Episode 132 - Safety at Home

This week we talk about some interesting news about those who work at and around the home. 

Links: 

https://www.foxnews.com/us/osha-investigation-finds-safety-violations-georgia-grain-silo-fatality

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-09-30/california-newsom-veto-housekeepers-nannies-domestic-workers-safety-protections

Transcript

Announcer: 0:15

Welcome to the leading and learning through safety podcast. Your host is Dr. Mark French marks passion is helping organizations motivate their teams. This podcast is focused on bringing out the best in leadership through creating strong values, learning opportunities, teamwork, and 60. Nothing is more important than protecting your people. Safety creates an environment for empathy, innovation, and empowerment. Together, we'll discover meaning and purpose through shaping our safety culture. Thanks for joining us this episode. And now, here is Dr. Mark French.

Mark French: 1:10

And welcome to this episode of the leading and learning through safety bomb cast. Hello, I am your host, Dr. Mark French. And I am happy that to have you as someone listening to my podcast. I always appreciate it. Because when your listeners are in the anyway, I really appreciate it. It's really good. I love doing this podcast and I just appreciate you being a part of it. I'm looking forward. I've got some exciting things coming with the podcast hope next year, as I'm improving some of my equipment and stuff. So you know more to come excited about that. So this podcast is all about leadership. It's about leadership and how safety is your first indicator. I call it the litmus test because litmus paper basically says acidic or basic or neutral. And that's what I love about it. You just touch it, you know the color you go, okay, acid base, whatever chemical thing, I love chemistry. But safety to me is a litmus test, you walk into an organization, you walk into a site, you look at the safety, you look at the people and you ask them about safety. That's gonna tell you a lot about the organization. Right? They're hot or cold, good or bad. At acidic or basic. It is the test that it'll tell you distinctly about their leadership, their investment, it tells you a lot about that organization. Real quick. Look at your safety. What story is it telling about your organization? Are you proud of that story? Are you happy with where that story is at right now. And this story doesn't end. I love safety. Because it's so much about people. That means the story is never over. We're always improving, always driving, always doing something more. That's exciting. It's exciting that when you make that improvement, that it directly impacts people. And it directly impacts your company in your organization so perfectly. Just fires me up. So let's jump into the news here. I found a really interesting news story. Right at the end of September, this one came out and it's from California. I usually follow California and Washington State as really clean indicators of future OSHA activity, potentially, because their state plans usually lead the way with educational resources. They also usually lead the way in regulations like they'll pass a lot of extra regulations. As part when we hear about Cal OSHA, we hear about Washington, OSHA, we really hear about Cal OSHA a lot. But when we see like the trends, we see things evolving there, we usually see other states follow. We also see national OSHA start to adopt some of those policies, usually they'll use what's existing first as a baseline. So if you look at like even the ergonomic standard that was eventually turned back over, but when you look at those regulations, you look at what they were doing in those states. Those are the ones that lead and that the feds and other states will take their standard and adapt it some but it generally comes from that existing standard where they've essentially tested it. They've seen how it worked inside that those states and then they're able to take it refine and learn from it get over the learning curve quicker, implemented. And we can see that and so when you're using those as your guidance and your guiding light principles, it gives you a good idea of what you can expect Two years from now, usually, but it gives you an idea of what you can expect. So I always try to follow them. Not perfect about that. But I try to follow the best I can with what's going on there. This new story caught my attention because of the intricacies and the debate here, which is really powerful. And very interesting to me on how this would happen and how you could do it. But basically, it's about the Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill, it would have granted safety workplace protections to housekeepers and nannies in California. The unions and the immigration right advocates are really fighting for these regulations for domestic workers and housekeepers and nannies, things like that. It's the second time that Newsom has vetoed the safety regulation for domestic workers. A statewide advisory committee has recommended it's been a 50 year exclusion from Cal OSHA, the the bill did have wide spread support, it was expected to cost quite a bit of money. And really, it was about worker protection, that those that going into people's houses may not have the protections that other people would have in, in work. The reason he vetoed it was that this would give Cal OSHA power over individual households. So imagine you were an individual that has a housekeeper or nanny or something like that, that you were affording them, you would also have to afford all the safety protections for that person, as needed, you would have to essentially comply with the OSHA regulation in your home, that you were bringing that worker, you would have to for instance, if you had cleaning products for your housekeeper, an eyewash, station safety data sheets, you would have to provide protections. It would also I didn't dig a whole lot into like where the workers comp would come from anything of that sort. But also there could be fines. So let's say you had a complaint against your home for not being compliant with safety standards. Cal OSHA could potentially have come in and cited you as an individual. So there was a lot of the individual versus company versus safety, all of that into a combination of how do you provide safety? For those that go to a client location? How are they prepared for whatever may come in, walking into a client now currently, I mean, I work in an industry where it's not houses, but it is client driven. So we're in a client's location. We work inside a different building, we work inside the client's building, we have to go in. In those cases, it's a company organization. So ideally, they would be compliant with OSHA regulations. So the team would be going into a location that is OSHA prepared, OSHA safe, OSHA approved, not approved, no motion doesn't approve anything, but essentially up to legal standard. So there shouldn't be concerned of walking into that. But when we start going into individual houses, where are those protections? And how do you provide those protections for those workers that may not be completely present? At a more industrial or company, workplace fire code? We think about a lot. No, the intricacies of the law was different. And I'm speaking in very, very broad terms. But these were the things that were considered during the veto process was how do these protections go into place at an individual household? Should there be safety protection for workers? Yes, workers deserve it. To me. Safety is integral to the human condition. If we can make it safer, we should, if there's a way of providing a safer workplace, safer, chemical safer process, should we do it? Yeah. Even at home, even if they're not workers, I tried to think about the idea of providing a safer place to live and work. The NFPA publishes all kinds of things about home safety, home fire escape plans, home cooking, protections, none of that separate but what I'm trying to get at here is that safety is integrated. It's it's almost an innate right, that if we can provide it, it should be there. And in the 21st century, how do we not provide that Let's talk a little bit more about that worker and home protection. When we come back right after this break,

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Mark French: 10:46

And welcome back to the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. This week, we're talking about protections for workers that maybe at a client side or at a home location. So in California, they they've had a bill come through a couple of times, that have the support from a lot of people, for domestic workers like housekeepers, nannies, etc, that they would be able to have the same protections as everyone else under OSHA. The concern came from how do you have an individual household OSHA compliant? Where does the funding come from? Where does the right to file an OSHA complaint? Where can OSHA sign who has to pay for the upgrades? Who has to do the OSHA stuff? Where does all that come from the process? It sounds great. And ultimately, it should be something that is done. I think it was the How to that really got tangled up is? How do we get to that point? And how, how much work? Would it take how much investment, there's estimates of like 10s of millions of dollars of state investment to get to a place where they could actually perform the law. And it comes to the idea of where are these protections? And how can they be done? Is there the in between? Is there a way that innately we provide that protection in one of my thoughts goes immediately to the agriculture industry as right now, and has been and will be going on here for a little while about harvesting that we're bringing in the grain we see. I see right out my window, a field where they just harvested the corn maybe two a week ago, and down the road. Because I live in a rural area, I'm watching them farm, a whole bunch of other stuff, they're bringing in beans or bringing in corn. And over the past few weeks, I've seen a few unfortunate stories of where industrial farms where there's been some engulfment issues and this unfortunately, every year around this time and the grain silos, that there's someone that goes into unclog it, there's not a confined space prop policy there. And they're sucked in. And there's a fatality. A lot of those go unreported because OSHA does not have jurisdiction over families. So if it's just you and your family doing the farming, there's, it's really up to you to provide safety based on what you feel comfortable doing and what you can do. And what you know to do. And there's a lot of not a lot, but more common than it shouldn't be I'll put it that way. A lot of the farmers are very responsible, respectful. They do their they do it well. And they do it great. And they, hey, we eat it. If you ate today, think of pharma I mean, for real and very, very thankful for what they do. And also there's a deep concern that do they have the safety Massey, a lot of outreach from some people that I've seen in the agriculture industry of providing safety equipment to these family farms to teaching them how to use the equipment like just simple rescue equipment for confined spaces when you have to go into that grain silo and unclog it. But here's another one of those where we look at the idea of how, at home and at work those those lines blur sometimes where it's that family working together in something like farming. And then there the idea of that that California we were talking about having workers in the home, where are those protections, those lines start to blur, the area becomes very gray on how we do it. And it comes back to what is the basic human process to make it better for human beings who are working around those things. Because for every item that we see reported from a farming standpoint of an industrial farm having an incident there's a number of them, that we are aren't seeing news about because it was a family. It was a family farm, a family run, OSHA didn't have to get involved, there was no press release. And there was still something very unfortunate that happened, whether because the resources weren't available, the knowledge wasn't there, the process wasn't there. Something was missing. And those basic protections are dire. And it's extreme, and it's, it hits that family very strongly. And where safety is that basic human need, we have that desire to be safe. But we can only be as safe as we know, we have to understand that there's a hazard there, we have to see ways to overcome that hazard. And then we have to put it in place, there's a very critical issue here of one, knowing there's a hazard and to knowing how to overcome it. Many times we see in the safety profession, I know, like for credentials, they asked for you to have so many years of experience. So you can have that experience to lean on. As you take exams and as you grow and continuing education, because they want you to see things they want you to see those problems and solutions because it's easy to walk in. And I've always said this about, there are certain consultants that have made a name for themselves by just pointing out problems. They come in, and they write this monster list of everything that's wrong. And they give you nothing on how to fix it. Which is to me, missing part of the point. I've also worked with some fantastic consultants that have come in, wrote the big report, but also gave me ideas, pictures, places to buy things, people to talk to methodology to fix the problem. That's where it comes from. It's easy to find that looks unsafe, that doesn't look right. But if you've never had the background, the knowledge, the education, the learning the experience, of seeing it and seeing the solution, your mind only has the hazard in it, it can't process to the next level to realize other people have gone through that. And there's a really neat solution out there to help fix it or help correct or maybe being a resource that will help you come in and correct it. And that's where I always I want to encourage you reach out for resources. I'm sure if you reach out to someone, there's something out there that can help you get there and find that safe place. I mean, even I have called OSHA a number of times not to report something, but to ask a question to verify that I'm on the right track to verify I interpreted the regulation the correct way. It's great to ask for help. That's why we're all here is to help each other and to make sure we can provide the safest place for people to work. Well, thanks for joining me on this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. This is going to be put out right before Halloween. So I do want to mention, I know it's really uncool. But when your little ghosts and goblins are out trick or treating flashlight, some reflective where those things help. And the last thing we want is even though we want to be spooky and fun and scary, being seen as even better. So I really hope that you have a fantastic Halloween if that's what you do and out there, but be safe while doing it. And until next time we'll chat stay safe

Announcer: 19:03

Thank you for listening to the leading and learning through safety podcast. More content is available online at www dot T S D A consulting.com. All the opinions expressed on the podcast are solely attributed to the individual and not affiliated with any business entity. This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes. It is not a substitute for proper policy, appropriate training or legal advice. This has been the leading and learning through safety podcast asked