When no one witnesses a workplace injury and the injured employee files for workers’ comp, sometimes all you have to go on is the worker’s story. The situation can become more complicated when the worker delays reporting the injury.

Frank Karban said he was moving equipment at work on Feb. 24, 2007, when he bent down, made a twisting motion and “felt a pop” in the right side of his lower back.

Karban says he continued to work that day and didn’t report the injury to his supervisor until the next month.

His supervisor says Karban never told him about the incident.

Almost seven months later, Karban went to his employer’s environmental health and safety representative to report the injury.

Before he reported the injury at work, Karban saw his doctor who sent him for an MRI, which revealed lumbar spine abnormalities. His doctor and a specialist both recommended Karban stop working.

More than a year after the injury took place, Karban filed a claim seeking lifetime medical benefits for injuries resulting from the injury and temporary total disability. He claimed he’d never suffered a back injury before the workplace incident.

His doctor sent a note to the Workers’ Compensation Commission stating Karban had been to his office complaining that he hurt his back. However, that visit happened one month before Karban said the injury occurred at work.

Despite that information from the doctor, a deputy commissioner awarded Karban temporary total disability benefits for six months.

His former employer appealed, and the full commission reversed the deputy commissioner’s ruling, finding Karban failed to prove he suffered a compensable workplace injury and failed to provide adequate notice of the injury to his employer. The full commission also reversed the deputy commissioner’s finding that Karban was credible.

Karban appealed to a state court.

The court sided with the full commission: It didn’t find Karban to be credible. Specifically, the court noted several discrepancies in Karban’s testimony. Karban was unable to explain the medical records that showed he suffered an injury before his alleged workplace injury.

The credibility issue was enough to throw out Karban’s claim — in the end, he didn’t get workers’ comp benefits. Therefore, the court never ruled on whether he provided adequate notice of his injury to his employer.

Cite: Karban v. Universal Fiber Systems, Court of Appeals of VA, No. 2094-09-3, 7/13/10.

As this case shows, the longer a worker waits to report an injury, the more complicated a workers’ comp claim can become. What is your company’s policy on employees reporting injuries? How late is too late? Do you have specific procedures for when no one else witnesses a workplace injury? Let us know what you think in the Comments Box below.

John Aravosis’ Americablog first uncovered the altered photos on BP’s website of its crisis command center in Houston.

Someone cut and pasted three underwater images onto a wall of video feeds from remotely operated undersea vehicles.

Among the giveaways that someone used Photoshop:

• one image sticks down into the head of one of the people sitting in the control room
• there are jagged white lines showing the cut-and-paste job, and
• the side of one image hangs down below the area on which the video feeds were projected.

“I guess if you’re doing fake crisis response, you might as well fake a photo of the crisis response center,” Aravosis writes on his blog.

A BP spokesman told The Washington Post that this isn’t anything sinister. He said a photographer working for BP inserted the three images in spots where the video screens were blank.

BP has posted the original photo, without the cut-and-paste video images, on its website.

The controversy doesn’t stop there. An Americablog reader noticed that the meta info for the photo says it was created in 2001, not July 16, 2010 as claimed by BP.

And we’ll add our own question to the mix: After three months with the leaking oil well in the Gulf, BP couldn’t find one moment to take a photo when all the video screens were filled?

So, put yourself in this situation. To promote that “Safety is No. 1″ at your company, someone in marketing has posted a photo on your company website that’s been Photoshopped to show an aspect of safety that wasn’t there at the time — maybe workers wearing hardhats are pasted onto a photo. Do you let it go or object?

And what about BP? Does this altered photo say something about the company, or is it really no big deal? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

The boat, with 35 passengers and two crew, stalled in the Delaware River after the vehicle caught fire.

As the boat was sitting in the river, waiting for help, it was struck by a barge being pushed by a tug boat. Two passengers drowned in the Delaware River.

Accounts from passengers say they had less than a minute to get life jackets on children. However, local media report that the duck boat was sitting powerless for 15 minutes before the collision occurred.

A Pennsylvania regulation requires children 12 and younger to wear life jackets on recreational vehicles. That rule doesn’t apply to the Ride the Duck tours.

For commercial vehicles, such as the duck boats, children don’t have to wear the life jackets. The company just has to have enough life vests on board for everyone.

Chris Edmonton, director of boating safety at the Boat US Foundation, said he assumed the duck boat captain would have asked the passengers to don their jackets once the vessel lost power.

“That’s what I would have done, but he is not legally required to have them do it,” Edmonton told The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Questions remain about how much time the two crew members had to react once the duck’s engine failed.

So, how can you use this story in safety training?

The investigation into this case will surely look into how the two duck tour employees reacted when the engine unexpectedly failed.

Safety training for normal operating conditions is one thing. But how would your employees react to something unexpected?

Have you ever given workers a safety scenario during training and asked them how they’d handle it? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

A city of Jeffersonville, IN, employee had taken two prescription pain medications just seven hours before the garbage packer he was driving was involved in a five-vehicle crash that killed a teenager.

Roger Crum Jr. was taking Lortab and Flexeril for lower back pain. At first he told investigators he took the meds only at night.

But later Crum admitted he took the pills between 4:30 and 5:00 a.m. on the morning of the crash. The pile-up happened at 11:30 a.m.

When Crum’s vehicle struck a small car, it killed its driver, 19-year-old Bethany Burrier. Three others were hospitalized. Crum was treated at the scene for minor injuries.

A city report notes the FDA says Lortab can cause light-headedness, dizziness and sedation and can impair thinking and physical abilities for driving. Flexeril also comes with a warning about driving.

Jeffersonville officials were apparently unaware that Crum took the drugs. The city has a policy that requires its drivers to report taking prescribed medications to their supervisors.

What’s your company’s policy on prescription meds and workers in safety-sensitive jobs? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

Mark Malecha, a manager at Feely’s Elevator in Farmington, MN, was trying to dislodge some frozen corn in a grain silo.

According to the owner of Feely’s, Malecha would normally attach fall protection gear when entering the silo. But on Feb. 4 this year, he didn’t.

Some corn shifted, and Malecha fell 30 feet. He was buried up to his chest in frozen corn.

Luckily, his one arm was free, and he used his cell phone to call for help.

The rescue was time-consuming. Workers lowered plywood into the silo to form a box around Malecha to keep corn from caving in on him.

After rescuers built the box, they removed corn from the silo one bucket at a time.

Eight hours later, a team of an estimated 145 rescue workers freed him.

Surprisingly, Malecha wasn’t injured.

OSHA issued seven citations against Feely’s for a total of $7,750 in fines. Feely’s is contesting the fines.

How do you impress upon workers that they have to wear their PPE every time? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

Recently, we wrote about a survey that put “safety” as the No. 6 most annoying thing in the workplace. So, we asked you what is most annoying about workers when it comes to safety. Here are your answers:

One of the most common complaints was workers who say things like, “I’ve been doing that this way for 20 years and have never gotten hurt.” A slight variation on the theme: “I have 20 years experience. Don’t tell me how to do my job.”

When it comes to one specific worker action that is annoying, “wearing safety glasses/goggles on top of their heads” was mentioned the most.

Some other annoying worker practices when it comes to safety:

• Supervisors who walk right by obvious safety violations.
• “Safety is the safety manager’s job, not mine.”
• Employees who say they don’t have time for safety.
• Safety costs too much.
• Managers who require workers to attend safety meetings and then don’t show up themselves.
• Workers who prefer not to know about safety rules and then say they were out of the loop.
• Not reporting injuries. “It happened a month ago, but I thought it would quit hurting, so I didn’t tell anyone.”
• “I’m the engineer. I get the thing to run. You’re the safety person. You figure out how to do it safely.”
• Upper management that won’t get serious about safety.
• “Where does it say that I have to _____?”
• Blocking exits, aisles, fire extinguishers, eyewash stations, etc.

After reading all of those (and probably recognizing many, if not all of them), are you really annoyed?

We don’t want you to spend the rest of the day that way. So, we’ll note that a number of you seemed to have a good sense of humor while writing about these annoyances. And while safety is, of course, very serious business, it can help you get through the day to have a sense of humor about it.

Here are some worker annoyances from safety pros that show that they’re not about to let the few employees who ignore safety get them down:

• “We are safety-ed to death.” (The workers who said that obvious didn’t think about their statement.)
• “Safety, safety, safety. All we ever talk about is safety, and we don’t even have any accidents around here.” (Well, must be working, right? )
• “We never had all this safety s*** before,” from the guy missing part of his thumb because it was ripped off in a drill press.
• Right out of the childhood playbook: “They’re not doing it, so why should I?”
• “That wouldn’t be in the aisle for someone to trip over if we didn’t have to participate in this Safety Tour during our clean-up time.”
• When people open a meeting by saying, “Let’s get this party started.” If it were a party, there’d be more beer and hot people in the room.

And some of you really liked one comment and requested a copy of the so-called “Dumb-ass Certificate”:

Deviation Under Modified Basis—Agreement Support Sheet (DUMB-ASS Certificate)

I understand that there are identified rules and procedures in place but I cannot accomplish the task on the basis of those rules. I am applying for this Dumb-Ass certificate so I can get an exemption to perform (name task) without following the following safety procedures.

The reason that I want the Dumb-Ass exemption is (check all that apply)…

You get the picture.

When it comes right down to it, a one-word comment we received sums it all up. The most annoying worker habit when it comes to safety: Excuses.

How do you counter workers’ excuses? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

Kenya Madden was hired as a police dispatcher for Hillsboro, IL. During her training period, she told her supervisor she had narcolepsy.

Among the follow-up questions the supervisor didn’t ask Madden:

• What has your experience been with the condition?
• When was the last time you had an episode?
• Does medication control the condition for you?

Madden was fired. She filed a lawsuit under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), alleging discrimination based upon the perception of a disability.

Hillsboro settled the lawsuit out of court, agreeing to pay Madden $10,001. The municipality admits no fault.

Before the settlement, the town’s police chief told the Chicago Tribune that this was a clear public safety issue, and he was unwilling to risk Madden falling asleep during an emergency call. She would have been alone at many times.

Is this a clear-cut case because of the potential risks? Or are there gray areas because Madden’s condition was under control with medication? Let us know what you think in the Comments Box below.

Cite: Madden v. Village of Hillside, (PDF).

Now with just a couple mouse clicks, the whole world can see which U.S. companies had an employee fatality in the previous week.

Example: For the week of Aug. 28, 2009, OSHA’s Weekly Fatality Report lists 18 incidents. First on the list is an incident involving Tri-State Electrical Contracting, Inc., Bay Terrace, NY. The Web page lists Nature of Incident as “victim was operating a knuckle boom truck and was crushed between the boom and the controls.”

That’s all the information given.

While the Web page explains how OSHA receives the incident information, there’s no word (at least as of the writing of this article) on what purpose the agency thinks posting this information will serve.

So, we have two guesses:

1. OSHA hopes employers use the information in safety training to show workers the real-life consequences of various workplace hazards, or
2. OSHA is posting the information to call attention to companies that just experienced a worker fatality or other catastrophe.

There are two potential problems with either of these uses. If these are meant to be used as teaching lessons for employees, the items are light on detail. If this is meant as a Wall of Shame for the companies involved, OSHA is posting the information before investigations can be completed, and before exact cause for the incident can be determined.

One more note: When the page for the Weekly Fatality Reports first appeared on OSHA’s Web site, many may not have found it. To access it, you had to find a one-line clickable link among everything on OSHA’s home page. A few days later, OSHA made it highly noticeable, front and center, in a bright blue box in the middle of its home page.

While safety pros can agree that sharing information about workplace fatalities can help prevent similar incidents from happening, it’s not entirely clear what OSHA’s intention of posting the information is.

What do you think? Is this useful information for safety training? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

“Silence clause aims to keep Turkey Point workers quiet” claims a recent headline in the Miami Herald about a nuclear power plant in Florida.

A former employee, Thomas Saporito claims that a clause in bonus agreements has caused workers to be afraid to make complaints about safety. Saporito has sued Florida Power & Light, the plant’s owner, numerous times claiming he was fired because of his persistent complaints about safety. FPL has repeatedly won in court.

The newspaper obtained one bonus agreement that contained this language: “The employee shall not, at any time in the future and in any way … make any statements that may be derogatory or detrimental to the company’s good name.”

An FPL spokesman says the utility encourages anyone working at one of its nuclear power plants to identify safety concerns without fearing reprisal.

What do you think? Could such language contained in a contract discourage employees from speaking up about safety? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

A recent Purdue University study may provide some clues.

When it comes to speeding, many people don’t worry about safety. They just worry about getting caught.

That’s one of the messages researchers took away from surveying almost 1,000 people.

They also found this correlation: The faster people think they can go before getting a ticket, the more likely they are to think safety’s not compromised at higher speeds.

As a safety pro, you know what happens after employees complete safety training. Many workers take the training to heart and follow the rules, such as always wearing their protective gear, or locking and tagging out equipment every time they perform maintenance.

But there’s always at least one in a crowd who has rationalized not following the rules. They think they’ll never get hurt. The only reason they might follow a safety rule is because of stiff consequences if they don’t.

Another finding by the researchers may be even more troubling. Getting stopped for speeding didn’t seem to have an effect on whether or not someone speeds again.

The researchers say this is probably because people who habitually speed aren’t significantly deterred by being stopped. Those who are inherently more conservative are more likely to slow down after getting a ticket.

What’s the lesson here? Perhaps it’s a call for a “two strikes and you’re out” policy when it comes to safety rules. Depending on the nature of the infraction, a second chance might be in order when a worker violates a safety rule.

But if they break the rule again, you may have someone who doesn’t care about safety – all they care about is whether they’ll get caught. Since no one can watch these workers every minute while they’re at work, the second strike may be a sign to let the worker go.

What do you think? Let us know in the Comments Box.

With a new administration coming to the White House, it’s likely companies will see some changes from OSHA. Among the possibilities: higher fines for workplace fatalities and injuries.

President-elect Obama has supported the Protecting America’s Workers Act as a Senator.

The bill would increase OSHA penalties:

• maximums for serious and repeat violations would go from $7,000 to $10,000
• top fines for willful violations would increase to $100,000 from $70,000, and
• fines for workplace deaths would be a minimum of $50,000, a maximum of $250,000, and up to ten years in prison.

OSHA fines low by comparison

Elected officials who support increases in OSHA fines say they would act as a deterrent to companies that want to skimp on safety. While responsible companies, like yours, are paying for all the necessary safety tools to prevent injuries, other bad actors see an occasional employee injury as just the price of doing business because it’s cheaper that way.

Elected officials also argue that current fines aren’t enough of a deterrent. Some examples:

• Employee dies at railroad crossing, company fined $2,250
• Trench cave-in kills two employees: company fined $11,200, and
• Fatal electrocution: company fined $37,000.

Compare those fines to some issued by other federal agencies.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) can fine a TV or radio station up to $325,000 for indecent content.

In other words, having a potty mouth on TV can garner a fine that’s ten times worse than when a person dies or is seriously and/or permanently injured at work.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) fines for incidents in which no employees were injured or killed are also higher than OSHA fines. Some recent examples:

• Company dumps untreated hazardous wastes: Owner could face up to 15 years in prison and $750,000 if convicted
• Company fails to inspect its diesel fleet for compliance with smoke control rules: $114,000, and
• Mishandling hazardous waste and used batteries leads to $190,000 penalty for another firm.

So, we’d like to hear from you on this issue. We all know that some companies put their employees’ lives at risk every day by not taking proper safety precautions. Here’s the question: Should the federal government increase OSHA fines for deaths and serious injuries? Would this be a deterrent to companies that don’t pay enough attention to worker safety? You can let us know what you think by dropping us a note in the Comments Box below.

For more information on the Protecting America’s Workers Act, click here.

The scenario:

The sheepish look on supervisor Glen Sherwood’s face told manager Mike Kelly a problem was about to be laid on him.

“You know I like to handle this stuff myself,” Glen began, “but this is a tricky situation.

“You remember Scott who was in that car accident?”

“Sure,” Mike said. “What a shame. The other car ran a red light, slammed into Scott’s car. He’s had, how many surgeries, three, four?

I understand he’s come back to work.”

“Right,” said Glen. “We’re real glad to see him. He’s a great guy who’s been through hell. But  … ”

He’s slowed down a lot

“But what?” asked Mike.

“Scott can’t get around like he used to. He’s walking without the cane now, but he’s slowed down a lot. I didn’t think he could return to his old position, so I’ve got him doing some lighter stuff.

“He keeps pushing to return to his old job. It obviously means a lot to him. But I don’t think he can move quickly enough if he needed to. I don’t want something else to happen to him on the job – or worse to him and someone else.”

Mike knew a decision had to be made about whether Scott could return to his previous tasks without affecting safety.

If you were Mike, what would you do next?

Edward Gill, Jr., Safety Director, East Boston, MA
What Edward would do:
I wouldn’t just take him at his word that he’s ready to get back to work. I would send him to one of our own doctors for an examination, and have the doctor give me his opinion.
Reason:
If he’d been walking with a cane, I’m not gonna put him back on his regular job anyway. But if I say no, he might just think I’m picking on him. An outside evaluation would clear that up independently. 

Eric Gislason, Vice President, Wilmington, NC
What Eric would do:
If he’s just gotten back from a serious car accident and surgery, it’s just a fact he’s going to need more time before he’s ready to get back to full duty. So after some time, I’d check up with his doctors and also get a second opinion to see where he’s at in his recovery.
Reason:
My background’s in safety, not medicine. So it’s a good policy to talk to the people who know best.

Wes Sparkman, Manager, Perryville, MO
What Wes would do:
You have to be careful that you’re not restricting a worker who’s been medically cleared. I’d follow doctor’s recommendations.
Reason:
If he’s been cleared for regular work, but we keep him on light duty, then essentially we’re treating him as a disabled employee. And that opens up a whole new can of worms.