Dive Brief:
- Dollar General will pay $12 million to settle Occupational Safety and Health Administration citations that found the company maintained unsafe workplace conditions at its stores, OSHA announced in a press release Thursday.
- OSHA alleged Dollar General stores subject to its investigations had health and safety violations such as blocked exits and unsafe storage procedures. The settlement resolves all existing contested as well as open OSHA investigations of Dollar General, the agency said.
- Per the terms of the settlement, Dollar General must implement “corporate-wide changes” to ensure employee safety and must provide quarterly reports to OSHA on its progress under the agreement.
Dive Insight:
Dollar General and its competitors in the discount retail space have come under public scrutiny due to their employment policies. But OSHA has had an eye on Dollar General for years; in 2022, it added Dollar General to its “severe violator enforcement program,” which the agency said is targeted toward employers who demonstrate “indifference” to their obligations under the Occupational Safety and Health Act through “willful, repeated, or failure-to-abate violations.”
The retailer did not fare much better in 2023. OSHA twice cited Dollar General for safety hazards that year — once in April for one willful and one repeat violation at a Pennsylvania store and again in June for several repeat violations at a Texas store. In a press release announcing the later set of violations, OSHA said it had proposed more than $21 million in penalties against Dollar General dating back to 2017.
A separate collective-action lawsuit filed by Dollar General employees in 2023 alleged that the company violated the Protecting Urgent Maternal Protections for Nursing Mothers Act by refusing to provide workers breaks or private space to pump at work, but the plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed their complaint months later.
Meanwhile, OSHA also entered a $1.35 million settlement with the company’s rival, Dollar Tree, in 2023 after the agency found similar violations at that company’s stores. In 2022, OSHA proposed more than $330,000 in fines against Dollar Tree subsidiary Family Dollar after an employee at an Orlando, Florida, store died while trying to prevent a shoplifter from leaving the store with merchandise.
