“An employer does not have the right to retaliate against employees who report safety issues,” said Nick Walters, OSHA’s regional administrator in Chicago, in a press release. “When employees can’t report safety concerns on the job without fear of retaliation, worker safety and, in this case, passenger safety on Metra, becomes a serious concern.”
What Walters did not say in the press release — what OSHA hardly ever says except in the “Statistics” section of its website — is that this type of finding is the exception, not the rule. In fact, according to OSHA’s own statistics, a mere 2 percent of claims were found to merit agency action.