Open Letter to John L. Henshaw, Assistant Secretary, OSHA

May 27th, 2004 by Hal

Someone please send this along to Mr. Henshaw. I don't have his email address.

On May 18th, the US House of Representatives passed legislation reducing OSHA's role making it easy on employers. The bill is not predicted to pass in the Senate. Still, in the face of continued deaths and injuries I wonder just what Congress is thinking. I have been a critic of OSHA for negotiating the terms of violations and the subsequent penalties. Repeat offenders seem to create a large percentage of the incidents. Certainly the annual statistics indicate we aren't making any real progress with construction safety. Yet, there is an approach that is resulting in significantly better safety performance. Here's my plan:

OSHA needs to spend time with companies that are doing well. Let's have a working session among firms whose experience modifier ratio is 0.6 or below. We need to learn how they got there and what they are doing to continue to improve.

Get companies on OSHA's VPP - Voluntary Protection Program. The VPP recognizes companies for the safe environment they maintain by exempting them from OSHA inspections. This frees OSHA's limited staff to spend their time with other companies while creating work environments that are far safer.

Adopt a requirement for doing business with the US government. A minimum qualification is to have an EMR of less than 0.85. This would go for all contractors and subcontractors on a project — NO EXCEPTIONS. If you want to do business with the government then you must be safe.

Encourage companies to train their workers to work at the edge of safety. Construction work is hazardous. Programs that stress avoidance of hazard miss an important element. At one time or another people will be faced with needing to act in the moment to protect themselves or others. People need to be trained to fall. They need to be trained to function in precarious situations. We train police to drive fast. We need to train construction workers to effectively perform during the most unsafe of times.

Treat all construction work like you would getting ready for pouring concrete. The consequences of not seeing that all conditions have been addressed are severe…the concrete would need to be removed. Consequently, people go to an extreme to see that the site is in a ready state for the pour. That isn't just a process of checking and re-checking. It involves having processes, protocols, standard practices, and training that supports performing work in ways that the site will be ready for the pour. These are the same actions that will keep people safe across the jobsite. The Last Planner System™ is one successful approach for achieving the result.

Adopt a two-strike policy for all workers. Some people just won't learn and maybe we just don't know how to teach. Either way, we can't allow people to be on our sites who work unsafely. Doing so jeopardizes others on the site. It is not responsible of us to allow that to continue.

Spanish speaking people are dying at two to three times their representation in the workforce. We can make inferences as to why this is occurring. Language and training are certainly keys. We cannot have the situation where people are unable to look after each other. At a minimum work crews need foremen and lead hands who speak Spanish and English.

Finally, mete out heavy penalties to the repeat offenders. Willful negligence that leads to a death carries a far smaller penalty than the white collar crime of cooking the books. This has to change.

I don't claim that this plan is the best plan. I do claim that we can make great strides beginning down the path. Please, please let's come together to try. Daddies and mommies don't need to die. And please, let's not wait for OSHA to act. If my plan makes any sense to you, then put at least that part into action. And if you want some help, just write me at hal@halmacomber.com.

Read Safety Everyday's construction safety in the news sideblog.

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One Response to “Open Letter to John L. Henshaw, Assistant Secretary, OSHA”

Gary Kuhn Says:
May 29th, 2004 at 2:34 pm
Hal,as usual a bullseye. It’s of course unfortunate that it seems we have to depend on Government to legislate and administer commen sense. It occurs to me that Government is a contributor to the continuation of the present safety performance. The low bid system for state and local contracts such as roads allows anyone, regardless of their safety record, to low-ball their way into a contract. Best value awards based on several factors with safety carrying a lot of weight should be the way that contracts are awarded. But that seems to require judgement.

However, I do support your ideas because they do reward the best safety performers and incentivizes companies to improve their safety performance. I just wish performance wasn’t based on statistics looking backward. I wish performance were measured based on the lack of hazards at a work site.

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