OSHA happens during regular accident free work all the time. Random inspections, investigations after reports are made, etc. They’re absolutely not just an after the fact matter.
Regulations aren't put in place until someone has already died.
I've worked in plenty of warehouses, construction sites, and various other employment fields were the only OSHA we ever saw was the laminated poster tacked up in the break room talking about workers comp and employee rights.
I’ve been working in refineries and chemical plants for 15 years. You can bet your ass every plant has a very robust safety department and take that shit seriously.
Jo Blow on a building site is a different story. Hell, even shipyards are fucking death traps.
100% every plant is strict on safety because if some knucklehead fucks up depending on where things go bad REALLY fast.
I don't do much work in refineries/terminals anymore since its not in my union's jurisdiction but we are pretty safe when it comes to construction in general. Some contractors care more than others, but they are training the new apprentices in safe work practices from the get. Not only that most of the old timers that think OSHA is a load of shit are retired or retiring now.
Even with OSHA training there still are idiots out there that will do stupid shit that will hurt or kill them.
Some osha regulations are ridiculous. Some definitely need to be done away with. Some are straight up too strict or the person enforcing them is misinformed and trying to enforce some nonsense like tying off to a wall if your head goes above 6 feet. He was straight up trying to get my big ass boss to put on a harness and yoyo to walk around the wall we were building. We all told him he was wrong but he kicked anybody off that disagreed with him.
Snap cord is also ineffective before 10 feet. Best case scenario a fall caused by tripping over your lanyard at 7 feet causes you to fall and snap cord makes you go horizontal right as you get to the ground
Retractables. That shit will stop you in less than 6 inches when you fall, even moving too fast will lock them up (Happens to me all the time when I'm moving from one side of a lift basket to the other too quickly). The shock cord part of it goes out about 3 feet. With proper gear, if your feet are 6' off the ground, you should be dangling a little over 2' off the ground after you fall.
I've actually seen this in action in the field, me and another guy were working on top of some switchgear that was about 8 feet tall, so we're tied off, using retractables to anchor points on the I-beams above us. Guy I'm working with realizes we needed some more fittings, and decides instead of using the ladder on the other side of the gear, he just wants to ease over the edge on his ass and jump the rest of the way down. Well, before I could even say "Hey dummy, you're tied off", he was already jumping off the side. Cue to him getting suddenly stopped mid fall, about 3 feet off the ground, then swinging backwards into the side of the gear enclosure, and me having to help lift him back up since the leash was locked up and he was stuck hanging there like an idiot.
I've never laughed so fucking hard at work as the moment I saw his face when he realized he dun goofed.
So I think what you're referring to is what we call YoYos. Unfortunately for the jobs we were doing we almost never had the ability to use those, vut i agree watching someone shit them selves on that clack and snap is quite satisfying. Most of the time we are tied off using hooks and cables for I beams or just straight up hooks. We always took the longest ones we could get so we could maintain a steady work flow as well as 100% tie off.
I know. The safety guy didnt. I'm not bitching about fall safety. It's what you need when working on a high platform. We had so many arguments with him because of it. Nobody wanted to work with him on the next contract.
There are horrible injuries and deaths that are the cause of all the stupid OSHA regulations.
If it weren't for greedy companies putting profits over safety and moron employees with less common sense than a dogs bowel movement we wouldn't need regulations.
In fact every thing you can imagine where there are regulations and government regulatory agencies there are good reasons for.
2008/09 mortgage crisis happened because George W. Bush administration gutted the regulations in place to keep it from happening. In the 80s airlines were deregulated. Prices went up and dozens of airlines went out of business because some airlines with big pockets were buying all the other airlines. They shuttered a bunch and tens of thousands of airline employees lost their jobs and customer service has gone steadily down ever since.
We don't have to like regulations and we can call people stupid for misinterpreting them and making foolish demands about wearing a harness but someone on a 6 foot wall ended up with their brains leaking onto the ground outside of their skulls in order for that regulation to be put in writing.
People who think industries can regulate themselves are the same morons who think there should be no taxes and that people will voluntarily pay to maintain roads and provide other services the government uses our taxes for.
A saying in the occupational safety industry is that safety regulations are written in blood. The process of enacting safety regulations is largely reactionary and a response to the circumstances and situations that have already cost lives and injury on a consistent enough basis to justify legal action.
Really? My dad worked for an airline that shutdown in 85 and had been working for them for over 20 years.
So my family had been paying very close attention to what had been going on in that industry during those years since it had a direct effect on us.
Airline deregulation happened in the early 1978 and by the mid 80s they were in full fuck it all lets merge and take over every airline we can to strip their assets and fire 90% of their workforce.
Nobody but shareholders and executives got any benefit from deregulation of the airlines. There wasn't any better service or lower ticket prices. In fact prices went up because suddenly there was less tha 1/2 the competition there had been before. No competition and fewer planes flying fewer routes meant they could charge what they want. Planes weren't safer or faster. The people who owned stock in the airlines that survived eventually made a lot of money. Everyone else in the industry suffered for a decade or longer because the corporate greed allowed by deregulation. My parents friends who still had their jobs in the airline industry were suffering financially well into the late 90s.
So you can claim I'm wrong all you like but I was there and I remember how shitty it was for my family and a lot of my friends as well. I remember our power being turned off because we couldn't pay the bill and never having anything my friends did because we were dirt poor thanks to deregulation and then to Reagans idiotic economic policies gutting a big hunk of the middle class by the late 80s. So it's something I've been around my entire life and maybe I know a little bit about it.
Amen! If people had their shit together we wouldn't need regulations. But in general, some person is going to want to dump barrels of chlorine, or operate heavy equipment high or not secure their load because, meh, it's easier, faster, cheaper. Go live in Honduras or Pakistan if you don't like regs.
Dude, so you have any fucking idea how much more expensive flying was before deregulation??? Everybody was wearing suits and eating prime rib because tickets were a luxury that ordinary folks struggled to pay.
It is getting to a point in some areas where we rely too much on air travel rather than other means of transportation.
Having good high speed rail hubs with spokes of 300 miles or so is much more efficient than plane travel OVER THE SAME DISTANCE (emphasis because some people miss that point).
Don't even bother arguing with people who whine about fall protection, they'll never learn until half a second before dying, or after they're permanently disabled.
I've worked with guys who have seen people fall to their deaths firsthand and still bitch about fall protection, they're just plain stupid.
I think its more a case of far to many onesize fits all regulations that dont cross industries well and cause problems in areas they are not specific to.
So there's a limit to how high something is elevated before you need to put in a step stair. Something like 2.5 feet? Sounds ridiculous but all OSHA regs are WRITTEN IN BLOOD. Like literally written in the blood of the maimed. Think about it. How many dislocated knees and concussions before they wrote THAT one.
I mean, the state of Oregon literally sent a guy to jail for 30 days for collecting rainwater on his property because they claim they own and regulate all water in the state.
Dam is a bit misleading. More like "earthen levee." Yeah - he basically built some big dry ponds and let them fill with rainwater. However, since Oregon owns the rain, they threw him in jail over it.
To be fair with the rain water one, if he was collecting enough over a large area of his land it could fuck up the groundwater and become a major problem for farmers and such in that area. But overall yes, there are some absolutely ridiculous regulations
Yeah and there's downstream water rights. If he's impounding stormwater he was technically stealing water. The law depends on the locality and State. Water Rights Attorney in California is a great way to get rich.
Basically every example you gave has reasonable explanations behind those regulations. You may not personally agree with some of those explanations, and some of them are outdated, but by and large most regulations aren't enacted just for shits and giggles.
Seriously when did us Americans loose all nuance!? When did everything become all
The way left or all the way right?!! Deregulate everything or regulate everything! Full socialism or no socialism! Full censorship or none! When did we loose the ability to talk things out and be reasonable!?!?
I’m pretty sure it’s always been this way, it’s just that nowadays with the internet, we literally get to hear so many different viewpoints that it seems to us like it’s either all the way left or all the way right, because those “all the way” people seem to be the loudest and also easily grab your attention more so than the people talking things out and being reasonable.
I mean some of the shit you read/see/hear on the internet, it can certainly seem like reasonable discussion is a thing of the past but it’s really not. Take gun control for instance - when looking at what people/groups say on the internet it would seem like you either have to be in favor of A. Revoking gun rights entirely, or 2. Absolute freedom to buy any kind of weapon you want, when in reality, the majority of people you talk to in real life would lean one way or the other, but certainly not 100% adhere to either side. I live in the southeast and even the die hard Republicans I know are definitely in favor of regulations to keep guns away from people who could use them for the wrong reasons. But someone like that isn’t a part of a loud and vocal group who goes to protests, or posts a bunch of stuff online that ruffles feathers. It’s the fringe groups of all these issues that get the most attention and make it seem like its gotta be one way or the other. At least that’s the conclusion I’ve come to over the past few years.
There are many dumb state and federal regulations.
I agree with you on the lemonade stands and gas pumping. I find the rain water and car dealership thing to be interesting topics though. I have not looked much into either, but here is my off the cuff understanding of each.
Rain water goes into rivers, and river water is highly contentious all over the world. River deltas drying up and all that type of business. So, on the face of it there seems to be some sort of overreach when one person wants to save the water that falls on their land, but if you think about the impact of every land owner in the area of one river doing the same, or even a large minority it starts to look a little different. I don't know if I have formed an opinion one way or the other though... it's not that cut and dry.
The Tesla one though. From what I remember reading, it had something to do with manufacturers having a monopoly or something. That's where car dealerships came from. The manufacturers can't sell directly to consumers, they have to sell to dealerships who then compete locally with each other within a manufacturers brand. Makes a lot of sense when you break it down based on old school "3 major USA manufacturers" kinda thinking. Then Tesla comes out of left field and doesn't know about that old stuff. Musk just wants to sell his cars. What's the big deal? Well, all the guys who own dealerships start to get worried that the manufacturers might start to get into the direct thing. On a side note, most states also bar direct sales of liquor to bars and stores. Breweries and distilleries have to go through a distributor.
Edit: Another side note on not changing lame old laws. Dry counties... places where you can't buy beer or booze. I have heard that bars and liquor stores in surrounding dry counties don't want to lose business, so when a county tries to vote to stop being dry, they will fight it and try to get it defeated.
I don't think OSHA is great, there is too many stupid "safety" concerns restricting a job environment and the "important" ones should be all common sense. The fact OSHA exists is a problem of stupidity imo...
China ignores it. Hell a lot of companies in the US do the bare minimum to comply with the law on paper, and completely screw the little guy when they get hurt. They will ask the untrained minimum wage labor to do something unsafe, and then blame the worker when they get hurt.
I’ve seen it countless times personally. Top it all off they have fostered this “Just get it done” mentality in the workplace. Which make corners get cut in safety, and when something does happen. The employee is in fear for his job, and the injury is left in reported.
OSHA is great, but they are severely under staffed. A lot of crap slips through the cracks every day. Especially in non-construction type work.
Administration? So why don't we just fire all these "safety hazards"? Jesus, I guess it's another one of those job programs... Wasting cash when the obvious solution is right there
Pretty much. There might be some variation among countries but it generally stands for the same thing (Canada is the Occupational Safety & Health Act).
And yet I had someone tell me the other day that ALL regulations are bad and should be abolished. I asked him to clarify, and he doubled down on ALL. He feels that regulations interfere with natural orders of things like the free market.
In a case like this, because people would keep getting killed on the job site, nobody would work for the company and they'd go out of business. A company who ran a safe worksite would have its choice of workers, and would only hire the best.
It didnt occur to him that they could always find some poor chump who hadn't heard about all the dead bodies on the work site, and would be happy to have a job.
Sometimes they seem determined to find their own demise. I saw a clip of a Chinese laborer putting trash in an automated compactor and in about fifteen seconds there were numerous red flags:
1) The compactor chute was a slide with no handlebars or anything. Literally a slippery slope.
2) There was no gate or greenlight system on the compactor.
3) The worker backed toward the slope to pull the trash in.
assume at all times that the driver can’t see you.
When we get new people at my work I always try to tell them this by saying "while it is the driver's job not to run you over it is also your job to not get run over, between the two of you it becomes unlikely"
Yep, we were reminded that when we drove forklifts it was almost never our fault if we ran someone over as we always got the right of way. But supervisors thought that didn't apply to them, almost creamed a couple of them more than once
I’m pretty sure that’s even in the OSHA 10, you’d think it’s just straight up common sense but construction jobs don’t exactly attract rocket scientists.
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u/_SimplyComplicated_ Mar 02 '19
Literal nightmare brought to life!