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Future of workplace safety
- Thread starter MadMitch
- Start date
buckfever
Senior Member
I remember watching a show on the History channel once about the Panama canal. One of the experts on the construction history of the canal said that with today's regulations that it could never be done. That should be a major wakup call to everyone. A improvement in transportation that save the world billions of dollars could never be reproduced because of government. Like I was once told " if you can get what you want at a reasonable price, government is involved"
6shooter
Member
Safety safety safety! Anything from a 6' tall man wearing fall protection with a 4' tether on a 6' tall ladder to being told we weren't allowed to have an open pocket knife in our hand without wearing cut resistant Kevlar gloves and sleeves is the exact reason I got away from the mining industry and all of MSHA's bull$hit regulations. We had one location get fined because the scale house lady didn't have a cover on the recyclable paper bin below the copier (fire hazard according to the inspector) and one guy got 3 days off because the chain for an oxygen tank wasn't in place after changing tanks (possible fatality, highly likely, few thousand $ fine). It's ridiculous, and I hate it. All I can think about when I see pictures and videos of the heavy equipment industry from 50 or 60 years ago is "damn, I'll bet it was so much easier to just do your job and survive as long as you're not an idiot." Wish I was around back then!
Nige
Senior Member
Back in the day Darwin's Theory of Evolution soon weeded out the idiots, and in those days it did not result in the creation of a better class of idiot like it does today.
Those projects also wouldn't make it pass the environmental, archeological and cultural studies that are required for such projects now a days.
If green leftists had been around from the beginning we wouldn't have been allowed to have fire or mud huts.
Jumbo
Senior Member
After perusing the thread for a few months, my observations:
1) Welcome to corporate contracting!
2) Most of what I see here is a result of a corporate lawyer who needs to make work for himself.
3) OSHA, MSHA have some foolish rules, many derived form corporate lawyers.
4) The corporate lawyers “interpret” what all the regulatory people say and do a wonderful job of screwing things up by putting their spin on things.
I have a friend with a gravel pit; he has only been tagged twice in the last 20 years, both times for berms at the edge of the pit being either too low or too close. Both times he was told to fix the problem and by the time the inspector got back, at the end of his tour, the issue was repaired and no fine. I believe the East and Midwest have more problems with inspectors than the West does on a general basis. Most of the state and federal safety people I meet never went to college for safety; they just worked the job and understood safety.
Every encounter I have had with a safety idiot involved someone quoting the “rule” without any knowledge of the rule. When asked to show the chapter and verse they cannot. The best way to cure the problems is to do away with corporate contracting, go back to the one man and his company, who stood by his word, load all the lawyers and corporate safety weasels in an old rock pit and backfill it.
I do have strong feelings about workplace safety, as I started my working life, in the late 60’s we were killing 6-8 men a month in the woods in Washington. Construction when I started in the mid 70’s was killing a man for every 9 million dollars of work. OSHA and all the other regulatory agencies brought that down. Unfortunately, Darwin’s rule did not always get the dumb one. I once watched a dumb laborer open a 1-yard bucket of concrete on a good man, he never worked again. OSHA is fun to ridicule, (and I do) but there are some good people out there that retired uninjured due to OSHA.
1) Welcome to corporate contracting!
2) Most of what I see here is a result of a corporate lawyer who needs to make work for himself.
3) OSHA, MSHA have some foolish rules, many derived form corporate lawyers.
4) The corporate lawyers “interpret” what all the regulatory people say and do a wonderful job of screwing things up by putting their spin on things.
I have a friend with a gravel pit; he has only been tagged twice in the last 20 years, both times for berms at the edge of the pit being either too low or too close. Both times he was told to fix the problem and by the time the inspector got back, at the end of his tour, the issue was repaired and no fine. I believe the East and Midwest have more problems with inspectors than the West does on a general basis. Most of the state and federal safety people I meet never went to college for safety; they just worked the job and understood safety.
Every encounter I have had with a safety idiot involved someone quoting the “rule” without any knowledge of the rule. When asked to show the chapter and verse they cannot. The best way to cure the problems is to do away with corporate contracting, go back to the one man and his company, who stood by his word, load all the lawyers and corporate safety weasels in an old rock pit and backfill it.
I do have strong feelings about workplace safety, as I started my working life, in the late 60’s we were killing 6-8 men a month in the woods in Washington. Construction when I started in the mid 70’s was killing a man for every 9 million dollars of work. OSHA and all the other regulatory agencies brought that down. Unfortunately, Darwin’s rule did not always get the dumb one. I once watched a dumb laborer open a 1-yard bucket of concrete on a good man, he never worked again. OSHA is fun to ridicule, (and I do) but there are some good people out there that retired uninjured due to OSHA.
That don't work. The military in the 80's started a zero accident program for everything except airborne ops and combat. I was on tanks. It was to the point by 96 that if someone was injured on a tank crew they read the tank commander his rights before they even started and accident investigation. Not only was I a tank commander but also a Platoon SGT at the time. I never did understand that. Operating a tank, both for maneuver training and on a firing range is a dangerous job. You are not going to have zero accidents. I also had as an additional duty accident investigations and unit safety NCO. I had to give the commander a seasonal safety summery sheet for the weekly week end safety briefings. Don't drink and drive. Don't drink and swim. Don't have unprotected sex. We even had classes on how to correctly roll on a condom. 63 men sitting in a class room with bananas and condoms. Now that was funny. During one of these classes I ask the company commander if he knew how many digits were in a serial number on a condom. When he told me he didn't know I said "guess you never had to roll one down that far". But every time OSHA came up with a new rule the first folks to implement it was government workers and the military. The Air Force by 2001 had to have a not only someone making an environmental impact statement for a fuel spill but also had to have a Nuclear/Bio/Chem person standing by during cleanup. My daughter was a NBC specialist in the Air Force back then. So serving now in a non combat area isn't as fun as it once was.
Rick
ValleyFirewood
Senior Member
Nodding my head the whole time I read that Rick.
One that got me was the ladder program. In order to "by the books" have a ladder it was damn near an act of congress. Training program, forms for the ladder and inspections on it, fall protection, harnesses, warning labels all over, ladders in a locked area and only able to be used by trained people, etc, etc.
Shop chief got fed up with the b/s and threw the couple ladder we had in the dumpster.. Problem solved in his mind, but now we don't have any ladders. Kinda nice to use when washing trucks, changing light bulbs, whatever. There was 3-6ft tall stepladders.
I walk in the office one day and a few A1Cs are changing some light bulbs. Have 2 coffee tables stacked one on each other, and then an office chair on top of that. You now the kind with wheels, swivel, etc. 2 guys holding the chair on the table and a guy standing on the arms of the chair to get the bulbs out.
So by making it completely stupid to have a ladder instead you have crap like that going on.
We were not allowed to back up a vehicle without having a spotter outside. Parking lot had easily 300-400 ft clearance behind the trucks, didn't matter. Throw it in reverse and someone better be outside signaling.
You know how well that works when snowplowing?!
One that got me was the ladder program. In order to "by the books" have a ladder it was damn near an act of congress. Training program, forms for the ladder and inspections on it, fall protection, harnesses, warning labels all over, ladders in a locked area and only able to be used by trained people, etc, etc.
Shop chief got fed up with the b/s and threw the couple ladder we had in the dumpster.. Problem solved in his mind, but now we don't have any ladders. Kinda nice to use when washing trucks, changing light bulbs, whatever. There was 3-6ft tall stepladders.
I walk in the office one day and a few A1Cs are changing some light bulbs. Have 2 coffee tables stacked one on each other, and then an office chair on top of that. You now the kind with wheels, swivel, etc. 2 guys holding the chair on the table and a guy standing on the arms of the chair to get the bulbs out.
So by making it completely stupid to have a ladder instead you have crap like that going on.
We were not allowed to back up a vehicle without having a spotter outside. Parking lot had easily 300-400 ft clearance behind the trucks, didn't matter. Throw it in reverse and someone better be outside signaling.
You know how well that works when snowplowing?!
kshansen
Senior Member
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2012
- Messages
- 11,157
- Location
- Central New York, USA
- Occupation
- Retired Mechanic in Stone Quarry
LOL safety things got so bad in the Army that by 85/85 us NCO's were saying, "This is a government operation. Simple problems REQUIRE complex solutions, SIMPLE SOLUTIONS WILL NOT BE TOLERATED". Unfortunately there is more truth in that statement that joke.
Rick
MadMitch
Active Member
Hey guys. Long time since I've updated this status but I thought this was rather funny. I'm sure many of you can relate
