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Don’t get caught on TV working unsafe!

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hillbilly1

Senior Member
Location
North Georgia mountains
Occupation
Owner/electrical contractor
Just seen a TV news camera crew filming a banner installation at the Kentucky Horse Park I believe. Two workers were installing a new banner along a wall about 15-20’ up using a scissor lift. Every thing was going well until they reached the end, when they pulled out a walkboard to span the last 8’ the lift with the platform extended, could not reach. They walked right out on the walkboard, did not even appear tied off and finished the banner! Any OSHA inspector watching the news will probably make a visit to that company! I will see if there is any video available.
 
Buck Parrish

Buck Parrish

Senior Member
Location
NC & IN
Yep, you've got to watch out for cameras.

I was installing wires for a community garden receptacle outlet in Durham years ago. I had not taken out a permit. The next day the front page of the paper had a pic of the trench being dug. It read "Electricians installing wires for the community garden.

I got a call from the city inspections about the time they finished their doughnuts that morning. ;)
 
Sea Nile

Sea Nile

Senior Member
Location
Georgia
Occupation
Electrician
Ever see the iconic picture of the construction workers sitting on an I-beam of a skyscraper eating lunch? Historical pictures like that show how far we have come in safety standards. But sometimes I see things or read some of the posts here that make me think that we have gone too far. I'm for safety, but against runaway safety tyranny that makes it impossible to be productive. The problem is there are no checks and balances on OSHA.
 
4x4dually

4x4dually

Senior Member
Location
Stillwater, OK
Occupation
Electrical Engineer/ Ex-Electrician
Sea Nile said:
Ever see the iconic picture of the construction workers sitting on an I-beam of a skyscraper eating lunch? Historical pictures like that show how far we have come in safety standards. But sometimes I see things or read some of the posts here that make me think that we have gone too far. I'm for safety, but against runaway safety tyranny that makes it impossible to be productive. The problem is there are no checks and balances on OSHA.
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Back then, if someone would fall off an I-beam and go splat, the family wouldn't sue for millions of bucks. They'd know that the job was risky and that is part of it. Today, some jackwagon walks into my father's body shop, trips on the threshold of the door, then sues my dad for medical. That door has been there for over 60 years and no one has tripped on it. I saw we remove warning labels and let natural selection get back to what it was doing 50 years ago. Up pad the rooms, take off all the helmets, and get after it.
 
drcampbell

drcampbell

Senior Member
Location
The Motor City, Michigan USA
Occupation
Registered Professional Engineer
Sea Nile said:
... sometimes I see things ... that make me think that we have gone too far. ... The problem is there are no checks and balances on OSHA.
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If nobody had been killed or injured on the job for several years, it might be appropriate to begin asking whether OSHA was overreaching.
But as it stands now, OSHA is pretty far away from fulfilling their mandate of assuring safe & healthy workplaces. Workplaces need more scrutiny, not less.

4x4dually said:
Back then, if someone would fall off an I-beam and go splat, ... They'd know that the job was risky and that is part of it. ...
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Yeah, what a bunch of wussies we've become: Expecting to come home safely from work each & every day? What next? Livable wages for everybody?
 
Jraef

Jraef

Moderator, OTD
Staff member
Location
San Francisco Bay Area, CA, USA
Occupation
Electrical Engineer
All of this emphasis on safe work practices is the direct result of the families of injured or killed workers getting lawyers. All of it. OSHA is the result of those lawyers saying, after the award was handed out, that “we were not in it for the money, we did it to affect changes”, then elected officials enacting those changes into laws and appointing a watchdog agency for them.

Is it all wrong? I’m not so sure. Employers, especially larger ones, were (are?) notorious for not giving a flying you-know-what about the lives of employees and would often require that they work in dangerous situations. When I was coming up working in a steel mill, I witnessed a coworker get killed working on a rolling mill DC drive while it was energized, because “it was too expensive to shut down the mill”. Needless to say the mill ended up shutting down anyway, but the bigger cost was to him and his family. I think they got $100k from USS for that, based on his being in his 50s and how many more years he would have been able to work. But AFTER that, OSHA came in and reviewed the workplace safety procedures and forced them to make changes.
 
petersonra

petersonra

Senior Member
Location
Northern illinois
Occupation
engineer
Jraef said:
All of this emphasis on safe work practices is the direct result of the families of injured or killed workers getting lawyers. All of it. OSHA is the result of those lawyers saying, after the award was handed out, that “we were not in it for the money, we did it to affect changes”, then elected officials enacting those changes into laws and appointing a watchdog agency for them.

Is it all wrong? I’m not so sure. Employers, especially larger ones, were (are?) notorious for not giving a flying you-know-what about the lives of employees and would often require that they work in dangerous situations. When I was coming up working in a steel mill, I witnessed a coworker get killed working on a rolling mill DC drive while it was energized, because “it was too expensive to shut down the mill”. Needless to say the mill ended up shutting down anyway, but the bigger cost was to him and his family. I think they got $100k from USS for that, based on his being in his 50s and how many more years he would have been able to work. But AFTER that, OSHA came in and reviewed the workplace safety procedures and forced them to make changes.
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I am not sure who is worse. The large employers who knew certain things were unsafe but also knew to the penny how much it would cost to correct the unsafe conditions so made an economic judgement to remain unsafe. Or the smaller employers who did not want to know just how unsafe some of their facilities were.

The US government was no better. During WWII they gave life insurance policies to service members in the amount of $10,000 that paid off if a service member was killed in action. So, the US government set the value of a human life of $10,000 way back then.
 
Sea Nile

Sea Nile

Senior Member
Location
Georgia
Occupation
Electrician
I'm not saying OSHA is bad, and I'm not saying that I support the idea of the workers eating lunch on an I-beam.

What concerns me is the idea of safety above all else and the pursuit of impossible goals.

It leads to things like was mentioned in another thread
Where someone had to request permission to use a ladder a day in advance.

But too many people want money for nothing so they hire the ambulance chasing blood sucking lawyers.

I support safety and am against companies that put profit ahead of their employees, but there should be a balance where you can recognize that there are inherent dangers in certain job fields and the people that choose to work in that field accept calculated risks.
 
ActionDave

ActionDave

Chief Moderator
Staff member
Location
Durango, CO, 10 h 20 min from the winged horses.
Occupation
Licensed Electrician
I spent the day working alone in an empty, solid, concrete room. Nothing was going fall anywhere from anything or from anybody. I still had to keep my hardhat on. Ridiculous. I've had it with safety programs, safety meetings, safety policy, daily safety huddles, plans, and the whole safety infrastructure. And I disagree that it's OSHA at the root of all this. It's insurance companies.
 
Jraef

Jraef

Moderator, OTD
Staff member
Location
San Francisco Bay Area, CA, USA
Occupation
Electrical Engineer
petersonra said:
…
The US government was no better. During WWII they gave life insurance policies to service members in the amount of $10,000 that paid off if a service member was killed in action. So, the US government set the value of a human life of $10,000 way back then.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I met a woman once who had the front of her foot amputated after an accident caused by a drawbridge raising in traffic. She got $2.1 million to cover her life long medic costs along with the pain, suffering and loss of work, but the family of the 60+ year old woman in the car next to her who died got $300k.
 
H

hillbilly1

Senior Member
Location
North Georgia mountains
Occupation
Owner/electrical contractor
Jraef said:
Yeah, I met a woman once who had the front of her foot amputated after an accident caused by a drawbridge raising in traffic. She got $2.1 million to cover her life long medic costs along with the pain, suffering and loss of work, but the family of the 60+ year old woman in the car next to her who died got $300k.
Click to expand...
Yeah, it’s much cheaper to have an employee killed instead of maimed in an accident.
 
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