National safety advocate says proposal to evaluate safety records is not effective

A national safety advocate says Durham’s proposal to change its bid process and ensure the safety of employees working on public contracts has “significant problems.”

Last month, NBC-17 discovered the proposal inside a series of email exchanges between city employees.

The discussion to change the city's procedure comes after two men suffocated inside a manhole earlier this year. Following the tragedy, NBC-17’s investigation found many local governments, including Durham, don’t consider a contractor’s safety records in the public bid process because the law does not require it.

Tom O’Connor, executive director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, applauds Durham’s efforts to consider safety in their public bid process, but says the proposal is far from effective.

In a letter to city officials, O’Connor writes the city’s proposal sets “an exceedingly low bar which would fail to screen out even some of the worst actors."

O’Connor points out several issues, including the proposal’s focus on “willful” violations, which he says are very rare.

North Carolina Division of Occupational Safety and Health records show, during the 2010 federal fiscal year, the state issued 10,387 citations, 23 of them were considered “willful.”

Instead, O’Connor says Durham should focus on a company's history of "serious" violations.

“These are serious and should be examined. In the particular case of Triangle Grading and Paving, they had a whole long history of serious violations so that would've raised a big red flag,” O’Connor said.

Triangle Grading and Paving employed two men who suffocated last spring inside a Durham manhole last June. The company had more than 60 construction-related safety violations and more than $200,000 in fines, including a previous worker fatality.

In late November, the North Carolina Department of Labor cited Triangle Grading and Paving for four alleged serious violations of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of North Carolina, with a total penalty of $16,000. The fine resulted from the state’s investigation into the June 2011 deaths.

The City of Durham declined requests to discuss their current proposal but say it “may or may not take some of that into consideration."

Source: Charlotte Huffman, NBC17.com