OSHA News Release: Ashley Furniture faces $1.76M in fines after OSHA finds more than 1,000 worker injuries at Wisconsin site in past 36 months [02/02/2015]

OSHA News Release: [02/02/2015]
Contact Name: Scott Allen or Rhonda Burke
Phone Number: (312) 465-6699 or (312) 909-6630
Email: Allen.Scott@dol.gov or Burke.Rhonda@dol.gov
Release Number: 15-0133-NAT

Ashley Furniture faces $1.76M in fines after OSHA finds
more than 1,000 worker injuries at Wisconsin site in past 36 months

Largest furniture retailer in the U.S. exposes employees to amputations, other hazards

ARCADIA, Wis. — In a three-and-a-half year period, 4,500 employees at Ashley Furniture Industries Inc., in Arcadia, experienced more than 1,000 work-related injuries. One worker became another terrible statistic when he lost three fingers in July 2014 while operating a dangerous woodworking machine without required safety mechanisms in place. Of the injuries recorded, more than 100 were caused by similar machinery.

After the incident, the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration conducted an inspection of the facility. Investigators identified 12 willful, 12 repeated and 14 serious safety violations at Ashley Furniture's Arcadia location, carrying a total of $1,766,000 in penalties. The company has also been placed in the Severe Violator Enforcement Program for failure to address these safety hazards. OSHA previously cited the Arcadia facility in 2014 after an employee suffered a partial finger amputation.

"Ashley Furniture has created a culture that values production and profit over worker safety, and employees are paying the price," said U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas E. Perez. "Safety and profits are not an ‘either, or' proposition. Successful companies across this nation have both."

Dr. David Michaels, the assistant secretary of labor of occupational safety and health, said, "Ashley Furniture intentionally and willfully disregarded OSHA standards and its own corporate safety manuals to encourage workers to increase productivity and meet deadlines. The company apparently blamed the victims for their own injuries, but there is clear evidence that injuries were caused by the unsafe conditions created by the company. OSHA is committed to making sure that the total disregard Ashley Furniture has shown to safety stops here and now."

Forbes lists Ashley Furniture Industries, a furniture manufacturer with worldwide distribution, as the 117th largest private company in America. With annual revenue of $3.85 billion as of October 2014, the company employs about 20,000 workers at 30 locations nationally. The Arcadia plant is also the largest employer in Wisconsin's rural Trempealeau County, with a population of about 30,000.

The 12 willful and 12 repeated violations were cited after OSHA found that the company did not take the necessary steps to protect its workers from being injured by moving machine parts. It did not prevent machines from unintentionally starting when workers were performing tooling and blade changes on woodworking machinery, and also failed to provide adequate safety mechanisms to prevent contact with those moving parts. These types of violations are among the most frequently cited by OSHA and often result in death or permanent disability.

A willful violation is one committed with intentional, knowing or voluntary disregard for the law's requirement, or with plain indifference to employee safety and health. OSHA issues repeated violations if an employer previously was cited for the same or a similar violation of any standard, regulation, rule or order at any other facility in federal enforcement states within the last five years.

OSHA also cited Ashley Furniture Industries for 14 serious violations, including not training workers on safety procedures and hazards present when servicing machinery. The company also lacked adequate drenching facilities for workers exposed to corrosive materials; it committed three electrical safety violations, and it did not equip some of its machines with readily-accessible emergency stop buttons.

An OSHA violation is serious if death or serious physical harm can result from a hazard an employer knew or should have known exists.

View the current citations at http://www.osha.gov/ooc/citations/Ashley_Furniture_Industries_Inc_987512_01-29-15.pdf

Ashley Furniture Industries, Inc., has had 33 federal OSHA inspections and 23 state plan inspections since 1982. In its 33 previous inspections, OSHA issued citations for 96 serious, four repeat and 38 other-than-serious violations. Four inspections were initiated as a result of finger amputations, with Arcadia's 2014 incident being the most recent. Ashley Furniture's workers' compensation carrier is Twin City Fire Insurance Company, part of the Hartford Insurance Group.

The company has 15 business days from receipt of its citations and penalties to comply, request an informal conference with OSHA's area director, or contest the findings before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.

To ask questions, obtain compliance assistance, file a complaint, or report workplace hospitalizations, fatalities or situations posing imminent danger to workers, the public should call OSHA's toll-free hotline at 800-321-OSHA (6742) or the agency's Eau Claire Area Office at 715-832-9019.

Under the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, employers are responsible for providing safe and healthful workplaces for their employees. OSHA's role is to ensure these conditions for America's working men and women by setting and enforcing standards, and providing training, education and assistance. For more information, visit http://www.osha.gov.

Above is from:  OSHA News Release: Ashley Furniture faces $1.76M in fines after OSHA finds more than 1,000 worker injuries at Wisconsin site in past 36 months [02/02/2015]

 

 

MADISON – Less than a month after the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. board approved a $6 million tax credit for Ashley Furniture Industries, the company's owners gave $20,000 to Gov. Scott Walker's re-election campaign.

The State Journal reported Sunday the board -- led by Walker, who is chairman -- approved the tax credits on Jan. 30 for the Arcadia-based company, though the award hasn't been formally announced because a contract between the state's flagship job-creation agency and Ashley has not been finalized.

The award was premised on the company investing $35 million in a headquarters expansion and keeping at least 1,924 of its current jobs in the state — or half of its current employment levels — over the next five years. Typically the agency makes awards to companies retaining 100 percent of their employees or creating jobs.

About two weeks after the WEDC vote, on Feb. 17, Ronald and Joyce Wanek of St. Petersburg, Florida, and Todd and Karen Wanek of Arcadia, each gave $5,000 to Friends of Scott Walker, state campaign finance records show.

Ronald Wanek is founder and board chairman of Ashley. His son Todd is president and CEO of the company, which is privately owned.

An Ashley spokeswoman did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment from the Waneks.

Laurel Patrick, a spokeswoman for Walker, said in an email: "Political contributions are in no way tied to tax incentives provided by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation. Decisions related to investments or awards are contractually required to meet certain objectives."

The Waneks previously gave $10,500 to Walker's campaign going back to 2010, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

They also gave $18,500 to Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, from 2002 to 2006; $8,000 to Republican Gov. Scott McCallum in 2000 and 2001; and $20,500 to Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson between 1993 and 1998.

The company and city of Arcadia have received 10 awards from WEDC and the Department of Commerce since 1988, but the $6 million tax credit approved in January would total more than all the others combined.

In a statement Sunday, liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now said the timing "should raise serious questions." The group's executive director Scot Ross said in an interview that he's not claiming anything illegal took place.

"They just got a $6 million tax break that allows them to cut half their jobs and two weeks later they give Walker $20,000," Ross said. "I think it speaks for itself."

The company said in a statement Friday it plans to donate the $6 million tax credit to the city of Arcadia to move a creek that flooded the downtown in 2010. The creek project would allow Ashley to move forward with a 480,000-square-foot expansion and keep its headquarters in Wisconsin.

"The loss of Ashley's contributions to the regional economy of west central Wisconsin would be catastrophic," the company said in the statement.

Patrick said the administration has worked with Ashley in the past -- as have previous governors -- and will continue to do so.

Walker, a Republican, is running for re-election. He is being challenged by Democrat Mary Burke, a former Trek Bicycle executive and Commerce secretary who is a current Madison School Board member

Above is from:  http://www.fdlreporter.com/story/news/local/2014/08/24/wedc-board-okd-ashley-furniture-getting-million-tax-credit-cutting-jobs/14544481/

How a microbe's non-evolution could confirm Darwin's theory - CSMonitor.com

 

Scientists say they have uncovered evidence for sulfur-loving microbes that appear to have been put on evolutionary hold for more than 2 billion years, remaining virtually unchanged during that period.

If the team's analysis holds up, it would provide a striking confirmation of the theory of evolution, the researchers suggest.

Evolution occurs in response to changes in an organism's physical or biological environment, explains William Schopf, a geobiologist at the University of California at Los Angeles and the lead author of the analysis, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

There is plenty of evidence for this aspect of evolution in the fossil record and in existing organisms, the researchers note.

 

 

But if those conditions don't change, "the prediction would be that life shouldn't change," and that's what the team found, he says.

In this case, the stable environment is ancient and modern sea-floor muck beneath enough water to be isolated from wave action or other forms of mixing that could alter conditions within the sediments.

A key piece of the puzzle fell into place in 2007, when Chilean researchers Victor Gallardo and Carola Espinoza published their discovery of communities of thread-like bacteria found beneath undersea mud along the west coast of Central and South America and out to the Galapagos Islands. These thrived in a cold, sulfur-rich, oxygen-deprived environment.

The duo, from the University of Concepción in Biobío, Chile, suggested that communities of these organisms appear worldwide and likely have been populating the planet for billions of years. The work was part of a decade-long global effort to conduct a census of marine life, including microbes.

Fast forward five years. Dr. Schopf was a visiting professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, when a geologist handed him some rock samples a from 2.3-billion-year-old formation in western Australia. Within a few weeks, Schopf had touched base with the Chilean researchers and concluded that the microfossils in the samples he'd received were essentially the same organism.

After returning to UCLA, he revisited rock samples he'd collected 30 years earlier from another rock formation in western Australia. The rocks were 1.8 billion years old and contained what had been puzzling microfossils. Sure enough, the bacteria appeared in those samples as well.

Ideally, researchers would use genetic analyses to explore the relationships between different populations of these bacteria. But as microbes become fossils, their genetic material is destroyed. Scientists then have to rely on comparing shapes and sizes of the bacteria, the similarities or differences in the rock formations that encased them, mineral evidence for the environment they inhabited back in the day, and the physical layout of the communities they built.

When the team, which included researchers from the United States and Australia, as well as the two Chilean scientists, made the comparisons, the two ancient populations and the living populations were essentially the same – both thriving in oxygen-free, light-free, sulfur-laden marine mud.

The evidence is compelling, Schopf suggests. But it will take time to fill out the picture.

The idea that these bacteria confirm Darwin's theory is based on three populations, compared with light-loving bacteria associated with ancient and modern stromatolites – rock formations that form in shallow water as the waste from bacterial communities on them acts as glue to bind tiny grains of sediment. Ancient and modern versions of these have been studied for decades.

The sulfur-cycling bacteria's habitat, buried in deep-sea sediments, "has essentially not been investigated by paleontologists, so we didn't know what was there," Schopf says.

Now that these first results are out, researchers will explore other deposits, "and I think we're going to find exactly the same types of organisms right up through geological time," he adds.

Still, circumspection remains the order of the day for now.

"Such findings may eventually be regarded as having confirmed the null hypothesis of Darwinian evolution," the team writes. "But such an assessment, at present, would be premature."

How a microbe's non-evolution could confirm Darwin's theory - CSMonitor.com

Revised Text Amendment Proposal for Wind Turbines

This text amendment has been revised and will return to the Regional Planning Commission.  Previously the Regional Planning Commission recommended denial 3-2 however there have been replacements of two RPC members who opposed the amendment.  To see the previous amendment go to: http://boonecountywatchdog.blogspot.com/2015/01/another-text-amendment-on-winda-half.html

Text changes are in RED.

 

Growth Dimensions’ Tax Return

Most tax exempt entities must publicly disclose their tax return.  Here is the most recent return for Growth Dimensions.

Many pages require little information to be supplied.  The larger photocopies show forms with major items of information. 

For the 2012 Tax Year only a portion of the return is supplied. 

The salary for Director Mark Williams was $84,801 for 2012. Kelly Galluzzo’s  2013 salary was $40,078.

Click on any of the pages and it will be enlarged.

 

2012