When a safety disaster occurs and worker are hurt or killed, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) can issue fines and citations against the company. Unfortunately, these fines have statutory caps and are often too low to really make a substantial impact on deterring companies from engaging in dangerous behaviors.
Employers also can’t generally be sued by workers, as workers are relegated by law to making a workers’ compensation claim only instead of filing a civil lawsuit against a negligent company employing them. With limited fines and virtually no risk of lawsuit, there is little to deter companies from taking a gamble they can get away with unsafe behavior. 
One powerful way to force companies to be better with safety would be to hold CEOs and other corporate executives personally responsible in certain situations where there is an egregious lack of effort to prevent disaster. Safety News Alert, however, reports executives are very rarely held accountable because OSHA and other government authorities are lacking in legal tools they need.
OSHA Lacking in Legal Tools To Hold Executives Accountable
The problem with insufficient legal tools to hold executives accountable was pointed out in a report from Senator Elizabeth Warren’s office. The report was called Rigged Justice: How Weak Enforcement Lets Corporate Offenders Off Easy. It listed 20 different criminal and civil cases which occurred over the course of recent years in which both government regulators and prosecutors failed to hold executives accountable for egregious safety issues.
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