Manager going to prison for hiding injuries to get safety bonus

Manager going to prison for hiding injuries to get safety bonus

April 19, 2013 by Fred Hosier

Posted in: construction safety, criminal charges, In this week's e-newsletter, Injuries, Latest News & Views, OSHA news

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What will some people do to get their safety bonus? One safety manager hid more than 80 injuries to get a $2.5 million payout.
Walter Cardin, a former safety manager for the Shaw Group, has been sentenced to 6.5 years in prison for deliberately falsifying workplace injury records. He’ll also have two years’ of supervised release after he leaves prison.
The records were for work done by Shaw at three Tennessee Valley Authority nuclear plants, two in Tennessee and one in Alabama.
Cardin was convicted during a November 2012 trial of falsifying the records so Shaw could collect safety bonuses from TVA worth more than $2.5 million.
Prosecutors presented evidence of more than 80 injuries that weren’t properly recorded by Cardin, including:

• broken bones
• torn ligaments
• hernias, and
• shoulder, back and knee injuries.

Employees said they were denied medical treatment or it was delayed as a result.
Despite the evidence presented, Cardin denied intentionally misclassifying injuries. He also said he didn’t know safety bonuses were tied to his injury reports.
But investigators found emails sent by Cardin with this information.
Shaw paid back twice the amount of the safety bonuses it received from TVA.