We recently won a massive victory at PeaceHealth Southwest in a fight against their unfair treatment and attacks on worker power. We filed complaints with the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) over multiple issues that management was not dealing withCOVID-19 and other safety precautions correctly.
These include:
The employer did not provide the correct PPE to workers who had to be close to any patient during aerosol generating procedures. The employer sent workers into rooms with unsafe PPE. This was their highest fine because it is a serious violation.
The employer did not get signed paperwork from every worker that they fitted for an N95 mask. They received a fine about this since last year they were implicated in the same behavior. Since it is a second violation they have to pay a fine.
Our third complaint showed that the employer did not follow the law that requires them to put workers who test positive on the OSHA 300 logs within seven days of knowledge that OSHA gets. 19 employees got COVID when the outbreak happened last year and none of them ever showed up on the OSHA 300 logs. This is a dramatic breach of protocol that puts members and patients are at serious health risk.
These complaints resulted in over $10,000 in fines, including $7,800 for the incorrect PPE and $2,600 the lack of signed paperwork. This money will go to the state and federal treasury where it can hopefully be used to further empower community health programs.
The main benefit of this is that it holds management to account for sub-par performance in protecting staff and patients and the inclusion of the penalties helps to ensure that they will follow correct protocol in the future. We have to raise our voices and fight on these issues as much as possible, using every mechanism at our disposal to hold leadership accountable to their responsibilities!