I discovered about 5 homemade devices attached to a piece of equipment that use ground rather than neutral as their return path. The control circuit runs a couple of 120 V relays and valves. It switches 208V to a 1KW heater as well. The control circuit is not fused because the wire will melt first before the heater breaker will blow.

This is a safety hazard, but management in our department won't fix it because:

1) It's worked fine for 20+ years
2) I can't find a reference where it's bad
3) What can happen

Each piece of equipment is fed from a 50-60 AMP 4 wire service.

This same system may or may not shut down the heater if a phase is lost. You would lose about a week of time if it happened and everything was just right.

It's a large organization with a dept of occ health and safety and an electrical shop etc.

Any suggestions to get them to comply?

Explain to them the amount of the OSHA fine for the violation, the possible money in workers comp for injured workers.

But I will be honest, many large corporations, often perfer to take a risk than pay to fix things properly. One large company I worked for had to get about a 5 million dollar fine before they would fix things and follow proper rules. ( they ended up settling for 1 million to be paid over 5 years)

Fr Chuck is correct. OSHA is the one agency to be concerned with. You can contact them without any fear of being identified. I just had a meeting/training session with an OSHA rep recently.

They have been very lucky for 20 years, so have the workers. I wonder what management will do if someone gets shocked and is withering in convulsions on the floor someday!

Read Article 250 Grounding of the NEC and you will find several references as to why equipment grounds cannot be used as a return. Also, read Article 430 Motors for reference to fusing control circuits.

And the first violation on the home made stuff is addressed by Section 110.2, all equipment in use shall be approved, this means built and tested by a third party testing firm, such as Underwriters Laboratories.

OSHA will refer to or copy NEC, and several other codes, to the letter, in addition to adding their own verbage.

Neutral conductor is to be considered as current carrying. So using an equipment ground is sending current thruout the entire grounding system, working it's way back to the utility transformer. This can affect not only the person working on the unit with the home made stuff, but someone at the other end of the building, if conditions are just right, or wrong I should say.

Even though a worker is covered under workers comp to protect the employer, if an accident happens, and the OSHA determines that the violation is found to be willful with knowledge that the violation existed, the injured employee, or the survivors, as may be the case in a fatal accident, can sue the employer.

This is crazy, almost every company I encounter, small to large, is so concerned with safety, and trying to eliminate workplace accidents, due to OSHA fines, worker comp costs, and law suits, I don't understand where your company is coming from. Quite frankly, it has been a real pain in the butt last few years trying to do work for some companies, due to safety policies and procedures.

We wired a distribution center for a large retailer, let's just say Big Blue, and we were required to have two safety coordinators, on site, on our payroll, monitoring all of our workers. Even if there was a pin prick that drew blood, the worker HAD TO visit the hospital. We buy so many hardhats, safety glasses, gloves, hearing protection, fall restraint harnesses, etc, it is not funny. I am not complaining, just getting so hard to be competitive, customers complain about the cost of getting something done.

If OSHA finds a serious fault in the wiring, that is ignored, they could contact the local or state electrical inspector, and have the main switch to the building shut down and locked off, shutting their business down. How is that for a fine!

If they ignore this condition, and you are truly concerned, a call to OSHA will not jeopardize your job by being identified. Even if it did, so what? Who wants to work for a company that has so little regard for human life?