Dollar General has paid a fraction of the $21 million it owes in fines for hazardous working conditions

• Dollar General has paid less than one-fifth of the $21 million in fines it owes OSHA.
• The retailer has accumulated the fines over several years due to messy and chaotic stores.
• The problem is so bad that OSHA labeled the company a "severe violator" earlier this year.

Dollar General has racked up $21 million in fines over hazardous working environments in its stores. But so far, the company has paid just $4 million of what it owes.

US Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, has hit the retailer with fines since 2017, Retail Dive reported last week. Most of the fines stem from violations of safety regulations, including merchandise stacked in aisles, which creates hazards if a fire or other emergency breaks out and could injure people in the stores.

At some stores, the clutter has gotten so bad that local fire marshals have ordered them to close until they can fix the issue.

In April OSHA added $401,000 to the fines that Dollar General owed after finding that aisles in one of its Florida stores were blocked with merchandise in rolling containers and pieces of shelves.

OSHA has also cited Dollar General for other kinds of incidents. At a store in Minot, North Dakota, federal inspectors found that some employees needed medical treatment after a chemical tank burst last year. OSHA said that Dollar General hadn't given the employees training and personal protective equipment to clean up the chemicals.T he violations were just some of 32 that OSHA found at Dollar General stores in North Dakota last fall. The fines for those violations totaled $2.5 million.

The company's shareholders voted to investigate worker safety issues in May, shortly after OSHA labeled Dollar General a "severe violator" of safety requirements, a designation that the government uses for employers that are "committing willful, repeated, or failure-to-abate violations."

Neither OSHA nor Dollar General immediately responded to Insider's requests for comment.

OSHA has the power to file criminal charges against companies that refuse to pay fines, Lee Marchessault, president of consulting firm Workplace Safety Solution, told Retail Dive. Dollar General's net income for the 2022 fiscal year was about $2.3 billion.

One reason for the clutter, employees told Insider earlier this year, is that the chain has cut worker hours over the last few years. That's left a single employee on shift for hours at a time at many stores. In those cases, workers often default to working the checkout and helping customers, leaving inventory unpacked and sitting it the aisles.

Dollar General is one of the fastest-growing retailers in the US and is about to open its 20,000th store. The chain has often benefited financially during times when consumers are looking for value, such as the latest streak of inflation. But in its latest earnings report, the company said that inflation and more cautious consumers were actually hurting its sales of discretionary purchases, a category that includes toys and home decor.

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