Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday May 14 2020, @09:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the follow-the-money dept.

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.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 14 2020, @01:08PM (16 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday May 14 2020, @01:08PM (#994222)

    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]
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Interesting=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Thursday May 14 2020, @01:13PM (15 children)

    by Muad'Dave (1413) on Thursday May 14 2020, @01:13PM (#994224)

    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)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday May 14 2020, @01:27PM (#994231)

      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)

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 14 2020, @04:50PM (#994301) Journal

        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)

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday May 14 2020, @05:37PM (#994315)

          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

            by Acabatag (2885) on Thursday May 14 2020, @08:20PM (#994370)

            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)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2020, @06:24PM (#994332)

        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

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday May 14 2020, @06:50PM (#994345)

          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

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2020, @11:33PM (#994437)

          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)

        by Muad'Dave (1413) on Thursday May 14 2020, @06:29PM (#994334)

        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)

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday May 14 2020, @06:41PM (#994337)

          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)

            by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 15 2020, @02:21AM (#994486) Journal

            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)

              by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday May 15 2020, @03:21AM (#994506)

              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)

                by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 15 2020, @03:56AM (#994519) Journal

                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)

                  by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday May 15 2020, @12:45PM (#994595)

                  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

                    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 15 2020, @04:15PM (#994681) Journal

                    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.