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Older, larger companies benefit from not investing in worker safety, study finds:
When it's cheaper to pay nominal fines for violating workplace regulations than to provide safe workplaces, that indicates current safety regulations are not enough to protect workers, researchers say.
Oregon State University Public Health and Human Sciences associate professor Anthony Veltri was one of several authors on the study, an international collaboration between Mark Pagell, Mary Parkinson, Michalis Louis and Brian Fynes of University College Dublin in Ireland; John Gray of the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio; and Frank Wiengarten of Universitat Ramon Llull in Spain.
"Organizations that do not provide a safe workplace gain an economic advantage over those that do," said Veltri, who studies occupational safety and health. "The goal of improving the longevity of a business conflicts with the goal of protecting the workforce."
The study, published last week in the journal Management Science, looked at both short- and long-term survival of more than 100,000 Oregon-based organizations over a 25-year period. In this study, "survival" was defined as ongoing operations, even in the face of an ownership change.
[...] Although there are businesses that provide safe workplaces and also improve their competitiveness, such businesses are not the norm, the study says. And while organizations seeking to maximize their survival are unlikely to harm workers on purpose, they are correct in calculating that the costs of preventing all harm to workers is higher than the cost of not doing so.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 14 2020, @11:31AM (29 children)
I can't possibly disagree, because I do enough groaning of my own. Stupid shits like wearing a damned seatbelt on a forklift, FFS.
Then again - we have serious safety violations that are never addressed.
The single best example I can give, are water hoses, air hoses, power cords, and conduit on the floor. Walking between machines is genuinely hazardous. Every single one of them are OSHA violations, as well as being criminally stupid. It doesn't take an IQ larger than your shoe size to understand that they are all tripping hazards. It might take a slightly higher IQ to understand that walking on these items tends to damage them. Walking on damaged power cords and conduit (some of it as low as 24V DC, some as high as 480V 3ph AC) can damage them. A damaged electrical circuit, being walked on, just might fry someone's ass.
Someone might ask, "Why hasn't anyone called OSHA?"
The answer would be, "OSHA has been called. The state OSHA people called the company, and requested an appointment to look at the plant. The appointment was made, the plant was cleaned up, and all those tripping hazards were repaired as well as could be, without actually picking them up off the floor. When OSHA saw that crap, company reps explained that "No one is allowed to walk behind the machines, so they don't trip over them."
OSHA bought that nonsense, no fines were issued, the report said that the company is in compliance with OSHA regulations.
And, I have no idea how much money the OSHA reps put into their pockets when they left the plant.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday May 14 2020, @11:57AM (20 children)
One of my favorites is requiring electricians to wear leather gloves to keep from scuffing their knuckles while they're having to handle tiny screws. Makes the job take 8-12 times as long and only saves them from needing some bactine and a bandaid at most.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 14 2020, @12:12PM (1 child)
Yeah, that's stupid, but you missed part of it.
The electricians are supposed to be wearing rubber gloves next to their skin, and the leather gloves go over the rubber gloves. I'm lucky to pick up the screwdriver, forget about the screws!!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday May 14 2020, @12:31PM
Naw, they're supposed to have the piece of equipment locked out with their own personal lock so rubber gloves aren't necessary. For most things anyhow.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 14 2020, @01:08PM (16 children)
An electrician replaced the meter can on my house once... handled the inlet wires with leather gloves - live - while standing on an 8' step-ladder. He explained that the alternative was climbing the pole, twice, to throw the breaker and that the live wires were safer. Made sense to me, I'm sure OSHA would have had some other much more expensive solution that didn't really remove the risk overall.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Thursday May 14 2020, @01:13PM (15 children)
He didn't have a hot stick [mitchellinstrument.com]? That's the easy way.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 14 2020, @01:27PM (14 children)
Might have had one in the truck, but didn't use it - seemed like he had just about everything you could want in the truck.
This was a typical 2 phase 220V service drop that included a mechanical support cable, so when he took the live wires loose from the weather head (one at a time, capping them with insulator) they only hung down a foot or so from the support cable.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 14 2020, @04:50PM (3 children)
He was cheating, but he probably had a couple secrets. Ladder was probably a fiberglass ladder, certified for use when working with electricity. He was probably wearing insulated boots,, with composite toes - but any leather boot with an insulating material in the sole does much the same. And, 220 is just 110V on two legs, unless you complete a circuit between those two legs. I'm admitting nothing, but I may have done similar in the past. :^)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 14 2020, @05:37PM (1 child)
My grandmother's garage was miswired such that you could pull the fuses and the outlets were still hot... Granddad had a really old refrigerator down there with a rubber mat - if you didn't stand on the rubber mat while touching it you got zapped, I think he liked it that way, all he kept in there was his beer.
Anyway, after he passed, I went to install a motion sensor light so granny wouldn't have to reach around to find the switch and possibly tumble down the stairs, like Granddad had more than once... That was a fun experience, fuses out and the lines still hot trying to get wire nuts secure in a 4" box, while on a ladder. Got it done, never caught fire so I suppose I did it well enough.
The scary thing about the house feed isn't so much the voltage, it's those thick ass cables connected to what's probably a 400 amp breaker back on the pole - granny's little lamp wires would pop and spark, but those things could weld your watch onto themselves with a tap.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Acabatag on Thursday May 14 2020, @08:20PM
I had a job testing icemaker valves for an appliance OEM once. My job included wiring up valves on a manifold over a sink with water hookup. The valves had 120 volt solenoid coils and there was a switch box to select which valve to energize for a timed flow test.
I happened one day to notice that the switch box was wired backwards. The neutral was being switched and for weeks I had been wiring up the coils with the hot side always on. The manifold was brass and grounded to building plumbing. It turned out that a clueless intern had wired up the switch box.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday May 15 2020, @11:28AM
Pffft, we used to grab other students and slap live voltage with the back of our knuckles back in AIT several times a day. There's plenty of ways to deal with electricity without getting yourself killed to death, you just have to pay attention.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2020, @06:24PM (2 children)
Yep. He might go his entire career never suffering from a workplace injury. Or he could become 1 of the 150+ who end up dying in any given year. [esfi.org] And sure, I've worked circuits hot also in my time. In retrospect, though, I've come to realize that my wife probably cares a lot more about my getting home than the company ever will for having saved them time.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 14 2020, @06:50PM
The interesting thing to me was: it wasn't saving time, it was actually saving overall risk to work on the hot circuit, when the alternative is climbing an old 30' pole with tons of previous climber spike holes in it (makes it more likely to slip), twice at least.
Now, he could have put the climbing job off on somebody else by calling the power company to do it for him, but that still leaves the risk on somebody.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2020, @11:33PM
I've worked with live circuits a few times. But, the only times I've been in real danger were when I touched things that weren't supposed to be live or I wasn't even expecting to come into contact with something that carries electricity.
Working with hot wires works out as long as you've done an adequate job of insulating yourself. And in many cases, it's not even getting shocked that's fatal, it's the fall after having been shocked. Years ago an electrician working on a neighboring building got hit with a significant voltage and was thrown off the ladder. It was the injuries from the fall that were fatal, not the shock.
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Thursday May 14 2020, @06:29PM (6 children)
Messing with 220V service entrance cables is dangerous since there's no overcurrent protection until the fuse on the transformer primary.
I'm not sure I'm right, but I consider US power to be split single phase [wikipedia.org], not true '2 phase' [wikipedia.org]. 2 phase would have 2 conductors 90 degrees out of phase instead of 180, with or without a neutral.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 14 2020, @06:41PM (5 children)
Yeah, we're split single, but precious few people understand what that means, and fewer still use the correct terminology.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday May 15 2020, @02:21AM (4 children)
The only place I've ever seen European style 240 volt is inside of machines, with their own transformers. I spent an afternoon figuring out how in hell my 240 nozzle heaters worked, because it just wasn't the same as all the rest of the 240 circuits I worked with. As you say, no one around had the terminology to explain it to me.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 15 2020, @03:21AM (3 children)
I got a B.S. in Electrical Engineering (with Honors - whatever that means) - they never even showed me 3 phase... I took the EIT exam and had to learn it for that.
My first job was upstairs from a print house with a huge press that ran on 480 3 phase. Some genius wired our central air compressor to 2 legs of that 480, it ran but not well. No great surprise that a 25000 BTU (properly wired) wall unit "made more cold" than the supposed 5 ton central unit wired as it was.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday May 15 2020, @03:56AM (2 children)
Hmmmm. Are you aware that, you can rewire most motors, and switch them from 240V to 480V, and vice versa? When I pull a new motor out of the box, the wires inside the "peckerhead" have all been stripped back 3/8" and left that way. For 480 3ph use, I take wires 4 and 7, wire nut them together, wires 5 and 8 together, wires 6 and 9 together. Wires 1, 2, and 3 each get wire nutted to L1, L2, and L3. Energize momentarily to check rotation - if the motor runs backward, you reverse any two of L1, L2, or L3.
It's been a long time since I wired for 240, I can't remember which wires are connected for 240 service, but the diagram is printed on a sheet packed with the motor.
I don't know what conversion would be like for an air conditioner - it may not be possible. Well - yes, it's possible. In many cases, we bring 480 3phase inside the electrical cabinet, wire up all the 480V components, and two of the hot legs also go to a transformer to make 240V and/or 120V and/or DC voltage.
So, you would have to get into the cabinet, and see what was done, before concluding that it was right or wrong.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 15 2020, @12:45PM (1 child)
So, there's a long backstory that amounts to: we didn't really want to know what was going on inside that compressor, but we did get permission from the landlord to install a 2 ton wall unit (total cost including professional labor $1200) that made more difference in the overall temp upstairs than the 5 ton rated unit was doing.
We did open the panel on the 5 ton unit enough to see 2 legs of the 3 phase service going in there, not enough to determine what they had attempted to do with them exactly. It was labeled as a standard split phase 240 unit, maybe they thought they were doing something "correct" but it certainly didn't work well. It was a long time ago, I say the 3 phase was 480V but actually I think we decided it was something more exotic in the high 300s...
Sad story about motors that get delivered in A/C units. I had one of those 2 ton units in my house, and it died about 4 years after I moved in (unit was about 12 years old, according to the label) so I bought a new replacement and had it installed in the same opening. About 13 months later (literally a few days after warranty expired) the new unit died, I called a repairman who extracted the factory motor and installed a new one. The factory motor was clearly labeled "check and fill lubrication every 6 months" while the outside of the A/C unit was labeled "no user serviceable parts, do not open" - and even if you knew they had put in the oiled motor there was no way to get in to service it. It was a standard size and the repairman put in a no lubrication required motor to replace it which lasted at least the next 6 years until central A/C was installed in the house - but... thanks a lot A/C factory for putting in a motor you know is going to burn out shortly after the warranty expired. If we all had cell-phone video cameras back then I would have posted the proof on the internet.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday May 15 2020, @04:15PM
I can empathize with the stupid labels. "No user serviceable parts" tells me that I've just GOT TO open the panel up, to inspect stuff. Been burnt a couple times with that kind of foolishness.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 15 2020, @01:01PM
A few years back I went to the factory down the street for some seasonal work. Had top watch that "Lockout Tagput" video for the 1000th time, only to find out they don't even have locks on their machines, they just show the video cuz OSHA.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by coolgopher on Thursday May 14 2020, @12:43PM (3 children)
Favourite from a previous job - having to sit through day long building site safety inductions because we were installing gear in the server room, and there might be floor tiles lifted (aircon runs underneath the raised flooring).
Of course, you get a pack of nerds into a room under a dumb pretense, there's bound to be lots of smarty comments. After the umpteenth question on how we know whether an area is classified as a building site (what if it's only one missing floor tile? how about if there's only a ladder present in the room?), the instructor cracked it and asked if we were completely stupid. Turns out he thought we were actual building workers, and when it dawned on him we were merely stuffing some kit into racks he too questioned why the hell he was wasting time on us. Occupational Health & Safety strikes again!
Oh, and then there was the other time when we all had to leave the server room to go into town to shop for steel caps. Because, you know, raised floor tiles...
Curiously, I don't recall getting any official advice not to touch the 48V bus bars in the power distribution racks. Tales from colleagues about vapourising screwdrivers makes me think that might've been a better topic to discuss.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 14 2020, @04:52PM (2 children)
Most auto mechanics can probably tell you about lowly 12V DC melting steel tools. All it takes is a large enough battery to keep the current flowing for more than a couple milliseconds.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Acabatag on Thursday May 14 2020, @08:26PM
At a medical device company I worked at I had a big barrel of partially depleted 9 volt batteries. You can plug them terminal to terminal and make a very long high voltage battery. With quite a bit of current behind the potential.
It's amazing how many of us live through our adventures safely.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Friday May 15 2020, @01:00AM
Your average car battery puts out more amps than my welder.
And I have friends who do chainmaille ring-welding using small 12V UPS batteries, quite successfully. In fact, rings going up in smoke was the bigger problem there too.
Don't mess with the amps. You're not going to win.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 14 2020, @01:04PM
1987 I worked in a factory that had an un-grounded 100VAC test station, if you didn't stand on the insulating mat and touch only one point at a time, you'd get zapped - and it happened to even the trained workers on a regular basis, much more to new kids on the job.
Same place was using solvent cleaners that made the workers' hands go numb - after about 4 girls couldn't feel their fingers anymore even after the weekend they figured out a different, slightly less toxic, solvent to use - but, judging from the affected workers' personalities (super sweet, dumb as bricks)- it wasn't just the nerve cells in their hands that were getting killed...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2020, @01:16PM
Again, what you seem to describe is corruption. I'm glad and surprized you recognize it - there's hope.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2020, @06:49PM
That's because if something happens it is safer to be thrown out of the roll cage and crushed by the forklift or the load, right?!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Friday May 15 2020, @01:52AM
All those things are problems with your society, not worker safety rules.