LOS ANGELES (October 9, 2013)3Ž4In response to workplace safety complaints over the lack of condom use in adult films produced by California adult film production companies, AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), AHF has learned that Cal/OSHA (California’s Department of Industrial Relations, Division of Occupational Safety and Health), recently issued multiple workplace safety citations and fines to San Francisco-based Factory Video, an adult film company that primarily produces gay bareback, or condom-less, adult films. Factory was fined close to $60,000 for numerous occupational safety and health complaints, which were filed by AHF over the past two years.
Factory now joins a growing list of California porn companies cited and fined by California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA), the state’s health and safety regulatory and watchdog organization for failing to follow workplace safety regulations. Other adult film companies recently cited include Larry Flynt’s Hustler Video (LFP Video Group LLC), cited and fined in March 2011; and Streamray Studios Inc., cited and fined $27,000 in January 2013.
“I am very pleased to see that Cal/OSHA is really starting to step up its enforcement of existing California health and safety statutes that have long required the use of condoms in adult films produced anywhere in California,” said Michael Weinstein President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation. “All workers deserve a safe workplace, including those primarily young, often powerless people working as performers in the adult film industry. To OSHA, I say ‘thank you’ and advise those porn industry producers who continue to ignore and break the law that we intend to continue to file similar workplace safety complaints.”
Five of the citations Factory received were classified ‘Serious’ by Cal OSHA (others were classified as ‘General’ or ‘Regulatory’ and also resulted in fines). Of these five Serious citations, three resulted in $9,000 fines apiece including one for failure to maintain an Exposure Control Plan; a second, for failure to observe and practice Universal Precautions for possible contact with, or exposure to, blood or Other Potentially Infectious Materials (OPIM); and lastly, for failing to use engineering and work practice controls to eliminate or minimize employee exposure to “…minimize splashing, spraying, spattering, and generation of droplets of… blood or Other Potentially Infectious Materials (OPIM).”