Many see workers' compensation as a program designed to help workers injured on the job. But it is a program with some glaring gaps.

Minnesota Senator John Marty is trying to close those gaps and make employers more accountable for willful workplace safety violations.

Maximum penalties in this country for corporations that deliberately scam investors or pollute - are far greater than what a company would face if they willfully violate safety rules resulting in the death of a worker.

Federally, it's not even a felony.

In Minnesota, only one worker's comp case was ever charged as a crime. The employer pled to a lesser-charge and paid a $3,000 fine.

Companies are protected in civil court too. Families of those killed by companies violating safety rules cannot bring a case in court.

A bill before the state legislature this year would change that.

More than 300 people were killed or seriously injured on the job in Minnesota over the last five years. In the vast majority of those cases, employers were found to be breaking the safety rules designed to protect the worker.

Most commonly, the workers were crushed to death in accidents that weren't all that "innocent."

There were 175 survivors - suffering burns, amputations, electrical shock and other horrible injuries.

It sounds like torture. The truth is the injuries and deaths are often gruesome. They're also, often preventable.

Some in our state legislature think there ought to be greater incentive for employers to follow the law.

This story is about why.

Jeff Steffenhagen is a reason.
The 33-year-old father of three was a hard-worker. His sister called him a "likeable guy" with a lot of friends.

His job at Mid-America Dairy in Zumbrota, in 1995, was to force giant blocks of cheese through an enormous grater that was seven feet square. It was a dangerous job, which his employer made more dangerous, by violating the federal safety rules designed to protect him. They removed the safety shield so he could push more cheese through - faster. He was working alone over top of the grater the day he fell through.

It's something his sister still doesn't want to talk about.

"It gives me nightmares," she said.

There was nothing left of Jeff Steffenhagen.

Another example:
Patrick Randel, 19, was working his way through college with a road crew from Buffalo Bituminous when he was sent into a manhole where there was no oxygen. He didn't last long.

Again, there are federal rules in place to keep this from happening, but the company wasn't following them.

His mother acknowledges, "They didn't try to kill my son. I know that, but he's dead. And it's because of their not following through on the safety codes and the OSHA regulations."

Like most mom's, Margaret wanted to make the company pay.

She told herself she could keep this from happening to someone else's child.

Her attorney, Ray Peterson, explained to her that she could not. "If you pointed out the limitations in workers compensation and point out this extraordinary protection employers get in these specific circumstances to most people on the street they'd think you were lying," Peterson said.

Circumstances by and large don't matter.

Even if a company flat-out violates OSHA regulations, there is no consequence beyond insurance payments and what's often a small fine by OSHA.

The company remains otherwise unaccountable to survivors.

Cheyenne's Story:
In Bemidji, Audrey Thayer still cannot believe it. She can't believe the law.

She can't believe the privilege it gives to companies.

And she can't believe her favorite photo of her little boy, Cheyenne, in full native dress at the age of nine, would turn out to be a picture of him at middle age.

"He's an example of businesses that fail to protect the worker, fail to protect human life," she said. "They violated the law."

Cheyenne and his brother Charlie were temporary laborers on the job of an industrial tear-down on the shores of Lake Bemidji. The first day of work in the summer of 2003, Cheyenne, without any of the required safety equipment, fell more than 25-feet to his death. His younger brother Charlie was the first one to his side.

"Immediately I just started praying in my brother's ear," he said. "I just kept telling him to hang on that I was there."

Cheyenne died that day. One life gone, leaving so many others in shambles. They buried him in a traditional Indian grave on the White Earth Reservation.

Despite OSHA regulations requiring simple things like a harness, Cheyenne Devlin died because his employer, Hanson Manufacturing of Lancaster, in northwestern Minnesota, disregarded that.

The OSHA fine, about $30,000 - the accountability, lacking.

"Those people need something awful to happen to them," Cheyenne's mother said. "I sometimes think about that, where is the justice?"

Roofing accidents among most common

Then there's the story of Nolan Keane:
He went through a roof on a California job site while working for a Minnesota company, Single-Ply Systems. It was two weeks to the day after his brother went thru the same roof on the same job and survived.

In an email to KARE 11 news, Single-Ply Systems called Nolan's death 'tragic' and 'regretted.' But they said 'the company believes the accident did not result from (their) safety practices."

Still, California's OSHA investigators slapped the company with three safety violations, two of them 'willful,' which CAL/OSHA tells us are the 'most egregious' citations they can issue.

Nolan's mother says "It's like a huge cement wall that just circles these employers. Like they're in a castle, inside these big walls and you cannot get to them. So what we have to do is make a hole in the wall."

For Liz Lambrecht, Nolan's mother, this has become a mission. She quit her job as a banker. She's about to graduate from law school with the singular focus of changing state law.

"By going to law school and changing the laws and helping others, hopefully as a lawyer, I can hope this doesn't happen to anybody else," she says.

She has found an ally in Minnesota senator John Marty.

Marty says, "If you kill someone with a gun you're going to serve your life in prison or at least a long period of time. If you kill someone by breaking worker safety laws you might get a fine of $40,000 and that's a high fine."

Marty is proposing a new law that would make employers prone to lawsuits if they violate safety rules resulting in the serious injury or death of their workers.

He's tried it before. But he keeps failing, largely because the business lobby, namely the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, keeps shutting him down.

They say Minnesota is not unique.

The Chamber maintains the existing law is part of a historic deal - a grand compromise at the turn of the last century. Workers are guaranteed benefits if they're hurt or killed on the job regardless of who's to blame. In return, workers' compensation is the exclusive remedy under the law.

Tom Hesse, vice president of governmental affairs at the Chamber, says, "the exclusive remedy is a critical part of Minnesota's workers' comp law and every other state's system and we just don't think it should be changed."

In this legislative session, the business lobby will argue employers should not be held accountable in civil court even when they "willfully" violate OSHA rules and a worker dies as a result.

They say that would destroy the no-fault workers' comp system which comes with its own courts designed to pay everybody something and keep liability limited. The alternative, they say, is that workers' comp goes away altogether. And workers would be hurt in the end.

The way it works right now, the only time you can go after your employer in civil court in Minnesota, is if you can prove they intended to kill or seriously injure you. The survivors we're talking to say that's not enough.

They want to go after the companies in court if they can prove the company willfully violated the safety laws designed to protect you.

Workers are already being kicked out of the system. It doesn't happen often. But if the employee violates certain company rules, they can be left with nothing. It's only fair they say that if company violates safety rules and you're seriously hurt or killed you should be able to sue.

The employer's perspective is clear - and the perspective of countless mothers, brothers, and sisters is becoming clearer. These survivors are pushing for something more.

Their heavy hearts have found hyper focus.

As Senator Marty puts it, "I'm just saying if you break the law, you should suffer.

John Marty's bill is ambitious, there's nothing like it in America.

In fact, several states don't even exempt intentional acts of murder by the employer from workers' comp law.

Minnesota does.

And now, some final notes.In the case of the man who went into the cheese grater, his family did sue. They lost the case in court but the company did make a payout during the appeals process.