Safety Wars
Safety Wars Live 6-18-2024 Safety News and Views
Hi. This is Jim from Safety Wars. Before we set the program, I want to make sure everyone understands that we often talk about OSHA and EPA citations along with some other regulatory actions from other agencies, legal cases, and criminal activity. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Propose fines are exactly that, and they are often litigated, reduced, or vacated. We use available public records and news accounts of press releases. We cannot warranty or guarantee the details of any of the stories we share, since we are not directly involved with these stories, at least not most of the time. Enjoy the show. This, this, this, this, this show is brought to you by Safety FM. And, from the border, a liberty prospering and hiding in the north, is the Jim Ozil with Safety Wars. How's everybody doing out there, man? We need for all the streamers to kick in and everything else. Anyway, uh, we're back. It's been a rough couple of years. I've been in the city of the city for a long time. I've been in the city for a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long. Jim, wherever you've been, well, we've had all different types of things go on here, that you would not believe. If I told you, you wouldn't believe it. But what do you mean? Okay, let's see. Family with a major, family member with a major, major health problem. We had chipmunk infestation. We had a moth infestation. We had baseball games and congratulations to the bowlers for winning their division in U.S.A.B.L. North Central. I believe that's division. North Central, 12 U. Little League champion. Little League. We had everything going on in tournaments. So, things are calming down. I will be back on the air. I promise you, on the safety FM, we're going to be on it more consistently. Anyway, long story short with everything. We're, it's been crazy. Everything has been crazy. The news has been crazy. The world is crazy. The financial aspects of the world are crazy. Everything is crazy. We've got everything up and running now. We're working on a couple of things. We're going to be sharing with you very, very shortly. And it has to do with making your life easier. Well, what do you mean by making your life easier? We'll be making that announcement in the next couple of weeks. Number one. Number two. Summertime is here. What's the big thing going on? We're there screaming and yelling over heat stress here in the Northeast for like the last week. We have a heat wave coming. We have a heat wave coming. And I tell you what, it's not been easy on anything. So, on any of us here, with the heat wave coming in, you know, up here in New York. Now, I'm going to go in the way back machine here to our March, 19, 2021 program. I'm going to play it for you because it's really important here. It's very short about six minutes, 44 seconds. Let's see if this is going to work. Hold on. [inaudible] This is going to be a different type of episode today. This show, we'll discuss some of what we deal with at safety professionals and how to manage those situations. Gaslight, the day of safety boards was gimme polls. Today, we're inspired by an article on betterhold.com by Mary Dean. What is gaslighting a sneaky kind of emotional abuse? What is it? It's a psychological manipulation in which a person or a group covertly so see some doubt in a targeted individual or group making a question their own memory perception or judgment. A little bit of history here. Gaslight is a party written by Patrick Hamilton that was made into two movies, a 1940 version and the 1944 version starring Charles Boye in Great Birdman and in her movie debut, an 18-year-old angel to Lansford. She is also known for the TV show, Murder She Wrote. A month to academy awards. In short, this is a movie about a woman whose husband manipulates her into believing she is going insane. Over the last 60 years, movie title has become a real psychological term and has been an inter popular culture. Mary Deal lists six signs of gaslighting. Number one, denial to confuse you. In other words, the gas lighter, the perpetrator, is failing to admit the truth. Number two, they lie about and treat you. Number three, their actions do not light up with their words. Four, big crates or appreciation is directed at you. Five, projection accusing someone else of your own shortcomings. And number six, my favorite, good old-fashioned manipulation. One of my favorite stories is what I attended a class about two years ago. I was required to take this class. I'm permit required to find spaces among other things. For a project that was up and coming, note that I have been teaching this particular session on permit required to find spaces for about 28 years. And to give you a little bit more background, one of my biggest clients paints pipe pipes and above ground storage tanks as a large part of their business. So this is an activity I'm familiar with. The instructor says, you need to follow the general industry standard for painting and starts to go on and on and on. I waited for a break and I held him in private that painting is construction work and you need to follow the construction regulations. For management, it is markedly different than the general industry standards. For the worker not so much except for a couple of items. But we had a classroom of managers here and they really needed to know what the difference was in the requirements. We make our way over to the OSHA definition of construction work. And right now in the regulation, I read, construction work means work for construction, alteration, and/or repair, including get this painting and decorate. He says to me, that's not what that means. You don't know what you're talking about, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I showed him the letters of interpretation and he had never heard of letters of interpretation, he said, all of that is below me. I know what I'm talking about, I'm an instructor, you are a student. What started out as a private conversation ended up with him getting real aggressive in front of the entire class with me, which by this time having filtered back into the classroom after the break. Essentially, he was gaslighting. This wasn't a simple disagreement between professionals, which happens all the time no matter what your profession is. This was actual gaslighting because he had been doing it the entire week of the class to meet and multiple people. So, now I had a decision. Either be silent and let him mislead the class further down a road that we didn't want to go down. In the past, I would have backed down. When faced with gaslighting, especially publicly, it might be false. It has become to call the person out on it first privately and then follow it up with management. If that doesn't get the results. So, I got his boss on speaker above. I explained the situation and his applause thanked me and agreed with me and picked the situation. This is not the first time anything like this has happened to us in the safety industry. It usually comes from managers who are not safety professionals. And we all have stories on this. The question is this. What do we do about it? I try to deal with the person directly and resolve our differences. If that doesn't work, and I'm going to tell you, it doesn't usually work. You've got to follow it up in the train of command. Usually those who are gaslights are also psychopaths. And one of the attributes of those folks is to play the victim and try to turn things around and say that you're the perpetrator. So you need to be very careful. And by the way, this is extremely time sensitive. You may not be able to do anything about this type of person or work environment. And you need to decide what's best for you and your situation. As always, if you have been a victim to this behavior, it might be helpful to overcome it with counseling and maybe developing strategies to deal with these situations that do not reflect badly on you. Remember, there are often masters of argument, and they're looking for an argument with you to make you look bad. I know of one place where a worker actually committed suicide because of this behavior. If you need help, please see, dealing with gas sliders, that is a battle we'll must all face in the safety war. For safety wars, this is Jim Polls. Boy, what a long way we've come with the program and with everything else here with this. That was from March, 1921, episode eight of safety wars on gas lighting. Now you're going to say, well, Jim, what does that have to do with the current situation? Okay, so last week, and I wanted to get to this last week, we just now things did not work out here. It's been covered widely in the news here, right? This is from the Times Union, former governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday told the Congressional Subcommittee that he was unaware of a controversial directive that had been issued by the State Department of Health in March, 2020, directing nursing homes to accept residents, even if they had Tessa Vazza for COVID-19. And Cuomo's statement about his lack of knowledge or directive was made to members of the Select Committee on Coronavirus Pandemic, which has been probing New York's handling of the healthcare crisis. So he did not even want this. I don't even know. I know there was probably a transcript made, but you didn't want any of this on video. This was all negotiated for him to come on here and everything else, right? The former governor's assertion that he was unaware of a directive that had been issued to ease pressure on New York hospitals as they became overwhelmed with patients echoes public statements that he made a month early in April, 2020, when he claimed during news comments that he was not familiar. Sources are with the familiar with the now closed FBI investigation, the Cuomo administration's decision. The issue that directive said that a draft was edited for more than two days by the health department and members of the governor's office was issued on March 25, 2020. Cuomo's testimony that he was unaware of the directive even for me weeks later means that he was not briefed on or otherwise rather discussions. In addition, former health department officials interviewed that in that federal investigation told the FBI that Cuomo was frequently on their calls for this coronavirus task force, but will usually only listen without speaking at least one of those former officials told the FBI, a former secretary to the governor who was brought back to help with public health response had a hand in editing drafts, right? Schwartz said on Tuesday that the allegation the editor reviewed a draft was no, it's false and going on. So and it's a lot of finger pointing here. I don't know what happened here. With that, I'm just reading this. I don't know whether this is true or not. But I've read several stories on this thing heard a lot of stuff and nobody ever comes up with the actual memo here. Interesting. I got the directive right here and took a little bit of digging here for me, you know, I don't want to pat myself on the back here, but took a little bit of it took a little bit of searching for this thing to get this going here. So here, let's put up the memo right now. See if this works. And I'm not, I'm took myself out of the photo here, but let's see, let's try to, you know, everyone, no, everyone wants to talk about this and beat around the bush. Oh, the memo doesn't say this, the memo doesn't say that, the directive doesn't say this, but they never produced this. What I think happened was they had a lot of things, my opinion, a lot of balls in the air here. Whether Cuomo knew about this or not, I have no idea. But I suspect he had a lot going on and he delegated this stuff. And unless he had, I mean, he has my, my, as I recall, he had a wall background, which, you know, I think any first year, I'm not on the attorney. I'm not playing one here on YouTube and on the safety FM. I'm not playing one at all. I'm just a guy who reads. But some of the comments I've read on this is that this is not, did not say anything, let people in with COVID and this said this, they're not, but they did not, nobody produces this. And as a famous radio talk show host said, words mean things. Now, Jim, what do you mean words mean to words mean things? So here it is. This is from March 25th, nursing home administrators, directors of nursing hospital, this charge planners, New York State Department of Health. COVID-19 has been detected, right? In multiple communities, we have some front matter here. Hospital discharge planning staff and, uh, NHs, what, an, NH nursing home, NH should carefully review this guidance with all staff directly involved in resident and mission transfer and discharges. During this global health emergency, all nursing homes must come must, right? It's not right. You must do this comply with the expedited receipt of residents returning from hospitals to nursing homes. Residents are deemed appropriate for return to a nursing home upon a determination by the hospital physician or designate that the resident is medically stable for return. Keep that word in your, in that phrase in your head, medically stable for return, right? Hospital discharge planners must confirm to the nursing home by telephone that the resident is medically stable for discharge. Remember that again, medically stable. Comprehensive discharge instructions must be provided by the hospital prior to the transport of a resident to the nursing home. Okay, no resident shall, meaning that you got to do it, shall be denied readmission or admission to the nursing homes solely based on a confirmed or suspected case of COVID-19. Nursing homes are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined to be medically stable. Remember, medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission. And it goes on and on. Uh, no, some other stuff, you know, go normal. We've been through this. Okay, here's the question. All right, we got a question here. Let's see. Do I have a? Do I have a sound effect for that? Hold on, uh, I used to. What does, what does the word medically stable mean? What does that mean? Any idea? Any guess? Medically stable, there's no legal definition as far as I could tell. I've been looking for a week now since it's come out. No, and maybe out there, I looked, you know, I had a call into a couple of internships or a thing called medically stable. And it turns out that the closest definition officially that I could get is at someone who is not getting better and who is not getting worse. That means they're medically stable. What does this not say this directive? And this is where people say, well, the director was confusing. Okay, it was confusing. It didn't say that. Where it was confusing was this met. What does medically stable mean? It's, you know, and words mean things in exact language caused the confusion here. In exact language, the sound was used, in my opinion, by bureaucrats somewhere. I don't know which one. I have no idea. Someone who had came up with this text sounds to me like they're threading the needle is medically stable. It's almost like it's safe. It's a safe workplace. Well, what does that really mean? What does medically stable mean? Beats the heck out of me. So, you know, very frustrating, right? On this whole thing. Now, it doesn't say contagious, not contagious. Had it said, make sure the person's not contagious. Guess what? We wouldn't be having this conversation here in all likelihood. It was not contagious. So, this directive said that they are not getting better or worse, but they are medically stable, the COVID-19 patients. And we could go through all these directives here. I had a whole list of them here on how vulnerable nursing home residents are and everything else. So, it doesn't say contagious. So, this directive essentially, I know how people read things, and I know what I'm writing plans and be very careful as a safety revision. What they ended up doing was letting them people who were contagious, because they were, you can remember with COVID, you can be contagious, and you can be medically stable. You're not getting worse, you're getting better, you still be contagious. And that is where the issue is. But you go out there with, no, people wouldn't, no, they're not out there with like, you know, alphabet soup, you know, network things, network shirts, or like, no, I'm getting a lot of good compliments by this, right? Safety words. Jersey, right? They're not out there, saying, no pointing this out, what the actual issue is. It's in the way this was written and the inexact language of medically stable. And we're going to go to our first commercial break here, and we will be back to you. It's Tuesday, right? Yes, Tuesday, June 18th. This is safety words broadcasting to our brothers and sisters in the occupied territory of behavior based safety. Get out your secret decoder ring. Here is your nightly message. Blame fixes nothing. Blame fixes nothing. So Oliver was a little bit too busy today to do the actual news broadcast. So we're going to do just go right to it. But you know, what do you think? Tell me, folks, what do you think about this? Am I right? Am I wrong? What have you, you got to write things more exact. Now, I understand I am coming from hindsight bias and Monday morning quarter, but I get that. But we have to file this away for the future. And this is a lesson learned, lesson learned is, and be careful what you're right when you're writing these directives or your emails or anything else. Number one, number two is file this away. So the next time we have a pandemic, well, we will have another pandemic. Next time we have a pandemic outbreak or something, you're going to say, hey, think back, hey, how do we, how do we do this? Now, my hope, right, is in the future that we have lessons learned. I really hope the agencies are going through lessons learned because I went through lessons learned here with this. Now, we're going to go back to some of our news stories. I think we might have covered some of them on our last program. It's hard to remember here, keep it straight. But for whatever reason, I think OSHA has been on vacation also with these, with these, what do you call them with these press releases being so far behind here. Okay, we can I know we covered that one. All right. Here we have Illinois contractor exposes employees to deadly fall hazards and a Hanover subdivision. And let's increase that. It's from region five, Illinois contractor. Federal workplace inspectors found an Illinois construction contract that seven, cited seven times since 2020, again, exposed employees doing framing work to the risk of deadly falls from elevation at two homes under construction at Hanover Park in December, 2023 in February, 2024. That's a three month span, right? Inspectors with OSHA going on. I'm not going to mention the name of the company work that heights of up to 20 feet without adequate fall protection. OSHA identified the violations in December and February at two nearby works sites on blah, blah, blah, and the company name to willful to repeat two series violations. Agency has proposed $264,407 in penalties. Again, nobody apparently got hurt or killed here. And as part of the news release, the Bureau Labor Statistics reports that in 2022, 1056 construction workers died on the job with 423 of those fatalities related to falls from elevation slips and trips, slips or trips. Let's see what those are. 23 pages. Wow. Residential construction, right? This was residential and six feet or higher, you got to have some kind of fall protection here. Guys, they were exposed to 20 foot fall going on and on proposed penalties, 124,219. That was a willful and this was for the one in in February. So this was after they had already found out apparently from before. 124,000 when I'm an achiever to buy a fall protection equipment, folks. Citation two, item one, type of violation, repeat other. The employer shall verify compliance with a paragraph and a section by preparing a written certification record. You need to have, again, if you're a trainer, you have to have the employees trained and data to training the signature of the person who conducted the training and many other records on that. Make sure that's on there. $1774. So apparently, so again, let's say that you know, this is an important thing. We're dealing with this now. Let's say you do most of your training through weekly safety meetings. All right, if you fall under the process safety management center, there's really comprehensive training records that have to go in there, right? Duration of training, who attended topics, an agenda, and all that stuff. Now, let's say you're doing a weekly safety meeting type of thing, which some people do. What are they looking for? They're looking for on that sign-in sheet, maybe, that you use the date of the training, the signature of the person who conducted the training or the employer. If the employer relies on training conducted by another employer or completed prior to the effect of data this section, the certification record will indicate the date of the employer. The term in the prior training was adequate, rather than the date of actual training. Okay, great. So again, they got, if you do training, you better have records. Here we have 1774. So for that one in February, $125,993. This is the one over in December, it looks like. Again, he, let's see what they got here. They might have been told to get training then and they didn't do it. That may, you know, and then they came up with training documentation things. Setation one, item 1A, serious, 12,421, personal full arrest systems when stopping a fall shall be rated such that an employee can neither free fall more than six feet nor contact any lower level. Again, improper rigging. All right, here, meaning a citation one item one V, no, no fine here. On the attachment point of the body belt, the wire to use the body belts shall be located in the center of the wearer's back. The attachment point of the body harness shall, they should be wear harnesses shall be located in center of the wearer's back near the shoulder level or above the wearer's head. On or about December 11th, an employee performing construction at height 16 and 6 feet was wearing a personal fall arrest harness where the attachment point was not located in the center of the wearer's back. Again, where was it attached? Are they wearing that harness properly? Then we have citation two item one type of violation, willful, serious, and it's a six foot fall protection rule and construction $124,219, citation three, item one, it's a repeat. Again, with the certification records, and we had a citation for item one band electric cords for cables. Now, if they go back in the future, which I suspect since they have repeat and willful violations, now the citation for item one other than serious now come becomes a willful or a repeat violation. And it's not going to be zero dollars. I have a sneaking suspicion of that. Alright, so let's do our next story. Now, I'm going to go over here. All right, and we always talk and I'm guilty of this as much as the next person. We always talk about 1910, general industry, 1926 construction, 1915, maritime, 1917, which is also maritime in 1918, and I believe it's 1928 for agriculture. There's a lot of other OSHA regulations out there, tons of them. Now, you're going to say, well, where are you thinking here? There is something called. Now, you'll look and you see what the other regulations are, and that is the, we're pulling it up right here, the 1977 standard. What is the 1977 standard? All right, so standard number 1977 is showing at all. Yes, it is. Scroll on down, and it is discrimination against employees exercising rights under the Williams-Siger-Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. Now, if you are a outreach trainer, this needs to be in the outreach training here. I'm not, you know, with this. So, as far as this, so here's our table of contents. Purpose to this part. Purpose is far to make available in one place. Interpretation is of various revisions of section 11 C of the Act. It means the OSHA Act, which will guide Secretary of Labor and performance of his duties. Therefore, they're under a less and until otherwise directed by authority, the decision of the courts are concluding on re-examine in interpretation that it is incorrect. Persons protected. All employees are afforded the full protection of 11 C for the purposes of this Act. An employee is defined as an employee of an employer, pardon me, who is employed in the business with his employer, which affects commerce. The Act does not define the term employee. However, the broader remedial nature of this legislation demonstrates the clear congressional intent that the existence of an employment relationship for purposes alone in C is to be based upon economic realities other than upon common law. For purposes of section 11 C, even an applicant for employment can be considered an employee. Further, because the existence in terms of any employee is clear, also clear that the employee need not be an employee of the discriminator. The principal consideration would be whether the person alleged the discrimination was an employee at the time of engaging in a protected activity. So, I guess this is subcontractor. I guess I'm not an attorney, I'm just reading the regulation here. In view of the definitions of employer and employee contained in the Act, employees of a state political subdivision thereof would not normally be within the contemplated coverage of 11 C. Okay, great. Right, and then it goes down, unprotected activities, right? Well, some of the employees engagement and activities protected on the act, son, I had automatically rendered him immune from discharge or discipline for legitimate reasons. At the same time, there established a violation of section 11 C, employees engagement and protected activity need not be the sole or primary consideration of fine discharge. So, let's say that, okay, you made a complaint to OSHA, but then guess what? The person decides not to show up to work for a week. It might not be a complaint here. All right, no help. And then proceedings, all right. Finally, complaint of for discrimination. Who may file a complaint of election 11 C discrimination may be filed by the employee himself or by a representative authorized to do so on his behalf. No particular form of complaint is required. Complaints should be filed with the area director responsible. Timing, this is important. An employee who believes that he has been discriminated against in violation of section 11 C one may within 30 days after within 30 days after such violation occurs, file a complaint with the secretary of labor. I would not wait for the 30 days. I'd do it immediately because they might have discriminated you prior to let's say you got fired. They might have discriminated for you for two or three weeks before that. And then you are now you're up, you know, with that. And they need not have to fire you. Right. I tell you what, I have to take this phone call. I will get back to you in a moment here. I'm going to go to commercial break. In a world where danger lurks in every corner, one man stands as a beacon of hope. Jim Polzel, a veteran safety expert with over three decades of experience, now bringing his knowledge to you with safety wars. Engaging, informative, and always relevant, that's safety wars. Join the safety revolution with safety wars available on Spotify, Apple Podcast, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts and videos. In an unpredictable world, one voice rises above the chaos. Meet Jim Polzel, a seasoned safety expert who's navigated through some of the most dangerous scenarios from anthrax, explosive cleanups, disasters, and numerous environmental cleanups and lived to tell the tale. Now he's bringing his wealth of knowledge, insights, and experiences to you through safety wars. From workplace hazards to the hidden dangers in your own home, Jim covers it all with his engaging storytelling and expert analysis. Safety Wars isn't just a podcast, it's your guide to a safer world. Join Jim Polzel and become part of the Safety Wars Revolution, available on Spotify, Apple Podcast, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts and videos. Safety Wars, you... The safety warship. It does stream live on the radio and on the streamer universe that we have. So if you have not taken a listen to Jim Polzel and what the hell he's doing every evening with safety wars, I would strongly encourage you to take a view or take a listen, whichever option is available for you, and take a listen to what the hell he has to go to guide. It definitely will take some deep dive to some information that you might consider. In the professional safety community, communication and planning are just a few keys to your program's success. The question many practitioners have is where to watch start? Dr. Jay Allen, the creator of the safety FM platform and host of the rated R safety show, has built a global foundation to help you along the way. Go to safetyFM.com and listen to some of the industry's best and most involved professionals, including Blaine Hoffman with the Safety Pro, Sam Goodman with the Hopner, Sheldon Primus with the Safety Consultant, Jim Polzel with Safety Wars, Emily Elrod with unapologetically bold and many others. As individuals, we can do great things, but as a team, we become amazing. Dial in to safetyFM.com today and surround yourself with a powerful force of knowledge and support. Sorry about that everybody and let's get Jessica in here. Ocean recordables, catastrophic losses, environmental disasters. Do you want answers? So do I. This is Jim Polzel with Safety Wars. That's my daddy. People always want to hear that. And by the way, one of the listeners out there for us is on a satellite radio, Shady45 on SiriusXM, and he puts his kid who is much older now, but him on the air there. So anyway, there may be circumstances which were justified tolling of the 30-day period on a recognized equitable principles or because of strongly extenuating circumstances right where the employer has concealed or misled the employee regarding the grounds for discharge or other adverse action or where the discrimination is in the nature of a continuing violation. The tendency of a grievance arbitration proceedings or filing with another agency among others are circumstances which do not justify tolling the 30-day period. So now this is all along and all well and good here with this. But when we talk about whistleblowing and things of that nature under the OSH Act, this is what they're talking about. Now, the thing is when you go down here and you go down the table of contents here, OSHA is in charge of over 20 different areas here as far as whistleblowing, 20 different, over 20 different federal laws, OSHA takes the initial thing, a thing, a report. All right, they may be part of the investigation and everything else, but no, with that. Anyway, that's what's going on there with that. All right, with whistleblowers. Now on to our next story here is, right, we were with that background. So here we have the U.S. Department of Labor, and this came out today, I believe this press release. U.S. Department of Labor to offer whistleblower program webinar to educate southeast stakeholders, employers, workers, and federal on federal protections. This is a webinar on June 26, 2024. Again, here it is, whistleblower protection program enforces whistleblower provisions, 25 whistleblowers statutes. So I'm probably worth it. It's July 18th, it was today. I don't know with that release number. Okay, so it's July, June 18th, today. So this was released. Again, now you can get into a little bit of trouble here with, no, if you rely solely on HR, human resources, and your organization to worry about this type of stuff, which is normally what happens, that's where you're going to get into trouble, because how do you know, if you have the human resources, normally does not, most organizations, unless it's their own employee, their own people, doesn't assign work, doesn't manage the work. They're a, for lack of a better word, necessary evil, like us, like safety professionals. That's at least how they're, we're trying to have their scene. So what ends up happening is you have people out in the field doing the work, and they're like, well, and things, well, you know, I'm going to, I don't like so-and-so because he reported the safety issue, and it doesn't even have to be OSHA. He reported the safety issue, and now I'm going to go and get him, and we're not going to give him overtime. He lost out on the overtime over the weekend. Guess what? Now you violated the whistleblower protection, because now you have a whistleblower complaint. Could happen. Just something that you need to consider here with this. Now then, here's a free webinar. I mean, it's for free. It's for me. Let me clear off some of the board here. You have a lot of open windows here. I know. Did I go to go a little too deep here with the governor here? I don't think I have. It's, did he know or not? I have no idea, right? However, you have to remember, you have to remember you need to words mean things. You need to write things correctly. A federal administrative law judge has upheld the Department of Labor's finding that a Houston crane and rigging service, service provider who violated a federal law by firing company truck driver on June 5th, 2020 for refusing to exceed safe driving limits set by federal motor carrier safety administration. All right, so this is, again, another thing, wrongful firing. No, with that. No, you have the right to refuse unsafe work and to violate, you don't have to, if your employer tells you violate federal law, you don't have to violate federal law. And this is what I tell people on the projects I'm working on. Well, my employer told me not to use fall protection. Well, your employer is violating federal law. The ash act and all these regulations take your chances. This is a big issue also in New York, state here with this, because if you're a competent person, and we go into this all the time, if you're are a competent person, it's your rear end on the line here. If you're, no, you're the competent fall, a competent person for fall protection. Well, cuz someone gets killed and it's because of your negligence. That is a criminal act taught to now not in New York, panic and terrorists read in New Mexico, spending 18 months in jail now. Why? She was in effect, the competent person person in charge. And she, there was a problem, right? Alec Baldwin, Russ Productions. Now she has some problem. She's in jail for 18 months. The people who told her to act that way, and not to have safety meetings, and not to have safety training, and not to do this, not to that. Don't worry about the guns, worry about the regular props. There's Scott Free, except for her direct supervisor. Everybody else? She got it in writing. Right? She got all this crap in writing, and, you know, now you have a problem. So, OSHA found that the company fired the employer illegally for exercising their protective rights under the federal whistleblower protection program, and the department's regional solicitor and Dallas resented its case during a formal hearing in the use of October 14, 2022. So, one and a half years later, more than one and a half year, one of your eight months later, the judge issued a decision in order the company to pay the former truck driver almost $15,000 in back pay, interest and compensatory damages. The company most also expansion former employees record and post a notice to employees. Basically, they, now you have now, they gotta go and tell everybody they done screwed up. I don't know. Again, and this is all on the public records. So, do you really want it on the public record that you're firing on employees for doing this? I don't know. We covered this story. There we go, and that. Okay, this one just came out. Again, we had mentioned over the last several months on industrial hygiene issues. So, it's estimated by model, and this is not Jimmy's numbers, not Jimmy's numbers at all. It's estimated that 50,000 employees are killed or die of work-related illnesses every year, based on their current models is what OSHA says, and they can go and do a deep dive with that maybe one day we will on that. So, again, there's a lack of interest, it seems, on industrial hygiene issues in the workplace, because probably because a lot of employers are like, well, you're selling us me a statistical issue that might come up in 30 years, they may or may not get cancer. Well, guess what? I'm not going to do an industrial hygiene audit today. We've got something that might happen, and by the way, the person making that decision is usually in their mid-50s, and they're either going to sell, they're the owner of the company, they're going to sell it, or they're going to be retired, and they're not going to be able to. They're not going to worry about it. Plain and simple. I don't know, you know, with this. Here we have, after Sanduski, pork processing facility workers seek medical treatment for ammonia exposure, federal investigators identify 43 safety violations. Oh, we should have held this one for tomorrow. So, let's see what they are. They assess them, and we're not going to go through all of them, $528,000 for this. Oceanside it again. So, what this sounds like is that the employees went to hospital themselves. They didn't, they might not have followed the company known about, followed, or one might not have existed, on how to manage this situation. Now, we do a JCP technical and safety words. We have plans already in place to teach you how to manage accidents. Give us a call 845-269-5772. You too can have that, those plans. The agency assessed the company with, that's okay, so what are we here? Lack of fall protection, noise exposure, inadequate permit required confined space procedures, lack of an emergency eye watch or shower, lock out, tag out procedures, no hazard and communication plans, electrical safety related work practices, failure to mark all exits, unsafe electrical equipment and installations, lack of lock out devices, lack of PPE, unsafe walking and working services, serious violation at 1.4 failings, reduced employees from bloodborne pathogens and had a penalty on that which is currently being contested. And let's remember all of these things that we're talking about are proposed fines. Now, let's see what this is. I'm interested in seeing how many pages it is. 83 pages. You gotta love it. No. I don't know what to say here, right? And they're all small things, I guess. Let's go to the summary page. We'll scroll on down. Yeah, all little tiny things. 167, right? Well, not all of them. Now, this is what the issue is. Training with this. Were people actually trained? Were your supervisors trained? Did you actually know about it? Did you say, "Oh, well, we're not going to worry about it because nothing ever happened before?" We don't need to worry about this thing called "Hosha's ineffective." I hear all this stuff. Now, if you're a safety professional managing this stuff, again, all, uh, there's one repeat. I will go into this tomorrow. One repeat for $63,000, but I don't know. Seems like very small penalties here. And that's all I'm going to say here. We're coming up to the end of the program here. Here's a local story here. Department of Labor. Try that again. The Department of Labor recovers $84,000 in back wages and damages to from the Jersey Shore Steakhouse owner, willfully denied to pay full paid to 13 workers. I won't let's remember. Basically, salary laws are changing on July 1st, unless there's an injunction issued here. So, basically, a lot of the people who are paying your paying salary are now going to be paying overtime. US Department of Labor has recovered more than $84,000 in back wages and liquidated damages for 13 workers and assessed $4,459 in penalties at their investigation determined. A very popular Jersey Shore Steakhouse owner violated federal overtime regulations deliberately. And I'm not going to mention the guy's name because for all I know, well, listener probably here knows them. The division also found that the employer failed to pay non-exempt salary to employees overtime and did not maintain required payroll records. Again, I don't know. I mean, this is fairly common, unfortunately, with this. And let's see how many more minutes we have left here. Okay, we're going to go and go to our outro here. We missed Flag Day last week, but, you know, every day here is Flag Day. Right, I got a comment here just now. Just now. What are you talking about? Shipmunks. Yeah, we had a chipmunk in the house, you know, you want to, you know, it was pretty funny. Now, the war against the chipmunks, we should have chipmunks safety war. So that would be funny, huh? And hold on, been a while since we've done this. All right, and we will be seeing you God willing tomorrow and have a great have a great Wednesday or Juneteenth tomorrow. So, you know, enjoy Juneteenth if you are celebrating. For safety wars, this is Jim Poelzel. And let me get off of here. Hold on. Sound is not working. We will cut it off. We will go in right here. The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the host and its guest and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the company. Examples of analysis discussed within this podcast are only examples. They should not be utilized in the real world as the only solution available as they are based only on very limited and dated open source information. Assumptions made within this analysis are not reflective of the position of the company. No part of this podcast may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means. Mechanical, electronic, recording or otherwise without prior written commission of the creator of the podcast, Jay Allen. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]