LABOR — WAL-MART SPENDING MILLIONS TO BLOCK $7,000 FINE THAT COULD BRING NEW REGULATIONS: Hoping to avoid potential new regulations, Wal-Mart is spending “millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours” to combat a small, $7,000 fine from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) which was assessed after a Long Island employee was trampled to death by a crowd of shoppers. The company is arguing, according to the New York Times, “that the government is improperly trying to define ‘crowd trampling’ as an occupational hazard that retailers must take action to prevent.” Despite that claim, Wal-Mart, “seeking to avoid criminal charges,” has established new crowd-control policies nationwide. But the company is fighting hard to avoid the fine, which “has mystified and even angered some federal officials.” “In contesting the penalty, Wal-Mart has filed 20 motions and responses totaling nearly 400 pages and has spent at least $2 million on legal fees, according to OSHA’s calculations.” A spokesman for the company said, “OSHA wants to hold Wal-Mart accountable for a standard that was neither proposed nor issued at the time of the incident. The citation has far-reaching implications for the retail industry that could subject retailers to unfairly harsh penalties and restrictions on future sales promotions.” This is yet another step in Wal-Mart’s on-going battle against workers’ rights. The Wonk Room’s Pat Garofalo notes, “I’d like to think that a regulation along the lines of ‘don’t let crowds run through your store and trample your employees to death’ would be fairly uncontroversial.” He concludes, “Safety regulations are put in place to, among many things, protect workers from the sort of corner-cutting that makes a company’s bottom line look better. … [I]t’d be nice if every proposed regulation weren’t treated as an assault on capitalism itself by the Big Business community.”