OSHA Under the Obama Administration

An analysis of OSHA enforcement during the first two years of the Obama administration shows how the agency has changed its enforcement tactics compared to the Bush years.
OMB Watch says “the leash has been taken off the OSHA inspectorate under the Obama administration.”

The numbers paint the picture:

• In 2009, federal and state OSHA programs handed out more than 68,000 citations, a 167% increase from the previous year. In 2010, OSHA handed out almost 114,000 violations in just the first six months of the year.
• In 2008, OSHA handed out 203 willful violations. That number rose to 1,166 in 2009 and is on track to reach nearly the same number in 2010.
• OSHA conducted 6,000 more inspections in 2009 than it did in 2008. OSHA is on track to conduct 1,600 more inspections in 2010 than in 2009.

How is OSHA escalating its enforcement? Two ways.

OSHA’s budget increased 7.68% from 2009 to 2010, and the Obama administration has asked for another 2.5% increase for 2011.

But it’s not just money that’s responsible for the OSHA crackdown on companies. Support from the top has something to do with it, too.

After two workplace disasters that spent much of 2010 in the headlines — The Upper Big Branch mine explosion that killed 29 miners and the BP Deepwater Horizon rig explosion that killed 11 workers — President Obama signaled support for tougher safety enforcement.

After Upper Big Branch, Obama said “a failure first and foremost of management, a failure of oversight and a failure of laws so riddled with loopholes” allowed companies, such as Massey Energy, to repeatedly violate safety regulations without penalty.

In the aftermath of the BP spill, Obama said, “So one of the lessons we’ve learned from this spill is that we need … better enforcement.”

More than ever during the current administration, the phrase, “Don’t get on OSHA’s hit list, you’ll never get off it,” has taken on significant meaning for companies.

In April 2010, OSHA announced its Severe Violator Enforcement Program under which it has:

• increased inspections at companies with patterns of safety negligence,
• conducted mandatory follow-up inspections, and
• inspected other workplaces under the same ownership as those where severe problems have been found.

When all this is put together, what is OMB Watch’s conclusion about OSHA enforcement under the Obama administration? “OSHA appears to be developing an enforcement regime that focuses on industries and workplaces where employees are at greater risk for injury and illness.”

Does putting safety first send the wrong message to our organization? Part 2

Culture Change

One of the fundamental breakthroughs a company should realize is that the very same leadership and management skills used in achieving outstanding production, quality and cost could deliver similar results for health and safety. In other words, managers do have the skills to achieve health and safety excellence. They either do not see it that way or they do not see health and safety lending itself to the management systems they use for production, quality and cost.

When health and safety managers finally get the ear of senior management, they rarely choose to communicate in the language of the customer. Instead, they talk about job safety analysis, incident investigations, lost workday cases, OSHA incidence rates, etc. Certainly, all of these have their place, but the manager’s impression at this point is usually: That skill set is not part of my knowledge base. As a result, they reject their ownership role for health and safety. After all, their expertise is achieving production, quality and cost objectives, not health and safety.

Management needs to be taught, or convinced, that safety is not first but rather an equal held to the same level as production, quality and cost. More importantly, they need to be convinced that those same skills they use to achieve production, quality and cost will work in achieving health and safety results.

Steps to Accountability

How do we get management enrolled in the safety process to the extent they own it and lead it? Let’s break this task down into four steps:

1) Get off the Safety First kick if that is your current mind-set.

Instead, find out what the top two to four objectives of your enterprise are. It is a good bet that production, quality or cost will have a presence, but there could be others.

2) Adopt a system to approach safety.

Do not approach safety as a problem to be solved. Be proactive and don’t focus on lagging measures such as safety performance.  Instead, build a management systems approach that has the same elements used to achieve the most important objectives of your enterprise.  Develop a system that focuses on leading edge measures such as:

·        Defined objectives for health and safety established by senior management.

·        Significant management and employee involvement.

·        Establish goals and action plans.

·        Job safety analysis.

·        Training.

·        Performance and results tracking.

When you proactively develop the elements of your system, you have a before the fact system that drives continuous improvement, not an after the fact system focusing on solving the problem of the day.

3. Get management/supervisor buy-in that safety is one of the top objectives of your company.

Meet and share your observation’s that safety need not be first but should be of equal rank to the other two to four top objectives of your company.

For example, assume productivity is one of the key business objectives. Show how improved safety can positively impact productivity and by illustrating the impact when a serious, or even a minor, injury occurs. This can be demonstrated by calculating the impact of indirect cost’s on your balance sheet by illustrating what the company needs to produce in sales to offset the direct claim cost.  This is an eye opener for many managers.   

4. Create the Culture.

Now that have their attention, your job is to train them on how they can apply their management and leadership skills in deploying and executing your management systems approach for safety.  Facilitate their linkage with safety and help them see that their primary roles are to:

·        Set the EXPECTATIONS for the entire organization.

·        COMMUNICATE these expectations to the organization. 

·        Demonstrate management COMMITMENT to these expectations.

·        Provide reasonable RESOURCES to succeed.

·        Create ACCOUNTABILITY standards.

·        COLLABORATE with employees and REWARD progress and performance.

Safety management is a process based on a systematic approach to achieving identifiable objectives. Second, the fundamental role of a management is to communicate, demonstrate and commit to expectations.  Lastly, to accomplish this, provide the resources, audit and implement accountability standards and recognize/reward progress and performance. All this comes together when your THREE SIXTY SAFETY approach is not first but equal to the other organizational objectives.