NGC Rant Warning - Safety is a Serious Issue

[JC85]

Fellow, Guzzistis, I just quit my job. The reason is long, but please read it, for your own sakes. I have had to fight far too many battles with my bosses over safety issues, over the last few months, and it just keeps going. Finally, tonight, we had a major accident. An accident that would have been entirely preventable, had the company been taking the time to follow safety codes. One man is in the hospital, and two more are getting minor treatment. The kicker is that I watched, as supervisors made the decision to take a man who was on the ground, bleeding from his eyes, ears, and multiple shrapnel wounds, and move him/load him into a truck to take him to the hospital, themselves, instead of calling an ambulance. Why? Because when an ambulance is called for a workplace injury, it makes the OSHA report much higher profile, and the company didn't want that. Given the incident, this man could have had brain swelling. He could have had a piece of shrapnel lodged in an artery that could have come loose, causing him to bleed out, when they moved him. But none of that mattered to management. All that mattered was keeping things as quiet as possible to save their own butts. This was the last straw for me.

Please, guys, take workplace safety seriously, and NEVER allow a supervisor to bully you into working in an unsafe manner.

[Gliderjohn]

Totally understand. Good luck on seeking other employment.
GliderJohn

[Ncdan]

Don’t be afraid to contact the proper authorities to report the company’s violations of State and Federal mandated laws and regulations. There is help out there if you wish to follow up on it.

[John A]

Leadership failures by management in safety is a valid reason to leave that one.  I used to maintain an EMS helicopter.  I still remember the smell of some of carnage we took to the trauma hospital.  I’m glad you didn’t get hurt,  best of luck in your new job.

[Kiwi_Roy]

Congratulations on having the balls to resign but don't let the company off the hook, report them, there is no excuse for safety violations.

[delrod]

Hate to hear about any injury to anyone. Take some time to decompress and then make some notes about what took place. My guess is months from now you may be asked to recall the events and a written record will be helpful. Keep us posted on how your Co worker is doing. I assume your local union will get heavily involved?

[oldbike54]

 What Doug said .

 This sux .

 Dusty

[Lannis]

It's really hard to know how to handle the current "Target Zero" safety programs.

The goal is to have Zero OSHA-recordable or Lost Time injuries, and that's, on the surface, a Good Thing.  NONE of us wants to manage a work environment where someone won't go home to their family the same way they left their house in the morning, uninjured.   

We had daily Safety Briefings before any field work was done, every morning, to discuss the day's planned work and the safety plan associated with it.   We had regular Safety Surveys where we would go to each other's areas and look for safety issues (pinch points, etc) that the people who worked in the are had missed because they're just so used to it.   We had Safety Observation programs where each manager at each level went to an area in the shop or the field, watched people work, and made notes EACH DAY of people's activities, noticing both GOOD safety practice and BAD safety practice.   And the payroll "bonus" program, where both salaried and hourly employees participated in an annual bonus, was partly contingent upon the safety record of both the work area and the entire company, so that everyone had skin in the game.

All sounds good.   But (and this is a big BUT with spines and jagged edges), we have (like many companies) an aging workforce.   

We would have a perfect safety record in a potentially dangerous metal-working shop, and in a construction environment in the field.   But then someone sitting at their desk would reach for a pencil, pull a muscle in his back ... or working in an ergonomic chair with an ergonomic keyboard with frequent breaks would finally have his 64-year-old carpal tunnel fail in his wrist ... or pull a piece of paper out of his drawer and tear a rotator cuff that had been getting ready to go for 15 years and happened to happen during work hours ...

... and have to go to the doctor and get a pain prescription, and be on "light duty" for a day, and the entire safety record for the entire plant went to sh!t.    "OSHA Recordable" because of the prescription.   "Lost Time" because of the "light duty".   Exactly the same result for the safety record as if we'd negligently left an unguarded pulley on a machine and someone had broken their finger in it.

And we'd have a "Safety Stand-Down" and every would have to attend "Safety Camp" and get re-educated about our attitude to safety, because NO injuries are tolerated, and it must be EVERYONE'S belief that ZERO injuries on the job are achievable, even with the above examples ...

And they're not, because bodies wear out and sometimes fail during work hours in the SAFEST possible environment,  but God help you if you were to express that opinion.  So we all look down and nod like good children, and swear we won't let it happen again, and tell other lies to ourselves and our management, and pretty soon the attitudes are so bad that nothing works right ....

Lannis

[Two Checks]

Now that you are no longer employed there you might consider co tasting OSHA yourself.
My son used to work in a steel mill as an electrician. He was real persnickety about safety protocol and management didn't like it.
One day he tagged/locked out a machine and went to get parts to fix it. Suddenly he was called to the office. Once there his supervisor tossed something at his head, so he caught it. It was the lock he placed on the machine!
They fired him for violating safety rules. Two weeks later he saw two of his former supervisors in a store. They asked if he knew he was set up, and he told them yes, and they could be next.
A few weeks later he was getting his roof replaced. Half the guys on the crew were guys he worked with and quit because they wanted no part of it.
+1 on writing down what you saw and as you remember this vs write it down. Get in touch with the family of the victim. Your testimony is priceless.

[AJ Huff]

Fellow, Guzzistis, I just quit my job. The reason is long, but please read it, for your own sakes. I have had to fight far too many battles with my bosses over safety issues, over the last few months, and it just keeps going. Finally, tonight, we had a major accident. An accident that would have been entirely preventable, had the company been taking the time to follow safety codes. One man is in the hospital, and two more are getting minor treatment. The kicker is that I watched, as supervisors made the decision to take a man who was on the ground, bleeding from his eyes, ears, and multiple shrapnel wounds, and move him/load him into a truck to take him to the hospital, themselves, instead of calling an ambulance. Why? Because when an ambulance is called for a workplace injury, it makes the OSHA report much higher profile, and the company didn't want that. Given the incident, this man could have had brain swelling. He could have had a piece of shrapnel lodged in an artery that could have come loose, causing him to bleed out, when they moved him. But none of that mattered to management. All that mattered was keeping things as quiet as possible to save their own butts. This was the last straw for me.

Please, guys, take workplace safety seriously, and NEVER allow a supervisor to bully you into working in an unsafe manner.

Hey that's how I started my foundry career. Didn't end well for me, had to find another job after demanding proper PPE. I get the OSHA thing. Had my eye drilled at my own expense once so I wouldn't be an OSHA recordable for our plant and affect everyone's safety bonus. I was younger then and much more willing to toe the line.

Good luck!

-AJ

[JC85]

Thanks to everyone for the support and advice. Over the last couple of months, I have been in regular contact with a state OSHA rep for advice and to get specific information, so that I could back myself up with specific knowledge, when I had to refuse to perform unsafe actions. Not wanting to face retribution, I was close lipped about who my employer was, despite him being very interested in that information. I have already messaged him, informing him of the fact that I am ready to make an official report.

[John A]

Yeah, retribution, protect yourself. There are some small minded fools.

[80CX100]

     I feel for you, it's a tough spot to be in, good on you for standing tall and keeping your integrity.

     I know of far too many people who have lost their lives because others shirked their responsibilities,or turned a willful blind eye.
     - Poor young summer student electrocuted in a concrete plant because management hadn't paid for properly wired/grounded 550V equipment.
     - An innocent Tourist had his head severed as he entered the elevator in the lobby, because the elevator tech working on the system in the basement, short stroked the repair
      procedure
     - An officer lost his life because the known Kawi high speed wobble issue wasn't addressed and he was wearing a $2 helmet
     etc

      Keep good notes, think back over relevant pertinent facts and conversations, note them now, if you haven't already.

      Written correspondence over verbal if at all possible, it sounds like you've got an interested party with OSHA already, that's good.

       Hope your coworker comes through all right.

       Good luck going forward, it will work out.

       Respectfully yours

       Kelly

[Turin]

You did the right thing. I'm in the Paving/Construction industry. , We have a division that is exclusively devoted to safety. Minimum requirement to enter a job sight includes hard hat, proper safety glasses, and ASTM certified steel toe boots. We also random drug test.
A couple of years ago a fellow I used to work with went to another company and had his legs and pelvis crushed by a 6 ton Roller. 

[Chuck in Indiana]

 It's not unusual for management to not know.. or care. Choose one. In 30 years at GM, I saw some stuff. 

[pebra]

Good move, JC85.
You've seen demonstrated how they'd treat you.

Good luck in your search!

[pressureangle]

Just jumping on the pile here.

Kudos for doing all the right things, even though they come at personal expense (I'll forgo the philosophy of 'investment' here).

Our society has forgotten what it's like to work in dangerous places, and people have become much more careless. A hundred years ago, these dangers were recognized and accepted, even if they were preventable and known- you took the job knowing it was on you alone.

There is no excuse today, for an employer to willfully ignore safety and safety regulations.

[larrys]

Fellow, Guzzistis, I just quit my job. The reason is long, but please read it, for your own sakes. I have had to fight far too many battles with my bosses over safety issues, over the last few months, and it just keeps going. Finally, tonight, we had a major accident. An accident that would have been entirely preventable, had the company been taking the time to follow safety codes. One man is in the hospital, and two more are getting minor treatment. The kicker is that I watched, as supervisors made the decision to take a man who was on the ground, bleeding from his eyes, ears, and multiple shrapnel wounds, and move him/load him into a truck to take him to the hospital, themselves, instead of calling an ambulance. Why? Because when an ambulance is called for a workplace injury, it makes the OSHA report much higher profile, and the company didn't want that. Given the incident, this man could have had brain swelling. He could have had a piece of shrapnel lodged in an artery that could have come loose, causing him to bleed out, when they moved him. But none of that mattered to management. All that mattered was keeping things as quiet as possible to save their own butts. This was the last straw for me.

Please, guys, take workplace safety seriously, and NEVER allow a supervisor to bully you into working in an unsafe manner.

Good on you for sticking to your principles. If that's their attitude about safety, you don't want to work there anyway.
When I worked at the submarine factory in Groton in the '80's, there were a few years in a row when a couple people died in the shipyard each year. Management didn't make much of a deal about it until a guy got fried, weedwhacking in a fenced transformer enclosure. Turned out that the guy was a college kid working there for the summer. It also turned up that his dad was a big guy in upper management. THEN safety became a BIG DEAL...
Larry

[nsmith]

I was a private contractor working in a commercial plant. I was using their forklift, The owner of the plant told us if we drive over an extension cord even if it was unplugged we would be out of the building and the contract. He said he witnessed a forklift operator electrocute himself but doing just that. I had to admire him in demanding safety everywhere he could.   

[Guzzistajohn]

Wow,  tough night at work. You did the right thing. Sorry for your fellow employee. Wanna learn to install elevators?