Hey guys. Am I the only one around that thinks workplace safety is getting beyond ridiculous. I currently work on the railways in AUS operating plant and labouring and ever new job I go to seems to have these stupid new safety rules. Things that are actually becoming a hazard themselves and slowing the job down. Now I'm not talking about saftey devices that actually protect people, but the ones that are dreamed up by the uni or grad students in offices pushing pens all day trying to make a "zero incident" environment. My opinion is that half of those people haven't even worked on a worksite let alone don some work Boots. What are your thoughts ?
We have a new company policy that all vehicles must have wheel chocks in front and in back of one wheel when parked. This is even if parked on level ground with parking brake on and dozer blade or loader bucket on ground. The thing that really gets me about this is they don't care if the chocks in any way could hold the machine from moving. You know those rubber triangle chocks that are maybe 8 inches on a side? You can imagine how effective they are when used on a Cat 988H or 769D haul truck or a D7 dozer. But that keeps the white shirts happy! And this does not even talk about what happens in freezing weather, how are you going to remove them after sitting in the frozen mud all night?
Lot of the time that isn't from the company office, it's from whoever the insurer is. Do this and we will drop your rates. Rick
Hi, totally agree with you, used to work offshore and had a risk assessment in place for not banging your head while getting out of bunk beds! now u can see this type of nonsense creeping into the construction industry ie, you can only wear lace up boots on site for ankle support{no riggers** but u can happily wear wellington boots with absolutely no support, as you say 95% of this type of these rules are made up by people who have no experience.
Yair . . . I worked in an era before the safety Gestapo ruled in work places. I always took safety very seriously and never had a major accident on a jobsite. We are all human and accidents will happen but incidents can be minimised by a few basic rules, conditioning, and a bit of common sense. I believe the most potentially dangerous job I did was long distance trucking. This was before the era of JIT ordering and I was the one who decided when to pull up and roll the swag out under the trailer and get a bit of kip . . . the truck owner or the owners of the freight had no say and that's the way it should be. If a driver is tired, he/she is tired and if a bit of bloody freight is a few hours late into the depot bad luck. On a different note I copped a well meaning lecture from a well meaning brainwashed young boilermaker a couple of years back . . . he took issue with the four-inch grinders on my work bench and pointed out they would not be allowed on any work-site without the wheel guards. Apparently he had never used a little grinder bare wheel and was unaware as to how much more versatile the little machines were when you ditch the guard . . . I have been using them that way for over fifty years and I'm not about to change on my home turf. Yes, things can bite but hey that's life, no amount of Nanny State rules can cover all the risks. Cheers
Exactly ! Most of our chosen professions are danerous and that's the end. We have a thing called mission zero. Have to attend a day induction lecture on how important saftey is etc which is fine and all good because some of the stuff is really useful. When it comes to things like wheel chocks we have similar issues. One of our problems is on the rail we are operating our machines and working in close vicinity of each other. Sometimes less than 10m so we need to be in constant communication with each other to ensure we don't have a accident. Know the students in the white suits and ties think that we would all be far safer if we had a plant co-ordernator. Great idea. Except now we aren't allowed to talk directly to each operator because it is unsafe. Where is the logic ? We have to ask the plant co to relay the message and so on. These mission zero guys are doings pretty much everything except wrap us up in bubble wrap to keep us safe. Some sites we even have to wear hard hats, saftey glasses and gloves while operating a machine and doing paperwork ! Where's the end ? When can we do our job the most efficient and safely without having some power happy suit and tie breathing down our neck telling us what we can and can't do....
Ohhh do not get me started on this subject. I get so tired of this safety stuff. Now I am not stupid and I know there is a reason for safety but it is getting extremely ridiculous. It’s almost impossible for small companies to afford all the different safety training and safety devices you have to have. I really think this safety stuff is becoming almost a scam for people to make money. Let me explain what I mean. Where I work you have to be certified by some safety organization to work for company "A". Then you want to go do some work for company "B" and they only allow contractors who work for them be certified by another safety organization. Now you have to go get all your employees certified by this other safety organization. Now you get to the jobsite. Every piece of lifting equipment you have has to have a lifting capacity tag on it that is readable. Every time one of this tags get torn up you have to get another lifting device, even though you have an identical lifting device with the tag on it. On top of this every piece of lifting equipment you have has to be engineered certified, no matter how much weight you are lifting or the fact that there isn't anything out there that is premade to lift what you have the way it needs to be lifted. Now you have been certified by your safety organizations but the pipeline you are working on is a DOT pipeline, now you have to fly someone out to where you live or take all your employees to the closest certifying person which is pretty far away for us. Well this one won't be cheap just like every other type of certification. Now we are DOT certified but we have to get our operators certified on cranes, manlifts, forklift and whatever else. Now we have to do the monthly and yearly safety stuff. Also have to do all the drug testing. Now we have to have fit check and respiratory check (whatever this is called) to use berating equipment is H2S environment. Ok now we got all that done but wait not done yet. Our certification for crane operator isn't good for the other company now we have to go get certified by another crane operator certifying organization. Ok now our cane has to be inspected, then the boom broken down every five years and inspected. All the fire extinguisher has to be inspected. Have to have personal H2S monitors for everyone and FR clothing. Have to keep records of all repairs on on-road equipment for DOT, plus yearly physical. Plus have to keep records for repairs on all equipment for OSHA. Now you can hardly pull a trailer on a pickup without having a CDL and the truck under all DOT regs. Wow, now we got all that done and guess what it’s been a year and it’s time to do all the recertification stuff. On top of this everything that you have to buy that is safety related is outrageously expensive. Like I said I'm not stupid, I know some of this stuff is necessary but the problem is it is no longer about safety it is about people trying to make money. I think originally all the safety certifications and safety devices were about safety but now it’s more about making money. The last thing I have to say is these safety analysis when an accident happens. These too I think were originally formed for a good purpose but now it is a way to put the blame on someone and have deniability that it was not the companies fault, heaven forbid that an accident was just an accident. The mindset that accidents don’t happen is ludicrous. Accidents do happen but I do believe they can be minimized just never eliminated. I also agree that sometimes all of the safety regulations and safety equipment can cause accidents because people get more worried about following proper safety protocols than actually paying attention to what they are doing. Sorry to keep rambling but this is one of the topics that get me going.
Briscos, I'm 100% with you on that. Don't be sorry that's why I stated this thread. Give us a place to vent it out. I do agree it is more of a money making scheme. In my opinion, saftey inspections should be carried out by veteran or at least an operator that understands how the job actually gets done and how the machines operate. These students straight out of a university or saftey course wouldn't know the difference between a quick hitch or a manual hitch. (In short no idea about anything to do with the machinery or the job) so how is it they can decide on all of the rules and regs that we have to work by. What also bugs me is these big companies puttin pressure on us sub contractors to keep up the safe working style which takes a lot of time to carry out but still putting the pressure on us to get the job carried out as quickly as possible. Yet when we do everything according to code, they complain that the job is taking far to long. For example at the moment on rail, the excavators need to Stop completely with buckets/attachments on the ground when any labourer or on foot personell sets foot within the danger zone. Now that doesn't sound so bad ? What radius would you guess the "danger zone" would be ? It's sure isint the capable swing of the machine. It's almost 3x that. Now everytime someone comes close the whole fleet of machines on the job have to stop dead. This is taking up hours out of a day where the machines and person could work together safely. Now the company is complaining that we are holding up the job ! What do we do. It seems like you can't win ! Abit of common sense wouldn't hurt some people. It seems like if you have a near miss or minor incident, you get treated worse than a bloke that commits murder!
I all ways wonder how long it would take to build the Interstate system and projects like the hoover dam with todays rules and regs and lacking workforce. no cabs cable blade straight drive no brakes no gps the real meaning of get err done
If the sum total of all the workers are competent perhaps less rules would be required. One of the labor vendors saved their company from huge losses by applying a 40 question test multiple choice test about 'attitude' and 'how to react to others such as managers/foremen'....not one question about guards, ladder safety, etc. Those who failed the test were listed as ineligible for rehire for one year....they were amazed how their claims fell to a minimal level. The question is: should we encourage industry to lower the bar to include lesser qualified folks and protect them from others and themselves, or should we look into some stringency on hiring as a preventive measure? It seems unwise to adversely affect the production of experienced workers with procedures that are overly directed at assuring inexperienced workers safety.
I agree competent workers are helpful but I don't think that is going to help as far as rules are concerned. I think the rules and regulations are here to stay and are only going to get worst. That was the point I was making earlier, the rules and regulations are not to offset incompetent workers, they are there so companies are not liable if an employee gets hurt and so safety companies or safety people can make money. I’m not saying that all companies are trying to get out of being liable for injuries but many are. Last year we had an employee get injured and it was a lost time accident. We were sub-contracting for another company here and we do a lot of sub-contract work for them. The employee got his finger smashed between two pipe flanges and had to have surgery. The initial finding was the employee was not wearing gloves and this was the cause for him having to have surgery, they were saying if he would of had gloves on the injury would have been less severe maybe even prevented. They pushed our company hard to do something about it and were saying the accident was our companies fault because we did not make him wear his gloves. They did a safety analysis meeting and the only issue there company brought up was about our employee not having gloves on. Well, there employee was the one overseeing the job and was also the one operating the truck mounted crane. He was lifting the pipe that was stuck and had quite a bit of pressure on it when it broke loose. Luckily our boss brought this up and pushed the issue. Finally they did say it was there companies fault because there guy was over the job and was responsible for the guys working for him. He also had no training or any kind of certification to operate the crane, which was overlooked till brought up by us. There employee did not suffer any consequence from this, nor did their company implement any kind of program because of this; like they wanted us to do. They still do not train their employees on crane operation or safety.
Yeah I also agree. Most of these rules have been created to protect the stupid and ones with no common sense. However if they did have a test like the one you mentioned, I could only see the unemployment rate going up a whole lot. That creates even more drama ! Things like wearing gloves isint going to protect you from a lot. Sure it will protect you from some cuts and burns but no glove is going to protect you from a potential crushed hand or broken fingers. Similar to a hard hat. A hard hat isint going to stop an excavator bucket to the chin or side of your head. Sure it might fend off a shovel handle to the noggin but that's about it. And that's if the bloody things stay on your head long enough. If I could see into the future, I would say we will all be dressed up like nfl players wearing scuba gear, and probably wrapped in cotton wool and maybe for the big corporations a bubble like bubble boy. But hey, if I could see into the future I would avoid the potential incident anyway.
Oh trying juggling the differing interpretation of rules between osha/ msha / dot...... grrrrrr!
remember, idiots know how to make it safe for idiots
I love it when safety trainers, take a high and mighty tone, and spout none of you have ever been taught that injuries are acceptable! I laugh and tell them they need to do a hitch on the service!
Battling the idiocy of safety germs is a daily battle in my business. My signature line below was a result of one of my frequent run-ins with the Safety Dept.
Yair . . . Nige . I noted the changed tag line and thought there may be a story. (he grins) Cheers.
What came first? Clothing manufacturers making high visibility clothing and then convincing companies that it was essential to make people wear it? Or Companies deciding that it was essential that people wear high visibility clothing and getting clothing manufacturers to make it? The same could be said for bollards, star picket caps, reflective tape, barrier tape, glove clips, auto retracting knives, VRD welders, etc............ It's a whole industry that feeds itself and in order to keep expanding each new addition must be more ridiculous than the last.
Don't even get me started on Global Warming, sorry, Climate Change ........... Can anyone remember back to 1999 and the "Millenium Bug"..? How many "consultants" made sh1tloads of money out of that..? THe environmental/safety bandwagon is just the same IMHO.....
Maybe it's time this photo got another airing. It looks so like our manager (an ex-Safety germ himself) that they could be brothers ......
Those projects also wouldn't make it pass the environmental, archeological and cultural studies that are required for such projects now a days.
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"
To a certain degree, the lunatics are running the asylum.
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!
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.
If green leftists had been around from the beginning we wouldn't have been allowed to have fire or mud huts.
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.
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
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?!
Not sure if you meant that as a joke but check out this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX_YIr5CkDM
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
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