This week, the podcast is focused on what leads to a corporate culture of uncaring and apathy. Until, that is, something goes terribly wrong.
This week, the podcast is focused on what leads to a corporate culture of uncaring and apathy. Until, that is, something goes terribly wrong.
This week on the podcast, we're talking about a lockout tagout issue that leads to even broader problems with Department of Labor Laws at a chicken processor in Mississippi. I want to talk more about that on this episode 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 safety. 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. Hello, and welcome to this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. Hi, I am Dr. Mark French. And thank you very much for joining me on this adventure. As we look at safety, as we look at leadership, as we look at the causes the cultural causes of human harm. In a workplace, it's still unbelievable that we can talk about things like that, in the year 2024, that there is significant and serious harm happening to people at the workplace, and most of it and the ones I mostly talk about negligent, absolutely just negligence on the part of everyone around it, whether it be fear of speaking out, or whether there'll be a lot of other cultural issues we want to explore. It's a scary and honestly disturbing trend. So the news story that caught my attention very prominently caught my attention was that this is a poultry facility that processes meat and actually supplies some pretty famous places with chicken. And this Mississippi slaughterhouse was fined $200,000 for 14 Federal violations when a human being was pulled into a piece of equipment. And what makes it even worse. This is a 16 year old that was pulled into a piece of equipment. So let's look at a few things here. One, serious safety violations absolutely unacceptable. serious safety violations. Number two, age just absolute. Not paying attention to the age of their workers in looking at this migrant worker 16 years old, doing work that is not acceptable for that age, probably with no training. No doubt about that. I can't see that any liquor training was given here, and a fatality. And there's so much wrong here and I want to dive a little deeper. And of course, we can only look at what the news tells us and what I've been able to find. And I will post a link to the news story from NBC News. It was unbelievable how this happens. It's no surprise they quote, you know, the power wasn't disconnected from the machine. Yeah, there's this thing and I hate to be sarcastic but it's this isn't the first time we've talked about this on the podcast, where young people are doing work in a food processing plant that they have no business doing. There was no lockout tagout process, no control of hazardous energy and someone loses their life that is exceptionally young, more younger than what they even should be when I think about when I was 16 years old. Could I imagine being in a poultry plant, night shift, cleaning equipment and Maybe watching your friend die because of that work that we had to do? No, that's I can't put myself in that. So they have a poor track record of safety in the first place, according to some safety experts in OSHA that this is certainly something that shouldn't be there. The company said they were surprised to learn that this individual was 16 years old, and not 32. Who ever applied for the job, whoever put this person in the situation, wrote down they were 30 doubled their age. You know, I'm not an exceptionally like, I'm not a super observant person sometimes. But I hope that I would be able to look around my workplace. If I went and did a walkthrough of my work of the people that I work with due to safety audit, or even an HR visit. With this, would I be able to tell the difference between a 16 year old and a 32 year old? I would hope so. And what disturbs me is the layers of failure here that there should be more accountability in a lot of places here than just with this one manufacturer. The manufacturer did it because they were allowed to make a monster profit from a big corporation that evidently didn't look out, didn't do their due diligence, I'm sure there was something on paper that said, we will follow the law, I'm sure there was some writing and agreement somewhere that said, we will be safe, we will be equitable, we will treat pit people fairly, I am certain that is somewhere in writing in a contract. But evidently, it wasn't followed through, or there was no checking. Because if you go back and look at the OSHA violations, if you just look and do a basic search, this was not a great place. Historically, they had trouble. And I am I'm not sure how they spun that or even if they had to, or if it was just pure ignorance is bliss. Unfortunately, let me take one step back and talk about the fact that it is scary what is happening for sanitation. In the food industry, a lot of industries are the ones that we're seeing that are having these incidents are ones that have outsourced their sanitation. They have usually now when I was back in the food industry, back in the day, sanitation was a critical part of our in terminal plant. People that were worked there also was part of the sanitation team and sanitation had their own group that kind of oversaw and did some of the heavy, the more, I think more tedious, scientific, like deep level stuff. And then they had a lot of help doing the work getting it done. So you had the experts helping guide in, it was a good process. I believed in that process. I saw that process a few times I watched it happen. And it was people who knew the process, it was people who knew this equipment back and forth. They knew how to get it clean, they knew how to get into it, they knew what to do. And they were trained on lockout tagout, they were trained on HazCom. Because there's some really rough chemicals, when you're sanitizing food equipment, it has to make sure viruses and bacteria are gone. You don't want that in your food. So they're strong chemicals. I think they're becoming greener. I've seen some really cool technology, separate discussion. But you have to be ready for the chemical hazards, the PPE that's needed around those chemical hazards, lockout tagout, to assure that the equipment is off, you do not hit because you're in there. You're really scrubbing, you're getting in those little tight spaces you're putting where their stuff moving and grinding and doing your path to physically put a brush in there sometimes reach in there, it has to be verified off. No starting power is down. It has to be and I have I'm not the best. I'm not gonna say that I was perfect. I am not there is no such thing. But I understood that there was a huge risk there as a safety person, as a leadership person, that there was importance in doing that piece of it right. And there had to be extensive training. There had to be extensive learning and there had to be a robust process to make sure that when the people did that work, they were able to walk away from it, knowing that they've done a great job. and getting their line ready for the next production cycle. But also they were safe doing it. So important. Let's continue this discussion on the next half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. humanizing the workplace it is the leading a learning through safety podcast, DSD, a consulting, learn you lead others, the Myers Briggs Type Indicator is an amazing tool. The problem is that it can be easily misinterpreted. Dr. Mark French is MBTI certified and ready to help you discover your inner strengths. The MBTI assessment can help with team building stress management, communication, conflict management, and so much more. Individual and group sessions are available to help you discover what makes you great. For more information, visit us on the web at TS da consulting.com. And welcome back to the second half of our leading and learning through safety podcast. So glad you've joined me this week, we're talking about, again, sanitation at a food plant that had a lot of safety hazards. A very little oversight, evidently, and a contracted sanitation group that allowed a 16 year old to get caught in on a piece of equipment and die. Unacceptable. So let's right before we went to the break, we were talking about sanitation and how this externalizing this contracting of the sanitation group causes a lot of issues. There seems to be at times not that it can't be done successfully. It probably can. I saw it work best internal, a lot more accountability a lot more. You assured the training was right with a high hazardous item, you assured the people with people you knew. And when the HR group says they're astounded that Oh, you mean that wasn't a 32 year old? That was a 16 year old? Unbelievable. Where are we? What is happening when you are not at least at some point in good faith? going out and looking at your team. Now I will honestly say companies are cutting all the time, safety and health and HR budgets they want will fewer overhead people doing the work and it becomes so administrative so behind your desk, and it's overwhelming that way. And I am sorry for those out there that are in that position. Because it's an M, you can't win. There has that's a no win situation for anyone. And you can't be out there you can't see. And then these surprises get you and you go home and you go, Oh my God, how could this happen? And you realize it was probably done by design by a very greedy corporate culture that wanted to make sure that you weren't out there. And I have, in a very loose way seen something like that, and made sure I got out of there, it was took a little while. Because we have responsibilities as people to have a job. And when you're put in that situation, you start looking and you start hoping and you start trying to move but what can you do? Except keep trying to get out and keep doing your best and take care of yourself, but also take care of what you can but in this case, who was who else was out there not saying anything? Where are where was the supervision? Where was the auditing? Where was anyone else that could look out there and go? Why is this really young person working on this equipment? And why on earth? Is this equipment still moving? Where is it? And I'm getting more and more the more I find articles like this, the more angry I get, because it puts such a terrible face to safety when we should be focusing on so much proactive and there's so many out there doing some amazing proactive work. The spectrum is so wide we have this kind of violation happening. But on the other hand, we've got some companies that are doing everything right, making huge investments, making sure things are running the right way. And that recognition in those benchmarking only really gets shared within a small group of people. And yet here we have this happening. And so I also look at the next layer is as a company that would subcontract or buy a product from someone. We're as the due diligence now we have seen that some of the in the past I think in the past year I've read a couple of articles. I can't put my finger on them at the moment but companies like Microsoft and Apple started doing their own internal supplier investigation, sending their people to audit the working conditions and the living conditions of like, how are you getting paid? How are you treated at some of their places that are producing their items, because they came under such scrutiny for making such a monster profit over the lack of potentially the lack of systems in place to protect the people who were actually building in. The people were getting so rich, so So money hungry, and forgetting that there were people suffering, and not able to work safely, to even produce those items. And they started looking at those things, but even in the US, so that was overseas. In the US, we have things like this happening right in front of us, right here in our own country, which is so disappointing to me to hear that a very large company making a huge profit off of this, this other supplier that has said, hey, we'll supply you these things at a very great cost. So you can go do your thing and make money. And there's no deep dive into that. I will in when I was in the food industry, one of the more remarkable things that I was shocked in was that a very large grocery store chain, very famous grocery store chain, contracted with a group of auditors that came in and did like a full, it was a safety and kind of a payroll and HR audit, to assure that there was fair wages for the area that there was appropriate vacation time that safety practices were in place to look around the area a little bit, and to talk to a couple of people. And to do business with this village, we wanted, we needed this large, large grocery chain, you allow these auditors to come to you every other year, once a year, it was so frequently, I just remember being part of one of the audits. And I was shocked that it mattered like this, the scorecard really mattered and you needed to be performing, to assure that you were up to the standard, that you were taking care of your team appropriately. So that that company felt like they were doing the right thing in being in business with you and buying your product and putting their your product on the shelf. Wouldn't that be something to have those kinds of that kind of power happening? It didn't happen here. In something was missing, there are so many layers missing of people scared. And a lot of this now didn't even begin to touch this. But the whole sense of equity, and not taking advantage of a population of people. There. That would be a whole nother item to talk about. But I just want to we just focused today on just the layers of negligence of absolute turning a blind eye to unsafe conditions, very young people doing very unsafe work. And letting something like this happen and then going oh my God, how could this happen? Well, how did it happen? There's a lot of ways that have happened. The there were so many opportunities to be able to prevent something like this, and I hate it. And it frustrates me and slightly angers me at the same time. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. Hey, I'm really excited. Coming up. And early February, I will be at the alert media employee safety conference. And I will be there as part of a panel group very experienced panel group talking about how to leverage resources to get the best you can out of your team. I think it's gonna be great. I'm looking forward to it. And until next time we chat. Stay safe. Thank you for listening to the leading and learning through safety podcast. More content is available online at www dot t s da 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 his Safety podcast