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Refining Your Company’s Safety Standards (Part 1)

CHICAGO — “Safety first” has become the mantra for many workplace environments, so it goes without saying that the safety and well-being of employees remains a top priority for many companies today. Is yours among them?

Edwin G. Foulke Jr., a partner in the Atlanta law firm of Fisher & Phillips LLP, in conjunction with the Textile Rental Services Association (TRSA), recently hosted a webinar covering how companies can improve their safety program.

Foulke’s experience speaks for itself. In addition to serving as co-chair of Fisher & Phillips’ Workplace Safety and Catastrophe Management Practice Group, he’s served as assistant secretary of labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and was appointed by President George W. Bush to head OSHA from 2006 to 2008.

First Steps

The key to improving safety standards lies in first identifying why safety regulations are broken. Oftentimes, Foulke explains, many policies set in place are broken because they have become too hard to follow.

“We make sure our safety programs are such that we’re avoiding safety health hazards [but] we don’t want to have our program such that we’re so strict, or so cumbersome,” says Foulke. “We don’t want to get it to that point where we make it so difficult. We don’t want to make our safety program where it’s just so rigid that it doesn’t protect employees.”

Determining which OSHA safety and health standards are applicable to a company’s operations, and staying abreast of your company’s OSHA recordkeeping audits, should be your first steps toward safety improvement.

While determining which safety standards apply to a company can be “self-evident,” he advises business owners to look at their Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) or National Advisory Committee on Ergonomics (NACE) Code to know for sure.

“Make sure that OSHA properly classifies your establishment and you’re not classified wrongly because there are some things, like recordkeeping, [that] certain companies [or] certain industries are not required to do,” Foulke says.

He also recommended that business owners get themselves prepared for an OSHA inspection, and that they understand their legal rights.

“OSHA can’t just come in there and ask for every document you have. They’re not entitled to [them],” Foulke explains. “They just can’t walk around by themselves...[you’re] entitled to accompany them during an inspection.”

It’s critical that you assert your rights. If you give the inspectors every document you have, and you sign statements, neither of which you’re required to do, you’ll be hurting yourself. “And in the long run, the inspection is not going to go well for you, and you’re going to end up having a lot more penalties [and] a lot more citations.”

Low-Hanging Fruit

Regarding recordkeeping, Foulke advises owners to keep track of their company’s OSHA 300 Log. It can help you keep track of accidents in the workplace, plus possibly pinpoint patterns of where they maybe occurring.

“If 90% of the injuries in your 300 Log are occurring in Department A, you have a problem there that you need to address,” he says. “It could open up a whole array of OSHA standards that you may be violating, and if they see a pattern...the inspection starts to expand.”

To prevent inspections from expanding into other departments, Foulke advises company owners to audit their workplaces for “low-hanging fruit,” or common safety and health violations that could easily draw OSHA fines.

Blocked exits, extinguishers and electric panels; improper handling and racks; recordkeeping errors; and housekeeping problems are among the common violations that companies can easily avoid, according to Foulke.

One other precaution that applies specifically to textile care facilities is the handling of hazardous chemicals, under OSHA’s revised Hazard Communication Standard (HCS).

The HCS has been “aligned with the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals (GHS),” according to OSHA, meaning that the update will “provide a common and coherent approach to classifying chemicals and communicating hazard information on labels and safety data sheets.”

Under this revision, safety data sheets will be more standardized and detailed, and employers will have to train all employees on how to use them by Dec. 1, according to Foulke.

Keep Track of Abatements, Citations

Foulke highlighted the abatement of past citations (correction of the safety or health hazard/violation that led to a citation) and keeping record of any such abatement.

“We need to make sure that we’re reviewing all our past abatements and making sure that those abatements have stuck, and that we don’t have them anyplace else in our facilities, because that will be the basis for repeat [violation],” he advises.

Failing to abate past citations can be costly, he warns. “We’re talking about $7,000 for each day you didn’t abate it, so we’re talking about some serious money there.”

Not only can repeat citations hurt a company financially, it can also subject it to even stricter inspection visits under OSHA’s Severe Violators Enforcement Program. “If you have a fatality, if you’re a high-hazard industry, if you get OSHA citations and you get a bunch of egregious citations, then you’re going to be put in the Severe Violators program.”

Companies on the list receive not only follow-up inspections, but are placed on a “priority inspection list for wall-to-wall inspections” for all facilities owned, and also receive enhanced settlement provisions, among other penalties.

In addition to staying on top of its own citations, a company should pay heed to OSHA’s Multi-Employer Citation Policy, and how the company’s relationship with other contractors or companies they employ could affect them, Foulke says.

Not only can OSHA issue an open inspection on a contractor on a company’s site, it can also issue the same inspection on the hosting company because “[they’re] the controlling employer.”

“The part of that problem is OSHA gets a complaint from one of your contractors on site, by one of their employees [so] the contractor will get cited for that violation,” says Foulke. “But you could also get cited because maybe your employees are exposed.”

“[You] have to recognize how contractors, or vendors or suppliers, [can] create safety hazards that could potentially expose [your] employees, too, and [how you’re] going to be brought into that.”

To avoid this issue, Foulke advises using teleconferences among other plants to share information on best practices, and how to apply them to similar situations they could face at their facility.

Check back tomorrow for the conclusion!

safety first

(Photo © iStockphoto/NuStock)

Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Matt Poe at [email protected].