Five employers who co-own a hemp facility in Murphy, Ore., an unincorporated area outside of Josephine County, have been fined by the state for allegedly housing workers at a vast hemp trimming and packaging facility where there were egregious safety and health violations.
Each of the five employers are being fined $165,000 by the Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Administration for allowing roughly 25 workers to sleep, eat and work in a condemned building that exposed employees to rodents, standing water and insects, according to a release by the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services.
The building was also structurally unsound, and had the potential to collapse on the workers, state officials say. Josephine County building safety officials had announced it was unsafe for any type of occupation, residency or workplace.
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Also see KDRV report
OSHA listed the following violations the employers are charged with:
- Failure to make the building structurally safe and to have it properly inspected before allowing employees to enter, occupy, and work within it.
- Failure to ensure living areas were safe, in good repair structurally, and stable on their foundations.
- Failure to provide permanent, unobstructed exit routes to leave work areas safely during emergencies.
- Failure to provide two or more exit routes that were necessary for employees to safely escape during a structural collapse or fire.
- Failure to ensure exit doors were unhindered for use during an emergency. Two exit doors were blocked by padlocks on the outside of each door.
