This week, we talk about OSHA's proposed rulemaking for the walkaround process during an inspection.
This week, we talk about OSHA's proposed rulemaking for the walkaround process during an inspection.
Welcome to the leading and learning through safety podcast where we discuss the technical and people's side of safety. Safety should be your primary leadership tool for discovering more about your people and culture. Your host is Dr. Mark French, also known as the safety dude. Mark is a credentialed, experienced and passionate professional with experience in automotive, food, chemical, nuclear, e commerce and energy sectors. He is going to share information and anecdotes from years of experience in the people side of safety based on industrial and organizational psychological theories. Safety is so much more than a technical skill. It is a motivational need that defines the culture of your organization. employee safety is a meaningful business practice that makes a direct impact on everyone through direct behavioral engagement. That is why your organization should be using safety as a key method to learn about your culture and lead your teams. Thanks for joining this episode as we talk through current issues and people management and how they impact our everyday workplaces.
Mark French:And welcome to this episode of the leading and learning safety podcast. Hello, I am your host, Dr. Mark French. And I am so excited to be back with you again in the broadcast. And thank you so much for joining me. Lots to catch up on and I think a couple of things to follow up on actually this time around. So a few weeks ago, even maybe further we talked about that the Department of Labor OSHA specifically is looking at changing their walk around rules. So what did that mean? It meant that if you're represented by a bargaining unit, the National Labor Relations Board has a very specific way of designating What is your labor representative. And then they have the right to escort and be part of that walk around whatever OSHA is doing, they would be able to walk around with that inspection officer. The tricky part is what about non contract bargaining unit? So a non union facility? What would that look like? If you were allowed to bring in anyone not just someone from inside the facility, but what if you were allowed to bring in a union representative or even the examples were given like you wanted a an independent safety professional or an industrial hygiene professional or something of that sort from the outside brought in that the inspection officer would be able to allow that and it helped facilitate through that a lot of interesting facets that came along with it and just a little bit of go. Right at the end of August OSHA did release a news release about the fact that they are actually publishing this. They have made the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking of who can be authorized to act as a representative of the employees during a physical inspection. Now, this does to go through a comment period. And there is more to that, but a lot of it is is OSHA overstepping their boundaries. So let's let's look a little bit deeper what this mean. So, basically, it says that the employees may authorize an employee or a non employee third party. If the compliance officer determines that the third party is reasonably necessary to conduct an effective and thorough inspection. It also changes the third party representatives are not limited to industrial hygienist and safety engineers. The third party representatives may be necessary because they have skills or expertise. So basically, it opens the door for whatever is needed. And so their thing the the background is that that worker safety and participation is part of the OSHA act. And so therefore, this is part of it. This allows that participation that is given that nothing changes. So I mean, I'm not panicking yet by no means because there's a lot This is gonna go through a whole lot, because this certainly shook up the safety community, especially the legal part of the safety community. As people started talking about what does this mean? I mean, even I consider it because I think about the implications of where this could take us. From a standpoint of how do we do it? There's been debate on where this will go, like, will it be defined in the field operations manual. And I will say, if you haven't gotten a piece of the Field Operations Manual, as a Safety Man, I would highly recommend you breeze through that monster document. Because it gives them insight to what the inspector is going to be doing the compliance officer. The other concern is the power that it's giving the compliance officer, not that they don't deserve some empowerment, not that they don't deserve respect. But that's a big, big responsibility to be able to walk into a non union site and make a determination of what's needed for that site. And you could easily choose a union safety person, like someone who is part of the Union designated to be in charge of safety for the Union to bring in, that would be able to see this non union environment. And there's where the concern is, for people who are concerned about contract bargaining is like, does this give them an advantage of some kind? Not gonna get political? I'm not diving into that whatsoever, because that's just dangerous. I want to stay with the safety part of this. But also any outside expert, whether or not they really are a safety person or not. It's like, what, how do you determine the need of the employees to bring that person? And I think there is the biggest question now this is, the comment period is probably going to be absolutely interesting as people send in and comment. I can only imagine some of the fun that will be there, asking those questions. And then secondly, even if it goes through, there's going to be legal challenges that OSHA is overstepping their boundaries, they don't have the right to do this. This wasn't part of the original act that they were going to bring, allow anyone to come in based on just general expertise without guidance. So yeah, there's gonna be a lot of debate that we will follow together. I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes, because I am kind of disappointed in it personally. Because I think there's more important things that OSHA shouldn't be addressing. I think heat stress should be the number one priority, they should be cranking out a heat stress policy and legal doctrine for us, because that's important, I think resurrecting the ergonomics portion that that was lost to us some years ago, and audit years ago. Now. I think that there are more important things out there that are affecting us as safety people and affecting workers affecting employees that are dangerous that other companies are ignoring, because it's not a law. And which blows my mind just because it's unsafe. It but it's not a law. So we don't have to do it doesn't matter if it hurts people, doesn't matter if it kills people. That's crazy to me. But that's that's been the life of the industrial worker. Since the industrial times we look back at some of the greatest disasters, and it was because productivity was absolutely King, over a human being. And so they allow people to get hurt, maimed or killed in mass, because of that. And so when I think about is this walk around rule where I would like to see OSHA focusing on not really, I really would hope that there would have been different focus, something that was more pertinent to my everyday work that I could really see that improvement. I'm not sure I understand it. I vaguely have the idea of why we're going this direction. But I think my biggest, strongest concern here is we're Where's that big impact? Is this really going to make the difference that we need to help protect people's lives and I see this as more of an administrative burden that I see anything that would help someone actually in the field working, they could say, I deserve better, I deserve to be safe. Therefore, I need this law in place and there's still so many laws that we need so much guidance we need and this one here to me feels like it was just kind of pushed through and not really something that's I see a huge benefit for Speaking of laws that we need that we don't have yet, we're going to talk a little bit about that. On the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast.
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Mark French:And welcome back to the second half of our leading and learning through safety podcast. So just moments ago, in case you don't remember, we were talking about the OSHA walkaround rule and how I felt that I understand it not going to be political about it. But think there are things that are more important one of those being a heat stress policy that would be great to have a law or better guidance on heat stress. And And here's an example one day before that news release came out there was a news story. Again end of August. This is out of Memphis that a distribution center died in hot conditions. Adding in this new story talks about how it adds to the debate over the risk to worker during heatwaves now I'm gonna stop there. The story is better than that. It carries into like the Yeah, the disappointing pieces of some workplaces. But it's not just the heatwave, the heat comes every summer and every summer, this wouldn't have been on the soapbox so many times. Why do we like we so get so dang surprised? Every summer when it gets hot and people get sick and people die? From the heat? It happens every year. It's a little thing called Summer. Some summers are hotter than others. Absolutely. Some are more dangerous than others because of that heat, but it is still gonna get hot. And it's still going to be dangerous for certain workers. If we don't take precautions in here, what are those precautions? They say? Rest? watershape. Why Why would you Why Why would I do that? If it's not a law? I know that's a silly question because we're going to do it no matter what because it's the right thing to do. But some companies don't and here's the example so leaders from the local union said he was trying to cool off in the produce section at time so he was this was a grocery fulfillment distribution center going back and forth between dry and evidently a frozen foods or a cool food section. So trying to go there and cool off. The Memphis Police Department found the individual dead at 8:13pm slumped over his pallet jack. Why I got so few words about that. I got a lot to say about overall but very few words about that tragedy. And it was a tragedy to see a human being working sweating to lean over his palate jag in die right there. So the local unions that they've been trying to negotiate with the company have more rest breaks, more water breaks, and not getting anywhere of course, safety of our associates are our top priority according to the company. The okay, no way just there were signs there were if so who was watching out for this now step one, I get it. Putting someone in a super hot warehouse in the like work in the afternoon shift where's the hottest where you go from like midday to evening and it is super hot. And you're moving product in evidently by hand in this case, because it was near a pallet jack hard work. And there should have been some engineering controls. To me the company has a lot that needs to be improved on this organization needs more to protect their people. Secondly, who was watching I'm not just saying your brother's keeper here. I'm not saying that this one on those peer behavior base. Like I checked on him he was okay. Where was supervision? Where was management? When you could look around and probably see that this human being was suffering. Because you don't just jump from like I am perfectly well, having a great day, being productive to dead slumped over a pallet jack in just moments. That's a process that you get there. You were in there. Even the story talks about that the people, the some of the fellow co workers, and I wonder what the conversation was around what they saw and how they reported it. No details there. I'm curious, like, did they bring it up? Did they step in and be like, dude, just go sit down, just stop, just we'll just don't worry about it. Just Just don't do it anymore. There could have been something going I don't know there. Because that's, I know, I've told that story before of where I've seen people just step in for someone else, you know, you're you're going into the break room, and I don't want to see you again, for 20 minutes. Just go get hydrated. And if you don't still don't feel well, let's figure out how to get you home for the day, let's do something different. Let's get you in to see the nurse, let's get you into the to the first aid station. Let's let's call the one 800 Number for for non emergency care, maybe for companies that might have remote first aid assistance, something like that, let's do something more than just let you continue to suffer. And to see this could happen and someone not see something, say something, do something and talking about during these times of the year, should there be more breaks should it be negotiated in this case, being that it was a a labor union, they're they're really pushing during that time of the year, they need brakes, more brakes, more access to cool areas, more water, because it's a dangerous condition. And they feel like that they have to negotiate that to get it done from the organization and the organization that says safety is number one priority. It's hard to defend that safety is your number one priority when you're when when the police come in and find someone dead in that condition not not to say they're an evil, evil corporation. But there was an opportunity to learn an opportunity to grow an opportunity to admit that maybe something wasn't perfect. And I know we never admit that in public because then the attorneys would just eat us alive. And I think that frustrates me too is that it's hard to be open and honest when you know that those words will come back and maybe bite you for being open and honest and vulnerable. That's a weird thing, isn't it? When you talk about how do we do this in an ethical and moral way. And that's a whole nother thing. I'm not going to even dive into that this week. Oops, that one would be oh, gosh, wouldn't it be a rough one? So here we are at the end of our time. And I think I want to close with just basically saying this is where we need focus. We are the hazards to our team, how do we get better involved? How do we jump in there and really make a difference to our team and I appreciate every single safety person out there doing that and trying to make them thanks for joining me on this episode. And until next time we chat stay safe.
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