Safety Wars
Safety Wars 8-7-2024 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. Proposed fines are exactly that, and they are often litigated, reduced, or vacated. We use available public records, news accounts, and 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 Cooperstown All-Star Village in Oniana, New York, this is Safety Wars. For Wednesday, August 7th, 2024. How's everybody doing out there today? I tell you what, it's a one hell of a program they have here out at Cooperstown. We are out here with the TBT, New York, Travel League Baseball franchise, for my son and his memorized, for watching the hymn and summoning what other teams out here compete. In case you've been following social media over the last six months, a list of a lot of us has been getting a lot of flak for fundraising off of her Instagram page for this event for her son. And her son was here, I believe it was two weeks ago, and competed. I tell you what, fantastic thing. Why is this such a big deal, where teams are coming from all over the country out to here? Well, it is, the Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame is right down the road here at number one. Number two, this is for what they call 12U, so 12U is the last year that you have the Little League fields. The 13U now moves up to the bigger field, so this is like the real big deal out here for everybody. I mean, they have barracks for the children to stay, the different teams, they have programs. Yesterday they had 1986 baseball, great, Tower Johnson here, from the 1986 Mets, the World Series championships. And he was here giving a little talk to everybody, met with some of the teams, some of the kids, and it's a great thing. It's like what we call the Little League Disney version, right? Disney World of Little League out here. And there are other facilities like the surrounding country, just so this one gets a lot of publicity. And there's another one right down the road here, very similar deal. Now, on with the safety, Jim, why, you know, you're talking about this, you don't normally talk about sports. Well, we, second program in a row, we're talking about sports. Come on. It's life. Now, what's going on in the world of safety? We are dealing with here in the Northeast and on the East Coast in general of the United States with all these storms. We're dealing with the remnants of tropical storm or Hurricane Debbie, I don't know what they called it. I haven't really been following. Maybe I should before I get on the air. But anyway, lots of rain, lots of stuff. I mean, we, like I said over the weekend, we had an issue with lack of internet access in my town and all the different things out there. And what I'm going to point out, regardless of anything out here, you know, the political situation, which we're not talking about here on this program and everything else, you got to be responsible for yourself and for your organizations out there. Don't rely on the government. Don't rely on international organizations, standards, anything like that to protect you, because as we found out, even the most well-intentioned people out there, those well-intentioned organizations get hit with these disasters, these emergencies, and they really can't protect you out here. You're on your own for, as the government points out, 72 to 96 hours. And when we go to the disaster preparation month, starting next month in the United States, we're going to go over the stuff again and again and again. I'm hoping to have new fervor in covering all this stuff. A couple of things, other things that happen other than the storms in the news. We have one that impacts pretty much anyone that deals with the internet here, or Google. There's was a lawsuit. And Google has been ruled against a ruled ads and illegal monopoly. And so all the search engines and everything else, I'm sure things are going to be appealed. And because they have a lot of money, they're going to go and talk. I'm certain they're going to appeal. And they have the money to last for this. I don't know if there is going to be a, they're not going to enforce the ruling here. But we'll see. So this is the story here. On Monday, U.S. Federal Judge ruled that U.S. Federal Judge ruled that Google has violated antitrust laws, saying the organization is a monopolist and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly. Google disputes the ruling and its resident of global affairs. Ken Walker said this decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn't be allowed to make it easily available. So regardless of what's going on, we're we're going to see some changes from the near future. Was there a world without Google on the internet? Yeah, there was. Back in the day you had many different search engines out there. Four or five major ones, as I recall, I would have to look them up to see what they were. One of them was Lycos, L-Y-C-O-S. And you have Yahoo had its own system out there. Those are the two main ones and there were more. And since then, there's been a lot of others that have come into play, all with different attributes, one of the somewhat different security measures, tracking and everything else. I think that's what Google is more famous for. It's not only the search engine, it's the tracking of everything where it's full, vertical and horizontal integration into our lives. And I think that may have something more to do with this ruling here than anything is that you cannot avoid Google, but we'll see what else happens. Now, being that I'm at All Star Village, or this is like a working vacation here, here is from Study Finds, average person forgets three essential items at home after leaving a vacation. I can empathize with this because what do you think I forgot? Socks, right? I have like two pairs of socks for a one week trip. You know, thank God for Wally World or Walmart, right down the street and some of the other places. Does your vacation checklist read more like a suspense novel? Novel? What forgot nine items playing the roles of villains ready to sabotage your perfect getaway? It can be minorly frustrating to realize you left something at home after you arrived at your destination. According to a poll of 2,000 adults, nine out of 10 Americans admit they've had their home alone moments minus the burglars and ruby drops. So what do people find themselves leaving them behind more often? Results show about a third have forgotten their phone charger. Yeah, I can empathize. I got like 10 phone chargers here. I remember them all this time. Along with toiletries, some beauty project products. So, you know, how many toothbrushes can you have? Well, we're going to find out in Jim's lifetime. We're in and a quarter wound up having to buy new sunscreen on vacation. Well, that's a normal one. And 18% forgot to bring their medication. I tell you what, that could be a problem, especially with some things here. And this was from Crystal Guyser, Alpine Spring Water, who did this. Now, how do we control for that? Checklists, pre-planning. It seems like with me, whenever I pack at the last moment, I'm going to forget something. My wife, on the other hand, being the event and meeting planner that she is, goes out and plans things out weeks ahead of time. She has checklists, especially for the children. And then not only do they double check, she does double checks, everything that they get, and everything that they pack. And yeah, even today, because she says, look, your headache, your mistake, my problem, my headache. So, we try to do that ahead of time. Well, no, within reason. I tell you what, what we're finding out here is that there's so many teams coming from like California, that they actually, the first, and they need like certain things like a team cooler. You're not going to pack a $80 team pooler on a plane and then pay 50 some bucks or more to transfer. You're going to buy it here and they buy it here. They also sell it here because a lot of the teams know their flight isn't until Sunday. So, they put it on their social media. Hey, we got stuff for sale and people go buy this stuff. No, poolers, shares, things of that nature. So, again, you may want to, if you're coming to an event like this, you might want to plan ahead a little bit more. Here's one for you. Another thing. I remember this coming out right with the four day work week. No, it seems to me like what I got out of college, they started this whole thing with the four day work week. A lot of companies felt that they would have more production. I guess if you're dealing with certain things, if you're not in the service industry, like the safety industry is, I could see whether this may be able to work out, where you have four, 10 hour days and it's 40 hours and everything else. Because especially if you have huge amounts of setup time, this is going to be an issue for you. Now, here is an article here. Where is it from? It was from MSN.com. Economic concerns could lead to layoffs and reduce remote work opportunities in the US. A weaker than expected jobs report could give cover to CEOs and want to reconsider work for policies. But reverting to additional work models could hard productivity and employee morale. Well, I don't know. A lot of companies that I know went through four day work week and then went back. Because what happened, everybody always went to ADAP. Hey, can you come in Friday? It always turns into a five day work week, especially in the safety industry. And let's face it, a lot of companies, especially one of my former employers, if you did not put in 60 hours a week, you were lazy. Yeah, they pay you the 40 hours a week for salary, but they want 60 hours worth of billable work. And then they wonder why everybody burns out and they have a high turnover rate. Now, a couple of years of that, you're going to get there. However, this seems to be a move outside of the US also, like companies like Samsung are reportedly telling executives to come in on Saturday or Sunday. We need to work business output. You know, and let's face it, a lot of these at home workers out there, they do things that are not necessarily related to work. I know some workers have opportunities where hey, they may do other things during the day, but then they work until two o'clock in the morning getting their job done. That happens also. So I guess what I'm saying is it depends on the business, it depends on the worker, and it depends on management. A lot of people complain about the remote work because they don't know who works at the company anymore. If you're in an office with 75 people or 60 people, like a lot of tech companies I work with, all of a sudden you have only five people showing up to work any day. Nobody gets to know each other. I guess I'm warning water cooler stuff really is important and a lot of workplace environments. And, you know, with all with what's going on with the stock market, you can see some companies getting into panic mode here. Here's a story out in Southern California, half in late last night or early this morning if you're on the east coast. An earthquake northwest of Los Angeles shook a large swath of Southern California Tuesday night, but there were no immediate reports of damage. And the US Geological Survey said the 5.2 magnitude tremler struck a 909 PM and was centered near Metler, an unincorporated area in the Kern County about 85 miles from downtown Los Angeles. Again, they reportedly had a lot of aftershocks in the first hour, some like 28 aftershocks. So, I don't know, we had an earthquake this week out on the east coast here. Again, people are rattled because of the earthquake earlier this year, the 5.2, centered in Gladstone. We have another like a two point something over in New Jersey also. I believe it was around Lebanon, the reported rusting place and the most evil man in the UK at the time in Britain, Alistair Crowley. So, in that area, does that have a connection? I have no idea. Well, we're going to find out soon enough. Here's one getting to disaster preparation month here. So, apparently the super rich out there, like a bunker designer was right what a bunker. We've heard this thing back especially after 9/11, the whole thing with safe rooms or you had to have a safe room. And this is when they started to really promote disaster preparation was right after September 11th where they're out there with, you know, all you have to have a safe room and it was for criminal activity, maybe short term emergencies. But the super rich, and by the way, based on my research and a lot of interviews and talks I've done with people over the years, you know, in preparation for this program, nobody wants to come on here to discuss this because it's, you know, I'm not here but any internet program based program podcasts is that they make a lot of money planning this out for people number one. Number two, they don't need the exposure and number three. Once you start identifying yourself as a planner for this stuff, now you get into security issues where, oh, you know, you did it, you did this for so-and-so. Now, we want to deal with so-and-so and rob that person. Therefore, we, you know, let's solve through a security consultant, that sort of thing. So, people keep their, like to keep their mouth shut. And I will say I spoke to a lot of people in law enforcement who are here. Now, they had something like a hundred people and who were first responders and in law enforcement got special recognition yesterday. You're at Cooperstown at the All-Star Village. All the police officers, I don't even admit because the way things are politically, they don't even admit that they're police officers unless they're on duty in the uniform. They're worried about security, which is pretty sad. But here we have situations and you're the super rich and they're not so worried about a safe room anymore. That stands for strategically armored and fortified environment. That's one of the phrases attributed to that acronym. They're doing a lot more. As we found out this weekend in my town with the loss of the internet, you had people going out there, you know, going stir crazy at home. Where they're finding this out with the super rich, "Hey, we're going stir crazy, so what are they doing?" They're adding these lavish home entertainment centers to their "safe rooms." It's now called a safe property. And we're, we're thinking this thing was located most of the time, not in the United States. Even though I know for a fact that some millionaires and millionaires have them, and I'm looking at one picture from Mumbai where they have a two-lane bowling alley, along with all the... Hey, nobody keeps score by hand anymore, so they have the computers keep score on everything on a bowling alley. Incredible. I know... I don't know if it's there anymore in the White House. I believe it was had a bowling alley in the basement, 10 lanes, for emergency use anyway. So, and then I think it was a pool or something else. I mean, no, Taylor made. I don't know anything about that. I just remember this stuff and what they currently have. We're going to go on over to our OSHA news and views today. Labor, with us all off the Department of Labor website, and I have to remind everybody all the companies we discuss, everybody is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. And a lot of this stuff is negotiated, litigated, reduced downward, and all of the penalties here are proposed penalties and citations. Here we have a... Department of Labor finds East Texas palette manufacturer continues to defy federal safety regulations that expose workers to amputation hazards. This is right off the news for these here. Despite receiving warnings and citations for more than a decade, a Jacksonville palette manufacturer's history of failing to protect workers from the risk of amputation continues that the Department of Labor follow-up inspection has found. So, let's remember, you have an initial investigation and maybe citations. And then especially, I know this may sound like me being a wise guy. Maybe it is. I don't know. Usually, when you pay the bill, usually you're guaranteed for a follow-up inspection with that. For whatever address my experience, where if you're going to go out there and litigate and everything else off and regulatory agencies say, "You know what? That's the cost of us doing this is maybe a little bit high here." So, they want the low-hanging fruit like everybody else. Basic environmental policy and government policy, they go for the low-hanging fruit first. Then my experience, and that's where they taught us at college at least. It's a low-hanging fruit. Inspectors with OSHA return to a certain company in Texas. In February 2024, I found lockout attack out violations similar to those discovered during inspections in 2012 and subsequent video visits in 2014, 2020 and 2022. And the company now faces $254,000 plus in proposed penalties. And so, during tuning inspections, the company was found reliable for one willful violation and 12 series violations related to unsafe machine operations, forklifts, and not using required seatbelts. So, forklift drivers, big thing. And this is very easy to observe. This is the lowest of low-hanging fruits out there to repeat myself. They have to, a lot of forklift operators, because they feel they're only going out there. This is only a one-minute or two-minute-long operation. I'm not going to wear seatbelts. And I lost count the number of times I had to correct this here on my on my project. We also have their full hazards and workers not trained to understand or follow a lot of procedures. The problem, and I was listening to Todd Conk on several months ago on this, who's on the CDFM Network Free Accident Investigations, hierarchy of controls we have from NIOSH, where you have elimination, you have eliminate the hazard, then you have substitute a very dangerous operation with a less dangerous operation, and then you have an engineering control, an administrative and PPE. Administrative and PPE stuff is towards the bottom of the pyramid, and it's you're requiring workers to go out there and follow a rule. Unfortunately, lock out, tag out, a lot of rules, a lot of areas where you can fail at. So how do we manage this many different ways? Unfortunately, most of the time companies go out there and they're, you know, we got to do it, they get the whip out there, right? And then, well, I understand that, but let's face it, you know, with the worker rules and everything, workers are not going to follow rules all the time. Not going to happen, it's the least reliable method of managing something. Unfortunately, lock out, tag out, is one of those things where you see a lot of violations, and I'm going to say this much in my experience, companies do not get cited, could get cited for a lot more stuff that they're not being cited on, which tells you that their more OSHA's work interested in compliance rather than punishment. Now, let's see, we will, let's see if they have, ooh, for some reason, I checked this out before the program, for some reason they did not, whoa, whoa, whoa, they took an all off the, they took off the accident report. It was on there before I got on here, apparently, they just took it off. Oh, well, but that's basically it, one willful and 12 series violations here with this, and we'll leave it at that. Department of Labor finds southeast of the Oklahoma contractor's history of safety violations contributed to the fatal trench collapse. We covered this last week with another company with this. Here we have a company faces $87,173 in proposed penalties for a cave-in, and this is all from a old computer. Here we go. So this is, there was a fatality here of a 61-year-old worker with this, and this is the only one where we'll have time to do, I'm hoping to be on the air again tomorrow, where we have a move though internet connection here, so I cannot do this live this has to be pre-recorded and we'll be uploading it to the podcast. Citation 1, item 1, this is for $10,600. The employer did not instruct each employee in the recognition and avoiding some unsafe conditions. Again, no training. They were installing water lines, this was in February, and the labor was exposed to soil collapse when required to enter an un-protected trench. That was reportedly nine-foot-deep. Citation 1, item 2, another $10,600, and they're doing this on a per instance. Same thing, no training. 1926, 51, K1, daily inspections of excavations in adjacent areas were not made by a competent person. Again, all those things where you have to do an inspection or verification or anything like that need to be done in writing, and today with that thing we'll call the smartphone that makes things all easier. 10,647. This is citation number one. Repeat serious, no adequate shoring or protective system or anything in there. 53,232. And that's the total 85,000 and going right, 85,000. That's where they list here with this. So, you know, it's, I don't know what to tell you. I'm here. Three-cott time for one war. Uh, well, to one war. Yeah, 85,000. Yeah, here we go. Federal law court forbids owner of 61 mega liquor and smoke stores from engaging in employee retaliation following a labor department investigation. The U.S. Department of Labor obtained a permanent injunction in order, this from South Carolina and Indiana, in order for bidding the owner and operator of, I don't know if this is the name of the company or not. They, they, they have 61 stores. And I think I mentioned the name. Again, I was at a burden and everyone's innocent until proven guilty and everything else. And Indiana and Michigan from retaliating against workers who cooperate with the U.S. Department of Labor. Uh, the, uh, wage and our division determined that the employer retaliated against workers and spoke to investigators and tried to coerce them to return back wages found due. The court also, uh, forbids the employer from terminating any employees reduced their wage rates or hours worth for a period of six months, unless he submits written notice seven days in advance to the department through any effective employee as to non-retal, retaliatory business justification for the termination and/or reduction of wage rates or hours. Uh, how much they own, uh, did a lot, uh, like 200 and some thousand dollars when you do the math here. Uh, and they did this 156 employees and they, uh, assessed them damages. Uh, so the total thing came down to 354,000 plus with this. Uh, what, what do you do? You just kind of obey the law. So that's all I have, uh, here. We'll be giving updates, uh, throughout the week. And I hope to hear you on the next, uh, Save You Wars. For Save You Wars, this is Jim Polzel. The viewers 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]