| Safety responsibility: start your safety training here |
We
sometimes have to protect workers from themselves
Contributed by Paul Ruminski, Dayton Ohio
I know a time when workers in our plant adopted an argumentative
tone when we tried to instill safety responsibility.
If we insisted on tightening safe work practices I would receive
complaints like, "I've always done it this way. Anyway, it's
my neck, why should you be concerned?"
Well, yes, it may be your neck, but it's mine too. This was highlighted
in a safety decision which I refer to, and which I read out any
time a team member expresses unhappiness at my insistence on a specific
safety procedure:
A worker in a furniture-parts manufacturing plant was injured when
a poorly-attached machine guard vibrated loose, and an errant steel
casting was ejected. It landed on his foot and broke
two metatarsal bones.
The employer was found to be negligent in failing to provide proper
protection.
Simple enough outcome.
But there was a side issue: it was actually this worker's responsibly
to remove and re-attach the guard when servicing the machine. He
had been negligent in doing so, and this led directly to the injury.
The tribunal learned that the worker was trained in the importance
and function of machine guarding, in particular the guarding on
this machine. He had also received instruction concerning his safety
responsibilities.
What is more, the injured worker had personally removed and replaced
the machine guard only a week prior to the incident. The guard was
designed to be attached by means of six screws with spring washers.
On the occasion when the worker was injured, he had attached the
guard with only three screws, of which just one still retained its
spring washer.
Nonetheless, this did not exonerate the employer. Management is
obliged to provide a safe workplace, not expose workers to undue
risks, and not request—nor allow—them to perform unsafe
acts. Management is responsible for seeing that workers do not work
unsafely, even though they have been given the full benefit of safety
training. In some respects management is obliged to protect workers
from themselves!
What more could management have done
to avoid this injury?
- The worker had failed to report a workplace
hazard—the missing spring washers.
- He had clearly failed to attach the
guard adequately.
- He had knowingly worked on a piece of
equipment with defective guarding.
- Despite training in safety responsibility,
the worker had shown poor regard for his personal safely.
The tribunal's main complaint against the
employer was of failure to follow
through. Management had apparently not followed up sufficiently
to see that safety training had sunk in, nor checked that the worker
was in fact working safely. Alternatively, management should have
detected the poorly fitted machine
guard and corrected the problem. If the worker persisted in fitting
the guard unsafely, or in working with an unsafe guard, management's
response should have been to discipline him for his failure to follow
safe operating procedures. |
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