The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has recently fined a Dollar Tree Stores location in Boston for exposing workers to serious danger. This is not the first time OSHA has fined this location. According to reports, employees at the location have “repeatedly faced the dangers of blocked exits and hazardous conditions in the store’s stockroom.”
An article recently posted on WorkersCompensation.com highlights this issue quite well. Based on these troubling concerns, the store may be forced to pay up to $177,800 in fines. While these citations are worrisome, another issue is the fact that the company has deliberately and continuously refused to address hazards. Brenda Gordon, OSHA’s area director for Boston and southeastern Massachusetts, commented that on the inspector’s first visit to the store, he “informed management of the hazards and the need to correct them. Yet, on subsequent visits, the inspector found these hazardous conditions again and again, showing an unacceptable disregard for employee health and safety.”
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The following is a list of violations that were noted while touring the Boston Dollar Tree location:
1) Merchandise stacked in an unstable and unsecured manner in the stockroom. This could have resulted in workers being injured if the stacks would have collapsed.
(2) Exit routes labeled as emergency routes were blocked by the store’s inventory, shopping carriages, a conveyor, and garbage.
(3) Failure to maintain a means of access to an electrical control panel in order for employees to have the ability to turn off the store’s electrical power if need be.
(4) Allowing trash to pile up throughout the stockroom area, “creating tripping and exit hazards for the workers.”
The last violation is considered by OSHA to be a “serious violation,” which means that “there is a substantial probability that death or serious physical harm could result from a hazard about which the employer knew or should have known.”
Over the last 19 years, Dollar Tree Stores have been inspected more than 150 times all throughout the country and has been cited for “453 violations of OSHA standards.” Just within the past five years, the stores have been cited 51 times for similar violations to what occurred at the store which is the subject of this blog post. In just this year alone, stores in Wilmington, Delaware and Missoula, Montana have been cited for these kinds of violations.
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Currently, Dollar Tree Stores have more than 5,000 locations and such a large employer “has a responsibility to its employees to ensure safe and healthful working conditions for workers,” said Robert Hooper, OSHA’s acting regional administrator for New England.
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The store’s headquarters are located in Chesapeake, Virginia and has stores in 48 states and five Canadian provinces. OSHA has given Dollar Tree Stores “15 business days from receipt of its latest citations and proposed penalties to comply, meet informally with OSHA’s area director, or contest the findings before the independent Occupational Safety & Health Review Commission.”
If you are seeking legal counsel for a potential workplace injury claim in Nevada, do not hesitate to contact the attorneys at 702 DEFENSE. We can schedule an initial consultation and review the facts of your case.
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