Paul Van Osdol of WJXT-TV in Jacksonville, Fla., was reporting a story on an industrial accident last year, when he decided to research deaths investigated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Those inspections are required by law. With only an IBM-compatible 286 PC and a program called Nutshell, Van Osdol compiled information from death reports and OSHA investigative reports.
Because state law prohibited him from obtaining complete electronic versions of death reports, Van Osdol tracked down victims' families to get details. He accessed state vital statistics death records, probate court and circuit court records and GAO reports. Van Osdol's team also used the on-line resource, Data Times, to research companies where deaths occurred.
Van Osdol found that OSHA investigated fewer than one-third of all workplace deaths in Florida during a three-year period. When OSHA did investigate, the average fine imposed was $2,900. After WJXT-TV's report, OSHA changed its procedures for investigating deaths involving longshoremen. The agency also promised to get tougher with companies that failed to report accidents.
Dateline NBC's David Hinchman, then at KOMU-TV in Columbia, Mo., reviewed electronic databases of OSHA inspections and Missouri workers compensation claims when doing a similar story on workplace fatalities.
Hinchman compared electronic records from OSHA and Missouri's Division of Workers Compensation. OSHA documented only 39 percent of the workplace fatalities that fell into its jurisdiction. He also found repeated on-the-job injuries at one plant did not lead to changes in workplace conditions.
Using compensation records
While reporting for the Houston Chronicle in 1993, Nancy Stancill acquired tapes from the Texas Worker's Compensation Commission to examine 13,328 injuries to Texas teenage workers from January 1989 to October 1992. Stancill discovered that Texas' child labor law, on the books since 1981, had never been enforced. Although required by law, the state had never actually hired inspectors to monitor children's work conditions. And while the law sets 14 as the minimum working age, Stancill found some teen-agers who said they started working when they were 10 years old.
Stancill acquired names of businesses cited for violations from the Department of Labor. She then analyzed all the data using EX IQ and found the majority of injured teens were hurt in restaurants and grocery stores. Injuries ranged from sprains and cuts to amputations and deaths. She also found many teen-age farm workers became ill after being sprayed with pesticides.
One thing veterans of workplace investigations warn is that seemingly related information might not be stored in one place. Many government documents are stored on different PCs among various public agencies.
Check other oversight agencies
David Armstrong of the Boston Globe suggests reporters check local industrial accident boards or equivalent administrative agencies that resolve workers compensation claims. "They're a good resource for finding out why people are getting hurt on the job and what injured workers are getting in terms of compensation."
Most states have an agency that handles claims independently, Armstrong said. These agencies' accident records include workers' descriptions of what happened, what kind of work they were doing, how long they've been off the job and what company they were working for. Information can be dug up including abuses of the system, people filing multiple claims, people who win multiple claims for the same kind of injuries at different companies and other fraud.
Other sources include labor unions, some of which do studies on workplace issues, and state governmental records on their own employees and how they get hurt.
NICAR Director Brant Houston suggests that if electronic accident, death or medical records are not readily available, civil and circuit court records can often fill in the information gap. Most cities and counties have computerized litigation records and can copy records onto diskettes for easy data analysis.
Cassandra Sweet can be reached at (314) 449-9368 or send e-mail to :656776@showme.missouri.edu