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In my experience it's the workers, and it's machoism amongst the workers that creates an intentionally anti-safe culture where such cultures are permitted. Wher
by cjbgkagh 2y ago
In my experience it's the workers, and it's machoism amongst the workers that creates an intentionally anti-safe culture where such cultures are permitted. Where I live they remove the angle grinder guards off and use 'safety squints' when welding. A friend had people working on his house, when I visited I made them stop their work and put the recently removed angle grinder guards form their new tools back on. I also and got them a chepo welding helmet. Not long after I left that day they took the guards back off and a young worker cut off a 1/4 of his hand and had to be rushed to hospital. My friend had a 'let them do what they want to do' attitude to the workers which thankfully has now been replaced with a 'safety first' attitude. Unfortunately too late for the kids hand.
This sort of stuff can't be done bottom up as there is huge social pressure to demonstrate manliness to peers through risky activity. Only strict top-down edicts where such digressions are severely punished can take away that pressure; i.e. instead of using safety equipment it's because they're a sissy it's because their mean old boss is a sissy and they're forcing them to use it.
While OSHA can be a bit onerous it really does help to have an organization with teeth pushing safety culture. Instead of the conflict between the workers and their bosses 'stupid rules' it's the 'stupid rules' of some 3rd party.
- crhulls 2y agoI second this. My day job is tech but I redid a rental property. I told the workers to wear a harness on the roof. I didn’t cheap out and bought nice comfortable equipment. They told me they were wearing it, but I came by unannounced and there they were on the roof with no harness. I asked the supervisor what was up and they were doing the same thing to him. They would put it on then take it off as soon as no one was looking. It was Latin machismo - the social pressure was so strong to not look goofy in a harness. The second time I saw this happen I wrote a firm zero tolerance letter which I translated to Spanish and hand delivered. One of the crew still didn’t listen. I fired him. (Not saying that reckless bosses aren’t an issue, especially in these trenching incidents where the safety equipment didn’t exist)
- jeromegv 2y agoYou are proving this is a management issue. You took steps to address the issue. Fired people who didn’t listen. The fact they thought they could do it without consequences means they never got into trouble by management at other job sites. If your industry has a culture of not following safety procedures it’s only because bosses don’t enforce it.
- ryandrake 2y agoThere were still no real consequences. At least today, that crew has a several month long waiting list and will just shrug and walk over to the next job. You really need to get OSHA involved and for it to start costing companies money.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoWhat does OSHA do in this situation? The roofing worker was fired for safety violation but can find work elsewhere. In this example it isnt about the company.
- ryandrake 2y agoUnless I read it wrong, OP fired the whole company/crew, not individual workers. The company is responsible for workers that are improperly trained or out of control. If the supervisor can't enforce workplace safety rules, then the supervisor isn't doing his job, and if the company does not have process in place ensuring the supervisor is doing his job, then the company needs to be fined, too. I can't believe we have this attitude of throwing up our hands and saying "Aww shucks, ya just can't convince those darn individual machismo men to do their job right. What can ya do?"
- garciansmith 2y agoOP wrote "One of the crew still didn’t listen. I fired him." He fired the offending worker, not the whole company. Though in general I agree regarding supervisors.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoI'm curious how liability works in this situation and when it ends? It sounds like you were operating as a general contractor. Were you paying the roofers salary or did you have a business to business relationship? Relatedly, someone was telling me what workers insurance is 1% of construction costs for large infrastructure like building hospitals.
- crhulls 2y agoI’m technically an owner builder. I have a workman’s comp policy that ranges from 10-40% of payroll depending on the task. For a residential project I can definitively say insurance is way more than 1% of total cost. Eg for the sake of round numbers, let’s say labor is 50% of the total. If I take the absolute lowest percent of what I pay for insurance, we already are up to 5%. This is separate from liability insurance for say negligence if I got sued. I hope my umbrella policy would cover me here but I found in my situation it is a bit confusing. An insurance broker struggled to give me clear answers
- s1artibartfast 2y agoThat doesn't surprise me. I imagine that construction labor is a lower fraction of expenses for very large projects, as well as real risk, and overhead. In the conversation, they told me that their #bigco was able to save X hundred million a year by creating their own insurance company and requiring all of their contract builders to use it.
- dboreham 2y agoThe people with money become liable.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoThats not a very useful heuristic. There are numerous relationships that effectively shield liability, and many of these make perfect sense.
- gregGisme 2y ago[dead]
- pandaman 2y agoIs this "Latin machismo"? Look at the cyclists on the streets, I don't know where you live but everywhere I've been in the US at least half of them are without a helmet. It just appears that most people don't believe that things that have not happened to them are real. They don't grab a hot skillet only because they have done that and found that it's quite painful. They don't wear a helmet or any PPE because they have not experienced the things it's supposed to protect them from.
- logicalexplan4 2y agoCycling without a helmet may not be statistically safer. See for example "The Ultimate Question: With or Without a Helmet?"
- pandaman 2y ago>Cycling without a helmet may not be statistically safer. See for example "The Ultimate Question: With or Without a Helmet?" I believe you wanted to say "may be statistically safer" because the article you referenced tries to infer that helmets cause more accidents even though significantly reduce the number of fatal/serious ones. What if construction workers also want to be "statistically safer" in this sense? It's trivial to see that PPE that prevents fatal and debilitating injuries is going to increase the total number of injuries as a person, who otherwise would have died or stopped participating in the dangerous activity forever, can go on and accrue more minor injuries.
- logicalexplan4 2y agoThat could be, my point is that people can not be wearing a helmet because they think it is better not to do so from a safety perspective. They could be making a deliberate decision that they think is in their own best health interest.
- delichon 2y agoI don't think the angle grinder guard issue is cut and dry. I sometimes operate mine without a guard in conditions where the guard prevents me from seeing the point of contact, which for me is a more severe safety problem. When I can't simply rearrange the work I remove the guard and take extra care. Such complex work environments should not be regulated inflexibly.
- cjbgkagh 2y agoThey never put the guard back on, you’ll never see a guard in use here. That’s why they consider it ridiculous to use one because no one else does. Never-mind the constant stream of people going to the hospital. Plus they use oversized grinders where smaller ones would be fine and safer even if slightly slower. And they take the guard off from the start so there is no guard while they’re still leaning. I had a ‘see me’ for an exemption policy while I was there and they didn’t need one. They really were not doing the kind of work that needed it.
- giantg2 2y agoSeems like a decent use case for an endoscope. I've never used one with and angle grinder, but seeing into places where other tools are cutting/drilling when the tool is blocking the view has been great.
- convolvatron 2y ago
- christkv 2y agoThis is not only a us problem for sure. Made two workers who where cutting pavement stones at our house wear safety glasses after i saw them cutting the stones with no protection. I don’t want it on my conscience if one of them goes blind due to a flying stone split.
- SubjectToChange 2y agoWhile OSHA can be a bit onerous it really does help to have an organization with teeth pushing safety culture. Instead of the conflict between the workers and their bosses 'stupid rules' it's the 'stupid rules' of some 3rd party. OSHA standards are quite a low bar in general. An organization that is simply "OSHA compliant" is definitely not taking safety seriously. Moreover, OSHA is often far down the list of regulatory agencies that companies are worried about. For example, killing a protected bird species is far more likely to incur 6-7 figure fines and/or land management in prison than a workplace fatality. That said, the situation with OSHA isn't particularly concerning. Most major companies are aggressively safety oriented. Even ignoring the legal liabilities of injured workers the fact is that, in the long term, unsafe working conditions are often less productive and potentially extremely damaging to capital investments. To illustrate, an accident at an oil refinery could easily run into the hundreds of millions in damage, in addition to an equal if not greater amount in lost production. The costs of settling lawsuits and/or fines for safety violations are trivial by comparison. Nowadays, the greatest risks to U.S. labor is not from the likes of Kiewit, Union Pacific, Rio Tinto, etc. It is the small and under capitalized businesses. So, what can be done? Such businesses are already walking on a financial tightrope. If OSHA were to properly scrutinize such businesses even their limited fines would present a significant stress. Some people might retort that if a business can't operate safely than it shouldn't be operating at all, which is a fine. The downside is that all of those services will become substantially less competitive and more expensive.
- dahart 2y agoThere’s a huge difference between avoiding PPE because you’re macho, and the company avoiding structural reinforcements in a trench. This whole thread is sidetracked on PPE. When someone chooses to do angle grinding without a guard, or chooses not to wear a helmet or goggles, they’re putting their own safety in danger. It’s dumb, but very different from the company making that decision for you. Companies should perhaps be partly liable when they don’t require and monitor PPE use, but they should be fully liable when the construction plan puts everyone at risk. That’s the company making bad/illegal safety choices for the workers, not the workers making their own bad decisions. Not installing trench boxes is like the company disallowing PPE on the job. I’m sure there’s gray area in between personal bad decisions and company bad decisions, but if a mining company were to operate a mine without reinforcing the walls, a mine collapse is 100% on the company, whereas if workers stop wearing masks while working and they get black lung after being provided masks and being told they’re mandatory, then it’s a bit more reasonable to say the workers made bad personal decisions, and the company didn’t do enough to enforce personal safety practices. Trench boxes are the same as mine cable reinforcement - something the company is fully responsible for. Pointing at workers and/or talking about PPE safety culture just isn’t very relevant.