How I got this story — analyzing government data

By Jeff South

Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism

We know the toll that the COVID-19 pandemic has taken on workers who got laid off or furloughed: We see the consequences by tracking unemployment rates and other economic indicators.

But what about employees who stayed on the job during the pandemic at the risk of getting the coronavirus at work? How do we measure the COVID-related anxieties and pressures they experienced?

I gathered government safety and employment data, asked questions and analyzed the numbers to uncovered a story that hadn’t been reported:

• During the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 1,400 valid complaints were filed against Virginia employers. Only seven states logged more complaints.

• About 60 employers in Virginia were cited for violating coronavirus-related workplace rules, and 20 of those employers have actually paid fines. In 24 cases, the state did not impose a financial penalty or dropped the fine during negotiations.

• During the pandemic, both nationwide and in Virginia, there was a spike in workplace complaints and a drop in the number of workplace inspections.

Here’s how I pieced this story together. 

As a data journalist, I keep my eyes peeled for datasets that might shed light on important issues. Last year, I noticed that the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration was regularly posting on its website a running list of workers’ complaints about their employers’ response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Most of the complaints accused employers of failing to provide or require personal protective equipment, enforce social distancing or tell employees when a co-worker had tested positive. The dataset contained complaints that had been deemed “valid” (meaning there were reasonable grounds to believe an OSHA violation had occurred) and had been “closed” by government officials (usually by reaching a solution with the employer).

While I was analyzing the data in January, Gov. Ralph Northam issued a news release mentioning that about two dozen employers in Virginia had been cited for COVID-related violations.

I was intrigued by the contrast: Workers were filing more than 100 complaints a month, but the state issued relatively few citations.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, I asked the Virginia Department of Labor and Industry for a list of Virginia employers cited by the Virginia Occupational Safety and Health program for coronavirus-related violations. DOLI emailed me the list and updated it several times during the months I reported this story.

Taking details on the citations from OSHA’s online search tool, I created a spreadsheet showing the violations, penalties, status and other basic information on each case. I also requested from DOLI the full text, including inspectors’ comments, for the citations against a dozen employers. 

Moreover, I downloaded OSHA’s dataset of complaints against employers nationwide. I pulled out the complaints against Virginia employers, standardized the employer names (to correct misspellings and inconsistencies) with a tool called Open Refine, and added a column showing each employer’s industry sector (using the North American Industry Classification System).

Using Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access, I then summarized the complaints data — to count the number of complaints filed in each state, against each Virginia employer and against employers in each industry sector.

Combined with shoe-leather reporting, I found this compelling picture of the trials and tribulations in the workplace during the COVID pandemic.