TW: Suicide, addiction, fatalities
Union and Management Working Together for Safety and Health
General Session 9.15.23
Panel Discussion
Personal injury incident 20 years ago
Electric furnace – very volatile furnace
Cooks down steel with 3-23” diodes
Need to push in scrap with a forklift
3,000+ degrees Fahrenheit
When the wall in front of door gets knocked into the furnace, a fireball came back out at him, bathing him in flames (fork truck did not have a window)
Ran off of forklift, checking body for slag
Lost skin off of ears, shield saved his face, neck burned, hands, leg had a steam burn
#3 Furnace-Stove man
28 ports on furnace, use elements to inject natural gas. Sometimes those ports can move
3 coolers that were leaking gas
Can’t eliminate hazard, so how do I control it
Shut off the seal gas, but he knew he was going down. Got gassed out
Vern Beck
Hired in July 1978
Woman’s job to clean an auger. The auger had cracked and they needed to weld it, so she was told her job was to steam watch it. Put the auger on a trailer, and told her to be careful because of the holes in the trailer. They showed her how and left. Came back, and her head was pinned between the auger and the trailer bed. The trailer was in such a poor condition it should never have been used. Locked out improperly.
Guy goes behind the house to check the gas meter, and leaves truck running in front of house. Van slipped out of park and rolled out to kill someone. That van had been previously brought in for slipping out of park and going into reverse
--be aware of what you’re doing, and whats going on around you
Bethlehem Steel-asked for a safety person
Given responsibility of coke ovens
Quite a few new hires
Called into work because of a missing employee
She had walked into a hole 10 inches x 17 inches, could see her footprints in the dust. Silo had just been filled with 5,000 tons of coal. So they started emptying the silo. Need to go to the spouse and tell them where she’s at
Be smart and help the new folks, the ones who don’t know will be the ones who get hurt.
Good safety programs start from the top. When you’ve got good upper management that want to work safe, the rest fall into line. As other people see the work getting safer, they want to work safer. Took a while to convince management that it was cheaper to work safer.
New sets of eyes, finding the hazards and get them reported before incidents happen.
-near misses, use as a free lesson and get them fixed.
Alan McDougall-keynote speaker
12-15 fatalities/year
Vietnam war taught about PTSD
Was on ERT and a young man died in a paper mill, and his dad worked on a different shift.
The company called and asked his dad if he would cut his bereavement leave 2 days short because he was the only one qualified on the machine…
-witnessing a fatality and losing your friends, can lead to substance abuse
Had coworkers to witness a fatality commit suicide-you carry it with you
Go to work safe, come home safe, and spend time with your families
In the 70s, company would bring in social workers to talk with workers with fatalities.
June 3, 1987, was going to commit suicide. Would never have gone to AA because it was for quitters. Went to the union hall, and it saved my life. Reshaped my life. Made me something of respect.
Was working in the office where he went for help. Two miners stuck underground. Stayed there 77 days. Bar was called the Library. Books are some of the best teachers ever. “you sew a thought, you reap an action”
Boy, if you want to have a good crop of potatoes, you better have a shovel in hand for the weeds.
Build a habit of caring for others