A few months ago, I wrote about a worker dying in the construction industry in New York. Then, I said:

    How do you stop this from happening? I’m sorry to say it won’t be by hiring more inspectors or gathering more data. It will stop when contractors start going to jail when people die at work sites. If the contractor at this site had previous violations and now a worker dies, why shouldn’t the contractor be indicted for manslaughter? And put behind bars with a stiff sentence?

    The fact is, as many advocates for workers have argued for a very long time, the safety and health system for workers is a joke: no real resources, a system that guarantees workplaces are rarely inspected, and, as important, no real teeth in the form of severe penalties for executives and supervisors who endanger the lives of workers. You want the workplace to get safer? Put some of these folks behind bars with some real jail time.

    Today, The New York Times has an op-ed by David M. Uhlmann, a law professor at the University of Michigan, who says:

Employers rarely face criminal prosecution under the worker-safety laws. In the 38 years since Congress enacted the Occupational Safety and Health Act, only 68 criminal cases have been prosecuted, or less than two per year, with defendants serving a total of just 42 months in jail. During that same time, approximately 341,000 people have died at work, according to data compiled from the National Safety Council and the Bureau of Labor Statistics by the A.F.L.-C.I.O.

It is long past time for Congress to change the law. First, Congress should amend the Occupational Safety and Health Act to make it a crime for an employer to commit violations that cause serious injury to workers or that knowingly place workers at risk of death or serious injury. Whether good fortune intervenes and prevents harm to workers should not determine whether an employer commits a crime.

Congress should make it a felony to commit a criminal violation of the worker-safety laws, and the penalties for lawbreakers should be stiffened. The maximum sentence ought to be measured in years, not months.

Congress also should change the worker-safety laws so that ignorance of the law is no longer a defense. Employers have a duty to know their responsibilities under the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

Finally, Congress should make clear who can be prosecuted. Some courts have held that prosecution is limited to companies and their owners. Supervisors who order workers to break the law, as well as responsible corporate officers who fail to stop violations that they know are occurring, should also be held criminally responsible, just as they are under most other federal laws.