Walmart fights OSHA fine

Representatives of Walmart appeared before a federal appeals commission last week to fight a $7,000 fine the retail giant was ordered to pay as a result of the trampling death of an employee at the Valley Stream store in November 2008.

“We’re disappointed that we haven’t been able to resolve this matter with OSHA,” said Greg Rossiter, Walmart’s director of corporate communications.

The Long Island office of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration began investigating Walmart following the death of Jdimytai Damour, a 34-year-old temporary employee. Damour died from asphyxiation when an estimated crowd of 2,000 shoppers stormed through the doors, trampling him, just before the store’s 5 a.m. opening on Black Friday. OSHA officials levied the fine against Walmart as a penalty for what they call a “violation of a general duty to protect employees.”

“This was an unusual situation, but not an unforeseen one,” said Anthony Ciuffo, OSHA’s acting area director for Long Island. “The store should have recognized, based on prior ‘Blitz Friday’ experiences, the need to implement effective crowd management to protect its employees.”

But Walmart officials are accepting neither that argument nor the citation. According to reports, the company has filed 20 motions, and spent a year and more than $1 million in legal fees, to fight the fine. Its action comes a little more than a year after OSHA accused the corporation of failing to take adequate steps to protect its employees from crowd trampling.

Yet Walmart took action in early 2009, long before OSHA ordered the fine, reaching a settlement with Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice to avoid criminal charges. The settlement required Walmart to implement new crowd-control strategies in all 92 of its New York stores and to create a $400,000 fund for customers who were injured in the 2008 stampede. Walmart also agreed to three years of monitoring, though the company admitted no wrongdoing.