Occupational Health & Safety: Gravity doesn't need to go to school. She is a master at pulling all objects toward the center of our blue planet and has been doing so since the dawn of time. So, yep, she is the grand master. Whereas we mere mortals are still learning how to counter her effects. Part of our learning is how to protect our workers at height from falling into her grasp. And OSHA recognizes we are still learning and thus requires employers to provide appropriate training to protect their workers at height—as well as from the grand master's constant grip.
5 comments:
The author is right, often times it is easy to believe that once on has been certified they have all the pertinent knowledge and expertise to properly supervise workers at height. But the classes and education are only a fraction of the necessary knowledge needed to have the safest environment for workers a height. Just like in every other field its practice and time that make the most successful supervisors. Not only practice of the regulations and rules, but of the consequences of mishaps. Our own Sean West has fallen from lifts and seen others injured from falls and falling objects. He knows first hand what to look for in a potentially dangerous situation and I have seen him many time correct a less experienced operator or student in order to prevent an accident. There comes a point where injuries can no longer be blamed on un-educated supervisor and attention needs to be placed on the experience of those supervisors.
I really liked how this article stressed how trainings are not comprehensive and should really be viewed as a starting point rather than an end point. There’s no way for a training or any kind of class to give the people taking it the same education as experience. They can cover the basics or strange situations that come up sometimes. But in the end they’re not a replacement for actually going out and gaining experience by doing what you’ve been taught. Classes are great but I wouldn’t want my supervisor for a project involving something potential dangerous like this to be someone who’s only experience was a training. Like Alex said there comes a point when injuries are because of unexperienced supervisors, not uneducated supervisors.
I get what this article is trying to say, but I think that OSHA in general may be in need of a message makeover in order to maximize their impact on the professional world. I'm a workplace safety nerd, and have made it a personal mission to rid any place I can of bullshit reasons for not being safe, because "you should have seen how unsafe we were a year ago" is a bullshit reason for not being safe.
However, I hate reading OSHA articles, because they seem to intentionally try and obfuscate their message in the most complicated legalese ever, for seemingly little reason. How are we as managers supposed to empower and productively encourage our shop foremen, deck chiefs, and other workplace supervisors, when we can't even suss out the intent and meaning of the regulation? "Because OSHA says so and we don't want to get fined" sounds like an almost equally bullshit reason for enforcing a rule, but often it's the only justification that we can give. That takes our own power away as managers and people with brains, and I wish OSHA would shift it's message to be simpler and more direct about why we should put in practice the safety regs we do.
I mean, the article is absolutely right. Any sort of safety training is about continuing the learning and determining the best practices for certain processes and situations. In the entertainment industry specifically we develop new processes and access methods and needs for safety gear, and we then go on to establish the best practice for dealing with them.
I can understand why employers and employees often simple ignore basic safety practices: There’s a lot of information and specifics and it’s easy to get caught up in all of them. Sometimes I think the emphasis is to “know every rule.” Some of the OSHA rules are specific and important, and they might be seemingly over-specific, but they probably exist for a specific reason. But I think that’s the exception not the rule here.
The rule here should really be: “Yes, continue your safety training and become a safety leader, but until you manage to get all of those rules in order in your head, just remember a few important ones. Most importantly, be safe and don’t be stupid.”
Working on your training to be able to fall safely in case it ever comes to that, is all about paying attention. I know I have done some unsafe tactics in my time inside the theatre and on various job sites, or just working at my parents house. Sometimes we don’t always have the necessary equipment to keep us safe. Sure mostly what happens deals with protection of the eyes and ears, but fall protection is something that should never be taken lightly. You might be one of the most trained professionals, and have worked on the job for years on end; but accidents happen. At the AT&T center in San Antonio, a worker was switching his line onto a different cable and he slipped and fell. No one would have thought accidents like that could happen but it did. Unfortunate circumstances happen to the best of us, and situations like that make it that much more important to have the training necessary to prevent accidents.
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