Tell me,
At your workplace, do you have the right to refuse to do any work, which in your opinion, will cause you harm or serious injury?.
An example would be an unsafe scaffolding, or a switch-board has no escape clearance around it.
I can think of others, but I won't bore you.
But, your thoughts please?.

My thoughts Trumpy?

The laws here enpower the employer , with the employee's sole option being to 'Rat out the Boss' in situations that they have no say in.

Should you survive, you get to keep your job and do it again tommorrow.

Should you slip up you may easily be proven to have been in some PPE and/or training violation, and your dead carcass may well end up pasted across the internet to validate the inept and inequitable dictorial beuracracies here.

As a savey poster said here, "You can't legislate common sense" ...(which makes one wonder what the mortality/morbidity rates would be if the employee were allowed to administer such.)

true...
but we have cornered the market on legislation for litigation protection at corporate levels here.

Trumpy,
I work for two different industrial companies.
At job A, the maintenance department manager doesn't really care, looks the other way, and simply expects the job to get done(so he looks good) regardless of any safety concerns. Unfortunately working under these conditions leads one to being "sloppy" and not working safely -- I have to "call" things on myself all the time to keep sharp.

At Job B, the first wording on every work order is: "This work is important, but not as important as your safety." If I have a safety concern here, it will get worked out -- I might not always agree with the outcome, but the process is good and above board. If anything, the employees here are guilty of not always using the available PPE and safety equipment.

At job A, I'd probably get suspended or fired for flat out refusal, even with code references or OSHA CFR 1910 dot whatever. Perhaps two or three of us in a shop of fifteen guys truly understand some of the dangers. It took 6 mos of nonstop pressure to get LASER training for maintenance personnel--then half way through the training (which was rather intensive from a physics and math standpoint) the maint dept manager got up and left. His response when I later questioned his leaving was "I don't need some LASER egghead telling me about safety". One hell of a leadership example.

At job B, my supervisor, me, and several other electricians would take a "look see" and talk about possible safety concerns. This might be as little as a two minute "second set of eyes" resulting in a go-ahead, or it might delay the job until scheduled downtime -- but either way my concerns would be addressed.

I try to work as safely as possible. Even though there is a flat spot in my forehead from trying to get my A employer to do it right the first time, I persist(I am a royal PIA). I consider it my duty.
Loss of life vs loss of job? Even my good B job isn't worth that.

Len

I'm fortunate( in my mind)no corporate goob to tell me what's safe and what's not.If it don't look safe it probably ain't.We try our best to be osha safe, but I'm sure we fall short.I tell my helper to watch himself and be careful at least 10 times a day.He's a country boy like me and we try our best to use a little common sense.If we need a12 ft. ladder we use one instead of standing on top of a 6.Little things and common sense will go a long way. Russell

Trumpy,
My folks first rule is: If you feel or think it is unsafe (for whatever reason), you don't do it. Any employee has the right to refuse and I will back them up. My philosophy is that there is nothing we do that is worth the loss of life or injury of any kind. And I re-inforce this on them quite often. In thirteen years I had one emplyee injured, cut her finger on the jacket of a water heater.

Bob

Hi,

Where I am employed, we definatly have the right to refuse to perform electrical work if we feel we lack the proper safety training for the task or if we feel it is unsafe. Safety is always considered first at our shop.

Now that doesn't mean we have a "get out of work free card", it means we are to consider the our safety and the safety of others when performing installations, repairs and service.

All of our field employees are required to have a 30 hour OSHA card in order to be the lead man on a job or to work alone.

Most of us thought it was a grand waste of time 4 years ago when the company started the 10 hour requirement for all emplioyees. But since then, I have seen the benefits of the training for me as well as new hires.

The 30 hour course had been met with mixed reviews when it started, but we have already seen the overall safety of our employees improve.

Knowledge is always a benefit. Yes, there is a cost. When costs are weighed, foreknowledge is always less expensive than hindsight.

I for one feel much more confident having the training in safety and NEC than the years previous before our company required neither.

My two cents,
Dave

This bears repeating Dave.

However, the knowledge of safety will forever be just so accessible via unfunded federal mandates.

Which is why our new govenor here is throwing VOSHA out on it's ear

Lord knows i only see them after a fatality

#1VOSHA dude; (viewing corpse)
"awe, gee...there really needs to be more training out here"

#2VOSHA dude;
yeah, yeah, so where's the greasy spoon at in this town?

sparky,


I couldn't agree more!

I'm glad to hear VOSHA is going out.
IMO, only CALOSHA and MIOSHA seem to do a pretty good job of education and enforcement.

How are the contractors in your area? Do they seem to care about employee safety or do they just go about their routines like we all used to?

I think guy's, that Employers need to get wise about basic Safety practices, because if an accident does happen, some of them, for some odd reason, forget that they where the one's that ordered this work in the first place, conveniently, this I have learn't.
But, this topic started off because of an incident that I was involved in recently.
Long story longer, I was rung on my cellphone by an apprentice, who works for a local company(everyone in the Electrical Business, around town, has my number, being a Faultsman,Damn!).
But, he was asked to go down to a small fishing village,near the sea, to fix a streetlight, because his boss owns a bach(holiday home), down there and wanted it done on the cheap.
He was asked to lean the pole ladder up against the street- light support, lean out from the ladder and repair this fitting.
For those of you, not conversant with NZ coastal conditions, Wood(Treated) lasts about 10 years,at the most, power poles down there are around about 15-17 years old.
Light fittings were Coach-Screwed, with 2 3" C/Screws.
I was asked to organise a Bucket Truck, to come down and do the work, good thing that the Apprentice never even leaned the ladder up against the pole, it was carrying a set of 3 11kV lines on top and a hole host of bare 400V lines below.
I shut all of the feeds to the area down, just in case.
Tested the pole near the ground, it was OK, got in the bucket, and went to move the pole by the crossarms, the whole pole dis-intergated, 5 foot was sticking up out of the ground.
But the thing is here, this could have been a real disaster, and the loss of another of our very few Apprentices.

our company likes to talk about safety, but doesn' seem to apply it much it's ususally"hurry up & get it done"then if something happens they know nothing of it & its your faultit just makes me

Trumpy,
another apprentice hazing eh? i'm glad s/he walked away from it.


Websparky,
we are horribly ingnorant, which is why i have no love for a system that is never seen or heard from, not to mention pay tax dollars into.

In the latter sense, there is much legislated of worthy intent, yet one needs to follow the money afterwards to realize the true efficy

as a mentor once told me "What works works" as such, the bueracratic wind from ivory towers does little for us here.

Nor will it ever do so with our 300+- annual fatalities in contrast to 50K highway ones.

sparky,

Wow, I had no idea......300!
I am not one for legislative mandates either. Somewhere, through education and common sense, places like this forum and instructors like Joe and others, we can collectively make a difference.
One does wonder what OSHA does with it's revenue to help spread the word...... I'm not sure if they do anything along those lines.

Dave

Agreed Dave,
any group that can network can grow, even to collectively affect legislative matters should it channel energy in that direction.

Guys,
It was interesting to see.
Our Boss, came with us on a Safety course, to see what they taught and because he thought that it would give him a reduction in the Company ACC premiums.
Well, he was all for these safe practices, Hazard Assessments, etc, I've never seen him ask so many questions, apart from the time when Ken (the Service Manager), reversed into an old lady in his 4WD, down town!.
The next day at work, it was back to the Status Quo,"Safety?, haven't got tp think about that, just do it!".
Leopard can't change, it's spots, eh?.

Well this has been a very interesting discussion for me to read. You see I am the safety guy at work. It sounds like I should consider myself lucky. I show the company the regulation and then we follow the regulation. I have never had someone refuse to do a job because of safety reasons. Usually it is the other way, when I walk around I will tell people to stop doing the job the way they are doing it and tell them the correct way to do it.

I am in California and fall under Cal/OSHA. However I get a lot of my information from the OSHA website. The OSHA regulation are written in a manner that is easier to understand. Also the website has letters of interpretation. Some people have written into OSHA asking a clarification of a standard the OSHA will respond with the interpretation. However this is a double edged sword. While the information is useful sometimes the letter of interpretation is stricter than the standard. Therefore you are creating a regulation without going through the approval process.

I personally feel that the OSHAs should focus more on training and informing work places on regulations than on enforcement. In the past we have brought in Cal/OSHA consulation. They do an inspection and give us a time table to fix any problems. No fines. I think if this were emphasized that more companies would use this service. However the corporate culture is to be scared of OSHA and view it as the enemy.

I of course have more to say but I know that you are falling asleep.

Trumpy, kudos to you and the apprentice. Buy him a beer for doing the right thing.

Scott

Scotts,
one can advocate safety ,yet view the empirical nature of the safety biz with scrutiny.

OSHA, in it's 30+ yr tenure has not gone out of it's way to educate the populance, nor would any enforcing agency normally do so.

Having watched the senate trash ergonomics on the dish here, it's fairly bad when one arm of goverment publicly blasts another, the regime seems in decline

But they had it comming because ergonomics was nothing more than a lobbied ploy to trash small biz, the senators where merciless...

Gestapo tactics are a poor marketing tactic of safety sales.

Can anyone tell me, if there is such a thing as a maximum temperature, in which an employee, can be asked to work in, under OSHA regulations?.
The reason I ask this, is because, I recently installed an Air Con unit in a Commercial kitchen, where, before this was fitted, it was as hot as H**L!.
The chefs, that worked there, were taking sick leave all of the time, they are happy now!.
Apparently, the temperature, used to rise to 52 degrees C, when all of the cooking equipment was on.
Can you help?.

Hey Trumpy,

I've searched hi and low..... can't find a thing about working in high heat enviroments.

Dave

Did U inquire @ OSHA's web site?

Not that it would do a hick electrician like myself any good, the kids gotta eat during a heat wave too.

pound that H2O!

I looked the OSHA website for heat and I did not see anything. I doubt if there is because how could you write a regulation that would apply to a steel mill, pretty hot in there.
Scott

we're fairly lucky up here in Canada the compansation board here hits the employers with fairly high fines each time there is and injury claim so most employers would rather shut down something or buy new safety devices rather then have the extra fines and all the hassels that go with them. A fatality can put a smaller company out of business. Last I heard two lost time accidents in one year costs about $35,000 and they don't care if the lost time was only one day.
Most companies I have worked for over the past 15 years if you tell them something is not safe they look into it. The company I'm with now doesn't care if it is legally safe or not if you don't feel its safe they don't want you doing it, they'd rather send someone in that is not worried about doing it then one that is.

I searched www.google.com "Heat Stress" and was directed to this site where I think I found the answer to the questions concerning the subject being discussed here:
http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/heatstress/