Federal safety officials have called for a $2.78 million penalty against the Cintas Corporation, the nation’s largest supplier of uniforms, for violations at its Tulsa plant, where a worker died when he was pulled into a large dryer.

The penalty that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced Thursday evening is more than four times any previous safety penalty leveled against a service-sector company.

In March, the Cintas employee, Eleazar Torres Gomez, 46, died when a conveyer belt in the automated laundry of the Tulsa plant dragged him into an industrial dryer. Workers said Mr. Torres was trapped more than 20 minutes in temperatures that reached 300 degrees.

OSHA found 46 violations at the plant, among them failing to protect employees from being pinned by the conveyer belt, failing to have a proper procedure to shut down equipment when clearing jammed clothing and failing to train workers on how to clear jams.

“Plant management at the Cintas Tulsa laundry facility ignored safety and health rules that could have prevented the death of this employee,” said Edwin G. Foulke Jr., the assistant secretary of labor in charge of OSHA.

Cintas issued a statement yesterday saying that it was cooperating with OSHA and that “much of what the inspectors found was in compliance, reflecting our longstanding commitments to workplace safety.”

The company’s chairman, Scott Farmer, said, “We have purposely created strong policies and procedures, demonstrated by a safety record that is 20 to 30 percent better than comparably sized laundry facilities.”

Mr. Farmer said Cintas disagreed with OSHA’s findings and planned to present evidence to the agency that could lead to its reducing the fines.

Based in Cincinnati, Cintas has more than 400 plants and employs more than 34,000 people.

Days after Mr. Torres died, Cintas issued a statement, largely blaming him for the accident, saying he had violated safety rules by climbing on top of a conveyor to dislodge jammed clothing.

After Mr. Torres died, five members of Congress and leaders of Unite Here, a union representing laundry workers, urged OSHA to investigate Cintas.

One of those lawmakers, Representative Phil Hare, Democrat of Illinois, said yesterday, “OSHA’s findings prove that Cintas inaction led to the death of Mr. Torres Gomez despite the company’s ridiculous allegations that he tried to commit suicide or was too stupid to operate the machinery.”

For four years, Unite Here and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters have sought to unionize Cintas workers, but they have made little headway, blaming the company’s strong fight against unionization.

“Cintas has a shameful pattern of illegally endangering workers’ lives,” said Bruce Raynor, president of Unite Here. “Even after this tragedy, Cintas workers say they continue to work in the same deadly conditions.”

Also on Thursday, OSHA announced fines totaling $117,000 against a Cintas plant in Columbus, Ohio, saying it had found five repeat violations and two others.