following proper procedures, ‘‘which would have prevented this 

tragic accident.’’

In its investigation, OSHA found that employees weren’t trained in how to shut 

off equipment properly. A surveillance videotape at the Tulsa plant showed workers 

engaging in activities similar to what led to Mr. 

Torres-Gomez’s death over several weeks prior to the accident, say people familiar 

with OSHA’s investigation. A government memo, sent by Richard E. Fairfax, director of enforcement for OSHA, states that over the previous two weeks, other employees had used the same method of dislodging jams some 34 times. 

‘‘Employees climbed on and walked up the moving shuttle conveyer, and kicked 

at, jumped on, and tried to knee the jammed clothing into the dryer opening,’’ Mr. 

Fairfax wrote. ‘‘The recording also showed two employees inserting one of their legs 

9

into the chutes of the operating washing machines and jumping up and down to 

clear jams of laundry in the chute.’’

Company surveillance video showed Mr. Torres-Gomez trying to clear the jam 

from the ground level. When that didn’t work, he got on the conveyor shuttle and 

began jumping up and down to push a clump of jeans through. He fell into the 

dryer. The automatic door shut, and a pilot light ignited. More than 20 minutes 

later a co-worker, hearing a loud thudding noise, found Mr. Torres-Gomez dead, 

lying on a pile of jeans, according to a police report. 

A Cintas spokeswoman said in a statement that the company couldn’t comment 

on ‘‘the factual circumstances’’ of the accident, because it is currently negotiating 

a national settlement with the Labor Department and faces pending litigation. ‘‘The 

accident was tragic and shook us all,’’ she said. Cintas—whose stock ended Tuesday at $28.87 on the Nasdaq, down 14.13% year to date—posted sales of $3.71 billion and a profit of $334.5 million in fiscal 2007. 

Commercial laundries operated by Cintas wash uniforms for hotels, airlines and 

restaurants, among others, as well as industrial shop towels and rugs. In automated 

plants, robotic conveyor systems called shuttles transfer hundreds of pounds of laundry from massive washers to dryers. 

In a confidential safety bulletin in 2004 that hasn’t been previously disclosed, 

Cintas’s director of safety noted that laundry jams were ‘‘fairly common on automated wash floors’’ and presented a serious safety risk to workers. 

The memo refers to an incident at a Cintas plant in Ohio in which a worker trying to dislodge a jam at the top of a shuttle was forced into a rotating dryer. The 

worker wasn’t seriously injured because a second worker was present and immediately shut off power. 

In the memo, Richard Gerlach, Cintas’s director of safety, told managers to implement several basic safety procedures before trying to dislodge jams, including shutting off power to the shuttle and to dryers and having an observer present to prevent a mishap. These procedures weren’t followed prior to the Tulsa accident. 

Cintas said that there were other procedures in place that would have shut off 

the conveyor, but they weren’t followed. The company said Mr. Gerlach wouldn’t be 

available to comment. The company also said that it is in compliance with OSHA 

regulations, which accept shuttles with so-called presence-sensing guarding, which 

shuts off a shuttle if it encounters a person as it moves along a track. The shuttle 

in the Tulsa plant had that, but it didn’t prevent workers from climbing on the machine while it was operating, according to people familiar with OSHA’s investigation. 

People close to the OSHA probe in Tulsa say plant managers knew that workers 

were standing on moving conveyer shuttles in order to dislodge jams. Surveillance 

video, they say, shows the dangerous practice sometimes occurred multiple times in 

a single shift. Workers told OSHA investigators they were ‘‘under a lot of pressure 

to keep everything going.’’ The company said that while the company sets reasonable goals for employees, pressure didn’t play any role in Mr. Torres-Gomez’s death. 

In its investigation into the Tulsa accident, OSHA cited Cintas for 42 ‘‘willful’’ violations—the most serious kind of violation because it denotes ‘‘intentional disregard’’ 

or ‘‘plain indifference’’ to employee safety. 

Since 2002, there have been at least 70 inspections of Cintas plants, more than 

half of which resulted in citations, according to Mr. Fairfax’s memo, which was prepared late last year. 

Some industry officials say Cintas has had more inspections than most other 

laundry companies because it has been the target of a long-running organizing campaign by Unite Here. Eric Frumin, director of occupational safety and health for 

Unite Here, acknowledged that the union helped workers file complaints, but said 

that Cintas’s safety problems were real, and that without these complaints, OSHA 

would never have scrutinized the industry. ‘‘What is the message when absent complaints or death, OSHA isn’t going to show up?’’ Mr. Frumin said. 

After a worker nearly lost his arm when it became caught in a washer at a Cintas 

plant in Yakima, Wash., last year, the state Department of Labor and Industries 

fined Cintas $13,600, citing it for a number of safety violations, including instances 

of workers standing on moving shuttles. Michael White, 52, who worked in the wash 

room at the Yakima plant for close to 30 years before quitting in November 2006, 

said Cintas scrapped some safety measures when it took over the plant about seven 

years ago. The previous employer scheduled two workers in the wash room, where 

shuttle systems automatically take laundry from washers and load it into dryers, 

Mr. White said, but Cintas decided only one person was needed to watch over the 

machinery. Cintas also took away safety switches that could be worn by employees 

and be used to shut off machinery in case of an emergency. The prior owner had 

required any employee entering the wash room to wear the devices, he said. 

10

Richard Smith, who retired after he sold the Yakima plant to Cintas in 2000, confirmed Mr. White’s description of procedures when he owned the facility, and 

Bourtai Hargrove, an assistant state attorney general who investigated the case, 

said witnesses at the plant confirmed Mr. White’s assertion about the safety switches. 

Cintas said it doesn’t find any basis for Mr. White’s allegations, which are ‘‘contrary to the company’s entire safety and health culture.’’

Write to James Bandler at james.bandler@wsj.com1 and Kris Maher at 

kris.maher@wsj.com2

[Letter from Cintas, dated May 7, 2008, submitted by Ms. Woolsey follows:]


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[Statements from various current and former Cintas employees:]

Prepared Statement of Errol Ingram, Former Cintas Maintenance 

Supervisor 

My name is Errol Ingram, and I’m an ex-employee of Cintas in Mobile, Alabama. 

I chose to leave because of instances of unsafe work practices and because the way 

I was treated. I was not respected. 

Even after the death in Tulsa, Cintas was still not safe. By the time OSHA was 

done, there still was not enough training and staffing. 

There were more than enough times where there were two man jobs that I was 

made to do by myself. I had to seek the assistance of someone who was not qualified 

to assist me. It got to the point where I could not take it any more, so I chose to 

leave. 

Being here today on Capitol Hill, I heard about Cintas’s widespread practices. 

These things need to stop, and I see now that this is possible at Cintas. I hope that 

this begins a trend of something good for all. 

Prepared Statement of Maria Espinosa, Current Cintas Worker 

My name is Maria Espinoza. I’ve worked at Cintas San Jose as a washer for about 

four years. I am here to talk about the working conditions and the pressures that 

we work under. 

They pressure us by putting colors on the production levels we do. They also count 

the amount of production we do by the hour. In folding, we have to do 130 folds 

an hour. In sorting clothes, it is 330 sorts per hour. Washing we have to do 16 cycles 

per day. If we don’t fulfill it, they red flag us. If we almost reach the goal, they give 

us a yellow signal. If we meet the goal, we get a green one. To avoid the shame 

of getting the red color is why people rush and get hurt. 

I have injured my calf at work, and it hurts even to walk. I hurt it from taking 

laundry from the carts and putting it into the machines. They don’t do maintenance 

to the carts, which is one of the main tools at work. They don’t put the appropriate 

springs in the carts that make them easier to load and unload. 

Those are reasons why so many of us injured. 

Prepared Statement of Santa Ana Ventura, Current Cintas Worker 

My name is Santa Ana Ventura. I’ve worked at Cintas in Bedford Park for 11 

years. Like others in my plant, I am often in pain from the pace of production that 

Cintas demands. They have raised the quotas, and we are under a lot of pressure. 


cintas-4.eps
14

Now, we have to hang from 1,768 to 2,000 shirts per shift. Our supervisors check 

every hour to make sure we are hanging enough shirts. So when I get home, I am 

so tired that I am not able to do anything, I have a headache and my body hurts—

hands, shoulders, arms, neck, and feet. My coworkers also suffer from pain. 

From hanging so many shirts so fast, my back also hurts a lot. And there are 

many times that I can’t lift my arms up. I have told the company that there is a 

problem with my arm but they want 100% so I feel bad. From the speed of the work, 

my hand still hurts today from an injury five years ago. Because my fingers have 

lost strength from all the fastening of shirts, I drop things. 

From working standing in one place so long, I had to have surgery on my foot 

because the company refused to let me transfer to another area to do another type 

of work. I still need to have another operation. But Cintas doesn’t want us to go 

back to work unless we are 100 percent. Supervisors do not want to give us different 

assignments that would allow us to start working again. 

I am glad that OSHA is now investigating in my plant, because, since we heard 

about the way the worker in Tulsa died, we have been afraid for the wash-room 

worker in our plant. 

Cintas raised production rates but they haven’t raised salaries; the supervisors 

told us, if we’re not happy with our jobs, the doors are open and we should just 

leave. Our raises are around $.17 to $.25 which doesn’t even cover the increase in 

health insurance each year. 

I hope that with your help we can fix things because right now we aren’t able 

to have the quality of life that we should. On my behalf and on behalf of my coworkers, I hope to find a quick resolution to these problems because I see every day that 

people are injured. 

I came here to talk to the representatives in Congress, to tell them about my foot 

and the injury because I want things to be better. If my coworkers knew that members of Congress were interested in understanding how our jobs hurt us, maybe they 

wouldn’t be afraid to speak up—and to tell Cintas when they are in pain or are hurt 

and need to go to the doctor. 

[Letter from the Textile Rental Services Association of America, 

dated May 2, 2008, follows:]

May 2, 2008. 

Hon. LYNN WOOLSEY, Chairwoman, 

Workforce Protections Subcommittee, Committee on Education and Labor, Washington, DC. 

DEAR MADAM CHAIRWOMAN: On behalf of the Textile Rental Services Association 

of America (TRSA), I would appreciate your placing this correspondence in the 

record for the April 23 Workforce Protections Subcommittee hearing titled ‘‘Improving Workplace Safety: Strengthening OSHA Enforcement of Multi-State Employers.’’ 

TRSA has a long commitment to helping our industry be safe, so I welcome the opportunity to let you and members of the subcommittee know about TRSA’s historical 

and continuing efforts relating to this goal. 

Founded in 1912, TRSA is the world’s largest textile service industry association, 

representing more than 1,000 industrial laundry facilities in 24 countries. The membership of TRSA represents a cross-section of the industry, including some of the 

world’s largest textile service companies, along with numerous mid-size and oneplant operations. Our membership includes companies currently doing business in 

commercial laundering and rental services to commercial, industrial and institutional accounts, as well as firms selling services, equipment and supplies to commercial launderers and linen rental companies. 

TRSA’s mission is to advance the professionalism of its members and promote 

their success through government advocacy, education, marketing and businesses 

enhancing services. TRSA is committed to addressing the changing needs of the industry, and our members, while striving to surpass industry standards by uniting 

members through a progressive organization. 

TRSA has always believed that educating its membership on the importance of 

a safe workplace and instilling a commitment to safety principles is an essential 

part of its core mission. Throughout its history, TRSA has developed resources and 

programs to improve the knowledge of its members on the most up-to-date practices 

to make our workplaces safer. 

Together with our sister association, Uniform & Textile Service Association 

(UTSA), TRSA established the Production Management Institute (PMI) in 1990. A 

strong and ongoing program, PMI is designed to educate plant managers and supervisors on state-of-the-art plant operations, including leadership and supervisory 

15

skills. From the beginning, safety has been a key component of PMI, and it will be 

a major focus at this year’s PMI session, which begins today. 

In addition, during the February TRSA Tech/Plant Summit of industry executives, 

I announced the TRSA Safety Initiative. The TRSA Safety Initiative is a comprehensive program that was conceived to help the textile service industry improve workplace safety. It encompasses four key areas: to educate TRSA members on how to 

improve safety; to serve the TRSA membership by assisting individual members on 

how to enhance the safety of their facilities; to track the progress of safety improvements through the collection and analysis of data; and to represent to the public 

and government bodies the industry’s commitment to safe facilities. One aspect of 

the Safety Initiative, SafetyESP (Safety Enhancement Stewardship Program), is 

being administered in cooperation with UTSA and will focus on tracking industry 

progress on safety improvement through data collection and analysis. 

TRSA—and its members—understand the importance of a safe workplace and we 

are committed to making the working environments of our membership among the 

safest in the world. We have been in contact with OSHA to make sure that the lead 

federal agency on safety is aware of our Safety Initiative and we have asked the 

agency to provide constructive criticism and other input that will make the TRSA 

Safety Initiative even more effective. 

My staff and I would appreciate the opportunity to meet with you and/or your 

staff for a dialogue similar to our recent discussions with OSHA. We also plan to 

meet with other subcommittee members and their staffs as well. 

Thank you for the opportunity to let us share what TRSA has done, and is doing, 

to improve safety in the textile services industry. If you have any questions or would 

like additional information, please contact me or TRSA’s Director of Government Affairs Larry Fineran. Both of us can be reached at (703) 519-0029 or through e-mail 

at rcocivera@trsa.org or lfineran@trsa.org. 

Sincerely, 

ROGER COCIVERA, 

President. 

[Internal Cintas memo and safety bulletin follow:]

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[Official documents on Cintas Corp. OSHA violations, Central 

Islip, NY, 2005–2006, submitted by UNITE HERE, follow:]


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Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Now I would like to introduce our very 

distinguished panel of witnesses who are here with us today, and 

I welcome you and I thank you for being so absolutely flexible that 

you—I think we changed the date and time of this hearing three 

times and here you are, the same four that we invited from the beginning. So thank you so much. I am going to introduce you in the 

order of when you will speak. I will introduce everybody at once 

and then give you a little tutorial on the lighting system, and then 

we will get into the hearing. 

Emmanuel Torres, the oldest son of Eleazar Torres-Gomez. On 

March 6, 2007, Emmanuel’s father was killed while working at a 

Cintas laundry in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His father was employed at 


unite-15.eps
35

Cintas from August 2000 until the day he was killed in an industrial drier. Emmanuel and his parents, Eleazar Torres and Amelia 

Diaz, moved to the United States in 1987. Since July 1998, his 

family has made Tulsa, Oklahoma, their home. Emmanuel attended and graduated from high school in Tulsa. He currently lives 

with his family and is helping his mom raise his two younger 

brothers. 

Frank White. Frank is the Senior Vice President of ORC Worldwide, responsible for ORC’s occupational safety and health and environmental practices. Mr. White previously spent 5 years in private law practice representing clients in occupational safety and 

health litigation and rulemaking. Prior to that, Mr. White worked 

in the Department of Labor, including serving as Deputy Assistant 

Secretary of Labor for OSHA and Associate Solicitor for OSHA. Mr. 

White received his undergraduate degree from Duke University 

and his J.D. from the University of Connecticut Law School. 

Ronald Taylor. Ronald is a partner in Venable, LLP. Mr. Taylor 

is co-chair of Venable’s Labor and Employment Practice Group, 

where he advises and defends employers on a wide variety of labor 

and employment law issues. He is an active member of the American Bar Association’s Committee on Occupational Safety and 

Health. Mr. Taylor earned his B.A. Degree from the University of 

Virginia and his J.D. from William and Mary Marshall-Wyeth 

School of Law. 

Randy Rabinowitz. Randy is a partner—no—is a private practice 

attorney who specializes in legal issues affecting injured workers 

such as OSHA, workers compensation and products liability. Previously Ms. Rabinowitz has served as a senior consultant to OSHA, 

an administrative law fellow and adjunct professor at the Washington College of Law and as counsel to this committee. She has 

also served as union co-chair of the American Bar Association’s Occupational Safety and Health Law Committee. Ms. Rabinowitz received her B.A. From the John Hopkins University and her J.D. 

and LLM from Georgetown University Law Center. 

Welcome to all four of you. 

So now let me tell you a little bit about the lighting system. If 

you have not testified here before, you will want to know this. First 

of all, every member and every witness gets 5 minutes. So when 

you start speaking, the light will not go on—yes, it will be green, 

won’t it? The light will be on and it will be green. And then when 

you have a minute left it will be yellow and when your 5 minutes 

is over, the light in front of you will be red. We are not going to 

cut you off mid-sentence, mid-thought, mid-idea. But if you have 

extra, more words than the 5 minutes, then we will ask you to 

enter them into the record and probably finish many of your 

thoughts during the question and answer period. 

Members also have 5 minutes. And if we sit up here and talk for 

5 minutes and don’t ask a question, that is our loss, not yours. So 

we try to keep ourselves short. But we have a hard time with this. 

Now, we will hear from our first witness, Mr. Torres. 

36

STATEMENT OF EMMANUEL TORRES, SON OF ELEAZAR 

TORRES-GOMEZ, WORKER WHO DIED AT CINTAS PLANT 

Mr. TORRES. Chairwoman Woolsey and other distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify 

today. I hope this opportunity is another step towards making a 

positive change out of my family’s tragedy. 

I am Emmanuel Torres, the son of Eleazar Torres, who was tragically killed on March 6, 2007 at a Cintas plant in Tulsa, Oklahoma. On behalf of my mom and three younger brothers, it is my 

family’s hope that this hearing results in the passage of legislation 

that makes workplaces across America safer and prevents tragedies like my father’s death from happening to others. 

It has been over a year since my father’s death, but laws ensuring safer workplaces still do not exist at the level that they should 

be. I hope that future legislation will make OSHA stronger and finally hold companies like Cintas accountable for repeated violations by imposing stiffer penalties. No one should have to endure 

what my family has over the past year. 

My father began working at a Cintas plant in Tulsa, Oklahoma, 

in August of 2000. He worked hard to support our family so we 

could live decently and even own a home. On March 6, 2007, my 

father was filling in in a different position for another employee 

who was on vacation. While my father was attempting to unjam 

clothes stuck on a shuttle, he was dragged into an operating industrial drier where he was trapped for 20 minutes as it continued to 

spin. As a result, he was killed. I will be haunted forever imagining 

the terror and the pain he must have felt. 

Despite CEO Scott Farmer’s statement that blamed my father for 

not following Cintas’ safety policies, OSHA’s investigation, which 

included review of security camera tapes, revealed over 30 similar 

instances over a 2-week period prior to my father’s death in which 

other employees climbed on the wash floor machinery. Any one of 

them could have been hurt or killed. OSHA even said these violations were willful. Based on OSHA’s investigation, we know the 

procedures my father followed were not merely an isolated occurrence, but were happening routinely. That is why there were several willful violations for failing to train my father and three other 

employees who were responsible to perform procedures to clear 

jams. 

Later we learned OSHA found similar violations in other States. 

The fact that Cintas blamed my father for what truly is a companywide problem is wrong. More important, Cintas knew about the 

danger and should have fixed the machine so they could not turn 

on while workers like my father were on them. 

OSHA fined Cintas approximately $2.78 million in penalties over 

their investigation of my father’s death. But Cintas is appealing. It 

is my understanding that a settlement between OSHA and Cintas 

has not been reached. It is important that any settlement send 

Cintas and other companies a strong message that things must 

change. Part of this change must include a companywide investigation to ensure that all of their facilities make changes to protect 

workers and not only say that they are in compliance with all safety standards and procedures, but actually practice these proceVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:44 Nov 17, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00040 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 G:\DOCS\110TH\WP\110-88\41811.TXT HBUD1 PsN: DICK
37

dures. One way this can be done is through more random investigation, stronger enforcement and more training. 

Also OSHA should use the punishment allowed by law. All of 

this will never bring my father back. Hopefully this process will 

make sure that all the other workers like my father at other Cintas 

plants are protected. 

As I have stated previously, I feel that my father’s death was 

preventable and Cintas failed to do everything in their power to 

protect him. This is why I respectfully request that this subcommittee adopt strong measures including ones I have mentioned. 

I further respectfully request that Congress begin to investigate 

employers who fail to institute strong safety policies and procedures and have failed to enforce them internally. If this does not 

occur, repeated violations will continue to occur at companies like 

Cintas and more lives will be lost. Me and my family love and miss 

my father so much that we hope a tragedy like this won’t ever happen again. Thank you. 

[The statement of Mr. Torres follows:]

Prepared Statement of Emmanuel Torres, Son of Eleazar Torres-Gomez, 

Worker Who Died at Cintas Plant 

Chairman Woolsey and other distinguished members of this Subcommittee, thank 

you for the opportunity to testify today. I hope this opportunity is another step towards making a positive change out of my family’s tragedy. 

I am Emmanuel Torres, the son of Eleazar Torres, who was tragically killed on 

March 6, 2007 at the Cintas plant in Tulsa, Oklahoma. On behalf of my mom and 

three younger brothers, it is my family’s hope that this hearing results in the passage of legislation that makes workplaces across America safer and prevents tragedies like my father’s death from happening to others. It has been over a year since 

my father’s death, but laws ensuring safer workplaces still do not exist at the level 

they should be. I hope that future legislation will make OSHA stronger, and finally 

hold companies like Cintas really accountable for repeated violations by imposing 

stiffer penalties. No one should have to endure what my family has over the past 

year. 

My father began working at the Cintas Plant in Tulsa, Oklahoma in August of 

2000. He worked hard to support our family so we could live decently and even own 

a home. On March 6, 2007, my father was filling in a different position for another 

employee who was on vacation. While my father was attempting to un-jam clothes 

stuck on the shuttle, he was dragged into an operating industrial dryer where he 

was trapped for over 20 minutes as it continued to spin, and as a result, was killed. 

I will be haunted forever imagining the terror and pain he must have felt. Despite 

CEO Scott Farmer’s statement that blamed my father for not following Cintas’ safety policies, OSHA’s investigation, which included review of security cameras’ tapes, 

revealed over 30 similar instances over a two week period prior to my father’s death 

in which other employees climbed on wash floor machinery. Any one of them could 

have been hurt or killed. OSHA even said these violations were ‘‘willful’’. Based on 

the OSHA investigation, we know the procedures my father followed were not merely an isolated occurrence but were happening routinely. That is why there were several willful violations for failing to train my father and three other employees who 

were responsible to perform procedures to clear jams. Later, we learned OSHA 

found similar violations in other states. The fact that Cintas blamed my father for 

what truly is a company wide problem is wrong. More important, Cintas knew about 

the danger and should have fixed the machines so they could not turn on while 

workers like my father were on them. 

OSHA fined Cintas approximately $2.78 million in penalties after their investigation of my father’s death, but Cintas is appealing. It is my understanding that a 

settlement between OSHA and Cintas has not been reached. It is important that 

any settlement sends Cintas and other companies a strong message that things 

must change. Part of this change must include company wide investigation to ensure that all of their facilities make changes to protect workers and not only say 

they are in compliance with all safety standards and procedures but actually practice these procedures. One way this can be done is through more random investigations, stronger enforcement, and more training. Also OSHA should use the punishVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:44 Nov 17, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00041 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 G:\DOCS\110TH\WP\110-88\41811.TXT HBUD1 PsN: DICK
38

ment allowed by law. While this will never bring my father back, hopefully this 

process will make sure that all of the other workers, like my father, at other Cintas 

plants are protected. 

As I have stated previously, I feel that my father’s death was preventable and 

Cintas failed to do everything in their power to protect him. This is why I respectfully request that this Subcommittee adopt strong measures, including ones I have 

mentioned. I further respectfully request that Congress begin to investigate employers who fail to institute strong safety polices and procedures and/or fail to enforce 

them internally. If this does not occur, repeated violations will continue to occur at 

companies like Cintas and more lives will be lost. 

Thank you. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Thank you, Mr. Torres. 

Mr. White. 

STATEMENT OF FRANK A. WHITE, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, 

ORC WORLDWIDE 

Mr. WHITE. Good morning and thank you, Congresswoman Woolsey and members of the subcommittee, for the opportunity today to 

testify on behalf of ORC Worldwide and discuss how leading corporations work to make sure that serious risks to worker safety 

and health get addressed on a corporate-wide basis. I want to do 

my best today to offer Mr. Torres, his family and his co-workers 

hope that there are, in fact, effective steps that companies can and 

do take to prevent the kind of tragic loss they have suffered, and 

I know that his appearance here will make a difference. 

ORC Worldwide is an international consulting firm whose Washington, D.C. office works with more than 140 leading global corporations to help them achieve health and safety excellence. For 36 

years, our guiding premise has been that providing safe and 

healthful working conditions is the mutual concern of workers, employers and government agencies, and it takes the cooperation and 

collaboration among those three to find solutions to safety and 

health issues. 

So how can a company make sure that a serious or safety health 

risk that is known to exist at one of its locations does not go unnoticed or ignored at another location? And what steps does the business need to take to assure that no worker is endangered by a 

similar risk at another facility? 

First and foremost, the indispensable foundation for effective action is the establishment of a clear and authoritative policy from 

the corporation’s senior leadership, the CEO, stating explicitly that 

the corporation as a whole will insist on full compliance of all worker safety and health standards and senior leadership should be actively engaged in monitoring to make sure that is done. 

Second, in addition to the clearly articulated policy of full compliance, companies that consistently achieve superior safety and 

health performance and that actually sustain corporate-wide compliance rely on a safety and health management system that includes several key elements. And I recommend to the committee 

the ANSI Z10 guideline that was promulgated in 2005 as a basis 

for a good, solid safety and health management system. The fundamental goal of a comprehensive management system is the elimination of injuries and illnesses through a continuous process of 

identifying, assessing and reducing risks, And there are a few key 

39

elements in those systems that are applicable here to corporatewide abatement of hazards covered by OSHA requirements. 

First, you have to establish clear lines of responsibility, authority 

and accountability through all levels of the corporation from the 

CEO on down to line employees. All management levels and line 

employees must be assigned, understand and be accountable for 

their roles in the management system for finding and fixes hazards. 

Second, you must encourage employee participation in reporting 

of unsafe conditions. No management system can function effectively without employee participation. Line employees are a company’s most knowledgeable resources about hazardous conditions 

and they must be encouraged to report such conditions with full 

confidence that management will act to correct those conditions. 

Third, there must be regular safety inspections and audits. Part 

of the responsibility of management at each company facility is to 

perform periodic reviews at each workplace to identify, evaluate 

and control risk. 

Fourth, perform root cause investigations of significant incidents. 

Now, most large employees do incident investigations of serious incidents or injuries. But it is also important to look at near misses 

and incidents that do not necessarily result in injuries, particularly 

those where serious injuries could have occurred. And the nature 

of those investigations needs to go beyond just looking at the unsafe act or behavior of the employee. You have to examine more 

closely the root causes of the incident. 

It is ORC’s experience that in general there are usually more 

fundamental, systemic, cultural and workplace design issues—reasons for such incidents that need to be addressed beyond the worker behavior. So you can’t stop at looking at what the worker did. 

You have to go beyond that to looking at root causes. 

In addition to these sort of basic elements, many companies that 

have specifically addressed the issue of looking at an issue in one 

workplace and making sure other workplaces are looked at as well, 

are the following: A requirement that each workplace in a corporation reports significant incidents to a centralized corporate function 

or team. Then the corporate team needs to look at those incidents 

and make some judgment as to whether there might be some potential likelihood for occurrence at other locations. Then there has 

to be an alert to those locations to take action, to look and evaluate 

whether there is a problem. And then again, responsibility and accountability to those other locations to investigate and, if necessary, to correct those actions. And then follow up at the corporate 

level to make sure, in fact, those corrective actions have been 

taken. 

Just a moment, if I may, on how OSHA can contribute. Obviously 

the issuance of citations for serious violations of an OSHA standard 

must be issued when they find that a corporation has violated a 

standard and particularly to take strong action, including egregious 

penalties when there are multiple violations at multiple sites. That 

is essential. But more fundamentally, OSHA can really do more 

and they have tried to establish some procedures in their Enhanced 

Enforcement Program, as you know. And basically those procedures 

seem to be pretty sound. The question is are they functioning corVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:44 Nov 17, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00043 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 G:\DOCS\110TH\WP\110-88\41811.TXT HBUD1 PsN: DICK
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rectly. And I hope we can explore during the course of this hearing 

how to make them more effective. 

And finally I would say that in addition to these kind of specific 

programs, ORC would strongly encourage OSHA to search for new 

ways to promote and advocate the value of safety and health management systems, because in the long term nothing will have a 

more significant impact on the reduction of risk, injuries and illnesses as well as improved compliance than the widespread adoption of such systems. And OSHA needs to take a role in doing that. 

Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

[The statement of Mr. White follows:]

Prepared Statement of Frank A. White, Senior Vice President, ORC 

Worldwide 

On behalf of ORC Worldwide, I would like to thank the Subcommittee for this opportunity to discuss how to make sure that serious risks to worker safety and health 

get addressed on a corporate-wide basis. We appreciate being able to share ORC 

member company experience in this area. 

ORC Worldwide is an international management and human resources consulting 

firm whose Washington, DC office has for 36 years provided specialized occupational 

safety and health consulting services to businesses and other organizations. Currently, more than 140 leading global corporations in more than 20 industry sectors 

are members of ORC’s Occupational Safety and Health Groups. The focus of these 

groups is to help ORC members achieve safety and health excellence by promoting 

effective occupational safety and health programs, benchmarking and sharing best 

practices in areas such as management systems and performance metrics, and creating new strategies and tools to improve safety and health performance. ORC is 

also a key industry voice on national and global safety and health policy issues. The 

activities of ORC’s Occupational Safety and Health Groups are based on the premise 

that providing safe and healthful working conditions is the mutual concern of employers, workers and government agencies and that cooperation and collaboration 

among these key stakeholders is essential to finding solutions to safety and health 

issues. 

How can a company make sure that a safety or health risk that is known to exist 

at one of its location does not go unnoticed or ignored at another location? At the 

very least, if there is an OSHA citation or a worker suffers an injury or even a nearmiss incident at one company establishment, what steps does the business need to 

take to assure that no worker is endangered by a similar risk at some other company facility? I will do my best today to offer Mr. Torres and his family hope that 

there are real, practical answers to these questions and that there are effective approaches that companies can and do use to prevent the kind of tragic loss they have 

suffered. 

But let me comment briefly before going further that OSHA clearly has an important role to play in ensuring safety and health risks are addressed on a corporatewide basis. It was during my years at OSHA in the mid-1980s that the egregious 

penalty policy was developed and implemented in order to enhance OSHA’s enforcement arsenal in the case of flagrant multiple serious safety and health infractions. 

It is entirely appropriate for OSHA to impose the strongest possible sanctions when 

a company acts in intentional or reckless disregard of the requirements of well-established OSHA standards addressing serious risks to workers, especially in cases 

of multiple identical or similar citations across a corporation’s facilities. Any company that receives citations for serious violations of an OSHA standard, particularly 

high-gravity serious violations, in one or more facilities, simply must establish the 

necessary processes and systems to require other locations with similar operations 

to determine the existence of like violations, and to correct any potentially serious 

violations that are found. 

Unfortunately, we know from our experience that even companies that work diligently to comply with OSHA standards will not necessarily have an effective process 

for assuring that findings of non-compliance in one facility will be made known 

across the organization and addressed at other facilities. There are several important prerequisites to having an effective corporate-wide approach to finding and fixing similar hazards at multiple locations. 

41

Top Leadership Commitment to Full Compliance 

It will not come as a surprise that the indispensable foundation for effective action is the establishment of a clear and authoritative policy from a corporation’s senior leadership, preferably the CEO, stating explicitly that the corporation as a whole 

will insist on full compliance with all worker safety and health standards and requirements. Without such a policy, and without senior leadership actively engaged 

in monitoring compliance progress consistent with the policy, it will be extremely 

difficult to sustain the effort necessary to attain full corporate-wide compliance. 

Implementation of an Occupational Health and Safety Management System 

But even a clearly articulated policy of full compliance from company leadership, 

while essential, is by itself insufficient to assure that the necessary actions are 

taken to actually attain and sustain corporate-wide compliance. Companies that 

consistently achieve superior safety and health performance, and that seek continual performance improvement, rely on a management system that includes several key elements. Probably the most up-to-date, complete and accessible description 

of an effective health and safety management system (OHSMS) is the 2005 ANSI 

Z10 American National Standard for Occupational Health and Safety Management 

Systems. It is important to understand that the fundamental goal of a comprehensive OHSMS is the elimination of injuries and illnesses through a continuous process of identifying, assessing and reducing risks. While most corporate management 

systems include compliance with safety and health standards in their scope, the 

focus of the system is more broadly on the reduction of all risks, not just those covered by OSHA standards. 

A few of the key elements of an effective management system that are particularly applicable to the corporate-wide abatement of hazards covered by OSHA requirements are: 

• Establish clear responsibility, authority and accountability through all levels of 

the corporation. From the CEO to the shop floor, all management levels and line 

employees must be assigned and understand their roles in the management system 

for finding and fixing hazardous conditions. In addition, each level of the business 

must have the authority and the resources to get the job done, and each must be 

held accountable for achieving results. 

• Encourage employee participation and reporting of unsafe conditions. No safety 

and health management system can function effectively without employee participation in key aspects of the system’s development and implementation. Line employees are a company’s most knowledgeable resources about hazardous conditions and 

they must be encouraged to report such conditions with full confidence that management will take prompt corrective action. 

• Perform regular safety inspections and audits. Part of the responsibility of management in each company facility is to perform periodic systematic reviews of the 

each workplace to identify, evaluate and ultimately control risks, including potential 

OSHA violations. 

• Perform root cause investigations of significant incidents (near-misses as well 

as injuries and illnesses). Most large employers and other businesses that have employed safety and health professionals at the corporate and/or the facility levels, perform investigations of incidents involving serious injuries. However, it is also important to investigate, where resources permit, near-miss incidents, particularly those 

where serious injury could have occurred. The nature of those investigations should 

go beyond looking at the ‘‘unsafe act or behavior’’ of the worker involved, and should 

examine more closely the ‘‘root causes’’ of the incident. It is ORC’s experience that, 

in general, there are usually more fundamental systemic, cultural, workplace design 

or other reasons for such incidents that need to be addressed beyond the worker behavior. 

• Establish metrics that go beyond OSHA-recordable injuries and illnesses. In 

order for a management system to be most effective as a tool for the prevention of 

injuries and illnesses, companies should establish metrics for tracking leading indicators of the company’s success in identifying and reducing risks and exposures, 

rather than collecting only the traditional ‘‘lagging’’ measures of how many injuries 

or illnesses occurred. So, for example, company leadership should want to know how 

much time it is taking to correct potential serious OSHA violations once they are 

found, or whether the company is successfully reducing the numbers of occurrences 

of certain kinds of risks or exposures, e.g., machine guarding. 

Integration of Special Procedures for Corporate-Wide Compliance 

While the above elements constitute some of the basics of an effective OHSMS, 

even ANSI Z10 and other management system guidelines do not explicitly address 

the issue of how to assure that risks (including potential OSHA violations) discovVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:44 Nov 17, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00045 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 G:\DOCS\110TH\WP\110-88\41811.TXT HBUD1 PsN: DICK
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ered at one company location are necessarily dealt with at other locations. To be 

perfectly candid, that has proven to be a challenge for some companies that have 

otherwise effective programs. Companies that have recognized this particular aspect 

of managing risks have enhanced their management systems with special measures 

designed to assure such multi-site awareness and response. Examples of these 

measures include: • A requirement for each workplace in a corporation to report significant incidents, risks or potential violations to a centralized corporate function or team. • A preliminary review of those reported events at the corporate level to assess 

whether there might be a significant potential likelihood of occurrence in other locations of the company. • A notification or ‘‘alert’’ to locations with the potential for similar issues, describing the issue. • Assigning responsibility and accountability to the other locations for evaluating 

the issues, determining appropriate action and providing feedback to the corporate 

function or team. • Follow-up (much like for an audit) at the corporate level to assure closure of 

any potential violations found at other locations. 

Although the execution of an effective approach to a uniform corporate-wide approach to multi-establishment compliance requires a significant and focused effort, 

the basic principles of leadership commitment, a systems approach, effective organizational communication and vigilant follow-up are the keys to success. 

Challenges and Opportunities for OSHA 

Let me turn for a moment to how OSHA can contribute to assuring that corporations with multiple facilities take effective action across the corporation to maintain 

compliance. In my view, from an enforcement perspective, OSHA faces a few longstanding institutional impediments to adopting a more corporate-wide orientation, 

among the most significant of which are: 

• The entire enforcement regime of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 

1970 is based on the inspection of individual ‘‘establishments’’ rather than corporate 

entities. As a result, OSHA’s inspection targeting strategy has been based on the 

safety and health experience at individual workplaces and the constitutional 

underpinnings of OSHA’s inspection authority have been affirmed on that basis. 

That is not to say that OSHA could not refocus its efforts, where policy considerations warrant it, to a broader, more corporate-wide approach. In fact, OSHA has 

done so on a limited basis, in its use of corporate-wide settlements, its application 

of the repeat violation policy, and even to a limited extent in the Enhanced Enforcement Program (which has been recently been modified). 

• Perhaps bigger practical impediments to an expanded corporate-wide enforcement policy are the ways in which safety and health data are collected and maintained at both the governmental and company levels. Again, reflecting the establishment-based orientation of the OSH Act, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and OSHA 

do not systematically collect or maintain either injury and illness data or, in 

OSHA’s case, citation history on a company-wide basis. And of course, OSHA collects data only from a limited number of workplaces nationwide, so it would rarely 

have in its data base a complete or even representative set of data from any multiestablishment corporation. And while many large multi-facility companies do collect 

and often analyze some injury and illness data at the corporate level, it is often a 

limited subset of the data from all of its facilities. 

• There is also the bureaucratic version of the ‘‘silo’’ issue faced by many organizations, including corporations—each OSHA Area Office and each OSHA Region and 

each State Plan State has its own priorities, goals and targets in terms of inspections of the unique mix of establishments in these ‘‘mini-jurisdictions.’’ If OSHA is 

to address more fully and strategically violations by a single company at multiple 

sites throughout the nation, the agency would need to institute some special program (akin to a National Emphasis Program) that encourages or requires coordination and the exchange and analysis of information, followed by action. 

Despite these issues, there would appear to be solid reasons for OSHA to consider 

additional ways to examine a company’s compliance on a corporate-wide basis under 

limited circumstances. Most fundamentally, OSHA is always looking for ways to leverage its scarce resources in order to maximize its impact—such a focused corporate-wide approach may be one way to further that objective. By the same token, 

any new or enhanced program to focus more heavily on corporate-wide compliance 

would have to balance the additional resources required against the potential impact of the program. 

One possible approach OSHA could take would be to establish certain ‘‘triggers’’ 

whereby if an Area or Regional Office has experienced a citation history of a desVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:44 Nov 17, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00046 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 G:\DOCS\110TH\WP\110-88\41811.TXT HBUD1 PsN: DICK
43

ignated ‘‘high’’ magnitude at the establishment or establishments of a corporation 

known to have national operations, this history could be brought to the attention 

of the National Office and other potentially affected Regions for an evaluation of the 

company’s compliance experience nationally. If the analysis finds similar compliance 

histories in other company locations, OSHA could establish a series of steps ranging 

potentially from notification of the company’s senior management of these findings 

and requesting a corporate review, to more intensive enforcement efforts at other 

company locations. 

Finally, on a more general note, ORC would strongly encourage OSHA to search 

for new ways to promote and advocate the value of safety and health management 

systems as a critical tool to reducing risk and achieving full compliance. In the long 

term, nothing will have a more significant impact on the reduction of risks, injuries 

and illnesses, as well as improved compliance, than the widespread adoption of such 

systems—OSHA can play a critical role in this effort. 

ORC looks forward to working with the Subcommittee as it continues to evaluate 

the issues raised in this hearing and other approaches to reducing injuries and illnesses in the workplace. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Thank you, Mr. White. 

Mr. Taylor. 

STATEMENT OF RON TAYLOR, PARTNER, VENABLE LLP 

Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Your microphone, sir. 

Mr. TAYLOR. I apologize. Thank you very much. Chairwoman 

Woolsey, members of the subcommittee, thank you very much for 

this opportunity to participate in this important hearing. Although 

my comments today are those of myself alone, they are based on 

my 27 years experience representing employers in enforcement actions and assisting employers in understanding and obtaining compliance with applicable safety and health rules throughout the 

United States, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. I have also participated as a past co-chair of the American Bar Association and 

have taught a mandatory occupational safety and health law 

course at the Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg School of Public Health. Those help to inform my experience. 

I have submitted written comments which I ask to be made part 

of the record, but I want to try to summarize them since I have 

only a few brief moments. 

The starting point for our discussion today is the Occupational 

Safety and Health Act, which was enacted in 1970 to assure that 

every working man and woman in the United States had a safe 

and healthy workplace. At the time that the act was enacted, Congress was very concerned that injuries and illnesses were on the 

rise. Statistics that were included in the legislative history showed 

that since 1958 the number of disabling injuries and illnesses was 

actually on the rise. So this was really the first comprehensive legislation designed to address that. At the time, estimates showed 

that between 14,000 and 15,000 workers died each year in occupational injuries. Today, 37 years later, that trend has been reversed. 

And notwithstanding the occasional but minor upticks, the trend is 

downward and the number of occupational fatalities is roughly onethird of that number. 55 percent of those occupational injuries are 

the result of traffic incidents and homicides. And in a 1995 study, 

two professors concluded that in fact the danger of dying at work 

was less than the danger of dying in an accident at home. 

44

I believe that there are lots of reasons for this. First and foremost is the very presence of OSHA, that this Congress had the wisdom to enact, to create this legislative rule. Its enforcement and 

that of the State plans that help OSHA enforce occupational safety 

and health laws across the United States has had a good effect. 

However, we cannot overlook the effect of increased education and 

efforts by workers, by their unions, by employee representatives, as 

well as by employers in helping to obtain this lower result. And the 

statistics that are included in my written materials reflect that. 

This is not to suggest that the goal of the act has been met 100 

percent or that people should be complacent. They cannot be. Unfortunately we have heard today of a tragic accident, and I know 

from my own practice that accidents occur, and we have to continue to be committed to reducing those so that nobody goes home 

as a result of preventable accidents. I think, however, it is fallacious to think that the system is because accidents still occur in 

complete disrepair or dysfunctional. In fact as I noted, workplaces 

are safer, employees are better educated and better trained as they 

should be. Employers in my experience generally do care and care 

very much. They do not want to be cited, they do not want to receive willful citations or repeat citations or any such thing. And 

OSHA is continuing to do its part. 

Our discussion today is focused on multiple employers who are 

operating at multiple sites. I think that the present act and the 

tools that OSHA has developed over its 37 years of existence are 

adequate to assure that its statutory goal is met and that while not 

perfect, that we are working towards that goal. 

Enforcement statistics show that fewer people are being injured 

and that there are fewer accidents. OSHA’s existing programs, willful citations, the program that Mr. White alluded to, the Enhanced 

Enforcement Program, its willful, egregious or otherwise known as 

instance by instance citation policy and in particular its repeat citation policy, provide avenues and tools for the agency to assure 

that employers who operate more than one facility have safe and 

healthy workplaces in all of those facilities throughout the United 

States. 

These tools drive behavior. In my experience, clients are very motivated to ensure that when an accident occurs that they don’t become subject to repeat citations or, alternatively, to willful citations 

and they take many of the very steps that Mr. White alluded to. 

They send out notices, they work to make sure. And often when 

OSHA comes in, and it does come in and look at other job sites, 

it finds that those violations have been corrected. I believe that this 

is the result of the spirit which is consonant with the act, which 

is to lead employers toward voluntary compliance; but for those 

employers who don’t do that, to have a stick that is available. And 

I think that the act provides those provisions. 

Two quick moments. I see my time is very nearly up. It is up. 

With respect to the EEP program, I have criticized it from time to 

time as being over inclusive and unfairly labeling employers as 

being indifferent when in fact nothing more is true. I expect that 

the OSHA people who I have met in my 27 years of experience are 

dedicated, they care, by no means in my experience that I have met 

an OSHA person who did not care about safety. And I think it is 

45

natural to see that relatively small numbers of people would be in 

EEP. That reflects to me fundamentally that the system is working. That should be the goal, to have fewer and fewer people in it. 

I think that can only be done by a proper mix of voluntary compliance and by adequate enforcement. 

Thank you very much. 

[The statement of Mr. Taylor follows:]


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Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Thank you, Mr. Taylor. 

Ms. Rabinowitz. 

STATEMENT OF RANDY RABINOWITZ, ATTORNEY IN PRIVATE 

PRACTICE 

Ms. RABINOWITZ. Good morning, Madam Chair and members of 

the subcommittee. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Your microphone. Get it in front of your 

face. 

Ms. RABINOWITZ. Oh, I am sorry. Is that better? 

I am honored to be here this morning. My name is Randy 

Rabinowitz, and as a private lawyer, I represent unions on OSHA 


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matters. And I imagine you won’t be surprised to learn that I have 

a different view than Mr. Taylor, and I do believe that there are 

several changes to the OSHA Act that the Congress ought to consider that would help improve OSHA’s ability to conduct effective 

corporate-wide investigations and to protect workers from the 

kinds of preventable tragedies like the one we just heard about 

which killed Mr. Torres-Gomez at Cintas. 

Many companies devote substantial resources to safety and 

health and take their duty to protect employees seriously. Unfortunately, far too many companies do not. So I don’t want to be seen 

as trying to condemn all of corporate America, but I do think there 

is a problem among some bad apples and the question is how to 

fix that problem. 

Mr. White has talked about what management can do to fix that 

problem internally. I would like to focus my comments on what 

OSHA can do to strengthen its ability to protect workers. 

In my view, OSHA could better use its inspection resources if, 

once it found evidence of severe health and safety violations at one 

location of a multi-facility company, it looked for patterns of misconduct within the company and demanded abatement of the problem companywide. Large companies have the organizational resources to make safety and health improvements, and I think unfortunately the Bush administration has relied far too heavily on 

voluntary programs, including an alphabet soup of partnerships, alliances and consultative programs even though they have no empirical research to show that any of them have any effect. 

OSHA’s enhanced enforcement policy, or EEP policy, was adopted in 2003 as a response to a New York Times expose on enforcement problems within the Agency. It provides guidance to OSHA 

staff on how to conduct wider investigations when a serious violation is found at one facility of a multi-facility company. The EEP 

policy in my opinion is too limited, both by design and in the way 

it has been used. There need to be changes in the OSHA Act to 

make sure that we remove some of the obstacles to uncovering patterns of corporate misconduct. 

One of the real problems with the EEP program is that it leaves 

OSHA with too much discretion. It may look great on paper, but 

the Agency doesn’t have to do anything with it. And it is just unfortunately oftentimes an empty promise. So one suggestion is that 

Congress should consider ways to require OSHA to conduct corporate-wide investigations in appropriate circumstances and not 

just rely on OSHA’s discretion in doing it or not doing it only when 

there is a big New York Times series and everybody is watching. 

OSHA also needs to overcome some of its own bureaucratic obstacles to conducting corporate-wide investigations. The OSHA 

statute imposes compliance duties on employers regardless of 

whether they operate one facility or hundreds of facilities. OSHA 

itself chooses to enforce the act facility by facility in a piecemeal 

and disjointed manner that often makes it difficult to achieve communication and collaboration among the various parts of OSHA. 

There is no reason they have to go about it that way and they 

should be pressured to fix that problem. I also think OSHA needs 

more information on corporate-wide injuries and illnesses. 

56

Section 8 of the OSHA statute grants OSHA broad authority to 

adopt regulations requiring employers to record and report workplace injuries and illnesses. There is no legal reason in my opinion 

that OSHA could not impose a new requirement on large companies to report this data across facilities. But unfortunately, OSHA’s 

record of timely adopting regulations is dismal and, without a congressional mandate that it do so promptly, it is unlikely to act on 

its own. 

Further, once OSHA finds a severe hazard at one facility of a 

multi-site employer, OSHA needs information on whether those 

conditions also exist at other facilities within the company. Current 

law allows OSHA to request such information, but it leaves OSHA 

with few effective ways to compel production within the 6-month 

statute of limitations during which OSHA has to issue its citations. 

So OSHA often negotiates for far fewer documents than it really 

needs to address the companywide problems. And Congress should 

consider how it can maybe arrange ways to get around the 6-month 

limit. 

And then finally, when OSHA finds a problem, a company is not 

required to fix serious and willful hazards until all its appeals have 

been exhausted, and that can sometimes take years. I know of one 

case where it took more than a decade, and during that time while 

the appeals are pending there is no obligation for the company to 

go out and investigate other facilities or to fix things and OSHA 

is often reluctant to inspect other facilities and cite the same problem while it is litigating the validity of its original citation. This 

committee has twice reported legislation to fix that problem, and 

I would urge that it consider doing so again. 

Thank you. 

[The statement of Ms. Rabinowitz follows:]

Prepared Statement of Randy S. Rabinowitz, Attorney in Private Practice 

Good Morning Madam Chair and Members of the Subcommittee. 

My name is Randy Rabinowitz. I am a private attorney specializing in occupational safety and health law. I have spent the past 30 years on OSHA law issues, 

first as a law clerk and attorney at the Solicitor’s Office, later in private practice, 

and as Labor Counsel to the Committee on Education and Labor between 1991 and 

1995. I have been a consultant to OSHA, the State of Washington, and the Commission on Labor Cooperation. I have represented a variety of unions, including UAW, 

USW, UFCW, Unite, and others in litigation over OSHA and MSHA standards. For 

several years, I taught a law school seminar on OSHA law, have served as the union 

co-chair for the OSHA law subcommittee of the American Bar Association, and have 

authored several law review articles on OSHA law issues. For more than a decade, 

I have served as the Editor-In-Chief of a prominent treatise on OSHA law, published jointly by the ABA and the Bureau of National Affairs (BNA). 

I am pleased to appear before you this morning. I have been asked to provide an 

overview of OSHA’s current legal authority to conduct investigations generally and, 

more specifically, to conduct corporate-wide investigations. My testimony is intended 

to highlight areas of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSH Act) 

which pose obstacles to broader reliance on corporate-wide investigations to identify 

patterns of misconduct for the purpose of reducing the safety and health hazards 

workers face on-the-job. 

Many companies devote substantial resources to safety and health and, within 

those companies, managers and officers take their duty to protect employees seriously. Unfortunately, far too many companies, both big and small, do not. This is 

unacceptable, because workers should not have to die or become ill when they go 

to work. 

In the more than two decades that I have been practicing OSHA law, every year 

it seems there is an expose describing the dangerous, often life-threatening conditions at some large company or within an industry. 

57

In the 1980’s, the meatpacking industry crippled thousands of workers. IBP denied the problem. An investigation by Representative Tom Lantos revealed the company’s deception about the true toll of worker injury and death. 

In the late 1980’s, the Phillips Petroleum and other petrochemical companies ignored process safety hazards, creating highly dangerous conditions. The risk of catastrophic explosions highlighted the need for stricter standards. Congress compelled 

OSHA to act when it failed to do so. 

In the 1980 to 1990s, the auto, garment, meatpacking, trucking/distribution and 

healthcare industries all ignored the devastating toll from ergonomic injuries until 

OSHA developed corporate-wide programs to address these hazards. 

The construction industry has killed workers through failures in site management 

and most often missing fall protection. Today, the Avalon Bay development company 

and its contractors repeat this pattern. 

In the late 1990’s and since, as the New York Times revealed in its expose, the 

McWane company achieved new lows in corporate malfeasance—with its ‘‘production-first and only’’ schemes that degenerated into death and injury for workers, and 

conspiracy, deception, and criminal convictions for managers. 

Today these same patterns continue: 

At the Cintas Corp., the repeated violations of life-and-death OSHA standards 

across the company again show a pattern of production-first, safety later. 

A recent expose by the Charlotte Observer illustrates that the House of Raeford, 

Smithfield and DCS Sanitation have again created the same dangerous working 

conditions Cong. Lantos investigated two decades earlier. The House of Raeford’s 

misrepresentation of its injury rates raises serious questions about OSHA’s failure 

to enforce basic recordkeeping requirements. 

New industries often escape scrutiny until it’s too late. Today, the waste hauling 

industry and its leader, WMI, has repeatedly violated OSHA rules, causing severe 

injuries and even death among its workforce. 

And, after every expose, OSHA and others promise to ‘‘get tough.’’ But, almost 

four decades after the Occupational Safety & Health Act went into effect, OSHA enforcement efforts grow weaker, not stronger. 

Empirical research has shown strict enforcement by OSHA is effective in reducing 

illnesses and injuries.1 It is the very foundation for the OSH Act. Nevertheless, during the Bush Administration OSHA has shifted its resources to voluntary programs, 

including an alphabet soup of partnerships, alliances and consultative programs. 

There is no empirical evidence that these programs reduce injuries or that they do 

so more effectively than old-fashioned enforcement. 

Like the Act itself, a recent enforcement effort by OSHA, its Enhanced Enforcement Policy or EEP Program, is another example of an enforcement program with 

great potential that has never achieved its promise. The EEP program was adopted 

in 2003, in response to the enforcement disgrace at McWane Corp. Unfortunately, 

the EEP program has failed to protect workers at indifferent, large employers from 

highly-dangerous hazards. 

In my view, OSHA should try to leverage its resources to identify patterns of misconduct and demand abatement of the problems company-wide. These large companies have the organizational resources to make health and safety improvements. It 

is a shame when OSHA fails to insist on this company-wide protection for workers. 

Overview of OSHA enforcement 

OSHA faces obstacles if it wants to expand its corporate-wide enforcement efforts. 

Some of these obstacles stem from the structure of the OSH Act and Congress 

may need to act to fix these. Other obstacles have been created by OSHA. OSHA 

chooses to enforce the Act facility by facility. Its programs and policies are designed 

to facilitate a plant by plant approach to enforcement. Those programs are administered by a Regional Administrator (RA). Within each region, the RA decides which 

cases to pursue. This piecemeal and disjointed approach often makes it difficult to 

achieve the communication and collaboration necessary to uncover patterns of misconduct across large corporations. Obviously, legislation is not necessary to fix these 

bureaucratic obstacles to greater corporate-wide enforcement. 

To help understand OSHA’s authority to conduct enforcement across an employer’s several facilities and the obstacles to effective exercise of that authority, I believe a brief overview of the enforcement scheme under the OSHA Act would be 

helpful. OSHA’s enforcement efforts rely principally on two types of inspections. 

OSHA relies first on injury and illness statistics recorded by employers and reported 

to OSHA to conduct ‘‘general schedule’’ inspections. These inspections are intended 

to target high-risk employers. The scope of a general schedule inspection is generally broader than the scope of a complaint inspection. 

58

Second, when a current employee at a facility, or that employee’s representative, 

files a written complaint about a hazardous condition, OSHA must initiate an inspection.2 During such complaint inspections, OSHA usually inspects only those conditions described in the complaint. 

If an employee believes OSHA should broaden its inspection, the employee can request that OSHA do so while the inspection is ongoing. 

When an inspection reveals that an employer has violated an OSHA standard, 

regulation, or the general duty clause, OSHA must issue citations.3 These citations 

must be issued no later than six months from the date on which the inspection 

began. The sooner OSHA identifies a problem and issues citations, the sooner the 

employer must begin abatement. 

A citation notifies an employer of the violations OSHA found, the penalties it proposes, and the date by which abatement must be accomplished. Each violation is 

classified by severity. A serious violation is one where there is a substantial probability the violation will cause death or serious injury. OSHA must assess a penalty 

of up to $7000 for each of these violations. A willful violation occurs when an employer intentionally disregards safety and health or is indifferent to the Act’s requirements.4 OSHA must assess a penalty of between $5,000 and $70,000 for each 

willful violation.5 OSHA may also levy additional fines of up to $70,000 for each repeat violation, those which are substantially similar to violations in prior OSHRC 

orders. 

OSHA may refer a case for criminal prosecution when willful violations of specific 

standards result in an employee death.6 OSHA may not seek criminal penalties for 

general duty clause violations, even if an employee dies. OSHA cannot seek criminal 

penalties when an employer’s OSH Act violations permanently disable workers. 

Only firms, not individuals, are subject to criminal prosecution for a misdemeanor.7

States may prosecute employers who harm workers if their actions violate state 

criminal laws, such as those prohibiting manslaughter and reckless endangerment.8

OSHA, however, has substantial discretion about whether to cite an employer for 

hazards it observes, to withdraw citations, reach settlements, characterize violations, and reduce or eliminate penalties.9 Courts are not permitted to review 

OSHA’s decision on whether to enforce the law. OSHA routinely changes the classification of violations when settling citations even in major cases involving worker 

deaths—usually changing willful violations to ‘‘unclassified’’ violations so criminal 

prosecution is no longer possible and the $5000 minimum penalty does not apply. 

Penalties are often substantially reduced as well. 

When an employer receives a citation, it has fifteen working days in which to 

challenge the violations, the characterization, or the penalty. An uncontested citation becomes a final OSHRC order, enforceable in federal court.10 Most contested 

citations are resolved informally, without resort to litigation. When employer challenges to citations are not resolved informally, they are adjudicated before the independent Occupational Safety & Health Review Commission. While an OSHRC challenge is pending, the employer is not required to abate the violation. This delay in 

abatement during litigation often extends for several years. In cases of imminent 

danger, OSHA can, but rarely does, ask a federal court to shut down a dangerous 

operation. 

OSHA shares enforcement duties with states under the OSH Act. Section 18 of 

the Act authorizes states to administer their own OSHA program, if that program 

meets minimum federal requirements and receives OSHA approval. Twenty-two 

states enforce occupational safety and health requirements in the private sector 

apart from federal OSHA. Where OSHA has not given the state final approval of 

its plan, and it has not done so in six states with jurisdiction over safety and health 

in the private sector (California, Washington, Vermont, New Mexico, Michigan and 

Puerto Rico), OSHA could exercise concurrent enforcement jurisdiction, but it has 

a policy of not doing so. Enforcement procedures—as well as classification and penalties—can differ widely among the states. 

Company-Wide Enforcement 

OSHA adopted its Enhanced Enforcement Policy (EEP) in response to the New 

York Times/ Frontline expose on corporate-wide indifference to health and safety at 

McWane, and OSHA’s inability to identify the horrifying pattern of misconduct at 

the company. Under the policy, when OSHA identifies high gravity serious violations at a facility, it considers whether to initiate additional enforcement action at 

that facility or at others. The idea—at least on paper—is to give OSHA a tool to 

find patterns of violations. 

Within this framework, EEP provides guidance to staff on how to conduct broader 

investigations when a compliance officer identifies a serious violation at a facility 

and a possibility exists that similarly hazardous conditions exist elsewhere in the 

59

company. But it is too limited. And, OSHA relies on the policy too infrequently for 

it to accomplish its goals. OSHA can fix some of the obstacles to stronger corporatewide enforcement. Others require Congressional action. Some of the issues which 

Congress should address are described below. 

OSHA’s current EEP program leaves the Agency with too much discretion to do 

nothing. On paper, the policy represents a reasonable effort by OSHA; the problem 

with the EEP policy is that it can be changed or ignored. Sometimes OSHA staff 

follow it. Sometimes they do not. OSHA is free to act arbitrarily. It is not required 

to explain why it relies on the EEP in some cases and not in others. Within some 

OSHA regions, the EEP policy is relied on often. Within others, rarely. 

OSHA’s own statistics reveal that while OSHA has designated approximately 

2,000 EEP cases since the inception of the program in 2003, it has not primarily 

been used to target employers with patterns of misconduct across multiple sites. 

Forty-six percent of the employers included in the EEP inspections are small employers with less than 25 employees, and only twenty-three percent of covered employers who had over 250 employees. Further, as of March 2007, OSHA reported 

that EEP had led to inspections of other locations of employers involved in EEP 

cases under one hundred times. OSHA’s unfettered discretion to do nothing leaves 

employees without adequate protection. Further, because OSHA relies on the EEP 

inconsistently, the program fails to deter on-going patterns of violations across larger companies. 

The strongest action under the EEP Program is the issuance of a national ‘‘EEP 

Alert’’ memorandum, instructing Federal OSHA Regional and Area Offices to conduct inspections at a specified group of a company’s locations, designated by the National office. According to OSHA, however, it has only issued 8 such alerts since the 

inception of the program in 2003—or less than two per year. 

Congress should contain OSHA’s discretion so that in appropriate cases it can be 

required to conduct corporate-wide investigations. Current law already mandates 

OSHA inspections when employees voice specific complaints. The EEP program contains no comparable requirement. 

OSHA has a crippling lack of the information that could help it target companies 

with widespread problems. OSHA currently lacks corporate-wide information on injuries and illnesses. Without such information, it cannot identify patterns of misconduct. Section 8 of the Act grants OSHA broad authority to adopt regulations requiring employers to keep records of workplace injuries and illnesses and report injury incidence to OSHA. OSHA’s existing regulations require that these records be 

kept for each facility. Some, but not all, employers must report their injury incidence to OSHA. In my opinion, section 8 of the Act clearly permits OSHA to adopt 

broader corporate-wide recordkeeping requirements. There is no legal reason OSHA 

could not impose upon large companies a new requirement to report injuries and 

illnesses across facilities. There is a practical limit to whether OSHA can accomplish 

this goal within the foreseeable future. When OSHA last set out to revise its recordkeeping rules, the process took nearly 7 years. Any proposal to expand recordkeeping requirements for large companies would likely generate controversy and 

OSHA’s track record of timely completing controversial regulations is dismal. So a 

Congressional mandate that OSHA adopt corporate-wide recordkeeping requirements with 6-12 months would be a necessary first step so the agency can obtain 

the basic information necessary about health and safety hazards across facilities 

within the same company. 

OSHA also needs information on whether conditions posing hazards at one facility 

exist at other facilities within the company. Current law allows OSHA to request 

such information, but leaves it with few effective ways to compel such information. 

Once OSHA identifies a serious safety and health hazard at a facility of a company 

with many facilities, it needs information about whether similar conditions or processes exist at other facilities before it decides whether to conduct a corporate-wide 

investigation. 

Under current law, OSHA can ask for this information during an inspection. It 

is clearly relevant to OSHA’s decision as to whether a violation is willful. For example, if a company has ten facilities with conveyors and employees have gotten injured in the conveyor at several facilities, that information could serve as potent evidence that the company either knew of the conveyor’s danger or was indifferent to 

the danger. Either way, such a violation could be characterized as willful. So if 

OSHA wanted the information, and its request that it be turned over was denied, 

the Agency could issue a subpoena for the documents and seek to judicially enforce 

the subpoena if necessary. 

OSHA faces a practical problem, however, in doing so. The OSH Act requires that 

it issue citations within six months of beginning its inspection. If a company resists 

OSHA’s efforts to obtain company-wide information about hazards, the process of juVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:44 Nov 17, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00063 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 G:\DOCS\110TH\WP\110-88\41811.TXT HBUD1 PsN: DICK
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dicially enforcing a subpoena—a process which may require an adversary hearing 

in federal court—could easily drag on for over six months. And, why would a company voluntarily supply information to OSHA about company-wide health and safety hazards, when doing so will likely increase the fine they face and refusing to do 

so will run out the statute of limitations? So, in practice, OSHA is likely to negotiate 

for far fewer documents than it needs to identify company-wide problems. To correct 

this imbalance, Congress should require that employers provide OSHA with documents about hazardous processes or conditions across company facilities whenever 

a serious violation has been identified. 

Critics of expanded OSHA enforcement may suggest that imposing such a mandate would encourage fishing expeditions by OSHA. I believe such an argument 

lacks merit. The Supreme Court has ruled that OSHA investigations must be consistent with the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution. An employer’s ability 

to challenge an OSHA subpoena for documents as unreasonable under the Fourth 

amendment guards against overly broad document requests by OSHA. 

Large companies should have an obligation, once a serious hazard has been identified at one facility, to conduct internal investigations to determine whether the 

same hazard exists at other facilities. Current law imposes no such duty. In fact, 

it creates incentives to delay abatement at all facilities. This is true because an employer is not required to abate an OSHA violation until after all appeals to OSHRC 

have been exhausted. The OSHRC appeals process often takes years, and in one recent GM case, OSHRC just upheld citations issued more than 15 years ago after 

a General Motors employee died on the job. During the interim, GM was under no 

duty to abate the conditions which killed this worker and GM had no duty to determine whether similar conditions existed at other sites. Further, OSHA interprets 

the OSH Act to bar it from inspecting an individual establishment for the same violation while its challenge to existing citations is pending. This is a huge loophole 

in the OSH Act and severely limits OSHA’s ability effectively to conduct corporatewide enforcement. It also means that when OSHA finds hazardous conditions, it 

often feels that it must negotiate away fines and willful designations just to obtain 

quicker abatement of hazards. Congress should correct this problem. Companies 

which delay fixing hazards or turn a blind eye to how prevalent the problem is within their facilities should pay a heavy penalty for doing so. Existing law provides just 

the opposite—a safe harbor. 

OSHA’s penalty structure provides little added incentive for large companies with 

multiple facilities proactively to find violations throughout the company and fix 

them before OSHA inspections. OSHA penalties for each serious violation are a 

maximum of $7000 and for each willful violation $70,000. These penalties may be 

significant for small companies, but are unlikely to pose a deterrent for larger companies. Besides, OSHA routinely negotiates penalty amounts and often accepts a 

fraction of the penalty it initially proposes. OSHRC penalties are almost always 

lower. Large companies, usually represented by experienced OSHA counsel, take advantage of these penalty reductions frequently. OSHA resources are spread so thin 

that OSHA can inspect every workplace under its jurisdiction only once every 133 

years. Thus, a company cited at one location has little fear that OSHA will followup at a different location, or that such a follow up inspection will impose significant 

costs, particularly when the two facilities are in different OSHA regions. 

Further, criminal penalties under the OSH Act are laughably weak and, therefore, 

provide little reason for companies to proactively identify problems across facilities. 

OSHA may prosecute a company for criminal violations only when there is a death 

and it was caused by a willful violation of a standard. Even then, the crime is a 

misdemeanor and two courts have ruled that OSHA may not prosecute individuals 

for the violation, so there is no threat under Federal law that a manager will go 

to jail for OSHA violations. Criminal fines for the company are just another cost 

of doing business. Criminal penalties for violating environmental laws are substantially more rigorous. 

Finally, I can foresee one additional obstacle to broader corporate-wide enforcement. OSHA currently enforces the OSH Act in approximately one-half of the states. 

States enforce state OSHA law in the others. So, when a company has facilities in 

several states, each facility may be subject to different OSHA laws and enforcement 

by different agencies. If OSHA gets information about hazards in a state plan state, 

it can notify the state of the hazard, but it cannot inspect. Likewise, states which 

learn of hazards have no duty to notify OSHA or sister states of the problem. One 

state may cite a company for lockout violations and when another state or the federal government find similar violations at other facilities, they may not be able to 

impose the higher, repeat violation penalties provided for in the OSH Act. Congress 

should create an effective method of coordination among the different state plans 

61

and between federal OSHA and the states so that the patchwork of enforcing agencies does not prevent the discovery of patterns of misconduct. 

ENDNOTES

1 Baggs, Silverstein, and Foley, ‘‘Workplace Safety and Health Regulation: Impact of Enforcement and Consultation on Workers’ Compensation Claims Rates in Washington State’’ 43 Am. 

J. Ind. Med. 483 (2003). 2OSHA must initiate inspections in response to formal complaints. 29 U.S.C. §656(f)(1). OSHA 

does not routinely initiate inspections in response to phone and other informal complaints or 

in response to complaints from non-employees. But see L.R. Wilson & Sons, Inc., 17 O.S.H. Cas. 

(BNA) 2059 (O.S.H.D. 1997), aff’d in part & rev’d in part, remanded, 134 F.3d 1235 (4th Cir. 

1998) (initiating inspection in response to the Assistant Secretary’s observations). 3Section 9(a) provides that ‘‘if, upon inspection or investigation, the Secretary or his authorized representative believes that an employer has violated a requirement of section 5 of this Act, 

of any standard, rule or order prescribed pursuant to this act, he shall with reasonable promptness issue a citation to the employer.’’ 4 United States v. Dye Construction Co., 510 F.2d 78, 81-2 (10th Cir. 1975) (holding ‘‘evil motive’’ not an essential element of willfulness). 5 29 U.S.C. §666(a). 

6 29 U.S.C. §666(e). 

7 United States. v. Doig, 950 F.2d 411, 412 (7th Cir. 1991) (holding that Congress did not intend to subject employees to charges of aiding and abetting employers in criminal violations 

under § 666(e)). 8 Illinois v. Chicago Magnet Wire, 534 N.E. 2d 962, 966-70 (Ill. 1989). 

9Sydney A. Shapiro & Randy S. Rabinowitz, Punishment Versus Cooperation in Regulatory 

Enforcement: A Case Study of OSHA, 49 ADMIN. L. REV. 713, 731 (1997). 10 29 U.S.C. §659(a). 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Thank you very much. What an informed, delightful panel you all are. Mr. Torres, of course, we are 

all so deeply sorry about your father’s death and that it was preventable. That was the worst—I mean, that was the toughest part 

of the whole thing. 

Let us talk about—and you can respond through your father’s experience if you feel comfortable—Mr. White, Ms. Rabinowitz and 

Mr. Taylor may want to respond also—about the difference between policy and practice in a corporation or in a business where 

the policy is you do not walk on this equipment. The practice is you 

do not shut down the equipment to get a rag unstuck or a piece 

of the material. What happens to the employee who is told one 

thing maybe at an initial training and watches—particularly the 

employee that was filling in—watches his or her co-workers do just 

the opposite? Would you like to respond to that? 

Mr. TORRES. I mean, if it was really enforced, I don’t think they 

would have done it, you know. That wasn’t his job, you know. My 

dad, that wasn’t his official title, you know. And like the tape 

showed everybody did it. They didn’t really enforce it for the full 

strength. He was filling in for somebody. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. So he did what they do? 

Mr. TORRES. Yeah. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Right. And, Mr. White, would you like to 

respond? 

Mr. WHITE. Yes, I would. The difference between policy and what 

I will call culture is very important. And safety culture is kind of 

what goes on when nobody is looking and I think you have to certainly look below the policy to see what the practices and what the 

drivers really are to worker behavior, and if you don’t have that 

leadership commitment, which is actually truly driving the behavior, if there is something else going on, there are other pressures, 

pressures for production, whatever else is going on, you know, 

there has to be a level of commitment. But there also has to be this 

62

management system that I mentioned that actually drives that 

hopefully, that top level of commitment down through the organization and creates a culture where employees do feel like they can 

say, wait a minute, this is not right. We have to stop this safe practice and get management to respond. And it takes a long time to 

build that culture. It may not be present in the circumstances that 

we have seen here, but I think it is going to take a lot of work. 

But there is definitely a disconnect in some cases between what the 

company says and what actually goes on on the shop floor. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. So therefore, Ms. Rabinowitz, who is accountable? The employer who is the adult supposedly in the situation or the employee? 

Ms. RABINOWITZ. Obviously——

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Turn on your microphone. 

Ms. RABINOWITZ. Excuse me. Obviously I believe that the employer should be held accountable, and one of the things—comments that I made in my written testimony that I didn’t have an 

opportunity to say orally is that the penalties under the OSHA Act 

are really far too weak, both the civil penalties and the criminal 

penalties, to hold employers effectively accountable, and I think 

that is particularly true for large corporations that are making billions of dollars a year when paying a 50 or $70,000 fine just becomes a cost of doing business. 

So that is unfortunate. I think it is unfortunate that there is a 

tendency among a few too many companies to blame workers when 

they have these accidents instead of taking management responsibility. 

And I would also like to point out that legally when these cases 

get contested, it is often the case where companies will say that we 

had these policies on paper and they were wonderful and the employee was just acting inappropriately, and when the case is litigated the testimony is overwhelmingly that, well, no, nobody really 

ever enforced the policy and we were told to wink and nod at it. 

And there were just dozens and dozens of cases where that issue 

is litigated and there is often evidence that it was really observed 

in the breach. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Well, I was a human resources professional for 20 years and I can tell you employees who act inappropriately in corporations and companies that actually have good 

management practices have these employees on notice that if they 

continue to do the inappropriate activity then they will—could possibly lose their job. And I don’t believe that was happening at all 

at Cintas. 

Mr. Wilson. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and thank you all 

for being here today. 

Mr. Taylor, in previous hearings there has been criticism of voluntary compliance. Your testimony supports the use of voluntary 

compliance combined with enforcement to achieve a safer work environment. Can you provide some examples of how this works in 

the real world? And another side to this question, it is not just the 

employer, employee and OSHA, but the insurance industry is certainly a very important factor for any business as to risk and preVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:44 Nov 17, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00066 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 G:\DOCS\110TH\WP\110-88\41811.TXT HBUD1 PsN: DICK
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miums and inspections. Where does the insurance industry fit into 

this? 

Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Mr. Wilson. It is important to recall, as 

your comments allude, that the Occupational Safety and Health 

Act does not exist in a vacuum. There are any number of factors 

at play which induce employers voluntarily—not just through the 

fear of enforcement action, but voluntarily to reach out and to try 

to attain a safer and more healthy workplace. One of those reasons 

is the fear of enforcement and the perspective that people don’t 

want to be labeled a bad actor. Their corporate reputation is valuable to them. And I have clients that have come to another conclusion with respect to using OSHA as a resource, and they have 

found that to be a very beneficial thing. 

With respect to the insurance, it is important—as I mentioned, 

the act does not exist in a vacuum. When workers are injured, 

there are worker’s compensation direct costs, there are recurring 

costs through increases in worker’s compensation premiums. In addition, insurance companies police these things and my clients have 

told me that their insurance premiums, general liability, not just 

worker’s compensation, increase simply as a result of getting a serious citation, which is 76 percent of the citations that OSHA issues, 

even in the absence of any accident. So there is a built-in incentive, 

even if nobody has been hurt, and an issue with respect to workplace safety and an allegation that somebody hasn’t complied with 

an applicable standard, that has potential ramification. Good corporate citizens understand as a result of all of those things, peer 

pressure, the need to motivate employees, to build morale, to involve them, you won’t have happy, productive employees if they are 

fearful of their lives, I think. But all of those things lead to the conclusion that I think most large employers have reached, which is 

that safety is good business. It is not just right, it is good business, 

and I believe that most corporate employers, my clients and the clients of the people that I have worked with at the American Bar 

Association, are committed to that practice. 

Mr. WILSON. We have also heard discussion about the Enhanced 

Enforcement Program, EEP, that was started in 2003. Do you have 

any experience with the program? Are there further improvements 

that the Agency can make to effectively target indifferent employers as the program is intended? 

Mr. TAYLOR. As Mr. White alluded during his testimony, the 

Agency revamped its program and refocused it earlier this year in 

January of 2008 and released a revised compliance directive which 

focuses more on an employer’s history of OSHA compliance or noncompliance, as the case may be, across all States. I think that that 

is a useful change and I will look forward to see how that plays 

out. 

I would note that the Agency, OSHA, has one of the best Web 

sites of any government agency that I have seen right now. It is 

a very useful tool. They provide a lot of very helpful information 

to employers as they educate themselves and their workers with respect to hazards. They just added a new posting yesterday about 

teen safety as we approach the summer when students are out of 

school and things like that. 

64

Compliance officers in my experience always look at that inspection history. And it contains data for every employer, for every job 

site, whether it is a State planned, State or Federal-State. That is 

available to and used by the compliance officers in determining 

whether or not a violation is willful or should be issued as a repeat. 

So there are tools out there that will enable them, and I think 

that they are taking the right steps toward reforming the EEP to 

focus it more on employers who really may not have gotten the 

message, which I hope is a relatively minor number of people. 

Mr. WILSON. And the Web site address is what? 

Mr. TAYLOR. www.osha.gov. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you very much. 

Mr. TAYLOR. My pleasure. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. That was a good commercial. 

Mr. Payne. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much. I think that in industry the 

tone is sort of set, I think, by the employer. If you have got goals 

that are very difficult to reach, then it seems that those companies 

know that people are going to try to shortcut and try to do things 

to increase their production. Listening to one of the employees this 

morning that I met with from Cintas, they talked about the fact 

that they have in their work area, they are color coded, you know, 

if you are behind in production, it is red, if you are sort of almost 

making it, it is yellow. If you are meeting the production goal, it 

is green. Now, I think that there are certainly—there should be bonuses and incentives for people to perform. However, this seems to 

be almost a negative kind of a connotation. And I am not sure they 

get a bonus because they are green. It is just that, well, if you are 

yellow or in the red zone, other employees might look at you like 

I am carrying your load or it is someone who is in the red zone is 

concerned about their employment, am I going to be able to make 

it. As you know, many of these men—most of these laundries are 

not unionized and so the intimidation of the employer to the employee is the way it is. 

So I just wonder if any of you would like to tackle that, either 

Mr. Taylor, Mr. Williams. Even you, Ms. Rabinowitz. What about 

this color—what about the attitude of the employer and what kind 

of impact does it have for people to go and break the law because 

they are worrying about their job, worrying about making production? 

Mr. WHITE. Thank you, Congressman. I will take a crack at that. 

I have never seen any data that demonstrate that bad safety practices are profitable. And to pick up on Mr. Taylor’s point, there is 

plenty of evidence that a good safety program is going to add value 

to the business, it is going to make the company more productive 

and more profitable. So I think we do probably need to do a better 

job of convincing companies that that is actually true. Because it 

is clear that—it is certainly clear in this case—you know, it is hard 

to believe that when a situation such as happened to Mr. Torres’ 

father happened that that didn’t—in addition to traumatizing the 

entire workforce, that didn’t create serious losses in productivity, 

and these ongoing practices are just not only intolerable from a 

safety standpoint, but they make no sense from a business standpoint. And I think that OSHA has a role in making that clear. I 

65

think other organizations who understand the value of safety have 

to do a better of job of convincing businesses that bad safety is bad 

business. 

Ms. RABINOWITZ. I would just like to note that you often hear recurring stories about a trend among some companies where employees are actually rewarded for not reporting occupational illnesses and injuries. And you get a Turkey, you get a TV. You 

know, the team gets certain gifts if they go so many days without 

reporting an injury or an illness and a lot of those practices have 

the effect of sending a message that management doesn’t want to 

know if something goes wrong. They want you to keep working. 

And if you report an injury, you are going to let down your fellow 

employees who are going to lose their turkey or whatever other reward is built into the system. They are unfortunately way too common and they are very pernicious, I think. 

Mr. TAYLOR. If I may, Congressman Payne. I agree with Mr. 

White that it is important that the company demonstrate leadership for safety, And I think that is one of the reasons to support 

the consultative approach that OSHA has adopted. It is consonant 

with the spirit of the act and it enables employers to get recognition for their efforts. If we just lead with the stick and don’t offer 

any sort of recognition for employers that voluntary seek out OSHA 

and undergo a lot of administrative review and hard work to qualify for some of these qualitative plans, then we are sending a 

wrong message to employers. I think the right mix—the difficulty 

is finding what is the right mix between those things. But I think 

it is an important adjunct to any form of enforcement program. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Mr. Kline. 

Mr. KLINE. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, panel. And 

again I want to extend my condolences, Mr. Torres. It is a brutal 

and heart wrenching story. 

The title of this hearing today is ‘‘Improving Workplace Safety: 

Strengthening OSHA Enforcement of Multi-Site Employers.’’ So I 

would like to kind of focus on that issue if I could for a minute. 

Mr. Taylor, I think I understand that OSHA may have limited 

access to a workplace when cooperation breaks down among the 

parties. Again, we are talking about multi-site. Is it possible that 

corporate-wide inspections create legal problems relating to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Barlow’s that would require OSHA to take 

the additional step of getting search warrants? Is there a legal impediment here? 

Mr. TAYLOR. Yes, Congressman Kline, there could be. In addition 

to the Supreme Court in the late 1970s, the Supreme Court enunciated that corporate citizens of the United States are entitled to 

the protections of the fourth amendment just as we as individual 

citizens are entitled to the amendment to the protection of the Constitution. 

I would disagree with Ms. Rabinowitz’s comment that OSHA’s 

enforcement is piecemeal. I think that it does have limited resources, and to say that simply because they find a violation at one 

site of a multi-site employer that all of the sudden we need to trigger enforcement activities that misallocates resources because it is 

going to be a huge commitment, particularly of an employer with 

66

any large size or number to commit all those people at once when 

there is no evidence at that point that there are necessarily violations elsewhere. And the fourth amendment protects all citizens, 

including corporate citizens, from unreasonable searches and seizures. 

Mr. KLINE. Okay. Thank you. 

Ms. RABINOWITZ. Excuse me. May I respond? 

Mr. KLINE. Yes, please. 

Ms. RABINOWITZ. First, I would like to correct what I said, because I think Mr. Taylor incorrectly repeated it, which is I think 

if OSHA finds violations at one site they could inquire as to whether other sites have the same processes that were dangerous in the 

first place and, if they have the same processes, they should look 

and see if the processes are equally as dangerous. And they don’t—

you don’t need to just go investigate every facility to do that. You 

can ask the company to give you information, and the company has 

fourth amendment protections. They routinely negotiate what they 

are going to give you, how you get it, and that is part of the process. And in my experience, OSHA is obligated to respect the fourth 

amendment, and they do so. And if they have to go to court to enforce their subpoena or get a warrant if an employer refuses them 

entry, then they do that. But if they know there is a hazardous 

process in Tulsa at Cintas, for example, and they want to go into 

another facility where they know they have the exact same equipment and the memo that the Chair cited in the beginning says, you 

know, this is a companywide problem, they can go to a judge and 

get a warrant. 

Mr. KLINE. So they have the ability to do that now? 

Ms. RABINOWITZ. The tests under the fourth amendment for an 

administrative warrant is not as difficult as it is to get a criminal 

warrant. And that would, I believe, you know, not being a 

judge——

Mr. KLINE. So we are looking—thank you. We are looking for 

ways to strengthen OSHA enforcement of multi-site employers. 

What I think I heard is, yes, there is a fourth amendment protection but it is not difficult to get that warrant. Would both of you 

agree with that? 

Mr. TAYLOR. I would agree with that. And any lawyer who told 

his client to resist a warrant in the face of a serious accident is 

looking for—taking a risk. 

If I can add one more important—there is already an incentive 

built in through the repeat citation. When an employer receives the 

citation even for something that—if it is a systemic process in particular, it has an obligation to correct that at all of its sites. So 

OSHA comes and that is the purpose of the repeat citation. And 

in my experience, they have not been reluctant to make use of that. 

So there is a couple of safeguards there, I would say, Congressman. 

Mr. KLINE. Okay. Thank you very much. I had a question I was 

going to address on rulemaking. But in the spirit of staying within 

the time—I see the light is about to turn red—I will yield back, 

Madam Chair. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Why don’t we give you 2 seconds to do 

your question. 

Mr. KLINE. It will be more than 2 seconds. 

67

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Well, I wanted to take the privilege of 

the Chair to make a comment on this last discussion. 

Would it not be possible and positive if OSHA helped corporations put in place policies where—we are talking about near 

misses, right? So you learn from one near miss or one accident how 

to prevent in the future or any other place in the organization. 

Ms. RABINOWITZ. Well, I would note that OSHA has made efforts 

to do that and this committee has supported those efforts to do 

that. In the—OSHA has a voluntary policy, I believe it is, on companywide corporate health and safety programs in the—I believe it 

was the mid-1990s, OSHA made an effort to make that a binding 

regulation. So companies had to have safety and health programs, 

and that effort was defeated by business opposition to the plan. 

This committee also twice reported legislation that would mandate health and safety programs by all employers of at least a certain size. I don’t recall immediately. And that legislation was 

strongly opposed by business and went nowhere. 

A variety of States already have that requirement on the books. 

California is one of them. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. All right. Thank you very much. I took 

somebody else’s time to do this. Congresswoman Shea-Porter. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Thank you. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Well, Mr. Hare gets to be our cleanup 

batter today. 

Mr. HARE. Go ahead. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Thank you very much for being here, and I 

extend my sympathy. It is a horrific story and one that shouldn’t 

have happened. We are very, very sorry. 

I have worked in factories through my college years and I understand the difference between the policy on the books and the practices, and while I do believe that most companies strive, I can tell 

you that every day they cut corners, they do what they have to do, 

they have fill-in people there. Sometimes they do it by mistake, 

they don’t realize employees aren’t properly trained, but the reality 

is that there are the rules on the books and the rules that actually 

happen and a lot of the employees aren’t even aware that they are 

violating it because of lack of training. 

Having said that, I do think that most companies strive and they 

don’t intend to violate. But there are companies that do violate, 

and this is my concern about the voluntary aspects for OSHA. We 

have been sitting here listening to hearings about BP oil, oil refineries, mines, other horrible, horrible accidents, and you have to 

wonder about the voluntary aspects. 

Mr. Taylor, I have asked this question before of other witnesses 

who really support these voluntary aspects. But do you think the 

IRS would be effective if it were a voluntary compliance on the part 

of American taxpayers? Do you think there are certain things that 

simply have to be law, not just voluntary compliance? Are you a 

true believer in that aspect? 

Mr. TAYLOR. I think that purely negative reenforcement ultimately is ineffective. I think that people have to understand that 

there is a greater purpose, that this government, for example, if I 

don’t pay my taxes, if I am a scofflaw, would not be able to fulfill 

many of the things that I come to rely on as a citizen in the United 

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States. And I think that if it is purely negative, you create incentives for me to skirt the law. I think the way to get above a minimum, which is what you are talking about with purely negative, 

is just pay only the taxes—and that is not a good example in the 

area of safety. But it creates a disincentive for employers to look 

for ways to go beyond the minimum that is necessary, to be 

proactive, to involve employees and management together. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Let me interrupt you there. Because while I 

agree with you and I think the best thing to do is create programs 

that encourage employers and rewards for that, and I think that 

most really do want to do the right thing but there are certain 

things that are just essential to the bottom line, and the reality is, 

for example, that this country needs to collect taxes in order to pay 

its bills and we can’t make it a voluntary program, although we 

can do certain things and I think it is the same thing here with 

safety, worker safety, that there have to be certain bottom-line requirements and then you work with employers to reward good behavior and to encourage compliance. But I think that we have fallen below the absolutely essential minimum standards. 

So I am going to turn—and I appreciate your response. I am 

going to turn to Ms. Rabinowitz, please. 

Ms. RABINOWITZ. Could I respond to the comment that you made, 

which there is some empirical evidence that OSHA enforcement 

works better than voluntary programs. And there is very limited 

empirical evidence and none that I am aware of that says the voluntary programs are empirically better at reducing injuries and illnesses in the workplace than traditional enforcement. And OSHA 

spends a lot of money on something that they don’t know whether 

it is working or not. And so we—I think we ought to have better 

information on what, if any, of the voluntary programs work and 

why before OSHA shifts more of its resources away from enforcement and into voluntary programs. 

Mr. TAYLOR. Ms. Shea-Porter, may I add one additional thought? 

Because I would like to add something in response to Ms. 

Rabinowitz’s comments. A follow-up study done in Washington 

State in 2004 and 2005 relating to enforcement inspections by 

DOSH in that State and consultation visits on compensation rates 

noted that in general there was approximately a 20 percent decline 

in compensable claims when there was either consultation or enforcement. The enforcement led to slightly greater than the consultation, but there was—it wasn’t magnitudes different. 

The other thing that is really sort of interesting, is that they 

have noticed that the largest decline in compensable claims, 34.7 

percent, occurred when there was inspection but without any citations. That I think should be the goal. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. I appreciate—and, Ms. Rabinowitz, would you 

like to answer that since he took another minute there? 

Ms. RABINOWITZ. I believe the authors of the study would tell you 

that they—it is often cited for the fact that there is statistically significant beneficial effect from traditional enforcement versus consultation. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. And I think the reason we came out with the 

enforcement principles is because voluntary compliance was not as 

effective as it could be. And what we have been hearing when we 

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sit here and hear people come before Congress, we recognize that 

there is a role for compliance. 

So thank you both. 

Mr. TAYLOR. I don’t mean to suggest that enforcement should be 

scuttled. My point is there needs to be a mix. 

Mr. WHITE. Can I weigh in here? I have sort of worked at both 

ends of the spectrum with OSHA and also with corporations, and 

I was at a meeting one time with the head of the Irish OSHA. And 

he basically said there are four kinds of companies. There are the 

committed companies, the compliant companies, the confused companies, and then there are hopefully a few criminal companies. So 

there is kind of—in those categories. So we really do need the 

range of services. I mean, we really do need enforcement both for 

the confused and certainly for the criminal. But we also need voluntary programs to bring the ones who want to comply up to a 

higher level and certainly for those who are committed, who maybe 

don’t need as much enforcement. 

So it is certainly not an either/or. We certainly need enforcement 

as the baseline for any other programs. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. I would agree that we need those minimum 

standards so there is some teeth when OSHA walks into a workplace. 

Thank you. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Thank you. 

Mr. Hare. 

Mr. HARE. Thank you, Madam Chair. I wish we had more than 

5 minutes. 

Mr. Torres, let me ask you, a year ago when you came to see me, 

shortly after your dad died, you told me—I think your family had 

gotten a letter or something from Cintas indicating that your father may—the implication was that he may have committed suicide 

and then when that didn’t work, they basically sent another letter 

out to your family indicating, or some communication indicating to 

you that your father just didn’t quite have the intellectual capabilities to operate the machine; is that correct? 

Mr. TORRES. Yeah. They sent something like that. 

Mr. HARE. And I would assume that that kind of incredibly poor 

behavior had to have a—you lose your dad and on top of that you 

get that kind of news. 

Mr. TORRES. Yeah. 

Mr. HARE. At that time we had talked about any compensation. 

Have you received any, your family received any? 

Mr. TORRES. Like, from Cintas? 

Mr. HARE. Yeah. 

Mr. TORRES. No. I mean—to help my mom, they keep on sending 

his checks to my mom. But that is——

Mr. HARE. And this is what troubles me and I have a question, 

I guess, for the whole panel. Just a couple of things. Let me just 

say with all due respect, Mr. Taylor, when you say a minor uptick. 

In 2005, we had over 5,700 workers who were killed. In the years 

between 2005 and 2006, it has shown a 2 percent increase in that. 

So part of that—I believe fundamentally that most corporations in 

this country are good, decent corporations. They want the best for 

their employees. They want to treat them fairly. But there has to 

70

be a fundamental right, when you have a company like Cintas and 

what I am amazed at—and I would ask that the Wall Street Journal article be entered into the record, Madam Chair. But here you 

have a company that ended with $3.71 billion and a profit of $334.5 

million in fiscal year 2007 in State after State after State. We absolutely know that this company is probably continuing to do what 

they have been doing. I find it extremely difficult and I am more 

than angry that they couldn’t take the time out of their busy schedules to come to this hearing today, yet we have workers who work 

for Cintas that came here from Illinois and all over this country to 

talk about the way they are treated each and every day. And I find 

that to be quite frankly an insult. Not just to this committee. I am 

used to that. But to the families, to Mr. Torres and to the people 

who are here because I think that they—that this corporation has 

got to help hold its feet to the fire. 

So here is my question to all of you. When you have a company 

like Cintas that just basically says it doesn’t matter, you can cite 

us all you want, you can fine us all you want, $2.8 million in fines, 

we will just litigate it out, and the treatment of Mr. Torres’ family 

and that kind of thing and all of these things that go on and on 

and on. What do we have to do to get a company like Cintas to step 

up to the plate and become a responsible corporation that is responsible to their employees, to make sure that the basic fundamental right of a person going to work every day and being able 

to come home and be with their families is something that they 

have earned? They are earning these kinds of profits for this corporation. And I am appalled by it and I don’t know—I mean, 

what—this legislation or whatever it takes for companies, not just 

this one, but if there are other ones. And if you have to get a warrant, you know, I think—so be it. But if you look at States—in 

Yakima—or from the State of Washington, Illinois, Oklahoma, New 

York. I mean, this is a company that just absolutely has total disregard for the law. So I am wondering, what could we do from our 

end of it to be able to make sure that Mr. Torres’ father didn’t lose 

his life in vain because of some company that thinks they can just 

either skirt it or just totally disregard it? 

Mr. WHITE. Here is my answer to that. You are doing it now by 

holding this hearing. I can guarantee you that a couple of articles 

in the Wall Street Journal will have a serious impact on Cintas because there is no time that businesses are more media shy than 

when the media is bad. And frankly what is going to drive a company like Cintas—and I am not intimately familiar with the facts—

is the business reality that they can’t be in the news day after day 

and sustain their own customer base and convince their shareholders they are a good corporate citizen. It is this kind of publicity 

and notoriety frankly that will eventually wake them up, and I 

have seen companies who were in similar situations do a 180-degree turnaround. It takes time and eventually this CEO or some 

other CEO will say this is enough, this can’t happen anymore. And 

eventually the message will get through and you will see a change. 

It is unfortunate that it has to take this, but that is what is 

going to drive business. It is not the $2.78 million fine, but the attendant publicity, public pressure and business pressure to make 

the change. 

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Mr. HARE. Ms. Rabinowitz. I am sorry, Madam Chair. I know I 

am over. 

Ms. RABINOWITZ. The union lawyer in me can’t resist. The best 

way to remedy the problem is for the workers to organize because 

self-help in the end will do more to protect them on the job than 

the government possibly can. 

Mr. HARE. Thank you. I yield back. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Thank all of you. 

First of all, I would like to ask unanimous consent to include in 

the record three items. One, Cintas memorandum of April 30, 2004; 

two, OSHA interpretation letter dated July 7, 2005; three, OSHA 

citation against Cintas in Central Islip, August 11th——

Mr. KLINE. Madam Chair, reserving the right to object, could I 

just see what you have got there quickly? 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Sure. Those were the letters that I referred to in my opening statement. 

Mr. KLINE. Yes, ma’am. But I haven’t had a chance to see them. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. All right. Go ahead. 

Mr. KLINE. Okay. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Thank you to the witnesses. Thank you 

for being here. Thank you for——

Mr. KLINE. I have no objection. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Thank you, sir. And again, thank you, 

Mr. Torres, for telling us about your father. It continues to be 

shameful that he worked and died in an unsafe workplace. What 

we have heard today, and I am sorry to say, describes a company 

that failed to address deadly hazards that it was actually aware of 

and a government agency that has failed to adequately enforce safe 

working conditions beyond the facility level until after a terrible 

tragedy had occurred. We are not going to let this stand. It is tragic 

that it took the death of Mr. Torres-Gomez to put this issue back 

on the public agenda. But we must, we will. We will develop better 

policies at both the corporate and government levels to adequately 

address worker safety. 

OSHA cannot in this endeavor, however, become the enemy. It 

must fulfill its original intention, which is to assist employers to 

make the workplace healthy and safe. 

So again I want to thank the witnesses for helping us chart our 

course forward. Next Monday is Workers Memorial Day and that 

day is dedicated not just to remembering those who have lost their 

lives or have been injured as a result of unsafe health and safety 

conditions, but also to fight for safer works conditions for all who 

go to work every single day. So on that day we’ll remember Mr. 

Torres-Gomez. We will remember him again. We will remember all 

the thousands of others who lost their lives in the workplace just 

this past year. We will redouble our efforts to create healthy and 

safe workplaces for all Americans. 

With that, this hearing is adjourned. 

Any member who wishes to submit follow-up questions in writing 

to the witness or witnesses should coordinate with majority staff 

within 7 days. Without objection, the hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:56 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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