I think Osha fills a very important role.
Qatar didn’t have any effective regulatory bodies during the Soccer World Cup and some of the top officials involved in to put the fatalities somewhere between four and five hundred.
It’s a solution as old as humanity … if work place problems cause people to die, the solution is simple … get more cheap labour.
To the rich its an economic problem … what’s cheaper? Fixing an expensive problem or saving money by buying more cheap workers and not bother changing a thing.
The counter move is also clear. When work is too cheap and causes people to die, kill the employer. That’s when unions appear to keep both sides from dying.
Unfortunately there’s also a bunch of loopholes, any business that’s small enough doesn’t need to report to OSHA except in specific circumstances, but how are they to know?
I think it’s under a dozen employees or something, so most small businesses avoid growing too large to avoid the oversight.
Roofing is a large one for this, they avoid the fall restraint/arrest requirements, it’s also why they are one of most dangerous trades…
How did so many people die?
Second class citizens with no worker protections of any sort whatsoever performing construction in one of the hottest places in the world.
To add to this Qatar has some of the best ‘insert stat here’ because they only count Qatar citizens and it’s basically impossible to be one unless you’re born into it or marry into it iirc. They just don’t count immigrants or anyone else in those stats and treat anyone not of Qatar blood like garbage. The Stat that comes to mind is poverty, iirc 0 percent of Qataris live in poverty because the government subsidizes them which sounds great on paper but when you look into it only 11 percent of their population is counted as Qatari and the rest are just cheap labor they exploit.
Pretty much every OSHA rule came from some kind of death or dismemberment of they guy before you. As a wise foreman once said, "Better a pain in the ass than your ass in pain”
OSHA violations are almost always the result of being underpaid and expected to do more work than possible if you follow the OHSA regulations.
Don’t worry, SCOTUS*, will abolish OSHA soon.
“The secret…is crime”
*OSHA
That’s why china is winning. No proper human safety, slavery, poor pay etc. Hence china is leading manufacturing sector.
Which I think its important to point out isn’t an endorsement. It means that we in the west should be doing everything we can to enforce our saftey standards on products sold in our countries, and if that isn’t possible then we should be bringing the manufacturing back onshore.
OSHA? More like OSHIT
When I worked in the outdoors section of a sporting goods store I used to get bitched at for climbing the shelves to get grills down instead of using a ladder because osha.
Then I pointed out that the shelves were bolted to the ground while the ladder wasn’t.
Yes, because shelves only support a certain weight and the whole thing can come crashing down like the World Trade Center, especially if heavier colleagues figure “if they can do it, so can I.”
I think you’re imagining shelves that were much less sturdy than these were. The uprights and horizontals were 3-4" steel I-beams and were bolted to threads imbeded in concrete every 5 feet.
A 500lb person wouldn’t even make them budge.
That’s not a guarantee things won’t come down.
A fuckton of Newtons perpendicular to a support beam is different from 1k Newtons downward
That’s what they all say right before the workplace accident training video gets filmed
My issue wouldn’t be with the shelving stability but with the ability to safely take down and carry something large while hanging on. I get it, sometimes you can make things work, but there’s going to be the one time where something goes wrong too, and that’s probably why policy and OSHA rules are in place, because it’s happened before.
That you don’t have the right equipment to do things correctly is a problem waiting to happen. It’s not a rare thing, companies like to trim and slide by as much as they feel they can, while quoting the “safety first” mantra. That’s why you quote that right back at them when asked to do things, especially when they don’t provide the means. This is also where HR can be on your side, since HR is all about protecting the company via their policy. As long as you and the policy are saying the same thing, HR is your ally. That’s the only time.
Climbing shelving is not a good idea, ever.
So they were bolted to the ground, but not the wall? Is this why you weren’t doing an engineering major? ☺️
I’m not sure why you think free standing shelves need to be bolted to the wall. These were made of 3-4" steel I-beams.
Not all stock shelves bolt to a wall. But I guess you’re too educated to know that.
Correction: The idiot who installed the shelf ALWAYS forgets to bolt the shelf into the wall unless you personally verify.
Trusting equipment you didn’t check gets you killed.
You shouldn’t be using a ladder to get a grill. You need a electric ladder with enough room to hold a grill.
Other option is to put it on a pallet
Neither of those were an option to us.
That is a OSHA violation. Companies get sued over those. You should report any violations to your supervisor and if that doesn’t work report it to the US department of Labor
This was over 15 years ago, so that ship has long sailed.
