By: Las Vegas Now Staff
Las Vegas construction deaths will be the focus of a U.S. House of Representatives meeting going on right now, questioning whether safety is really a top priority.
As for who is in the hot seat — not necessarily our city, but the federal agency that's supposed to protect construction workers. Twelve people have died on Strip sites in the last 19 months — six at Project CityCenter alone. And that's why OSHA is in the hot seat.
The Nevada Occupational Safety and Health Administration is sent in to investigate any accident or death that occurs on these sites. Currently on Capitol Hill, state and federal OSHA representatives are taking the stand to defend their regulations.
But the local unions say more needs to be done.
“I think federal OSHA has got a disconnect to state OSHA, and I'll say Nevada State OSHA. Nevada State OSHA under funded, under budgeted, undermanned – they need more bodies. I also think at the federal level under this administration, there's a lot of things that are being overlooked, violations that are not being followed through with and fines not being followed through with,” said Steve Ross, Building Trades spokesman.
After the most recent death at CityCenter earlier this month, workers walked off the job site over what they said were unsafe working conditions. The construction unions sometimes do their own investigations into accidents that happen on job sites.
But many of the twelve death investigations under OSHA are still ongoing.
Email your comments to Reporter Calvert Collins.
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I agree in part that OSHA could use more man power but I disagree also because until upper management of NV OSHA projects the requirement of having a safe workplace by enforcing the findings of their investigators instead of reducing or dropping citations and fines then having a thousand investigators isn’t going to mean a thing. It all comes down to OSHA enforcement. The lead investigator and I filed a CASPA against the NV OSHA office at the Federal level 9 months ago after they reduced citations and dropped potential fines of 2.4 million to $185,000 after my son was killed while working at the Orleans in Feb.’07. I continue to be told that it is “being reviewed” by who knows who in Washington. We can’t get a straight answer from anyone. They all want to pass the buck. So what NV OSHA has been doing in the construction industry recently has been going on for a long time.
Comment by Debi Fergen — June 25, 2008 @ 8:03 pm