President Donald Trump. Credit: AP Photo/Steve Helber

The owner of the shipyard that President Donald Trump toured today to highlight his major military expansion has been fined for endangering workers, exposing them to potential falls and amputations.

In one of the most serious cases, a Huntington Ingalls shipyard in Louisiana that has since closed was fined after a worker died in July 2011. Equipment crowded the compartment of the vessel where he worked, preventing him from using a ladder to reach the ceiling. So he instead climbed onto piping and then a metal cover marked “danger high voltage” before being electrocuted.

The shipyard settled with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, paying a $5,000 fine. At the time, the maximum fine for a serious violation was $7,000.

Since October 2008, OSHA has fined Huntington Ingalls shipyards more than $95,000 in five cases. However, the fines pale in comparison to the $38 billion in contracts the company has won over the same period from the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy.

A recent Reveal investigation found that the Navy and Coast Guard’s seven major private shipbuilders have received more than $100 billion in taxpayer dollars despite serious safety lapses that have endangered, injured and killed workers. The story detailed how these shipbuilders have few incentives to focus on safety.

Trump met with shipbuilders and military officials today at a Huntington Ingalls shipyard in Newport News, Virginia. He delivered a speech on the deck of the USS Gerald R. Ford, a $12.9 billion aircraft carrier that is set to be commissioned later this year. During his visit, Trump said new warships would help “project American power in distant lands.”

Huntington Ingalls Industries and other shipbuilders stand to benefit from Trump’s planned shipbuilding expansion, and it appears they will continue to face little accountability for putting workers in danger.

The shipbuilders rely heavily – and in some cases exclusively – on the Navy and Coast Guard. While the agencies say workplace safety in private shipyards isn’t their job, former OSHA officials say that the Navy and Coast Guard could force the shipbuilders to focus more on safety if they threatened to withhold contracts for workplace safety issues.

At the same time, the House has overturned a President Barack Obama-era executive order that would have forced contractors to reveal previous safety problems. The Senate is scheduled to vote on the repeal Monday.

Trump recently announced plans to boost security and military spending by $54 billion, which he said would require spending cuts for most federal agencies.

Trump’s proposed budget could mean less enforcement in dangerous industries such as shipbuilding, said David Michaels, who stepped down as the head of OSHA in January.

“If you increase hazardous work and decrease OSHA funding, it is a recipe for more workers being killed,” said Michaels, who is now a professor at George Washington University.

Meanwhile, the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday overturned an OSHA rule that allowed federal workplace safety regulators to cite companies for failing to log injuries and illnesses from the past five years, rather than six months, the previous standard.

During the campaign, Trump vowed to increase the Navy’s fleet to 350 ships, up from 274. It would mark the largest expansion of the Navy since the Reagan years.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy White House press secretary, did not return an email requesting comment on whether the Navy would step up oversight over workplace safety in private shipyards. A spokeswoman for Huntington Ingalls Industries did not immediately return a message requesting comment.

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

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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.