OSHA a no-show at safety session

By Alexandra Berzon

Monday, June 30, 2008 | 2 a.m.

It took 12 deaths, a massive worker protest and a hearing on Capitol Hill to bring about Saturday’s meeting at the Clark County Government Center.

The idea was to get policymakers and “stakeholders” together to examine worker safety on the Las Vegas Strip.

One big problem: A lot of those key groups either were glaringly absent or didn’t speak up — notably CityCenter owner MGM Mirage, its general contractor Perini Building Co. and Nevada’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which oversees and enforces workplace safety laws. Plus, state legislators wanting to attend were stuck in Carson City for the special legislative session.

That disappointed organizers.

“Clearly the point of this whole exercise was to get folks together in a room and start throwing out ideas and coming up with solutions,” said Steve Redlinger, a spokesman for the Southern Nevada Building and Construction Trades Council, which helped organize the meeting with Clark County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani. “It was good that we definitely had a lot of people who knew what they were talking about show up and offer concrete ideas. But I’m a little concerned about attendance.”

Giunchigliani oversaw the proceedings from the County Commissioners’ dais, alongside Building Trades President Rick Johnson, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, Associated General Contractors Vice President Steve Holloway and Clark County Commission Chairman Rory Reid. About 50 people — mostly union leaders — were in the audience, and several expressed deep concerns regarding the systems governing construction safety.

“Workers compensation is broken. Nevada OSHA is broken. Our budget is broken,” said Steve Ross, head of the Building Trades Council and a Las Vegas city council member.

A Sun investigation revealed that Nevada OSHA found disturbing patterns of safety violations on Strip construction sites following a string of fatalities, but repeatedly withdrew or reduced citations against contractors during informal settlement conferences.

“We’re very concerned about what’s happening in our community as far as safety of the hardhats — those people building the new Las Vegas,” Mayor Goodman said. “We want to make sure it doesn’t happen in the future.”

(Goodman does not oversee construction on the Strip, which lies in the county’s jurisdiction, but he said he intends to make sure the same problems do not persist on major construction projects in the city. One construction worker died last month at the city’s Union Park downtown redevelopment site.)

Ross said he has been particularly disappointed by the response of MGM Mirage. As a leader of the building trades unions, Ross organized a walkout over safety several weeks ago at CityCenter, where six workers have died.

“MGM Mirage’s public statements throughout this entire ordeal have attempted to absolve them from any responsibility whatsoever,” Ross said. “Just as any company who has a project built on their behalf will provide oversight of the project — was it built to proper specifications? was it built on time and on budget? — project owners must also provide oversight when it comes to the safety of their job site.”

In a phone interview after the meeting, spokesman Alan Feldman said MGM Mirage hasn’t shirked safety responsibility. The company sent several people to Saturday’s meeting, Feldman said, but they did not join in the conversation.

“There’s no confusion on our part whatsoever,” Feldman said. “Safety is the responsibility of all parties.”

Among the empty chairs and silent voices, it was the absence of Nevada OSHA that seemed to most befuddle and disturb attendees.

“They should be in this room,” said Johnson of the Building Trades. “I hope we can get them on board. They’re a vital part of the safety program.”

Giunchigliani said Nevada OSHA declined her invitation to participate in the meeting. She said she was told she could speak to an OSHA representative individually.

Congressional leaders also noted Nevada OSHA’s absence from a House of Representatives hearing Tuesday in Washington, D.C., where construction safety in Las Vegas was discussed. Nevada OSHA was invited to testify at that hearing, but also declined. A spokeswoman for the Business and Industry Department did not respond to requests from the Sun for comment Saturday after the hearing.

“It’s clear to me we’re not going to be able to accomplish our goals without OSHA,” Goodman said at Saturday’s hearing. “It’s really ridiculous they’re not here. It’s their duty and responsibility to be here. If they’re not at the table, we have to call them on it.”

To get around that glaring gap, participants brainstormed how the City and County might help in oversight of construction safety — an area that is traditionally the responsibility of the state through Nevada OSHA.

They put forth a range of informal proposals, including more worker safety training, placing third party safety inspectors on large construction sites at all times, requiring project owners to issue plans that outline safety in advance of beginning construction, creating new licensing requirements for workers, and granting the city or county the power to shut down projects over safety violations.

“I think we’re smart enough to figure out something we could do internally,” Giunchigliani said.

Ross pledged to issue a list of policy suggestions that could be discussed at a future round table on the same topic.

Goodman said he was hopeful that where Nevada OSHA and others have not been effective, the city and county could fill in.

“A lot is broke ... but we can do something about this,” the mayor said.

But looming over the discussion was the challenge of making those changes within Las Vegas’s deep-seated culture of fast-paced construction. It also will be tough to come up with funding for new oversight, participants said.

“We need to be realistic,” Reid said. “The fiscal crises state and local governments are suffering through is real, and departments haven’t received additional staff in years. I think we need to try to be creative, all of us ... the private sector and public sector. I think we all share the same interest in making workers safe.”