A Georgia Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. plant faces nearly $70,000 in fines for safety lapses that endangered workers' safety and lives, OSHA says. Credit: Steven Senne/Associated Press

A Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. plant in Georgia faces about $70,000 in fines for failing to follow federal workplace safety laws that endangered workers.

Investigators from the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration imposed seven serious citations against the company in January after inspecting its plant last year in Social Circle, Georgia. Federal officials found the company failed to provide proper protective gear to workers processing rubber through hot metal presses with temperatures exceeding 350 degrees Fahrenheit. They also discovered hazards from unguarded machines, rainwater and leaking equipment that put workers at risk of slipping on the production floor.

“Our inspection found multiple safety deficiencies that put employees at risk of serious injury or death,” William Fulcher, the OSHA area office director in Atlanta, said in a statement. “Potential workplace hazards must be assessed and eliminated to ensure employees are afforded a safe work environment.”

Goodyear has contested the fines, according to an OSHA spokesman.

Laura Duda, a Goodyear spokeswoman, wrote in an email that the company “cooperated with OSHA during its inspection and are now following the standard administrative process for responding to citations. We can’t discuss specifics while this is in progress.”

Similar safety issues were uncovered in an investigation by Reveal from The Center Investigative Reporting in December that showed how Goodyear’s lax approach to safety contributed to the deaths of motorists on the road and workers in its plants. The tire giant ranked among the top five manufacturers in the United States for worker deaths since 2009, according to Reveal’s analysis. In addition, at least four motorists over the last seven years have died in accidents after tires made at Goodyear plants failed.

Those tires were manufactured in plants where intense production demands and leaks in the roof have endangered both workers and consumers, Reveal’s investigation found. Court documents and former workers in the company’s plants in Danville, Virginia, and Fayetteville, North Carolina, detailed how water leaked through the roof and, in some cases, onto machines. Workers are trained to avoid moisture in tire production because it can prompt treads to separate, causing a blowout.

In interviews, several former employees of Goodyear’s Danville and Fayetteville plants said they felt pressure to put production before workplace safety. Some recalled a quota-driven motto invoked on the shop floor: “Round and black and out the back.”

Hours after Reveal’s investigation was published on RevealNews.org and, via The Associated Press, on the websites of The Washington Post, The New York Times and ABC News, a Goodyear spokeswoman issued a statement.

“Over the past two years, we fell short of our own expectations for safety, and we mourn the loss of valued coworkers at two of our U.S. manufacturing plants,” Barbara Hatala, Goodyear’s communications manager for the Americas operations, said in the statement. “This is unacceptable.”

The story detailed how protections for factory workers are being dismantled. The Trump administration has rolled back and postponed Obama-era protections in keeping with goals laid out by the National Association of Manufacturers. Richard Kramer, Goodyear’s chairman, chief executive officer and president, serves on the association’s board.

Since October 2008, Goodyear has been fined more than $1.9 million for more than 200 health and workplace safety violations, far more than its four major competitors combined. Besides the most recent proposed OSHA fines of $69,058, the company’s plant in Social Circle, Georgia, has been previously cited for three workplace safety violations, two of them serious.

The most recent fines are “deeply discouraging,” said Jordan Barab, the former deputy assistant secretary of OSHA under President Barack Obama.

“Even with multiple preventable deaths and serious injuries in plants across the country and multiple OSHA citations, Goodyear never seems to learn a very basic lesson: that they are legally and morally required to provide safe workplaces for their employees,” Barab said.

Jennifer Gollan can be reached at jgollan@revealnews.org. Follow her on Twitter: @jennifergollan.

Creative Commons License

Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.

Jennifer Gollan is an award-winning reporter. Her investigation When Abusers Keep Their Guns, which exposed how perpetrators often kill their intimate partners with guns they possess unlawfully, spurred sweeping provisions in federal law that greatly expanded the power of local and state police and prosecutors to crack down on abusers with illegal firearms. The project won a 2022 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and has been nominated for a 2022 Emmy Award.

Gollan also has reported on topics ranging from oil companies that dodge accountability for workers’ deaths to shoddy tire manufacturing practices that kill motorists. Her series on rampant exploitation and abuse of caregivers in the burgeoning elder care-home industry, Caregivers and Takers, prompted a congressional hearing and a statewide enforcement sweep in California to recover workers’ wages. Another investigation – focused on how Navy shipbuilders received billions in public money even after their workers were killed or injured on the job – led to tightened federal oversight of contractors’ safety violations.

Gollan’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The Associated Press, The Guardian US and Politico Magazine, as well as on PBS NewsHour and Al Jazeera English’s “Fault Lines” program. Her honors include a national Emmy Award, a Hillman Prize for web journalism, two Sigma Delta Chi Awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, a National Headliner Award, a Gracie Award and two Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing awards. Gollan is based in the San Francisco Bay Area.