| EDITORIAL | aggressively anti-OSHA. Instead of safety training, they trained employees on how to get around OSHA compliance, through an OSHA (or insurance) inspection, and absolutely punished any employee who got caught, reported a safety condition, or deliberately failed to conceal a safety issue. I vividly remember finding company issued fake GFCI (Ground Fault Circuit Interrupters) face plates and new extension cords with missing ground prongs on numerous construction sites. We had to watch when, how, and where we interviewed employees because too often they were scared of being seen talking to us because of the stories they had heard OSHA. On the flip side, during my time inspectors were routinely “cussed out,” threatened, sometimes even assaulted. In one of our offices an inspector was thrown in a trench, and in my own area office an inspector was injured jumping on the hood of his car while trying to get away from guard dogs that were released. Employers joked it was better to kill an OSHA inspector because the fine for assault was up to $10,000 if convicted. We got no love! Only later did we find out our counterparts in the private sector were not faring much better reputation wise, generally they too “weren’t feeling the love!” I am somewhat hard pressed to remember exactly when the safety tide began to turn. I know it had to do with rising insurance costs, first reflected in workers compensation premiums and later as insurance companies sought ways to improve bottom lines by paying out less for losses. This became a no-brainer when the insurance industry began preaching that fewer insurance losses equated to more profit for everybody. Almost suddenly it made business sense. Safety became important, sexy even, and eventually companies began to market safety as a product, a value and a culture. At some point, somebody came up with slogan variations of “our employees are our most valuable asset-yada, yada, yada” and “ta da!” some companies actually believed, accepted, and began
Safety has become important, sexy even... to practice that philosophy. Of course not all did, some still don’t believe it. They do know it’s an easy way of be-
ing politically correct and if nothing more they liked saying the words and/or thought the words looked good on company signs, brochures, websites, etc, … but again, that’s another topic for another column. Stay safe.
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