quote:

Originally posted by Lord Vaalic:
don't taunt Happy Fun Ball,

Yep, much of it was really REALLY over the top.
On the other hand some of it was good and necessary. They hired many 18 yr old kids out of High School who had never done anything more mechanical then push a joy stick around on a video game... put them on 7 million dollar machine as big as a house... and expected them to produce a quality product, efficiently, and not get killed in the process.

But they expected you to do their safety bidding at home as well!

At least they put their money where their mouth was.
25% of the points earned for our quarterly and yearly bonuses depended on our safety record.

Oh, and don't even get me started on the twice a month "behavior based" safety audits required of every employee...

Wait till they add a diversity moment , like my employer did.
Then an inclusion moment , for the terminally oppressed...

We had someone slip a couple of weeks ago while coming into the building because ice had formed on the sidewalk outside a door leading into the building because maintenance wasn't in yet to put some salt and grit on it. No, injury, no nothing, they just brought it up to their supervisor so that something could be done about it.

It was brought up in the morning production meeting and the head of the company came unglued asking why we aren't being proactive to avoid situations like this. Before his overreacting was over he had tasked the EHS manager with finding out the cost of sourcing slip on traction devices for everyone in the facility to put on before they got out of their vehicles.

We have this floor mat that has some stupid safety slogan like "Safety starts with YOU", and strangely, people stumble on it because the edges keep getting flipped over.

My company has never met a safety program it did not want. Safety departments in large companies tend to spin out if control in order to justify their existence (and budget).

Yesterday I spent 30 minutes on safety related fluff to do 3 minutes of work in a 480v electrical cabinet. All i really needed to do was hang locks and verify power was isolated.

Personally think that a lot of the "Safety Meetings" are a polite way of a "Cover MY Ass" and "Cover your ass" program when something happens and then the higher ups will use this training that someone violated saftey/policy and could not be held responsible for the actions of the employees. My 2cts. ................................... drill sgt.

So, recently, the plant was ordered to remove all the fans that we have bolted down to each station to keep us cool because some dumbass from another plant, in a different state, stuck his finger inside one and got hurt.

Retired from the power company . It was getting totally out of control . If the guys didn't feel like doing a particular task , they brought up some lame assed safety concern and upper management would shut it down . They got lazy about setting up scaffolding and had the practice discontinued . We ( the Foremen ) had to rent a manlift for them to work 10 ft off the ground . And the paperwork for the most trivial of jobs was crazy . I pulled the plug and never looked back .

'Safety' is the magic word that gets your particular gripe addressed. We hire folks too stupid to pour piss out of a boot with the instructions printed on the heel, and then try to idiot proof the facility to prevent these scholars from killing themselves...counting the days.

There is no doubt injuries are expensive. Insane safety programs have more to do with insurance companies than anything else. The more insane system the better the rate for the company. Even to the point of hurting productivity. Any system can be idiot proofed, but nature will make a better idiot every damn time.

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:
Mike Rowes Safety 3rd

[FLASH_VIDEO]<iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/s0RrhkMk2zY" width="560"></iframe>[/FLASH_VIDEO]

Mike Rowe....EXCELLENT as usual! As the owner of a company that installs overhead cranes I see the full gambit. Companies that will literally cripple your ability to work due to overbearing safety requirements and companies that could care less what you do. When we are landing bridge cranes we always get a bunch of yahoos telling us how to do it better. We just ignore them and go about our business of safely installing 10,000lb girders overhead as they have NO IDEA about safety.

Worker safety has put a lot of workers in this country out of a job.
By the time I retired the things you had to do for safetys sake(mostly to appease the safety inspector) before you even started a job, had gotten so out of hand that it took longer to do the pre-job saftey prep than it took to do the job.

For instance, we had a machine that was 9 foot high. It had a completely flat top that was smooth, no trip hazards. The machine was 10 ft long and 8 ft wide. I leaned a ladder up against it and climb up, walked to the middle and plugged a cable into an electric motor and climbed down.
It took about 5 minutes. The safety man saw me and told me that I should have run a guy wire over top and anchored that wire to two stable points. Then leaned the ladder over to the machine at the correct prefigured angle and then after reach the top of the machine, I should tied my climbing harness off to the guy wire in order to walk out to the center of the machine.
Bye bye jobs to China or Mexico. So, you take 1 hour to get ready and 1 hour to tear down and 5 minutes to do the job? And that makes sense?