Should government get out of safety award business?
November 15, 2010 by Fred HosierPosted in: enforcement, Fatality, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, mine safety, What do you think?
PDF Six months before 29 workers died in its Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, owner Massey Energy received three Sentinels of Safety awards from the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA).
An article in The Washington Post says such apparent contradictions have some in the safety community scratching their heads. How can the same agency that filed hundreds of violations to Massey in 2009 bestow an award on the company in the same year?
“This allows companies to promote themselves in a certain way. Shareholders and employees are told: ‘The government thinks we are safe,’” said Celeste Monforton, a former senior MSHA official and assistant research professor in occupational health at George Washington University.
“It can potentially be used as a shield against criticism when problems arise,” said Monforton, who is also an author of influential public health blog The Pump Handle.
Massey pointed to its safety awards from MSHA in the days and weeks after the Upper Big Branch disaster.
You don’t have to go far on its website to find Massey touting its government award. Click on “safety” on the company’s homepage and then on “awards.” You’ll come to a page listing its “awards for safety achievements.”
And 2009 isn’t the first year MSHA gave Massey safety awards under questionable circumstances. In 2008, Massey’s Aracoma Alma mine in West Virginia where two miners died two years earlier received a safety award.
The government and Massey were still fighting over fines associated with those deaths at the time of the awards ceremony.
Monforton has a suggestion regarding these awards: a three- or five-year moratorium when there’s a fatality.
Should the government get out of the safety awards business? Should companies be banned from receiving the awards for a certain period following a worker fatality or large fines? Let us know what you think in the Comments Box below.
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Tags: Celeste Monforton, Massey Energy, MSHA, safety award, Upper Big Branch mine
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November 15th, 2010 at 10:47 am
Safety is a continuous practice and when you are working in an industry that has inherent hazards, the potential for bad things to happen is always there. Humans are not perfect, and since machines are made by humans, they are not perfect either. I don’t believe placing safety award moratoriums on companies where fatalities have ocurred is prudent unless the company was shone to be negligent. If a company has employed prudent efforts in accident prevention and has backed that up with good performance and low incident rates, I think it would demotivate them to be hit with safety award moratoriums following an fatal accident. That would be equivalent to saying “it only takes one uh oh to wipe out all of your atta boys”! I don’t believe that is the goal of a safety program. What would be the expected outcome if we did away with safety efforts or the awards recognizing success of those efforts? Would we be less likely to have accidents or receive criticism ? It is a difficult question and should be considered case by case not by a pigeon hole decision or a desire for a pound of flesh. We should not allow a company that is only paying lip service to actual safety efforts to use awards to hide the truth of negligence and maybe more importantly, we should not hand out those awards unless we are sure of the efforts being made to keep employees safe.
November 16th, 2010 at 9:52 am
This may sound political, but it seems the government screws up everything they touch and they are too easily corrupted. Let’s get them out of the safety award business.
November 16th, 2010 at 10:13 am
OSHA has become a joke. They have very little influence on workplace safety today. Companies couldn’t care less about OSHA activities because the fines are meaningless. OSHA reform legislation was important but the Democrats had too much going on with healthcare to be concerned for worker safety. Republicans care even less about workplace safety and will not do anything to help strenghthen OSHA’s hand.
Government employees like the ones that gave this award to an unsafe company, don’t help much. It shows that even companies that follow all of the antiquated OSHA rules are still not safe places.
November 16th, 2010 at 10:40 am
It is the management systems that an organization has in place that prevents incidents from happening. If awards are to be given they should be based on third party audit results of the effectiveness of the management practices/systems of that organization. Not on injury rate performance. Injury rates can show improvement while the underlying practices and processes are in decline. In an organization where this is occurring, it’s only a matter of time before something bad happens.
November 16th, 2010 at 2:24 pm
If I’m in MSHA and had a hand in those safety awards to Massey Energy, and I had any integrity, I would sure as heck want to know how such a blatant incongruency - the award and the disaster - could happen.
Somebody screwed up. Either (a) someone in MSHA is on the take from those companies it is supposed to regulate or (b) Massey totally dropped the ball and rested on the laurels of their awards, letting safety standards slip, or (c) both.
November 18th, 2010 at 1:26 pm
Nathaniel is right about not basing awards on incident/injury rate data. Third party audits may help to uncover the good or bad management practices and processes actually followed, but they can only do so much given time, money and staffing resources. the most effective safety actions will come from the orgnaization and its employees. If anything, I would reward the reporting of safety issues instead of injury/incident numbers, since awards tied to low numbers might encourage organizations and their employees not to report safety issues, incidents, injuries - meaning that they will likely go unaddressed. Awards for high reporting rates may encourage organizations to look earlier and harder for safety problems and their solutions.