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Every day, 12 workers die on the job across America. As the nation’s secretary of labor, I am surrounded by numbers about jobs, the labor market and about the economy more broadly. But the number 12 stays with me. It is a haunting reminder of the hard-working Americans we lose every day, often in the prime of their life, filled with the energy that we need to build a better world.
Sheri Sangji was one of these Americans, so full of promise. She was a 23-year-old research assistant in a lab at the University of California at Los Angeles, looking forward to a career that would allow her to pursue her interests in chemistry, law and the rights of women and immigrants. One day, while performing an experiment with highly reactive chemicals, a flash fire ignited her clothes and skin, causing fatal burns. Sheri had not been properly trained in the handling of the chemical that set off the blaze.
To remember Sheri Sangji and all others who die on the job across our country, we observe Workers Memorial Day every April 28. Today, we remember families who have lost a loved one because of workplace injuries, and we pledge to continue fighting tirelessly to make sure that no worker trades a life for a livelihood.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is the agency in my department that sets and enforces standards that ensure every American comes home at the end of a shift. In 1970, when President Richard Nixon created the agency, 38 workers died every day.
Forty years later, we have gone from 38 to 12.

This decline is the result of people working together, marshalling the combined efforts of private industry, government, trade unions and academia to create safe and healthful workplaces for every worker in America. It shows that it’s possible to save lives through common sense safety and health standards and strong enforcement of the law.

I believe that we can keep doing better. I will not let up until we do.  That’s why this week I announced our new public outreach campaign to educate workers and employers about what they must do to prevent deadly falls in construction. Falls are the leading cause of worker fatalities in the construction industry – a sector that accounts for almost one in every five worker deaths in the country.

No matter how many times I meet with families like the Sangjis, it never gets easier. Yet the strength of character I witness in almost every one of these meetings inspires me. Almost universally, the single most important need that these bereaved families express is the goal of preventing another family from going through the same unspeakable suffering.
It is our duty to ensure that all workers and employers recognize the need to make safety a priority and to stand behind our firm conviction that workplace injuries and fatalities are entirely preventable. I appeal to everyone to carry that message to your families and communities. Speak up about your support for the right to a safe and healthful workplace.
Finally, take a moment to remember the workers who have been taken from us too soon. Making a living shouldn’t include dying.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/04/26/3199718/protect-workers-with-strong-laws.html#storylink=cpy

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Mississauga, ON – Results of a November 2011 inspection blitz of hazards involving racking and storage systems suggest many employers are falling short on ensuring equipment, materials and protective devices are maintained in good condition, reports Workplace Safety & Prevention Services.

More positively, many employers appear to understand the value of a health and safety policy, and are fulfilling their duty under Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) to review their policy annually and develop and maintain an implementation program.

Storage racks, usually made of steel, often support heavy loads that may collapse if improperly installed or used. They’re common in warehouses, distribution centres, retail operations and manufacturing plants.

During the one-month blitz, ministry inspectors conducted 1,167 visits to 977 workplaces and issued 3,063 orders, including 118 stop work orders.

How workplaces were chosen for inspection

Inspectors checked workplaces where racking and storage systems are commonly used. The workplaces were selected based on various risk factors. Included were workplaces

- identified as being high priority due to possible racking and storage hazards

- where complaints have been received

- having a poor compliance history.

The top five workplaces visited were in the following sectors:

- food and beverage

- retail

- transportation

- wholesalers

- wood and metal fabrication.

While on site, the inspectors focused on five priorities. How would your pallet and racking system measure up? (See ‘How to improve racking in your workplace’ below for sample tips.)

Installation and selection. Have racking and storage systems been selected and installed to ensure worker safety?

Condition, maintenance and repair of racking and storage systems.

Use of racks. Are lift trucks being driven and products being loaded and unloaded on pallet racks in a safe manner?

Forklift activity. Are appropriate lift trucks being used for the workplace and tasks required? Is truck capacity sufficient to carry the required loads? Are narrow forklifts being used for narrow aisles?

Other related issues, such as aisle obstructions, lighting, and pallet condition.

Take note: inspectors’ findings may affect the frequency and level of future inspections of individual workplaces. If your workplace received orders following an inspection, expect to see an inspector again — or if your workplace experiences a serious racking incident.

How to improve racking safety in your workplace

Here are four sample steps to consider. Add to the list where possible to reflect conditions and circumstances in your workplace.

1. Conduct a thorough inspection of your racking system to establish a benchmark, and make repairs if required.

2. Create an inspection checklist for use during regular inspections. “In some workplaces,” says Chuck Leon, a material handling and warehouse specialist with Workplace Safety & Prevention Services (WSPS), “the racking systems may have been there longer than the employees who installed them or now use them. A checklist will help you focus on safety priorities. For example, are safety pins missing? Are safety bars in place? Are they bolted to the floor?”

3. Provide racking safety awareness training so that supervisors, lift truck operators, maintenance staff and joint health and safety committee members know what to watch out for. “Most certification training courses don’t cover off racking in hazard identification training,” warns Leon.

4. Give yourself enough time to inspect the racking system thoroughly. “If inspection staff have only an hour to go through the entire facility,” asks Leon, “will they see everything they need to see? In my experience, racking systems, loading docks and conveyors don’t always get checked thoroughly enough to truly protect workers and prevent damage to property. It all goes back to knowing what to look for.”

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The Bay of Plenty branch of the New Zealand Institute of Safety Management is challenging people to change their attitudes when it comes to work safety.

Having the attitude “it won’t happen to me” is costing the country financially and has caused New Zealand to have one of the highest workplace injury rates compared to similar countries, says branch manager Phil Sexton.

He says in recognition of the major personal and financial impact this unenviable status brings, last year the Government decided enough is enough, something had to be done to turn around the figures. 

Certain industry sectors, such as construction and residential construction, make up the majority of the injury statistics.

Phil says it’s for this reason that recently the Government and Department of Labour announced the launch of a three year campaign focusing on the aspect of construction – falls from heights as a result of construction work is estimated to cost the country $25million a year.

“Now it’s worth pointing out that nothing has actually changed in the legislation or even the advice given to prevent falls. 

“The major change signalled by the campaign is in the approach that the Department is taking towards failures in the basic responsibilities of maintaining a safe workplace.”

Phil says inevitably, the changes in working methods to combat the fall injury stats, like hand rails to the roofs of single storey houses and the use of effective health and safety systems, is going to have a perceived overall cost to the builder. 

He says this cost which is likely to be passed on to the home buyer. 

“But as Chris Graney, a Health and Safety advisor based in the Bay of Plenty put it, “We’re already paying the social and economic costs of working at height accidents, through loss of production and the impact on the families of those injured.  Thinking it’s never going to happen to me, because I have always done it this way and never been injured, is not facing reality”.

“In fact many builders are seeing the change of approach by the Department as more than just having a positive effect on injury figures, but also creating a level playing field when it comes to safety performance.”

Phil says historically, the conscientious builders who had every intention of taking the right steps to protect safety were unfairly penalised by being undercut by competitors who sacrificed safety to secure the contract.

“In effect, this market lead level of compliance progressively reduced any real effort to actually manage safety, to the point where it has become commonplace for just a file of generic safety information kept on site, to be deemed as ‘all you need to do’.

“But the time for accepting such ‘ceremonial compliance’ is now gone.  As the slogan for the Department’s campaign states, ‘Doing nothing is NOT an option’.”

For further information on the changes visit www.nzism.co.nz

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For 18-year-old Sanjeev Kumar, it was a miraculous escape after remaining trapped for a nerve-racking 50 hours, even as death stared at him continuously for over two nights. The teenager, a native of Bihar, was among the ill-fated laborers on the ground floor of Shital Fibres, the blanket manufacturing unit which collapsed on Sunday night, killing and trapping more than 100 people.

“I had lost all hope of coming out safely. Two of my colleagues, who were trapped along with me, died. But l kept praying, hoping to see my parents and siblings back home in Bihar,” Sanjeev said. It took rescuers – National Disaster Response Force and Army jawans – five hours to dig a tunnel to reach him and pull him out at 1am on Tuesday night. They cut through four levels of broken and precariously placed concrete slabs.

Sanjeev is now in the Civil Hospital here, having escaped with some minor injuries. Subsequently, rescue teams pulled out three more bodies, but no survivors until Wednesday evening.

“I was near the cutter on the ground floor when parts of concrete fell from the roof. As we looked up, within seconds all hell broke loose. We were trapped,” he said.

“I fell unconscious and regained senses after several hours. I screamed for help,” Sanjeev said. “Vinod, who was trapped beside me, said that the building had collapsed. I wept but could not hear anything from outside. Then I passed out. When I woke up, I called out for Vinod, but he was dead. His body was stinking. His abdomen had come under a heavy iron pipe,” Sanjeev recalled.

“Later, another co-worker, Nitesh, who was trapped near his machine, too died and his body started stinking as well. I was trapped in a cavity and managed to move away a bit away,” he said. “I also tried using my mobile phone, but it dod not work,” Sanjeev said.

“Around 8pm on Tuesday, I heard a voice calling out for survivors. I screamed to tell my location and that I was thirsty and hungry. They managed to send down water and biscuits tied to a rod,” he said. Sanjeev began breathing a little easy when they started efforts to reach him. The process was slow as the rescuers were taking extra care while digging a passage to reach him.

The process took five hours in the dark. “We were making a vertical approach to reach for him but the Army jawans suggested a horizontal approach. He was rescued after cutting across at least four beams while taking care that the operation would not hurt anybody alive, including this boy,” said NDRF assistant commandant Mussafir.

Sanjeev’s friend Budhan, among the rescued, rang up his family in Bihar’s Gopal Ganj. “I have my parents, two sisters and a brother, all younger. I came to Punjab in January for earn a living. But now, I want to go back home,” he said.

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Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten on Thursday accused Victoria of “irresponsibly scaremongering about the sky falling on small businesses.”

Victoria is the key hold-out state on the reforms, although Western Australia plans to conduct a regulatory impact statement before passing any laws.

NSW agreed to the package with some legislative changes.

Victoria relies on a report it sought by PricewaterhouseCoopers Australia, which estimtes that harmonised laws would cost business $3.44 billion in Victoria over five years, including transition costs of more than $800 million.

Mr Shorten said the PwC report, which found small business would incur 78 per cent of transition costs and 74 per cent of ongoing costs, grossly inflated the costs of the scheme and failed to take into account the benefits.

He called for the report to be released for scrutiny by Safe Work Australia.

“The fact is, for many small businesses there will be little change under the harmonised laws,” he said.

“The estimated cost for the entire set of regulations for single-state firms and small businesses operating in a single state will be about $3.27 a year, or 6c a week, for each worker.

“This is clearly outweighed by the net benefit to society of $21.48 per worker per annum before any productivity gains are taken into account.

“The net national benefits of the reforms are $250m a year and will reap productivity improvements of up to $2bn per annum over the next 10 years.”

But Mr Baillieu reiterated his opposition, claiming his state’s laws were the best and should be replicated nationally.

PwC warns that Victorian small businesses could face average annual costs of $2330, and medium and large enterprises $7270. These groups would face annual costs of nearly $600m associated with the occupational health and safety reforms, the report asserts.

Transition costs for small business would be $634m the biggest burden across all businesses.

Mr Shorten accused Mr Baillieu of falling short on work safety, saying Victoria had 17 worker deaths in the second half of last year — five more than any other state. “Workplace safety requires co-operation, not conflict and cynical politics,” he added.

The PwC report found key issues concerning Victorian businesses included the redefining of hazardous confined spaces, changes to liability provisions and redefining what constitutes a worker.

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Workers who believe their companies value safety experience fewer injuries, according to a recent study. Also influencing worker safety, surprisingly, was the existence of work/life balance. To create a safe workplace, it’s important for companies to break down barriers between HR and occupational health and safety professionals, experts say. By David Shadovitz

When it comes to workplace safety, the way workers perceive an organization’s commitment to safety and work/life balance clearly matter. So report researchers at the University of Georgia’s College of Public Health, who recently found that these two factors can have a significant effect on the number of on-the-job injuries. Dave DeJoy, professor emeritus at the school, and Todd Smith, a recent graduate of the school’s doctoral program, detailed the findings in an article published in the March edition of the Journal of Safety Research. DeJoy notes that the study — which analyzed data from the 2002 General Social survey and the NIOSH Quality of Work Life module — supports growing evidence that management and organizational factors play a critical role in creating safe workplaces. Leading up to this study, he says, most of the research focused on particular occupations and companies. But here, he says, a broad spectrum of employment situations were explored. “This is one of the very few studies that have examined work organization factors and injury outcomes in a representative and diverse sample of American workers,” the authors write.

The findings, DeJoy says, confirm that workers who believe they work in a safe environment experience 32 percent fewer injuries. The findings, DeJoy says, put hard numbers behind a long-held perception: that there’s a correlation between safety climate and workplace injuries. “If you talk to people who do safety inspections, they will often tell you that the first impression they get when they walk into a factory or construction site — how neat it is and whether employees seem to be actively engaged — tells them whether or not a worksite is safe or not,” he says. “Now, we have numbers that back this up across a wide range of settings.” Further, the research suggests that work/life balance isn’t just a retention and morale issue, but also a safety issue.

In situations in which work interfered with family life or family demands affected job performance, the researchers find that the risk for injury increased 37 percent. “If I had to line up factors that were most important to injuries, work/life balance probably wouldn’t be at the top of the list,” DeJoy says. “But the research shows there’s definitely a connection.” In their article, DeJoy and Smith write that this finding supports the need for employers to take “a more comprehensive and integrated approach to safety.” DeJoy says the study sends a clear message to business leaders: “What managers do and don’t do can make a big difference. The tendency is often to look backwards once an injury occurs, to find someone to blame,” he says. “But what these findings, and other research, say is that you need to look further down in the causal chain.” The findings suggest a need to eliminate any walls that may exist between HR and occupational health and safety, according to DeJoy. “A lot of organizations, including progressive organizations, are set up so there’s a wall between HR and occupational health and safety,” he says. “But the two can no longer afford to work in silos — they need to break down those walls.” HR has an important contribution to make when it comes to creating a culture that values safety, ranging from selecting the right people to putting in place the right work/life programs, he says.

Jonathan Thomas, manager of survey research services at the National Safety Council in Itasca, Ill., agrees that greater collaboration between HR and occupational health and safety professionals is crucial. “It’s apparent that the things HR leaders are most concerned about are also the building blocks for building a safe workplace,” he says. Consistent with previous studies, the research also found that whites had higher injury rates than blacks, though both groups had lower rates than those in the “other” category, which primarily consists of Hispanics.

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