Hightower Lowdown

According to safety reports submitted by corporations to America's Occupational Safety and Health officials, workplace injuries on are the decline in our country.

Great--if the trend-line were true.

Why isn't it? Because many burns, cuts, ruptures, poisonings, and other on-the-job injuries are deliberately hidden from OSHA, according to investigations by both the media and government auditors. Last November, for example, the U.S. Government Accountability Office did a survey of 504 medical practitioners, more than half of whom told GAO investigators that they were pressured by bosses to downplay illnesses and injuries. More than a third said they were actually asked to provide insufficient treatment to workers, so injuries would not have to be reported. And more than two-thirds knew of workers themselves who didn't want their bosses to know of their injuries, because the workers feared they'd be disciplined or fired.

Under OSHA rules, any injury that requires more medical treatment than first aid must be registered in a company's injury log. A high injury rate increases the company's worker compensation costs and can prevent it from qualifying for government contracts. So top executives pressure managers, company doctors, and workers to treat serious injuries with bandaids instead of stitches.

Also OSHA conducts no routine inspections, so injury reports are based on the honor system! And, from Wall Street to BP, we've seen how much honor there is in CorporateWorld. When OSHA does an occasional on-site check, workers are rarely interviewed, leaving it up to executives to tell the truth about the real danger level.