Workplace Safety at work and in the home shop

[Chicken lights]

The best Safety Supervisors/Managers have previous hands-on experience in the specific industry so they can relate and effectively communicate with the people they are trying to protect. They also need to have experience in managing people because they are going to need to educate and if necessary discipline someone for their own good eventually.

The problem is that these folks need to be adequately compensated and upper management needs to recognize their importance: they’re not just there to satisfy OSHA or the insurance company.

This might be a little job specific, but county's in southern Ontario have bylaw enforcement for cutting trees. It was fairly common for us to cut a notch in trees but NO back cut.

Domino-ing was sending one tree into the next one to force it to fall over. Very illegal and unsafe

I had maybe 6 trees setup, notched, NO back cuts, and the inspector showed up. The foreman just happened to be there. I was accused of domino-ing

I held out the chainsaw at arms length and asked the inspector to show me how to do my job

We got shut down for a few days

 

[YotaBota]

In BC they make most employee "accidents" the fault of the supervisor. They say the super wasn't diligent enough in enforcing the safety guidelines. The super can give all the safety briefings and demo's all day long but as soon as he/she/they go back to the office and some moron that's been shown, disciplined and yelled at 50 times a day continues being stupid and hurts him/her/their selves it's the supers fault!

When you're dead you don't know you're dead,,,,,,,, same goes for stupid.

 

[Susquatch]

When you're dead you don't know you're dead,,,,,,,, same goes for stupid.

I think my dad's version of that was slightly better.

When you die, you don't know you are dead, it's just hard on everyone else around you. It's the same when you are stupid.

 

[Elektrishun]

In BC they make most employee "accidents" the fault of the supervisor. They say the super wasn't diligent enough in enforcing the safety guidelines. The super can give all the safety briefings and demo's all day long but as soon as he/she/they go back to the office and some moron that's been shown, disciplined and yelled at 50 times a day continues being stupid and hurts him/her/their selves it's the supers fault!

When you're dead you don't know you're dead,,,,,,,, same goes for stupid.

In my last job before retirement I was a maintenance supervisor. I used to have co-workers and managers give me that same spiel about responsibility for incidents. I would always refer back to a couple of more serious accidents that I was aware of but not involved and reply, "Tell me who got in trouble? Who lost their job? Nobody."

In my opinion as long as I could show that we did our due diligence and tried to be safe we were good. Especially in an environment where there appeared to be more concern on getting past the incident than pointing fingers.

More importantly I actually cared about keeping the team safe.

 

[Aarknoid]

For the face protectors I believe we use these at work :

not the cheapest but surprisingly light and easy to work in, and the front plastic cover is changed out pretty easily. I wear prescription glasses and have tried all manner of covers and prescription safeties, these have been my favourite so far.

as to falls ...

This was from a half built deck less than 3 feet from the ground. It seems a 20gal drum of tar isn't a good step stool and I can't hold my entire bodyweight on one wrist unplanned...

 

[Elektrishun]

For the face protectors I believe we use these at work :

View attachment 66098

not the cheapest but surprisingly light and easy to work in, and the front plastic cover is changed out pretty easily. I wear prescription glasses and have tried all manner of covers and prescription safeties, these have been my favourite so far.

I was looking to buy one of those about a month ago.

Haven't pulled the trigger but I should soon.

 

[Mike R]

This was from a half built deck less than 3 feet from the ground. It seems a 20gal drum of tar isn't a good step stool and I can't hold my entire bodyweight on one wrist unplanned...

Yup, when you are screwed back together with deck screws and reinforcing plates you know you done good. I'll spare the pic of my ankle hardware but was 3 plates and 21 screws to put this humpty dumpty back together after my trip over the handlebars of my bike... the last things I remember before I passed out from anesthesia was the nurse bring in a kit that looked like it was straight out of Canadian Tires tool aisle (ratchet, screw driver, hammer, etc.) and the doctor asking for the "large fixation kit"....

 

[Tom O]

When they put 2 screws into my knee all was fine till the swelling went down and I told them about the end of the screw was lifting the skin a good 1/4” . I watched them cut the stitches and pull it with a screwdriver funny thing though is they didn’t replace it a few days later I had clots.