With fewer baggage handlers sharing the airline's load in Tampa, their high rate of illness or injury prompted a letter from OSHA.
By STEVE HUETTEL
Published November 14, 2003
TAMPA - Northwest Airlines workers at Tampa International Airport, especially baggage handlers, face an excessive risk of injury or illness, according to the federal agency that regulates workplace safety.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration wrote Northwest last month that records showed its employees at Tampa International were getting hurt or sick at twice the rate of workers throughout the airline industry.
Local Northwest baggage handlers are three times as likely to suffer shoulder, knee and back injuries as airline employees overall, OSHA said.
Northwest said only that it was "thoroughly reviewing" the agency's report and recommendations for reducing injuries.
The union representing Northwest ramp workers says job cuts are largely to blame for the high injury rate because employees are trying to shoulder too much work.
"The company says not to lift anything over 70 pounds - to get help," said Joey Pascarella, a ramp worker and president of Local 2319 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in Tampa. "But if you don't have someone to help, what do you do? The company won't say to do something unsafe, but it won't give you enough people."
The problem isn't unique to Tampa International or Northwest, said Bob Benneck, health and safety director of the machinists union's division that represents workers at Northwest, Alaska Airlines, Air Wisconsin and a handful of other carriers.
"The ramp areas have been hardest hit (with injuries)," he said. "There are less people to do the same amount of work or more work. It's an unhealthy mix."
Union officials say understaffing likely contributed to the Sept. 12 death of a Northwest ramp worker at Norfolk International Airport in Virginia.
Denise L. Bogucki, 43, was driving a "pushback tractor" on a rainy Friday night, trying to hook it to the tow bar of a Northwest DC-9 so she could move the airliner away from the gate. Somehow, she was crushed between the vehicle and the plane, just beneath the plane's nose.
Bogucki was working alone on the ramp doing a job that should be performed by a driver and someone directing her, Benneck said. After the accident, he said, Northwest changed its policy to require two people to hook up a tow bar to a tractor.
"Northwest has trimmed and cut so many employees that we are all forced constantly to work short," wrote Carol Kromkowski, a Northwest employee and union steward in Norfolk, in a letter on a union Web site. "We have begged and pleaded for more help and been denied."
Northwest declined comment on the accident, citing ongoing investigations by government agencies and its own staff.
At Tampa International, OSHA began reviewing injury logs and medical records kept by Northwest in March after routine reports showed an unusually high number of workplace injuries, said Les Grove, director of the agency's Tampa area office.
Inspectors focused on baggage handlers. Not only did they have a higher injury rate than airline employees overall, OSHA reported, but the injuries were more severe. Between 40 percent and 47 percent of those hurt missed more than 31 days of work - twice the industry average.
OSHA inspectors observed 10 possible hazards, mostly situations in which workers were bending, twisting or moving luggage from awkward positions. The agency suggested the airline ensure adequate staffing to address three of the hazards.
The agency did not report a link between injuries and job cuts by Northwest, he said. OSHA also did not cite the airline for knowningly exposing employees to workplace hazards.
"This was a hazard we wanted to bring to Northwest Airlines' attention," Grove said. "We may come back and do a followup in a year."
When airlines lay off workers, they begin with the most recent hires and work their way up the seniority list. Tampa has always attracted more senior employees, Pascarella said, and layoffs since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks left Northwest with an even older workforce on the ramp.
More than half the local ramp workers are 55 years old or older, he said. The airline has 33 full-time and seven part-time employees to handle nine daily departures at Tampa International, Pascarella said. The airline will add six full-timers and two part-timers on Dec. 17 when the holiday flight schedule goes up to 17 departures, he said.
