Dollar Tree Reaches Wide-Ranging Safety Settlement With OSHA

One of the nation’s largest retailers, Dollar Tree Inc., has reached an agreement with the federal government to improve working and safety conditions at thousands of US stores.

As part of the settlement, Dollar Tree, which also operates Family Dollar stores, agreed to pay $1.35 million to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and make numerous business practice changes requested by the agency.

The company’s violations include blocked aisles, hazardous work areas, unsafe stacking of boxes, blocked electrical panels, and blocked fire extinguishers, agency officials said in a press briefing held in advance of Wednesday’s settlement announcement.

OSHA will close most of its open cases against the retailer and allow Dollar Tree in the future to have the opportunity to correct some store safety issues before the agency launches an inspection.

Dollar Tree has been fined $13.1 million since 2018 for violations found during 360 inspections, according to OSHA.

The fines were so high because when multiple stores were cited for the same violation, the violations were classified as repeat. The repeat designation meant proposed fines could be escalated to 10 times the amount of a serious violation—up to $156,259 for one repeat violation.

The company operates 16,419 stores in the US and Canada, according to its 2022 annual report. Net sales for 2022 were $28.3 billion.

Fix ‘Root Causes’

Doug Parker, the assistant secretary of labor for OSHA, said the settlement aims to fix the “root causes” of the most common violations the agency found at the stores.

To resolve the problems, Department of Labor Solicitor Seema Nanda said Dollar Tree agreed to increase its safety staff, monitor whether stores complied with OSHA rules, enact engineering controls, and improve business practices.

For example, Parker said, Dollar Tree might reschedule deliveries to ensure storerooms aren’t overcrowded at retail locations with high sales volume but little storage space.

Dollar Tree will also open a 24-hour hotline for employees to raise safety concerns and have workers participate in a committee seeking to solve the safety concerns.

The agreement, which runs until August 2025, doesn’t call for Dollar Tree to increase staffing at its stores.

Parker acknowledged this wasn’t OSHA’s first corporate-wide settlement with Dollar Tree. In 2015, the agency signed a settlement that expired in 2018.

Although Dollar Tree adhered to the settlement, the agreement didn’t lead to systematic changes to correct common safety problems, Nanda said.

Dollar Tree “needs to modify practices that have not worked in the past,” she said.

The agreement won’t lead to immediate changes at every Dollar Tree or Family Dollar store.

However, if OSHA receives a complaint about storage and overcrowding issues, instead of first sending an inspector, the agency will notify the company of the problem and give the retailer 48 hours to explain how it is responding.

If OSHA believes Dollar Tree isn’t fixing the problem, the retailer faces a potential fine of up to $100,000 a day for five days and an inspection that could result in more penalties.

A Dollar Tree competitor, Dollar General Corp., also faces millions of dollars in proposed OSHA fines for stores overfilled with merchandise.

Nanda said the department is in “active discussions with Dollar General,” but she couldn’t discuss specifics.