Safety Wars
Safety Wars Live 7-31-2024 Saul Alinsky's Rules For Radicals, Hierarchy of Controls, OSHA News
Hi this is Jim from Safety Wars. Before we start 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. Proposed 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 show is brought to you by Safety FM. And from the border of Liberty and Prosperity and highway to the north. For Wednesday, July 31st, 2024. This is Safety Wars. Has everybody doing out there? Been a couple of days. A lot of stuff going on out there outside of Safety Wars. Hope everybody's doing well. Tell you what, there's a lot of news and I had to say, no, we'll cut this promo live. Welcome to Safety Wars. Today we are political, let's try that again. Welcome to Safety Wars. Welcome to a political free radio show today. We're not talking politics. I tell you what, I'm sick of it. Let's get the after Labor Day will concentrate a little bit more on politics. We're not going for Labor. Maybe around the DNC convention. But we have, we're going to go over some old material today. Sol Allen's used rules for radicals. We're going to go into a couple of those because they became very relevant to me this week on a project. You're trying to, in a part of what we do here at Safety FM, Safety Wars and Jay Allen's podcast and the radar safety show and a lot of the Sheldon Primus and all those other primers, I'm sorry. All these other things is we try to do coaching. How do you handle secret? How do you handle people? That's another important thing. How do we handle people at heart? Thanks. And what I found, no, and I'm sure this, this is nothing new. And I'm not saying anything against family members or anything like that. But I was never taught how to handle people, how to handle things. And because of my cleft lip cleft palate, which I really don't talk about too often, a lot of stuff goes on where a lot of stuff goes on where I, you know, you just don't learn because of social isolation and everything that dealt with this people not wanting to deal with you because you have a severe speech impediment now if they could see me now, right? And that often is what happens with people in my situation and it happened more or less with me. With that. So what I've had to do is become a student of human behavior, a student of people watching them, talking with them, speaking with them, because I did not really get that experience when I was growing up as a child, right? Hey, everybody tried their best, right? Sometimes things work great. Sometimes they don't work so great and you just move on and everything else. I'm over it. But no, what's my point? Jimmy, what's the point? Well, I've stumbled across all our unscuse rules, radicals. We'll talk about that in a minute here. A couple of other things here. We talk about the general duty clause. No, we have a promo in there with that. And let's play that, right? Because I have a feeling that's going to come in on our new section here. So let me play that and we'll get back to you in a minute. Want to avoid hefty OSHA fines and keep your team safe? Let's dive into the general duty clause. The general duty clause, section five, A1 of the OSHA Act of 1970, is a catch-all rule to cover unregulated hazards. Employers must keep workplaces free from recognized dangers that could cause death or serious harm. For OSHA to cite you under the general duty clause, they must prove the following four things. One, the employer failed to render its workplace free of a hazard. Two, an employee was exposed to that hazard. Three, that hazard was causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm. And four, feasible means exist to free the workplace of the hazard. Employees aren't off the hook either. Section five, B, mandates they follow all safety standards. Both employers and employees must work together to maintain a safe work environment. Examples, think lifting above shoulder height repeatedly or working without proper support. Stay proactive. Monitor work areas, apply the four-part test, and you'll prevent those nasty citations and keep everyone safe. Need help? And more information. Contact Jim Pozel and the Safety Wars team to help you prevent workplace incidents. Conduct safety audits and training. Contact the Safety Wars team at jim@safetywars.com or 8452-69572. Visit us on the web at www.safetywars.com. Let's build a safer workplace together. All right. So, I know that's basically it. Yeah, I have to redo this just a little bit here. So, let me do a share screen here because this is actually a, this is actually, okay, is there a live? I'm a whole bunch of stuff here on the video stream. So, we'll just upload it later on where there is something that did not connect. All right. I know that's back ground. So, I want to share a screen with you here. And that is this. Okay, hold on. Here we have the icon. This is from publication from 2023 last year, workers' rights. And so, with the new, with the Biden administration, right, they're always talking about rights. And here we have the publication 3021-02R 2020-2023. So, this is some of the front matter here. All right. This publication provides a general overview of worker rights. Very important thing. Under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, this publication is not alter or determine compliance responsibility. Okay, great. This document, workers' rights, replaces employee workplace rights. All right. So, workers' rights. Here we have. You have the right to a safe workplace. Yeah. Occupational Safety and Health Act was passed to prevent workers from being killed or otherwise harmed at work. The law requires employers to provide their employees for the working conditions that are free of known dangers. The OSHAC created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and we talked about that. The OSHAC gives workers the right to safe and helpful working conditions, right? And that translates directly into the general duty clause, right? Each, with states, each employer shall furnish the each of his employees' employment and a place of employment, which are free from recognized hazards or causing or likely to cause death or a serious physical arm to his employees, shall comply with Occupational Safety and Health Standards, right? Probated under this act, and each employee shall comply with Occupational Safety and Health Standards, right? So, that's basically it with that. So, hold on. All right. So, you're afforded different rights. One of them is the safe and helpful workplace. So, here's a question for you. You're afforded these rights. What does it mean? We talk about rights all the time. We have 10 amendments in the U.S. Constitution, and something that some people fail to remember is that those are not our only rights. We have many rights, and rights will come from nature. I believe in natural rights, and our rights are many and don't have to be enumerated here. But we have a right to safe and helpful workplace. So, if you don't have a safe and helpful workplace, here's something to think about. Are your rights being violated? Have a right to report unsafe conditions also. If you're prevented from doing that, are your rights being violated? We talk about rights, and we throw that out, and it sounds great, right? And no, we talk about voting rights, right? We have the right to vote, which I encourage everyone to do this November. We have rights. No, the Second Amendment, right to speech, right to freedom of religion. No, the Second Amendment, right. The Third Amendment, right, where they're not going to house troops in your home, the Fourth Amendment, and it goes on and on and on, right, taking the Fifth Amendment. But a right to a safe and helpful working condition, that is a right. And that's what this OSHA was set up to be. So, they went and they codified a right. They, meaning Congress and the President, Richard Nixon, codified the right to a safe and helpful workplace. So, that's something you need to talk about. That's something we don't really talk about. When do I talk about it? When I'm doing outreach training, usually to at-risk communities and underrepresented in communities, because they understand rights, and it makes a connection to your audience and that type of thing where you talk about that. And, you know, people don't, my opinion, people don't talk about them. You know, you have a right and for what it's worth. Now, Sol Allen's scheme. How did this kick in? It's this week. How did it apply this week? So, like I know, all the jobs that we're on, there's often issues out there with dealing with people. You have to manage people. And as a third-party consultant, things don't always go as smoothly as we wish them to go, right? Where your third-party consultant, they don't want to know. Well, you're going to have the authority to hire, fire, or discipline anyone usually. And if you do, you better get at that in writing. You don't have the authority to make changes in the workplace and everything else. And I'm sorry, health and safety folks. With the COVID policies that we were forced to implement, we lost a lot of respect with some of the workplaces because it came down to this. The site manager doesn't want to say that they're behind on a project. So, what ends up happening is, well, you know what? The safety guy and all those safety person and everything else that they do, they extended the job. I can't beat my budget because they're enforcing the rules. And this got into a lot of workplaces I was in, where you're enforcing the rules. Don't enforce the rules so much. It's like, no, you're the host employer wants these rules in force, and if they're not enforced, I'm out of a job, you're out of a job, and your company is probably going to get thrown off the project. Because that's the way it was. And no, people would lie and everything else. And thank God, for these things called smartphones and other surveillance equipment that employers that I worked with actually had to set up on the job sites. Because people, not, oh yeah, here comes the safety guy, and they're putting on masks, they're putting on whatever. And then you leave, and then no, well, yeah, you know, he left, take it off, don't worry about it. And then an oversight person, they look up on the camera, hey, how come you're not enforcing the rule, and therefore you're evil. And then it goes on and on and on. And a lot of the stuff proven ineffective, a lot of the stuff. And the big one for most workplaces were the masks. Why? You're setting up rules, and you have the hierarchy of controls, right? We're all familiar with the hierarchy of controls from NIOSH and everything else here. And let's share that screen. And it comes down to this. I will be working up with the other program eventually, right? You have the hierarchy of controls. We're all familiar with it right here. So we have at the top, in the blue area, what do you have? You have the elimination, if you can see that, elimination. Then you have substitution engineering controls and administrative controls. Well, it's not on this one that I have picked out is that you want to be towards the top part of that upside down triangle. You would have had me able to eliminate substitute and have engineering controls. And why is that? Because you're not relying on the worker to do everything 100% of the time. When you start to get down towards the administrative controls and PPE, that's when you get those in the least reliable methods of controlling anything, especially with PPE. And you're relying on the worker 100% of the time. That doesn't always work out, as we all know. Now, why do I bring this up with COVID again? A lot of places or workplaces are now requiring, no, there are especially medical facilities, right? I don't think they ever stop doing this, where they require masks and some other protocols. I'm no of one nursing home in New Jersey, where one wing of the facility has 35 residents, and 30 of them came down with COVID three weeks ago. Thankfully, no one died. They were able to make a recovery here. But, you know, it's, you know, relying on PPE. And let's talk about PPE. If you're going to tell people to wear a mask, or even with regular, let's say, it's outside of COVID or anything, you're going to be having to make sure that they wear the mask, they wear the rest properly. They're a clean shaven and going on and on and on and on the limitations. When an administrative control, most workers have the attitude that, hey, rules are made to be broken. We all know people like that. So, when you put in an administrative control, it's a rule. Now, early on, I'm jumping around a little bit. This week, I received an email from a facility among their mailing lists, with lockout tag ad violations. There's, so we're getting lockout and tag ad violations, blah, blah, blah. That's the 29 CFR 1910 147. And that's coming up in our audits and you had better make them sure that you're not, you know, banging on the desk type of email. And perfect example here is for the hierarchy of controls, because the higher, because those are rules, administrative controls, for the most part. To get that's where they were failing with employees not doing the quote, unquote, right thing, whatever that is, right? But you got to remember, there is a lot that goes into those things before you get to those rules and everything else for de-energizing, right? That's an elimination. And there's a procedure for that. Yeah, so that's what, okay, you're eliminating, but now you're relying on a person to eliminate the energy source. Does it always happen? People are in a hurry. People are people. As I say, there are wild and perverse incentive structures out there that people have to deal with. And so these administrative controls, they're not really reliable with that. Now, where am I going with this? All Alan's rules for radicals. I'm going to share this. This is from infed.org. I'm not sure exactly sure where they are, but they had like the best thing here for that. We're not going to go into all of them. We're just going to talk about with this. So I'm not, I never heard of infed.org. I don't know what it is. So the bulk and the best rest of the rules around it when they talk about, you know, philosophy. And by the way, 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, there were riots. Saul Alinsky was a, a community organizer in Chicago. And he said, look, we got to be a little bit more organized here. And he came up with 13 rules, 13 tactics that are out there. Now, this is from infed.org. Oh, who's the author of this article? Uh, it says he, uh, what is infed? The encyclopedia of pedagogy and informal education. And so, we'll go on down with them, right? And the first part of, uh, this is once concerned with tactics, of means and ends, varies inversely, one's personal interest in the issue, and once this is a difference in the existence from the scene of conflict. Uh, Saul Alinsky was critical of those who criticized the morality of actions they were not involved in, or dispassioned about, or were not touched by it. For him, the further people are away from the conflict, the more they fuss over moral delicacies. Meaning he got to be in there, right? Furthermore, such moralizing distancing denies its own, uh, culpability. All right, the judgment of the ethics of means is dependent upon the political position of those sitting in judgment. Our cause had to be all shining dresses allied with angels. There's had to be all evil tied to the devil and no war has the enemy, or the cause has been gray. So everything is going to be black and white. Well, that, and it goes on and on and on. Now, the tactics that they use, the 13 tactics, is what I talk about. Now say, let's see that if you're a safety professional, if you ever got, uh, got this in you, right? Power is not only what you have, but with the enemy thinks you have. So how does this manifest itself in the workforce? I know after studying these as a man, this is all what I've had to deal with here for, at the time, 20 years and, uh, the safety industry. So in the book, he says that if one has mass support, one should flaunt it. If one does not, one should make a lot of noise. If one cannot make a big noise, make a big stink. Right. So what the idea is, uh, is what other it's what not so much like power, you have, but what other people think you have and what you think the other people have. All right. Now, how does this, uh, come up with this and you and I, I'm working, I have worked and, you know, I'm working on a project where a lot of politics there and people go out there and say, Hey, I, I'm in charge of this and I can do this, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you find out that they're full of groove. No, don't have that authority. Right. So the other thing is this. If it works the other way around, what do they think authority you have? If you're out there and they think you're a nobody, guess what? They ain't gonna listen to you. And just the way it is. I'm not saying, be fraudulent. I'm not saying intimidate. I'm not saying anything like that, but you have to conduct yourself in a certain way. If you're the safety professional, you have to be knowing, no, we'll, we talk about leadership too. We'll talk about that in the very near future, maybe tomorrow. Leadership, you have to know your subject. You have to, uh, uh, uh, no, uh, hold your cards close and everything else that everybody you hear on the motivational stuff. Don't let people know about your plans. Uh, be a little bit mysterious. Don't be wrong. Don't make a fool out of yourself. Anything like that, anything that, you know, if they don't know who you are, for example, you don't tell them who you are. You don't know who they are. Guess what? They don't know who you are. You're gonna have some authority like, you know what? I'm not gonna have to think twice about saying this because anything to this person because we don't know who they are. Uh, we don't know who they know. And I would say this, you don't know, you don't know what they're willing to do. Today, we have a thing called smartphones and we have plenty of videos on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook and all the other media things that people making fools out of themselves. So if you're gonna make a fool out of yourself and ends up on TikTok, guess what? Now people have a lot of authority to wield over their co-workers, over their employers. Right? Just because of this podcast, for example, that I'm sure this is, uh, the experience of many of our other colleagues here on the Safety FM Network is they know you have a podcast. We're not the highest rated podcast on this network. I'm sure I know that we're not the lowest one. Right? But we haven't a pretty good reach out there. But no, they know that we have this. We have a platform. Guess what? They treated when the minute I started the podcast, people started treating me a little bit differently out there with that, right? Never go outside the experience of your people and number three, wherever possible go outside the experience of the enemy. So don't go outside your experience. If you're a safety professional, you know something special. Like with me, I know about industrial painting. We went over that last program and I know about, uh, no, uh, no soil mechanics and soils and things of that nature. That's where I like to, you know, that's where I like to reside in the areas that I know that I know. Uh, but what the idea? No, because once you go outside of it, you look like the fool with it. Uh, and I know a lot of others subject, but you know, just for example, now, where ever possible go outside the experience of the enemy. Now I don't like to think of coworkers as enemies, but, uh, no, whatever your antagonist, whatever that is. This gets done. Uh, uh, this gets done, uh, uh, all the time where people change the subject. That's one way. So, you know, oh, uh, you know, and when they change the subject, they're going outside of what your expertise is to make you look foolish. Again, this, no, you see here about this all the time you see it, but to codify you're able to analyze it, make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. Uh, so people who inherited, uh, blah, blah, blah. Okay. So, uh, the bottom line is this. Uh, if you have a safety plan, make sure that you follow the safety plan. If there's a rule, make sure you follow it. If you're not wearing a hard hat, make sure, and then you ask someone else to wear a hard hat, not going to go over it too well. So, make sure that you live up to your, the rules. And, and someone is going outside of their rules. Guess what? Now you have, uh, now, you can point that out. Makes them feel a little bit uncomfortable. Makes you feel a little bit uncomfortable. So, same with any rules. And ridicule is man's supposed potent weapon. Ridicul, there's no, there is no, uh, some, uh, defense to ridicule. Very difficult to defend against. I'm not saying to go out there and ridicule people, but if people ridicule you, you got to come up with some kind of offense. You got to laugh, uh, defense. You got to laugh them off. Right. Uh, there's a lot of, uh, help on the internet on a, on how to manage that. A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. One pensioner, right? So if, uh, you, uh, uh, have a good thing, whether it's a safety meeting or anything else, use it, right? But the thing is, on the other end, if someone has developed something that they enjoy doing against the safety program, or against you, guess what? If they enjoy it, that's going to, they're going to continue to do it. Gotta come up with a response to that. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. All right. So, uh, basically, uh, you keep doing the same thing with that. Guess what? People are going to, uh, uh, no, uh, no, uh, it goes on too long. So the long-term safety programs who come on are techniques or even the safety STEM speeches out there don't always use the same route. One, change things up a little bit. Keep the pressure on, right? So if you're out there, no, uh, with an issue on the site, no, this is the flavor of the month, uh, uh, uh, thing that we get into. You have flavor of the month where this month, we're talking about this and then, you know, hear about it for the rest of the year, where there's a bad thing that happens and now your focus is on that bad thing, not paying attention to anything else. And then something else happens, then you move on to that. And, uh, the way I take this as, what, what safety, don't let things rest. If there's a problem, don't do not, uh, give it up until that's resolved. And, well, let's face the rename may not be able to get it resolved. But what do you do? You put that in your little file that you know, uh, no, I don't, what are many situations? Well, this is what the problem is. I'm waiting for this to get resolved. And a lot of audit forms, they have a who's responsible and for this getting this resolved. That's again, keep the pressure on. This is about corporate change in our case, not political, but corporate change. But the rules still generally apply the threat. Now this is my favorite one. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself. What I tell people is that sometimes you have to take the or else. Well, Jim, what do you mean you have to take the or else? Well, you're going to do this thing or else I'm going to do. Okay. Well, I'll take the or else. I'm going to tell your boss on you. Okay. You want to use my phone or yours. Let's talk to him right now. Conference men, you can explain your thing. Now, the other thing is this. Let me, this is a little bit, uh, you know, uh, no, I'll say this much. Uh, so someone says, hey, I'm going to do X, Y and Z to know or else. Right. And the other thing you turn in the round, right? You realize that sometimes now you can threaten people, right? But what happens sooner or later, the threat doesn't mean anything because they realize this. The threat is usually more tentative or fine than the thing itself. That's why I don't like to threaten people. And if they threaten me, I'd tell them, okay, go ahead. Because once you threaten someone, you have to follow through, right? With that. And I'm going to tell you, if you're a safety professional, you threaten a worker undermines what you do. And guess what? Yes, doesn't usually add to the resolution of whatever issue you're dealing with. Uh, the major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. Such pressure is necessary, Saul Alinsky argued, in order to get a reaction from the opposition, he argued that the action is the reaction. Wow. Right. The reaction, sometimes you're trying, they're trying to get a reaction out of you. So be careful with your reactions. If you push a negative, hard and deep enough, it'll break through into its counter side. Essentially, this is to not give up and be afraid to concentrate on negative aspects. Right. Uh, pushing negative aspects leads to changes often. There's an example of here on the screen, not relevant to safety. So keep on applying pressure, applying pressure, applying pressure, that's what often happens. That's why you have to resolve things. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. If one does not does push the other party through changing, one has to offer some type of solution. How many times do we make recommendations, but there are no solutions? This is where the idea of being a leader and teamwork is about. You try to get team together. So I wrote up an incident report where I knew that if I offered any recommendations, they would be ignored. So what do you I do? Some clients out there, hey, Jim, what's your recommendation? You know what? I think you should do this, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, Jim, thanks. And they implemented or not. If they don't implement it, they usually have more problems. They implemented, they have a problem. They resolve it. But what the idea is, is that you've got to try to build coalitions, build teamwork, get the other people that this is going to impact whatever the situation into it. It's a learning team sort of thing, right? We talk about learning teams here all the time. Now number 13 is this pick the target freeze it, personalize it and polarize it. And this controversial, okay? This is what it comes down to. You have to hound someone. They freeze it. They personalize it. They polarize it. How many times do you think that's happened to me where people have done that over that they didn't want to do, especially 15, 20 years ago, they didn't want to do X, Y, and Z, right? They push things all the way through. And it's, you know, unfortunately, and I'm going to say this, there have been people who said, you know, F you, I'm not listening to what you're saying. Like, as far as tie off, are concerned, we're not going to tie off, you're not going to make us tie off, you're just a trainer, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. One project I was on, six months later, two people were dead, right? I wasn't on the job. I wasn't involved. I was just called in to do a training class. I was like, well, I don't know. These were the two people or three people. Two people were screaming and yelling during training class. And I don't know what I'm doing. Tie offs aren't necessary and it's ridiculous. And then when he enforces the rule, anyway, I fell to their dad's 60 foot. We had another with that. And again, they, you know, you know, what the idea is, is that they picked me as a target, freeze it, personalize and polarize it, keep on going. Right. They say they'll make things personal. People make things very personal. Believe me with this stuff, especially if you're, they are perception is that your job, you're making their job more difficult. You're giving them more hoops to jump through. And this is a basic, no, that's like with the hierarchy of controls. That's where we're going to tie it in. Hierarchy of controls, you add more rules, you're not, they're not going to follow them all the time. To make them follow them, you got to fire them and put fear into people. That's the quick way to slow way and the better way is to get them on your team, try to get them involved in the rulemaking process. They'll apply some of those leadership skills. We're going to talk about them. We have spoken about later on, but that's basically what it is. I'm going to take a break here. I need to get something more to drink and we'll come back at you. 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 do I 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 Pozel 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. Ocean recordables, catastrophic losses, environmental disasters. You want answers? So do I. This is Jim Pozel with Safety Wars. That's my daddy. From the front lines of the safety war, it's safety wars with your host, Jim Pozel on safety FM. Get ready to face the harsh reality. Yes, here we are. We're getting ready to face the harsh reality. Okay, so here we have what we normally do. What do we talk about? Ocean news releases. I got some feedback from last week's program on that framing contractor that was a framing contractor. The Department of Labor States, South Jersey, Water Tower, painting contractor for three willful and 19-series violations. Here are workers 80-foot-fall. Someone called me up and gave me some inside info on that. That's pretty interesting with that and told me the good chunk of the history of the company there. Very interesting. I'm sure things will come out in any litigation with that. Here we go. This is from Region 10. Let's remember, all those regions are changing. We'll be like the other wars, which is from people within the heart of OSHA, Region 2. This is Safety Wars. This is at Boise, Idaho. Again, let's call everyone innocent until proven guilty. A lot of this stuff is vacated, negotiated outward, downward, litigated, and every type of other stuff. This and everyone's innocent until proven guilty here. Department of Labor finds a pulling disregard of safety standards by building contractor in a collapse of Boise and Air Port Hanger that killed three workers recovered on this show back in January, I believe, where a building contractor ignored safety standards and visible warning signs during construction. Inspectors with OSHA responded to the scene of the deadly incident and discovered a company of normal mentioned companies, had begun erecting the hanger without using sufficient racing or attention guy wires. OSHA also learned the construction contractor and ignored numerous indicators that the structure was unstable, including visibly curved, bent, and wavy structural ivy and unbalanced columns and several snap wire rope cables. Despite these obvious concerns, federal inspectors and determined the company continued to add 150 long foot long bays to the football science project. OSHA found that the bays are visibly not straight and the contractor left many critical connecting bolts loose. There was a warehouse collapse in Virginia. A couple years back, where was the same deal, where the connecting bolts were not all in there. Now, you're going to say, I'm not involved in this investigation, but how would that happen? Progress on a lot of these big buildings here, right, with this, right, on Air Force Hanger is very similar to a warehouse. It is very similar to other big buildings, right, with this. Now, what happens is the person paying for that job, once you see progress. What's the better way of visibly seeing progress on this type of a job is to hang up more and more steel, right? Remember, context drives behavior and they may not put in all of the connecting bolts, though it's the equivalent of a tack weld. Well, we'll just tack weld it a little tiny weld and they may put in a couple of bolts here and a couple of bolts there, just to get it up. And because now they say, you know what, we're going to go back and we're going and then we're going to put it in. But now the client comes out to the facility, the person paying for it and says, wow, look at all the progress we got. And you're like, yeah, baloney, that we got progress. And that's what they do. They only put up some of them with the intention of going back. The problem here is this. One, it's not being done correctly, number one, because you know, putting all the bolts that you're supposed to put in there and the guy route lines and everything else, right, is in the standard and there you have plans and all this is planned out. It's all supposed to be done. Number one, number two, very rarely does the company then go back and put all of the things in. Why is that? Because they want to get off to the next job. They want to send out an invoice. So this is where your quality control people come into play. And your project manager is to make sure that the job is done correctly, to make sure that all the bolts are in. That none of this, well, we're just going to put one in and then come back. That doesn't work. The other thing is this, you have parts of the bolts, right, with this, that break the end breaks off. It's like a torque issue. They're designed to break off when they're erecting things, right? My understanding is that torque issues someone will probably call me and say, no, that's not what it is, right? But it doesn't matter. And it's about yay, right? And I my finger is about an inch apart. So let me get scale. All right. So what's one inch? And this is my old Sears Craftsman thing that's about an inch. It was about that long. And yes, this is autographed by Bob Villa. I found that in my father's stash. So anyway, those little bolts often get kept put up in the webbing. Why? Because certain trades feel that it's not their job to clean up. And I've been on jobs where these things are falling from the webs, webbed beams, right? Literally onto the ground, which is why you should be wearing a hard hat, right? Why at all times? That's one of the things is that people leave stuff up in the webbing of the beams and in the columns and in everything else. So that's, again, a thing for the confident person to look at. Now, if I were OSHA citation officer, right, compliance officer, I probably would go up on any steel erections job and see if they have any debris up in the webbing, because if anything's up in the webbing, that's a housekeeping issue. And also a falling object that she can get them on the fall protection standard for dropped objects. And you can also get them on housekeeping. But you know, I'm just saying, these are the things that I look at. Oh, Jim, can you look at that job? Yeah, you got a scissor lift. Let's go and take a look. No, or a broom lift or something. Let's take a look at that webbing. Guess what? If I'm not allowed to look at the webbing, then it goes in the report. I was not allowed to look in the webbing. They didn't have the right equipment. So the thing claps, there were a blatant disregard for federal safety regulations that cost three workers their lives and it caused out these eight others to suffer painful injuries. Let's look at all of this. Now, you've now three people died. Three people died. Right. And other suffered painful injuries. I imagine those are recordables. I think we could call this a catastrophic incident. Now, this is what the issue here is with this. The kosher side of the company with one willful and three serious violations, 198, 586 dollars and penalties. The agency also cited the crane company with one serious violation and proposed 10,163 dollars in penalties for exposing workers to collapse hazards due to failures and true stability during the hangar erection process. All right. So, and it goes in there with that. Now, let's see what they are. Let's see what we got here. So this is on the company itself. And zoom in here. Do, do, do, do. Okay. Citation and notification of penalty. Right. And going down here. Right. And this is against the company, the employer. Citation one, item one, type of violation series. A firm, properly graded drained area was not readily accessible to work with adequate space for the safe storage of materials and the safe operation of the erector's equipment. On January 31st and at times fire, there are two steel erection work occurred in mud and areas of standing water. Equipment included scissor lifts, aerial lifts and rough terrain fork lifts that were used throughout the site with that. And this was, where was this Idaho? Boise, Idaho, right? I think in January, it's probably really cold there, even though I haven't been to Idaho. Oh, that's not true. I was over an Idaho over by Yellowstone over there. That was the only part of Iowa I've ever seen. About $12,421. Citation one item two, again, that had nothing to do with the fatality, the site conditions here. All right. Now with that, all right. 29 CFR 1926, 758. See, rigid frames do not have 50% of their bolts or the number of bolts specified by the manufacturer, whichever is greater installed and tightened on both sides of the web adjacent to each flange before the hoisting equipment is released. What did I just say? I didn't even look at this thing. So these things were not bolted down. You're supposed to have 50% of the bolts and so on tighten on both sides of the web adjacent. No, so that's basically it. And they have it listed here, frame line five, blah, blah, blah. ASCM A354BD bolts and heavy hex nuts are not tightened, including but not limited to those connecting to structural steel splice. And here we have another one, heavy hex nuts are not tightened, including but not limited to those connecting to structural steel and going on with this. Now, finance 12,450, 421. That is, right? So far, we really, yeah, this happened, right? I don't know how this was related to the accident, but this is what was observed. Now, I don't know, since they're dealing with a collab structure, I don't know if you're able to do that here. However, with this, if you're going around with an OSHA citation compliance officer, you have to go and take pictures of this stuff. And if you can, argue this kind of stuff in the field. Biggest one is this. If you're in general industry, four foot construction, six foot, for default protection standard, if the compliance officer says, oh, no, it's six foot, you go out there and you break out your ruler, right? Doesn't have to be Bob Villas. All right, you go out there and you have to go out there and make darn sure that that's six foot and not five foot 10, or five foot 11, right? Because compliance officers sometimes don't read things, right? Or there's some type of a question on where you measure it from and things of that nature. And this might be one of those things where, oh, oh, oh, that bolt's not there. Okay, Frank, you go up there and tighten up that bolt sort of thing. Then you have your statement right there in the field when you can. Citation one, item three, the employer did not ensure each connector had been provided for training the hazards associated. Employees, employers engaged in connecting, had not received training to include bolt tightening requirements or torquing methods, including for direct tension indicator washers. All right, no lack of training. I don't know if they're a union or not, but usually if they're union iron workers, they have this stuff. That's the advantage of hiring union iron workers. I mean, I had one job I was on in the Metro New York City area. They ran, no, an iron worker, I believe it's a five or six year apprentice program. And then you have testing and everything else. This one company they hired, they sent everybody out for an intensive crash course in iron working in seven days. Well, you took seven days. Well, we met the ocean requirements. We went to this guy and certified everybody. Said to my client, you know, we should do some follow-up on that. Oh, Jimmy shut up. Okay, I'm putting in an email. Here you go. You have to do some follow-up. Turns out it was from a certifications from a company that never existed. All right. Well, oh, Jim, the good thing. It wasn't Jim, good thing we listened to, good thing coming up to that. It was, no, Charlie on this. No, he came up with the idea. Well, as long as you can achieve anything with it, as long as you don't mind not getting credit here, citation to item one, willful serious. Structural stability was not maintained at times during the erection process. This is a big one, 161,323. Employees were erecting a steel hanging with 300 foot spans without intermediate support. From Monday, January 29 through Wednesday, January 31, 150 foot long ground assembly base of haste and joined at the middle peak. Each day, the solid web structural eye beam rafters were observed ending in curved lengthwise. Columns were observed out of plumb and numerous one-quarter rope wire cables broke. No temporary guy wires of raising ones were used and were used. That sounds like what happened there, right? And their proposed citations, $198,000. Now, my question is this, how did they find out about this? Were there photos? Were there emails? Were there reports? Now, here's the other thing. You're a worker, right? Let's for this in context. What are you to do? This might be a call to 1-800-321-OSHA if you told your company and they did nothing. But because these people did not get adequate training in one of these other citations, they might not have ever realized that there was anything wrong with this. And that is why companies do not often want their employees to go for training is that they should want to do what they want them to do. Not what the law is, not what their rights are, which is what we started out with, where you have a right to safe and helpful workplace for your recognized hazards. With that, now, right? That's what's going on. Next week, we are I am taking a small trip and we may or may not be here. I don't know where we may be broadcasting remotely and uploading these broadcasts remotely. I'll tell you more when we get back, when I get back from that is. That's what's going on. Other big news going on in the safety world? I don't know. There's a lot of stuff going on on LinkedIn with everything here, especially with these Supreme Court cases here. Because I tell you what, the One Supreme Court case, one Supreme Court case there had to do with the authority of OSHA. Well, guess what? Guess what? That might lead to a whole bunch of things changing in with OSHA and how they interpret regulations and everything else with the Occupational Safety Review Commission and all the other internal administrative courts that they have in there. We'll see what happens here with the Occupational Safety and Health Act with that. Now, one other thing is with the assassination, attempted assassination in the president, we're not talking politics. I'm President Trump. We're not talking politics here. Believe me here. A lot of stuff going on there. I can't wait for the final report with this. A lot of people on the hot seat here with this. A lot of conspiracy theories out there. It might be like another mini JFK thing. Thank God only one person was killed and I feel real bad. But this could have been really, really a lot worse out there. And luck and hope is not a strategy for anything. What else we got here? That's what I got. And we're going to cut to our outro here. And I'm going to see you tomorrow. I plan on being on the air tomorrow. For safety wars, this is Jim Polzel. If we still have running time here, we'll put in another thing here, another audio. Maybe we won't be doing that. Hold on. I got to work this out. Hold on. 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] This is Safety Wars, 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. Human error is normal. Human error is normal. Hey there safety professionals. Welcome to another episode of Safety Wars on Safety FM hosted by Jim Postel and today we're diving into what it really means to be on the front lines of the safety war. So let's start with the basics. Safety is not just a set of rules or regulations. It's a culture, a mindset, a way of life. When we talk about safety we're not just protecting workers from harm. We're building an environment where everyone can thrive. It's about going home safe and sound to our families every single day. Now I know it sounds like a heavy responsibility but that's why we're here. To make sure everyone understands the importance of safety and knows how to implement it effectively. Whether you're a seasoned safety professional or just starting out, there's always something new to learn. Let's talk about some key strategies. First up, communication. It's critical to ensure that everyone on the team is on the same page. Regular safety meetings, clear signage, and open dialogue can prevent a lot of accidents before they even happen. Next, let's focus on training. Proper training equips your team with the knowledge and skills they need to stay safe. Remember, it's not just about ticking a box. It's about making sure every worker understands the why behind each safety protocol. This understanding fosters a culture of safety where everyone looks out for one another. Of course, we can't forget about technology. From wearable safety devices to advanced monitoring systems, technology is revolutionizing how we approach safety. Embrace it. Use these tools to enhance your safety programs and keep your team protected. But let's not get too comfortable. Safety is an ongoing battle. New risks and challenges emerge all the time. Stay vigilant, stay informed, and never stop striving for a safer workplace. So, what's the takeaway? Safety is everyone's responsibility. It's about creating a culture where safety is ingrained in everything we do. As safety professionals, it's our job to lead by example and inspire our teams to commit to a safer future. Thanks for tuning into Safety Wars on Safety FM. Stay safe out there and remember, every day is a new opportunity to make a difference. Catch you on the next episode. [silence]