A 37-year-old worker known as Lalo says he asked for a safety harness before climbing onto a roof for a job overseen by Ujitha “AJ” Perera. According to an investigation by The Sacramento Bee, Perera told him to buy one himself.

Lalo fell and suffered injuries that continue to cause back pain. He returned to the roof later that day. Perera was working for Cal/OSHA when Lalo fell and continues to lead its Santa Ana district office, which investigates workplace safety hazards.

The investigation found that Perera ran construction and real estate businesses while working for the state, and those businesses did not appear on the conflict-of-interest forms he filed. Lalo and another worker, Jacki Rice, said they traveled from California to work on Perera’s Ohio properties, where work was allegedly done without permits.

Rice described working for Perera without receiving the pay she said she was promised, and both she and Lalo recounted allegations of abuse. Records also show that Perera used his state email and office equipment for matters related to his private business. California law restricts state employees from using public resources for private gain, though limited incidental personal use is allowed. 

The allegations raise questions about Perera’s work as a safety official as well as his outside activities. The Bee found that a number of investigations of life-threatening injuries overseen by Perera ended without interviews of the injured workers or citations, an all-too-common theme at Cal/OSHA. Perera and the Department of Industrial Relations did not respond to the publication’s specific questions about the allegations, as he remains in charge of the Santa Ana district office, which oversees a staff of 15 and handles as many as 600 worker-safety cases each year.

The Department of Industrial Relations said it takes allegations of misconduct seriously and reviews them through appropriate processes. For workers and the public, the case raises serious questions of whether the officials entrusted with enforcing safety rules are held to those same standards. How can workers trust Cal/OSHA to carry out its mission when one of its leaders is accused of disregarding the very safety rules the agency is charged with enforcing?

Cal/OSHA must be staffed with individuals fully committed to safeguarding the state's 18 million workers.

This opinion by the California Applicants' Attorneys Association communications team is republished, with permission, from the CAAA website.