I just read about the guy who got killed in February in MA. The contractor is set to get some heavy fines regarding several times they ignored ditch protocol. It got me thinking about the differences between the construction world and the mining world. My experience in mining is limited to FMC mines in Colorado at Climax and Henderson Shaft. This may be just from this corporation, and not applicable anywhere else, but I did feel a vibe at FMC, particularly in the pit, that there was a certain reverence for those gone before that made our rules the way they are today. Yes some are fairly ridiculous. My favorite is the one about how you can't be more than 2 feet off the ground on a ladder. You have to be on a man lift for that, because you have to tie off, and you can't do that on a step ladder. I broke that one myself a few times. Anyway my point is there was that vibe and generally guys abided by the rules. Generally. In the construction world, particularly residential, I don't feel that vibe at all. I do, to a certain smaller extent at a commercial site, where I'm heading today. But it's certainly significantly less. I'm not really going anywhere with this just wondering if anyone has similar experiences.
I know nothing about mine work but in the construction world, have seen many people that just have never heard of Darwin and were feeling too bulletproof to actually meet him. Some make it to old age, some don’t, the ones that usually do, either found a different line of work or are to broke up to enjoy retirement. I fear i will be in the last!
Mixed with paper education safety people no trade experience. Had one got write up for stepping a cross the trench 18"widex2' deep I was suppose to step down & up I wanted to write her up walking around with her clipboard & phone in her face around the trenchs/equipment. Can't climb on tire of dump gets me but do it a couple inches off site & back up
after i sold my biz, first year...i spent my time watching family feud and judge judy reruns...uh,uh....a aggregate company here was looking for an excavator operator for their 375 CAT to mine the gravel below the water table. i did that 4 years for 4-5 months a year. i've dealt with OSHA quite a bit when i was in biz, but from what i could see from working at that plant, MSHA is a LOT tougher.
I've been through the wars with safety people from both blue collar and management. MSHA surface coal was the worst I've been around. One inspector made me pull all the electrical box face plates to make sure all the ground wires were in place. Another incident we had an operator working second shift made a complaint about adequate lighting and wanted a light plant on his loading area. MSHA brought an official to the work site who spouted all kinds of crap and wrote out multiple thousands in fines. The mine engineer took the matter to an administrative law judge who noted that the official didn't bother to look up the requirements and the engineer pulled the manufacturer's specifications on the lighting on the loader which proved that the machine carried adequate lighting for the intended purpose. I've spent tens of thousands of dollars on guarding for rotating machinery that was sixty foot off the ground and not accessible by anything other than a tall reaching man lift. At the other end are those inspectors that don't know about painted lines on floors, proper storage of parts on shelving, adequate lighting in shops, warehouses and machinery spaces. I don't think the construction industry is any better. Most of those people are only interested in showing power over companies and employees. Even with all that we still end up with trench collapses, falling tower cranes and electrocutions.
A lot of it seems to be a lot of noise and a lot of colourful signs and orange clothes, but really nothing is done about some of the common risky bits. My beef is same as whl 1st post: when doing mechanic work on heavy equipment, no you can't use a ladder, but it's too expensive to have any platform or manlift. Also it's too expensive to move the screen or crusher out of the mud heap it's half buried in, surrounded by gloop. So you end up half hanging on the side of something, slippery boots, maybe standing on the batteries if you're lucky. Trying to undo the usual tight bolts, or pry off a bearing, one slip away from an injury. Rather have a ladder tied off with rope, or a basket on a forklift, but no, not allowed to use them any more. Bleating a bit now, rant over.
LOTO is the big one I see. In the shop (manufacturing) environment, it's followed. What I have read here over the years, is out in the field, or in a repair shop, it's not taken seriously. LOTO needs to be every time, not just sometimes. I agree with the comments about the frivolous inspector write ups & fines. They make it hard to get everyone to follow the main rules, the good rules, the ones that do save lives.
Is this it ? Very sad. Contractor cited for safety violations after fatal Cape Cod trench collapse The U.S. Department of Labor cited Revoli Construction Co. Inc. for willful, repeat and serious safety violations after the trench collapse in Yarmouth, which killed 61-year-old Miguel Reis. www.nbcboston.com That brings back a bad memory for me.
The mines were by far the strictest environments I've ever had to work in, sometimes to the point of stupidity. I worked a bit at a new mine that was being built a few years ago. Talk about safety overload. So many flashing lights, cones, flagging etc. So much of it was pointless. There could be a genset running off in the corner of a laydown, completely out of the way and it'd have flagging tape and cones around it. You could be parked out in laydown with nobody around, no traffic coming through and the safety guy would come by and tell you to cone and flag off your area. Its not like you're working on the side of an active haul road where taking precautions like that is a must. Pretty obvious when you pull into a laydown and see a service truck with flashing lights on it parked next to a machine that there's someone there working on it.
In 2023 there were 898 work zone/flagger fatalities recorded, with some 40,000 injuries reported. Not to take away from the trench tragedy, with the public walking around with their cell phone pace maker, responding to every media influencers thought and in a state of constant news up-roar. The populous as a whole isn't keeping their eye on the ball at work or most any other time. I hate cell phones.
Some of it's good, some bad. You can cone off an area, but if you use caution tape, there has to be a tag saying why it's flagged. One of the guys plowing got stopped on the road from 1 mall to the other. Volvo has a green flashing light on the outside of the cab that flashes when you have your seat belt on. Not legal, even turned off, has to be covered or removed. From now on, a plows that are over the 8 foot 6 have to have overwidth permits. So there are 13 loaders that would be traveling on the road that need over width permits. Money grab
Freightliner hiz seat belt. Safety is money company money get it done. Big blue in Milwaukee was co safety not operator
All the guys on the pipe crews have to have trenching awareness confined space, supposed to have a gas sniffer. I never go in a trench but had to have trenching awareness
No body goes in wanting to lose a buddy watch out for everyone but that 1 guy
I'm a firm believer that safety culture starts with hiring the right people to begin with and not just who's available at the time with the right piece of paper.
Exactly. I've taken the the training twice, have the paper and couldn't give you half the regs.
news recap $4.5 mil in fines way?news.
Totally different industry (TV Remote Broadcasting) but much of the same foolishness. Our corporate safety guy told us right up front that he was not there to help us keep safe, he was there to keep us compliant. The worst was the multi part videos with quizzes built in that took hours teaching us everything we needed to know about ladders, fork lifts, how to call for help (911) and fall safety. The only problem is that some of the information was clearly incorrect and they had no interest in correcting the bad information.
My msha was How's it made TV show 'gold mine' video bs
How true, in most cases company HR is to control company liability, not much to do with human resources. When comes to drivers the back ground check is a yes or no from insurance carrier, all has to do with rates. I had a confined spaces card at one time, I let it expire. I had it for working inside tankers. But before you enter a man hole--you want to know the two on outside know what to do in a emergency, can't have two rookies at the hole, plus never do anything risky while inside to need their help.
Ill never go in a manhole, I hate getting in a skid steer. But I agree. For a long time we only wore hard hats on a city or government job, now it's all the time. Only way I can remember to wear a hard hat is to wear it all the time. Not to fond of the chin strap and I only wear it when I am forced to. I noticed a lot of young people wear hearing protection. My ears ring so loud I think my dog can hear it. Eye protection if I need it, but not all the time, but that will be the next thing they will want all the time. I've never worked in the oil patch but im told if there is an accident, that they shut down the whole site. Our company spends a fortune on training and ppe. I tend to think it's not because they want to but are forced to.
I have done lots of confined space entries (water and sewer) and haven’t been involved in any incidents. That being said, the company had 2 serious injuries that come to mind over the 33 yrs I was there. Both were as a result of things breaking due corrosion and both were life altering for the individuals. There was lots of incorrect paperwork as we went from no rules to very high standards and lots of fines. As the company became aware of the rule changes, we all had lots of training in both the paperwork and rescue. The best was when the trades and the operations staff all trained together. You got confidence in the people who were doing the standby and rescue functions and those who you did not want to work with. Unfortunately, by the time I retired, trades only got trained in awareness and ops in paperwork, regulations, and rescue.
1 heck of a stammer you have Camshawn.
The company referenced in the OP had multiple trench safety violations on record leading up to this fatality, scattered across the 90's and as recently as 2023. That kind of complacency starts at the top and filters down. Doing the right thing can be time consuming. If the boss rewards performance at the price of safety the guys on the crews are screwed. You can bet your ass the injured and deceased guys in this accident were not calling the shots.
who gets the money ?? I wish it were the deceased worker's family.
Skyking nailed it down right there: Performance at the price of safety This is it in a nugget.
Which leads to, walking off the job when you know your being used like a whore. A person is no good to their family or themselves when injured or much worse--dead. I was looking for a job when I found this one, and I'm still looking.
The right to know, the right to participate and the right to refuse
as a grey beard I have been empowered to kick ass whenever it is the right thing to do. I have walked off a couple of jobs like that, or raised holy hell. My give a crap about your feels is all gone and when somebody is doing stupid, step the #### up and do something about it, and sleep well knowing you did not let it slide.
the company i ran the 375 CAT for....L.G. Everist..was super on safety. we had safety meetings all the time, had every kind of safety equipment we needed at our disposal. was instructed NEVER to do something WE deemed unsafe, even if at the direction of a supervisor. they were a GREAT company to work for.
This is currently an issue in the military of whether or not you have the option of refusing what are considered illegal orders. Officers suggesting you do are being reprimanded. Tough situation to be in. Don't want to make this political but it is relevant to this thread. My boss when I worked at the mall was a hypocrit. All about safety and reporting any injury or near miss except when it applied to himself. I was the safety officer for the welding dept. and he sure didn't want be mentioning his near miss/death at the toolbox meeting concerning safety in the water park. He fell off a beam trying to put a tarp over the roof before the rain came. He fell about 12' onto scaffolding below when the wind picked up the tarp. Two feet over he would have fell 30 or 40 feet to the floor. He broke his arm but kept it hush hush. A longer term coworker told me the boss told him he broke his arm. The boss did tell me it scared him. I'll bet it did! He was trying to be a hero/show off and it almost cost him his life! Had it been reported I'd guess they would have shut the entire amusement down while they investigated. That would have costed the mall thousands and thousands of dollars in lost revenue!!!
My wife worked as a clerk for a power company, IBEW. A thing called a tailboard chat running through safety on that job. If one doesn't like what others are doing they have to run through the tailboard chat again, and if it isn't resolved the GF is called in.
I have my yearly supervisor safety orientation on Tuesday. For private work I have to have a tool box talk every Monday and complete a field level hazard assessment card. The boys have to sign off that they understand the risks and controls that are in place. The sports plex requires a tool box talk every morning. Dot requires a site orientation for every new person on the job. A field level hazard assessment to be read out loud every morning signed every morning by all. I sit on the joint health and safety committee that is supposed to meet monthly. I have to complete a sign course ever 3 years, first aid. As a supervisor im supposed to have confined space fall arrest lock out tag out concepts of loss . Basically anything we are involved in. I talked my way out of all of it because despite what the legislation says I don't consider myself a supervisor Im a working grade foreman. Safety is one of those things that **** runs uphill so the lower i place myself the better