The Morning Call in Allentown, PA, interviewed 20 current and former Amazon warehouse workers over the course of two months and obtained OSHA records through the Freedom of Information Act to find how the agency handled complaints about extreme heat in the facility.

Here’s a partial timeline:

• June 2, 2011: An Amazon warehouse worker told OSHA the heat index inside the warehouse hit 102° and 15 workers collapsed. The worker said employees who left due to the heat received disciplinary points.
• June 3: OSHA told Amazon it had received a complaint and asked the company to investigate. OSHA said six employees had been taken to the hospital the previous day.
• June 9: OSHA inspects the Amazon warehouse.
• June 10: OSHA received a message from an emergency room doctor at a nearby hospital that several patients had come into the ER in the last couple days from Amazon with heat-related injuries.
• June 13: The safety manager at the warehouse sends a letter to OSHA disputing that employees received disciplinary points for leaving due to heat-related symptoms.
• July 25: An Amazon security guard called OSHA to report the heat indoors exceeded 110°. The guard said two pregnant women were taken to nurses and Amazon wouldn’t open dock doors to help air circulation. Employees said the doors were kept closed because of Amazon’s concerns about theft. While no one says the Amazon dock doors were locked, such situations have contributed to some of the largest workplace disasters in U.S. history.
• August 18: OSHA closes its inspection by issuing recommendations to Amazon about how it could improve its heat-stress management plan.

In 2010, when Amazon announced it would open a new shipping hub in the Lehigh Valley and employ “several hundred” workers, the news was welcome. Workers say employment at the warehouse ranges from 900 to 2,000 in peak season.

The jobs pay $11 to $12.25 per hour.

Many of the jobs aren’t permanent. Amazon uses a recruiting company, Integrity Staffing Solutions (ISS) to fill positions at the warehouse. Employees interviewed by The Morning Call say, even though they’re told the temporary positions can lead to permanent ones, that rarely happens.

Of course, since the workers are employees of the recruiting company, Amazon saves on its workers’ comp insurance costs.

‘Sign this’

According to one Amazon worker who spoke to the newspaper, ISS used another method to keep its injury rate down.

The woman said one day when the heat in some parts of the warehouse reached 110°, she began to feel dizzy. She went to a nurse station.

Within minutes, an ISS manager asked her to sign a paper saying her symptoms weren’t work-related.

The employee took meds for high blood pressure, which can sometimes cause people to be more heat-sensitive.

The woman thought the dizziness was work-related, but she signed the paper anyway because she needed her job. She says she’s looking for another job now so she can get out of the Amazon warehouse.

Amazon took some steps to deal with the hot conditions in the warehouse. The company paid an ambulance service to have paramedics stationed at the warehouse during five days of excessive heat in June and July.

The ambulance company says it saw 20 to 30 people who paramedics helped hydrate and cool down so they could return to work. Another 15 people were transported to area hospitals for further treatment, but none were in critical condition.

And the employees say at about the time of the OSHA inspection, the company changed another policy.

Amazon has an automatic recordkeeping system that gives employees demerits if they leave early.

The safety director at the warehouse says no employees were penalized for leaving work early due to heat-related symptoms.

However, workers tell the newspaper that wasn’t the case until after OSHA got involved.

Amazon has issued a statement that “the safety and well-being of our associates is our number one priority.” The company pointed to steps it took during this summer’s heat waves, but it didn’t dispute any of the newspaper’s reporting.

Of course there are two ways you can look at this story:

1. The conditions in the warehouse were too severe. Amazon could do more for its workers. Or,
2. Jobs are hard to find. For each worker who couldn’t take the heat in the warehouse, there are probably 10 more waiting in line who would take the job.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.

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The report from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) says the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig that killed 11 workers and sent almost five million barrels of oil into the Gulf over 87 days starting April 20, 2010, was the result of  ”poor risk management, last-minute changes to plans, failure to observe and respond to critical indicators, inadequate well control response, and insufficient emergency bridge response training by the companies responsible.”

The technical reasons for the explosion include problems with cement barriers, production casing and lock-down sleeves.

But the report also finds seven company practices that contributed to the explosion. They read like a list of things not to do if you want to have a safe company:

• the failure of the crew to stop work after encountering multiple hazards and warnings, despite the existence of a stop-work policy
• BP’s failure to fully assess the risks associated with a number of operational decisions leading up to the blowout
• BP’s cost- or time-saving decisions without considering contingencies and mitigation
• BP’s failure to ensure all risks associated with operations on the Deepwater Horizon were as low as reasonably practicable
• BP’s failure to have full supervision and accountability over the activities associated with the Deepwater Horizon
• BP’s failure to document, evaluate, approve and communicate changes associated with Deepwater Horizon personnel and operations, and
• failure of BP and Transocean to ensure they had a common integrated approach to well control.

Specifically, the BOEMRE report says in the days leading up to April 20, 2010, BP made a series of decisions that added incremental risk and failed to communicate these decisions to its business partner, Transocean. As a result, employees for both companies didn’t fully identify and evaluate the risks involved and misinterpreted anomalies they encountered.

Among the problems that BP and Transocean faced: project completion delays and cost overruns. At the time of the explosion, the project was significantly behind schedule. Operations were more than $58 million over budget.

Resulting cost cuts were a major contributor to the disaster, according to the BOEMRE report.

BP rewarded employees for cost-saving steps but didn’t reward them in the same way for increasing safety.

The U.S. Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation that could bring indictments and heavy fines. An expert interviewed by The New York Times says the BOEMRE report increases the likelihood that criminal charges will be filed.

As someone in charge of safety, have you ever faced pressure to cut costs or make changes that would increase risk so a project could be completed on time? How did you handle the situation? Let us know in the comments.

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The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has released its final report on the Aug. 28, 2008 explosion in Institute, WV.

The CSB found multiple deficiencies during a lengthy startup process that resulted in a runaway chemical reaction inside a residue treater pressure vessel.

The report says the startup was premature, a result of pressures to resume production at the facility after a lengthy maintenance period.

CSB investigators found startup took place before equipment checks, a pre-startup safety review and computer calibration were complete.

A principle cause of the explosion was the intentional overriding of a safety interlock system.

CSB Chairperson Dr. Rafael Moure-Eraso said the explosion “could have been prevented had Bayer CropScience provided adequate training and required a comprehensive pre-startup equipment checkout and strict conformance with appropriate startup procedures.”

The report also finds deficiencies with Bayer’s response after the explosion.

One CSB board member noted that Bayer management withheld information from county emergency response agencies.

The incident commander at the plant recommended residents nearby shelter in place. However, that information didn’t get to 911 operators. After an hour, local authorities ordered a shelter in place as a precaution.

A measure signed into law last year prohibits chemical companies from classifying safety information as sensitive in an effort to keep it from becoming public. The law was in response to the Bayer explosion.

Members of Congress accused Bayer of withholding critical information from emergency responders and CSB investigators.

The law makes it clear that the Sensitive Security Information designation created under homeland security laws can’t be used to withhold information that the government should share with the public.

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The commission appointed by President Obama will present its full report on Jan. 11. But it released one chapter of the report a few days earlier.

The report says the incident on April 20, 2010, was avoidable and that most of the mistakes at the Macondo well can be traced back to “a single overarching failure — a failure of management. Better management by BP, Halliburton and Transocean would almost certainly have prevented the blowout.”

Among the highlights from this chapter of the report:

• Three things could have prevented the blowout. “But mistakes and failure to appreciate risk compromised each of those potential barriers.”
• “BP’s management process did not adequately identify or address risks created by late changes to well design and procedures.” Changes in plans at Macondo “appear to have been made by the BP Macondo team in ad hoc fashion without any formal risk analysis or internal expert review.”
• “BP, Transocean, and Halliburton failed to communicate adequately. Information appears to have been excessively compartmentalized … BP did not share important information with its contractors, or sometimes internally even with members of its own team.”
• “Transocean failed to adequately communicate lessons from an earlier near-miss to its crew … from an eerily similar near-miss on one of its rigs in the North Sea four months prior to the Macondo blowout.”
• “Decisionmaking processes at Macondo did not adequately ensure that personnel fully considered the risks created by time- and money-saving decisions.”

This chapter also notes that in the full report, BP’s corporate safety culture will be addressed. “It is also critical that companies implement and maintain a pervasive top-down safety culture that reward employees and contractors who take action when there is a safety concern even though such action costs the company time and money.”

The government doesn’t get a pass in this report:

• “Government also failed to provide the oversight necessary to prevent these lapses in judgment and management by private industry.”
• “The root cause can be better found by considering how efforts to expand regulatory oversight, tighten safety requirements, and provide funding to equip regulators with the resources, personnel, and training needed to be effective were either overtly resisted or not supported by industry, members of Congress, and several administrations.”
• Government “lacked personnel with the kinds of expertise and training needed to enforce regulations effectively.”

A PDF of the pre-released chapter can be found here.

What do you think are the biggest safety lessons from the Gulf oil spill? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

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A company removed guards from a shredder, assigned an underage employee to use it and didn’t train him. The teen was crushed to death in the shredder. Does the teen’s family have a case for wrongful death, or are they limited to workers’ comp death benefits?

Seventeen-year-old Nery Castaneda Valenzuela was killed while working for Pallet Express.

One day, Valenzuela was working at a pallet shredder with another employee. The supervisor was late for work that day. The other worker left the machine to get a forklift.

When the other worker returned, Valenzuela wasn’t there. Moments later, his remains were found on the discharge side of the shredder.

North Carolina OSHA issued 11 violations including:

• allowing an underage employee to work on heavy equipment, and
• removing safety guards from the shredder.

Workers’ compensation is usually the exclusive means for the family of someone killed on the job to be compensated for the death.

However, there is an exception. In North Carolina, the exception is “where an employee is injured or killed as a result of the intentional misconduct of the employer.”

Valenzuela’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit, under the intentional misconduct provision of the comp law.

The company asked for the lawsuit to be thrown out because no one witnessed the fatality.

The trial court threw out the lawsuit, and the family appealed.

The family argued that the company engaged in intentional misconduct by:

• removing safety guards from the shredder which sacrificed employee safety for increased production
• assigning an underage employee to work on heavy equipment in violation of state and federal law
• failing to provide Valenzuela with proper training on the shredder, and
• failing to ensure that trained personnel were present when the shredder was operated.

The appeals court agreed with the trial court. It said the evidence failed to show that the employer knew that its misconduct was substantially certain to cause serious injury and was so egregious that it would be considered intentional harm.

The verdict: The case was thrown out. The family was limited to collecting death benefits through workers’ comp.

(Valenzuela v. Pallet Express, Court of Appeals of NC, No. COA10-87, 10/5/10.)

What do you think about the court’s decision? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

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BP’s report lists eight key findings that led to the explosion.

Among the findings, BP says its engineers and employees of Transocean, the rig owner, misinterpreted a pressure test of the well’s integrity. It also blames employees from both companies for failing to respond to warning signs that the well was in danger of blowing out.

Those are just some of the specifics. But others are taking a big-picture look at the situation, specifically, whether BP’s overall corporate culture was a leading cause.

The report “regrettably does not address the corporate culture at BP that shortchanged safety,” said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

A statement from Transocean said, “BP made a series of cost-saving decisions that increased risk.”

So the finger points once again to the idea that BP cut corners with safety at Deepwater Horizon to save money.

Legal experts speculate part of BP’s reason for releasing an early report on the disaster is to spread blame among itself, Transocean and cement contractor Halliburton as BP faces hundreds of lawsuits and possible criminal charges over the spill.

When it can be shown that a company purposefully cut corners on safety to save money, and a disaster results, how should the company be held accountable? Let us know what you think in the Comments Box below.

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China doesn’t lack workplace safety regulations. The problem for workers is that they’re not enforced.

It’s often up to local authorities in China to enforce the country’s safety laws, according to the article in The Washington Times. Local officials are often paid off by factory owners to ignore serious injuries and even deaths.

This gives Chinese manufacturing a short-term advantage over the U.S., but the cost is life and limb.

Example: The China Labor Bulletin (CLB) recently reported on a worker who got a finger caught in some equipment and was sent to a hospital. It was cheaper for the company to compensate the unconscious worker for a lost hand than to surgically repair his finger.

When the worker woke up, his hand was gone.

The CLB also reports, “It is much more cost-effective for coal mine owners to buy off the families … than risk closure by reporting an accident,” leaving many deaths overlooked. Local governments often pressure bereaved families into signing compensation agreements.

The owners’ priority: Keep production moving.

And here’s another interesting factoid from the article: Some labor laws put into effect in China in 2008 used input from U.S. laws.

The post In China, productivity tops safety laws appeared first on Safety News Alert.

A Wall Street Journal article discusses the backgrounds of some of the selections.

President Obama’s latest choice, Joseph Main to oversee the Mining Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), continues a strong trend toward choosing labor over management and increased regulation over the Bush administration’s more hands-off approach.

Main was for many years a union official and mine-safety advocate. He began his career working in coal mines.

If approved, he’ll join Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, who had a well-documented pro-union background, and temporary OSHA head Jordan Barab, who previously worked for the AFL-CIO and who was fiercely critical of Bush’s labor policies.

In contrast, previous Labor Secretary Elaine Chao worked for Citicorp and BankAmerica and was considered anti-regulation and a staunch ally of business. Previous OSHA head Edwin Foulke Jr. was a management-side labor lawyer.

Main would be the first confirmed head of MSHA since 2004. Richard Stickler, who filled the post under President Bush, was a controversial former Bethlehem Steel executive who was installed as a recess appointment after failing to win approval from the Senate.

Mining-association groups say they expect Main, if approved, to be tough. But, they add, they know him and can work with him.

He may have his work cut out for him. Public Citizen, a consumer-advocacy group, says the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission has a backlog of 13,000 mine-safety disputes.

What do you expect from President Obama’s nominees? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

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Michael Coleman, Manufacturing Specialty Administrator for the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) says the company he works for knows that by not cutting safety and health programs during the economic downturn, U.S. companies are holding onto and gaining in market share worldwide.

“However, those that reduce their safety and health budgets and programs are looking at losing that competitive edge,” Coleman said.

Coleman will discuss how safety programs help manufacturers stay competitive at this year’s ASSE Professional Development Conference and Expo, June 28-July 1 in San Antonio, TX.

Check in with SafetyNewsAlert.com next week for stories from the conference.

Other key presenters include acting OSHA administrator Jordan Barab and U.S. Department of Labor Secretary Hilda Solis.

The post Does safety put American manufacturers on equal footing with overseas firms? appeared first on Safety News Alert.

“How do I get all my employees to wear their safety gear all the time?” It’s one of the top challenges safety pros face year after year. So we asked 290 of your peers about their experiences to find out the top reasons workers give for not wearing PPE.

And we also asked safety managers how they deal with the problem. Here are the results:

Fit/comfort

“It doesn’t fit right,” or “it’s uncomfortable” are the reasons 30% of safety pros hear most often when they ask workers why they aren’t wearing their PPE.

Solution: Get workers involved in PPE choice. Ask what the comfort and fit issues are with their safety gear.

Work with a few select employees to order several different trial samples of regulatory-compliant gear.

Then have these employees test it. If there isn’t a consensus, note whether people with certain physical characteristics prefer certain types. You may have to order more than one type to satisfy your workers.

‘I didn’t know’

Some workers will try to put the blame for their lack of PPE on someone else – many times their supervisors or trainers.

“I didn’t know I needed safety gear” was the top reason heard by 10% of safety pros.

Solution: When safety gear training is given, have workers sign a paper stating that they’ve received and understand the training.

To make this policy work, supervisors will have to follow up with disciplinary action when workers don’t wear PPE.

Time factor

“I didn’t have time,” or “it takes too much time” are the main reasons 18% of safety pros hear as excuses from workers without PPE.

The first step to solve this problem: Ask workers why and listen carefully to their answers. You may have a conflict between production and safety. In that case, ask production supervisors to emphasize that work doesn’t start until safety gear is on.

You may also find out these workers weren’t properly trained about donning PPE. Another possibility is that workers are rushing to get to their stations on time because of tardiness. Disciplinary measures may be necessary in those cases.

They’re invincible

“I won’t get in an accident” is heard most often by 8% of managers.

Oddly enough, this sentiment is expressed by two very different groups.

Young workers often think they’re invincible — that nothing bad will ever happen to them. If they haven’t been exposed to a serious injury, it may seem to them like “that only happens to other people.”

More experienced workers who have gone their entire career without a serious workplace injury adopt this rationale: I’ve always done it this way and haven’t been hurt so far.

Solution: Show them how it has happened. Invite someone who suffered a serious — and possibly debilitating — workplace injury to speak to an all-hands safety meeting.

Ask the person to explain in detail how the injury has affected his life — how everyday activities others take for granted are now much more difficult for him.

Another tactic: Tell employees to put an arm behind their back. Now, ask them to perform a simple task such as tying their shoes.

Memory lapse

The rest, 34%, say “I just forgot.” Check first if fit, comfort or time is a factor before accepting this excuse.

This is where a strong safety policy comes into play. Each workplace has to decide how often it’s acceptable for someone to “just forget” and what will happen to the employee each time. Universal enforcement — up to dismissal if appropriate — will send a message to others to always wear their PPE.

What’s the biggest excuse you hear from employees when they don’t wear their PPE? What has — and hasn’t — worked for you to make sure they wear it? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

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The answer is through other signs. Sure, no one posts contradictory signs that say, “Production First.” But the signs take other forms such as output graphs, production pressures and reward programs that suggest production is the real No. 1 priority.

Only when employees understand the proper integration of safety and production are they able to make the right choices to make sure it really is “Safety First” at your company.

So how do you get them to do that? It’s all about communication.

Learning to choose

It’s clearly not enough to tell them that safety comes first – if that were the case, the signs would be all you need.

Employees have to learn how the consequences of their choices can impact the things they value most. That’s according to Tania Van der Stap, founder and a safety consultant with Align Strategic Management Services in Australia, who spoke at this year’s ASSE Safety 2008 conference.

She suggests speaking to employees in small groups that have structure but provide plenty of time for open discussion. Include supervisors and managers to show all levels of employees are involved in this discussion.

An effective start is to ask workers to talk about current perceptions about workplace challenges such as safety versus production and what drives risk-taking.

Then discuss the nature of hazards at your workplace. What are the risks associated with them? What are the potential consequences of these risks?

The point is to acknowledge the hazards and how important it is to manage them well, not just by mechanical controls, but also through personal behavior (choices).

Personalize it

All this needs to be personalized. Ask employees about their personal work/life goals. Example: Employees’ No. 1 priority might be to spend more time with or provide well for their families.

How do employees reach these goals? What would be the impact on these goals if the employee had a workplace accident?

Next to last step: Relate all this back to safety and making choices. Challenge employees to reconsider benefits versus consequences of risk-taking.

To reinforce this discussion, have some real-life stories ready about workplace accidents and how they affected the victims.

What do you think of this suggested approach? How do you handle the clash between safety and production at your workplace? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

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