The reality of industrial safety

The reality of industrial safety



We’ve all been exposed to it: The incessant repetition of safety videos, safety handouts, and presentations by some member of the corporate safety team. If you’ve worked for the same company for a few years you can probably recite the video. If you’re like me you have seen the same concepts presented in several different ways and signed innumerable attendance sheets showing you have been trained in safety.
Then, you left the conference room and returned to work doing things the same way you always have. I can demonstrate this with a personal story. I was required to attend the annual reinforcement class about safety, particularly the lock-out/tag-out process. As I descended the stairs from the conference room I noticed the large machining center across the aisle was stopped and the operator was trying to get it running again. I went to see what the problem was and quickly realized one of the major components of the machine had failed to complete its function. A proximity switch in the machine was being activated by a large metal chip and preventing the completion of the move. I climbed up into the machine and cleared out the metal chip. The machine abruptly returned to operation - moving to complete the current function. I had to perform some fancy dance moves to escape the machine before it included me in the process. I had barely reached the floor when my supervisor arrived, looked around, and said “I hope I didn’t see what I just thought I saw”. I indicated negative. He was not fooled but was willing to accept my denial rather than admit his safety class was that ineffective. This was not the first time I ignored a safety rule; it was not the last; and I suspect I will continue to ignore rules when the pressures of the job outweigh the potential dangers. I am not proud of this but it is the truth.
If anything, I am sometimes more worried about getting caught ignoring the rules than worrying about my safety. Some companies strictly enforce safety rules while others ignore the enforcement except as a response when someone gets hurt. The reality is that a company’s enforcement and application is most often driven by the legal department, not by any real concern about people’s safety. I’m not saying the safety director (or whatever title he/she holds) doesn’t care on a personal basis; just that any personal feelings take a back seat to the responsibilities of the position.
The safety director has the responsibility of preventing losses due to industrial health and safety issues. He has to put processes in place to protect the company from liability in cases of worker injury. (I’m concentrating on employee injury issues here but the same person may also be the environmental guru as well.) He must first be sure the company follows all state and federal requirements for training – thus the boring and repetitive annual classes. He makes inspections and documents places where safety improvements are needed. Documenting the inspections and documenting the instances where safety-based work is performed proves to the government agencies that he is being conscientious in his job. This provides loss prevention by eliminating fines that might be imposed by government agencies for non-compliance.
Almost all employers have some insurance-type company that is supposed to help offset the losses from injury-driven lawsuits. The costs for this coverage can be significant and anything a company can do to reduce the insurance company’s fees is part of the loss prevention process. The insurance company makes inspections and points out areas where improvements are needed. Failure to make the suggested changes will often result in increased fees (a type of loss). This is often where the seemingly silly changes to processes come from. Insurance company inspectors rarely have the technical understanding of processes to grasp the real impact of the changes they require. The result can some change to a process that makes the operator’s job much more difficult without providing any real safety improvement. Operators and technicians complain but are reminded this is a safety issue and they’ll just have to live with it. It won’t be long until someone finds a way around the impediment (ties back a switch…etc) to make the job easier. Such actions are overlooked by management using “selective blindness” where the production quotas heavily outweigh the safety of people – especially when a safety device slows down production while providing no real protection. This is what is really happening in industry today and has always been part of any manufacturing environment. It is not going to change. The costs of enforcing rules will be part of the manufacturing overhead as long as people work around machinery. When the rules and implementation of engineering measures get in the way of people doing their job, there will be ways found to get around the limits. It may well be that when a complicated safety measure is defeated the exposure to danger may be worse than the danger the measure sought to eliminate.
There is a complex interaction between all parties involved. Some companies are very strict with rules enforcement but they have to absorb the added production costs caused by safety measures and the inspection and enforcement process. Other companies only meet the government requirements and look at enforcement and implementation of safety measures only in response to a significant injury or lawsuit. I’ve worked for both types but most employers fall somewhere between – usually nearer the latter than the former.
In the end, if you work in manufacturing, you must be aware of your own risks and take the personal measures required to protect yourself. Don’t expect the safety director to watch out for you; he is more interested in making sure neither he nor the company gets blamed if you get hurt. Your supervisor may be your friend but his job is not to worry about your fingers and toes, he has a production quota to meet and he has to be sure he is protected from liability if you do get hurt. I can tell you from a maintenance technician point of view that supervisors will quickly ask me to override a safety process if it is going to impact his production. I can say that more often than not I do what I’m asked to do. It is simpler than arguing sometimes. I have noticed safety problems and tried to report them only to be brushed aside. I have even known at least one person hurt by a machine after I tried to report a safety problem with it. I was told “yes, we’re aware of that and we’ll work on a solution once we’ve got the machine running full production.” It was two weeks later when a person was significantly injured by the machine - exactly as I had predicted. (I feel guilty for not being more assertive, even though I was just a contactor at the plant.) After the injury, the machine was shut down for a couple of days while the safety devices were installed. The supervisor made a point to tell everyone “I told him not to put his hand in there…he knew better”).
The point I am trying to make is this: You must watch out for yourself. No one but you truly cares about your personal health and safety. Do not simply accept that your company is interested in your safety. It is not! The person working beside you has more concern for your safety than anyone else in the company. Stop and think before doing anything beyond your normal work process. Remember: some emotional wimp of a maintenance person like me may have caved to a supervisor’s pressure and bypassed a safety device. Some engineer might have decided that safety was secondary to getting a new process implemented. The safety director has all the documented training he needs to keep the company from being liable so he doesn’t care what you do – he can blame it on you if you get hurt.

You are the only person responsible for your safety!

If you care about people, help your co-workers be safe and remind them when they are about to be careless. Once you’ve reminded them you may not feel guilty if they get hurt – just like the company you work for.

No matter how fast you think you are you are not faster than that machine. It will not bleed if it gets hurt…you will.


The company’s CEO is not going to tell the stockholders that your products cost 10% more than the competition’s because he is worried about the safety of the guys on the assembly line.




Donald Page