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ACCSH Transcripts: September 2, 1999
|
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION |
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON CONSTRUCTION SAFETY AND HEALTH
(ACCSH) |
Room C-5521
Frances Perkins Building
200 Constitution Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
|
Thursday, September 2, 1999
|
Advisory Committee Members Present:
Larry A. Edginton
Director of Safety and Health
International Union of Operating Engineers
William C. Rhoten
Director of Safety & Health Department
United Association of Journeymen &
Apprentices of the Plumbing &
Pipe Fitting Industry of the United States & Canada
Stewart Burkhammer
Vice President & Manager of Safety and Health Services
Bechtel Corporation
Felipe Devora
Safety Director
Fretz Construction Company
Owen Smith
President
Anzalone & Associates
Harry Payne, Jr.
Commissioner
North Carolina Department of Labor
Danny Evans
Chief Administrative Officer
OSH Enforcement Division of Industrial Relations
Nevada Department of Business and Industry
Jane F. Williams
Safety & Health Consultant
Michael Buchet
Construction Division Manager
National Safety Council
Marie Haring Sweeney, Ph.D.
Chief, Document Development Branch
Education and Information Division
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
Advisory Committee Members Not Present:
Stephen D. Cooper
Executive Director
International Association of Bridge, Structural
& Ornamental Iron Workers
Mark Ayers
Director of Construction and Maintenance Dept.
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
Stephen Cloutier
Vice President
Safety/Loss Prevention Manager
J.A. Jones Construction
Robert Masterson
Manager, Safety and Loss Control
The Ryland Group
Staff Present:
Bruce Swanson
Sarah Shortall
AGENDA ITEM: |
PAGE |
Welcome, Introductions
Stewart Burkhammer, Committee Member
|
6 |
Special Presentation: |
|
Building Safer Highway Work Zones: Measures to Prevent Worker Injuries from Vehicles and Equipment
Suzanne M. Kisner, OSHA Directorate of
Construction
|
11 |
ACCSH Workgroup Reports: |
|
Musculoskeletal Disorders
Marie Haring Sweeney, Committee Member
|
25 |
Michael Buchet, Committee Member |
29 |
Data Collection
Marie Haring Sweeney, Committee Member |
35 |
Subpart N - Cranes
Larry Edginton, Committee Member
|
49 |
Construction Certification and Paperwork Reduction
Jane Williams, Committee Member
|
54 |
OSHA Form 170
Jane Williams, Committee Member
|
72 |
ACCSH Committee February Field Meeting
Michael Buchet, Committee Member
|
87 |
Diversified Workforce Initiatives
Jane Williams, Committee Member
|
90 |
Larry Edginton, Committee Member |
94 |
Fall Protection
Felipe Devora, Committee Member
|
97 |
Silica
Marie Haring Sweeney, Committee Member
|
105 |
Construction Advisor
Camille Villanova, OSHA Directorate of
Construction
|
110 |
Silica
Bill Perry, OSHA Health Standards Directorate
|
124 |
Technical Changes in Existing Standards
Bob Manware, OSHA Directorate of Health
Standards Programs
|
137 |
OSHA Training Institute - Update on Construction Courses
Manny Ypsilantes, OSHA Construction Branch
|
152 |
Construction Standards Update
Noah Connell, OSHA
|
171 |
OSHA Strategic Plan Update
Frank Frodyma, OSHA Deputy Director of Policy
|
183 |
Subpart V - Electrical Standard
Joe Pipkin, OSHA Director for Electrical and
Mechanical
|
217 |
9:00 a.m.
BURKHAMMER: Good morning.
Welcome to the ACCSH meeting. I hope everybody signed
in. There is a sign-in sheet out front. I think some
copies of the agendas are out front. So if you don't
have one, please go and pick one up.
I want the public to recognize how much ACCSH
thinks of the public and how pleased we are to have you
here by the chair differential between the public
chairs and the committee chairs.
(Laughter)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Some of us may be
adjourning early. Hopefully, the Department of Labor
finds little more comfortable chairs for some of us old
folks with bad backs.
With that, I'd like the committee starting
from Harry to introduce themselves and their
affiliation please.
MR. PAYNE: I'm Harry Payne. I'm the State
Commissioner of Labor in North Carolina. We are a
state plan, OSHA state.
MR. SMITH: I'm Owen Smith from Los Angeles,
a painting contractor.
MR. BUCHET: Michael Buchet from the National
Safety Council.
DR. SWEENEY: Marie Haring Sweeney from
NIOSH.
MR. DEVORA: Felipe Devora, Fretz
Construction Company, Houston, Texas.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Stew Burkhammer,
Bechtel.
MR. SWANSON: I am Bruce Swanson. I am the
designated federal official for ACCSH.
MS. WILLIAMS: Jane Williams, public
representative, A To Z Safety Resources.
MR. RHOTEN: Bill Rhoten, United Association
of Plumbers and Pipe Fitters.
MR. EVANS: Danny Evans with the OSHA
enforcement program, the state of Nevada.
MR. EDGINTON: Larry Edginton, International
Union of Operating Engineers.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you. Would
the ACCSH members when they want to talk, please grab a
microphone and speak into the microphone so that the
Recorders can hear it? It's kind of difficult to hear
some of us. All right.
I would like for the public to start with the
introductions, please.
(Whereupon, the public introductions took
place.)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: All right. If you
would take the minutes out of your packet, the minutes
of the June 10th and 11th meeting.
Is there any discussion on that?
(No response.)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: I'll entertain a
motion to approve?
VOICE: So moved.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Second?
VOICE: Second.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Motion approved and
seconded.
Any comments?
(No response.)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: All in favor of
approving the minutes from the June 10th and 11th
meeting, signify by saying aye?
VOICES: Aye.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Opposed?
(No response.)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: The minutes are
approved.
(Pause)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: The first item on
the agenda is a special presentation from Suzanne
Kisner on Building Safer Highway Work Zones.
A lot of us in construction have had
experience with highway work one way or the other. And
for most of us, it has been good.
There is a tremendous amount of injuries that
take place when you are working around the vehicular
traffic. In foreign countries, it is probably the
number one killer of construction workers
internationally in vehicle accidents, bus accidents,
head-on collisions.
Most third-world countries that we work in
anyway, to drive a vehicle, it's taking your life in
your hands. I know in North America and Canada, this
is a big issue. And we appreciate them taking time to
come and share with us.
So please proceed.
MS. KISNER: First, let me apologize to the
committee for --
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Wait a minute.
(Pause)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Oh, why don't we go
and sit in the comfortable chairs and watch the
presentation?
MS. KISNER: Okay.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Let the minutes
reflect --
(Laughter)
Special Presentation:
Building Safer Highway Work Zones:
Measures to Prevent Worker Injuries
from Vehicles and Equipment
MS. KISNER: Good morning. I would like to
thank the Directorate of Construction for giving me an
opportunity to speak to you for a few moments this
morning.
In January, my colleague, Stephanie Pratt,
presented details on a workshop that we conducted in
December of last year through the Work and Safety
Guidelines Project.
And Ms. Pratt presented the topic areas that
were covered and some preliminary information on a
document that was to come out of this workshop.
I would like to spend a few minutes this
morning bringing you up to date on this project and
giving you an idea of what kinds of recommendations are
likely to be included as we move towards finalizing
this NIOSH document that addresses prevention of
equipment and vehicle-related injuries to workers in
highway work zones.
Before I continue, I would like to
acknowledge and recognize my co-authors on this
project, Stephanie Pratt and David Fosbroke.
As Ms. Pratt discussed in January, the
workshop focused on four broad topic areas: safety of
all workers on foot around traffic vehicles, safe
operation of construction vehicles and equipment in
highway work zones, planning for safe operations within
work zones, and special safety issues associated with
night work.
We really tried to balance traffic and non-traffic issues, considering worker safety inside the
work zone which we truly believe has had insufficient
attention, along with the obvious concerns about worker
exposures to traffic vehicles.
Through the next few slides, I will provide
you with an idea of what kinds of recommendations we
are likely to make in several areas as we move towards
finalizing this document.
The material you will see is organized
topically. The actual document goes one step further
and directs recommendations to those we believe would
be in the best position to implement them, in other
words, to the employers, manufacturers or the
policymakers.
One thing I should note before going on is
that the following items are just a few representative
points pulled from draft. What will ultimately appear
in the final document will be guided by the comments
that we receive during the review of this document.
These are some preliminary recommendations
related specifically to traffic control. Consider
using a different color for signs and devices
approaching exit ramps. Use truck-mounted attenuators
more widely.
TMAs can be placed on the upstream, lateral,
or downstream sides of traffic flow to physically
isolate the work area.
One particular application suggested by
workshop participants was to use them in moving work
zones where TMAs can move forward as the work
progresses to protect workers from intrusion of traffic
vehicles approaching from the rear.
Adopt flagger devices, such as the flashing,
slow paddle which is a standard paddle with a strobe
light mounted on its face.
Revise OSHA regulations for the construction
industry to require adherence to the current MUTCD not
the 1971 version that is now referenced.
This set of measures is specific to night
work. Increase the length of tapers for night work.
Reduce the spacing between channelizing devices.
Install low-level, transitional lighting in
advance warning areas and termination areas to ease
motorists' adjustments to changing light conditions.
Inside the work zone, determine the optimal
levels of lighting that is needed around specific types
of equipment.
This recommendation would also encompass the
evaluation of lighting needs for particular work tasks.
The following measures relate to separation
of workers and motorists and to minimizing the
inconvenience to motorists.
Isolate the work area where possible. On
interstate highways, this might mean routing traffic
moving in both directions to the other side of the road
away from the workers.
Avoid reduced speed zoning as much as
practical. This is essentially reemphasizing what is
already recommended by the MUTCD, but it was a strong
message from participants at our workshop.
Provide concise, real time information about
delays and closures.
Our draft document specifies a number of
measures that addresses the importance of minimizing
the impact of construction on the public.
These include advance media campaigns to
prepare the public. Covering or removing signs when no
work is taking place. And keeping messages on signs
simple and brief.
A recommendation to employers in general, not
just construction contractors is to provide more
opportunities for flexible work schedules and
telecommuting during times of construction.
These measures relate to equipment operation.
Keep operator and repair manuals with equipment.
Participants at our workshop emphasized that
repair manuals are particularly difficult to replace
and are often not at the scene when repairs are needed.
We have made this recommendation a number of
times through our Fatality Assessment and Control
Evaluation Program.
Several times, they have investigated crane
fatalities where the load chart was not in the
equipment.
Allow only trained and authorized persons to
operate or move equipment. The reason we include
moving of equipment here is that we have seen a number
of instances where a worker was under a piece of
equipment, repairing it, and was injured when a co-worker moved it with the worker underneath.
Provide all operators on-site with
information about traffic control within the work
zones. This extends to anyone coming on the site. For
example, independent truckers bringing in materials,
state inspectors, utility company representatives.
Train operators to stay belted in equipment
during rollover. Here again, through our FACE Program,
we have investigated a number of fatalities that
illustrates the importance of this.
These recommendations address safety of
workers on foot, primarily those who work near
construction vehicles and equipment inside the work
zones.
Separate equipment and workers on foot
wherever possible. This recommendation covers
scheduling of work tasks so that workers on foot do not
need to be in the area of equipment.
We also expect to make a specific
recommendation that dump trucks entering and leave the
work area move within specified channels that are
closed to workers on foot.
Decrease the need for backing by planning the
flow of construction vehicles and equipment. An
analysis of BLS' Census of Fatal Occupational Injury or
C-4 data reemphasizes this by showing that backing
vehicles play a major role in fatalities inside the
work zone.
Train all workers on the importance of
establishing and maintaining visual contact. This
addresses a range of work practices, from the equipment
operator ensuring that he has established positive,
visual contact with any worker on foot before moving
equipment to using spotters to having all workers on-site trained in hand signaling.
This final group of recommendations relates
to strategies for making workers visible to motorists
and to equipment operators.
Develop apparel that is visible 24 hours a
day. At the workshop, we recognize that many of us
talk about the need for visibility for day work versus
night work.
We don't always recognize that day work can
become night work if the shift is extended or if day
shift workers are exposed to low visibility conditions
that are not all that different from the conditions
night workers work under.
The workshop participants recommended that
manufacturers develop apparel that will night or work
and at varying levels of lighting.
Consider using high visibility apparel that
has different designs front and back. The rationale
for this is that it would allow the equipment operator
to distinguish from a greater distance that the
worker's back is to him.
And lastly, develop apparel that covers
moving parts of the body. The gist of this
recommendation is to place high visibility material on
the hands, arms, and legs, not just the torso.
Motorists and equipment operators would then recognize
the worker as a person.
In January, Ms. Pratt indicated that our
public comment period would be from about March 1st to
May 1st. As many things go, we were maybe a little too
optimistic.
We actually are in the public comment period
for this document. The comment period should extend to
about October 15th.
Ms. Villanova was kind enough to have copies
of the draft document made. And I think she
disseminated those. We have about 40 copies. And if
we need additional copies, I am sure we can have those
made. We would welcome your comments.
She also passed out an additional handout
that explains how you can send us comments. I should
note that there is a web address that is noted in the
Federal Register.
We were not able to put this document out on
the web. So please, disregard that.
Thank you again for your time.
(Applause)
DR. SWEENEY: Suzanne.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Marie.
DR. SWEENEY: Suzanne, you might also remind
the attendees that the comments can be received to the
docket office at NIOSH. So you don't have to mail it
in. We can accept it through the Internet, the home
page.
MS. KISNER: Right. I think the Federal
Register has the docket officer's e-mail address in it
I believe.
DR. SWEENEY: It should.
MS. KISNER: Yes.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: One comment on the
slide you had there when you talked about seat belts
and rollover, you ought to put a bracket in there that
says secure the equipment with ropes. Some of the
vehicles still in use for highway work are grandfather
vehicles.
MS. KISNER: That is very true.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Comments from the
committee?
Michael.
MR. BUCHET: I am not sure I saw the slide
correctly, but there is one point that operators are
supposed to be trained on traffic patterns. And then,
for some reason, it suggests that workers should be
kept out of the dump truck way.
And I think the workers should be trained on
the traffic patterns as much as the operators.
MS. KISNER: Exactly. The idea behind that
would be to pretty much train everybody on-site.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: I did notice that
you did not talk about striping or monitoring, monitors
for traffic. Is there a reason you left striping or
monitors out of your recommendations?
MS. KISNER: They probably are in the
document. These were just --
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: You just highlighted
some of them. Okay.
MS. KISNER: Yes, yes. These are just
highlights. This is nowhere near all of the
recommendations that were included in the document.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Any other comments
from the committee?
Larry.
MR. EDGINTON: I took particular interest in
your recommendations regarding equipment operators.
I guess my reaction, being somebody who
represents the equipment operators is that there is a
big gap between how you think the world should be able
to operate and what is practical.
For example, when you talk about keeping
operation and maintenance manuals in the equipment, I
am not sure that you understand what you are talking
about keeping in the equipment because if you are truly
talking about keeping operations and maintenance
manuals in the equipment, in some instances, you are
literally talking about thousands pages of paper in
equipment which is, one, no proper place to keep it
start with. Two, it is constantly exposed to elements.
And as a practical matter, it probably it
will not last a week in the field. And that is why you
don't see them there now.
Your point with respect to load charts not
being there, there is already requirement that load
charts should be there. You are right that sometimes
they are not.
MS. KISNER: Right.
MR. EDGINTON: But I think you really need to
look at the practicality of what you are saying both
for owners or renters of this equipment.
I think what you really need to be honing in
on is ensuring the qualifications and trainings of
individuals that are either operating or repairing the
equipment. I really think that needs to be the focus.
MS. KISNER: Okay.
MR. EDGINTON: Because as a practical matter,
if you are not qualified or trained, those manuals are
not going to help you.
MS. KISNER: Very true.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you, Larry.
MR. EDGINTON: Yes.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Comments?
(No response.)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: It is very hard for
the chairman to see the committee. So make sure you
stick your hand out forward so I can recognize it.
VOICE: Or throw something.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you very much.
We appreciate the presentation.
And if any of the committee or any of the
public want to send in comments, as she indicated the
public comment period is still open. So please feel
free to do so.
Thank you.
MS. KISNER: Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: For those of you
standing in the back, there is plenty of seats up front
here if you want to come up.
VOICE: And very comfortable seats.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Very soft.
(Laughter)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Nice, flush seats.
VOICE: Warm.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Okay. We are now
going to get into the workgroup reports. The first
report is on musculoskeletal disorders in construction.
Mike or Marie.
DR. SWEENEY: Mr. Chair, while we assemble
things, I wanted to make one note. In the handout for
it is labeled ACCSH MSD Workgroup. We have a change to
make. Under the name Tammy Zisland. She is actually
not from NOWFAC, but from NAVFAC. And it should be
NAVFAC. And then, on the e-mail address should be
NAVFAC.
ACCSH Workgroup Reports:
Musculoskeletal Disorders
DR. SWEENEY: The first thing I want to do is
to express our appreciation to all the people that
attended the workgroup meeting on Tuesday. We had
quite a large number of folks who gave us some really
great recommendations. And in our presentation -- and
these are the people that were there.
The general discussion of our meeting was a
draft that is called "Preventing Musculoskeletal
Disorders in Construction". It is dated 9-1-99. It is
the packets of all of the individuals on the committee.
This document was prepared in response to a
request from Mr. Jeffress about a year or so ago to put
together information on musculoskeletal disorders in
construction.
And he wanted us to prepare a document that
described the disorders to identify the best practices
or what we all solutions or interventions and to
describe -- what was it? And describe a --
VOICE: Program.
DR. SWEENEY: A program.
That's Scott.
VOICE: Sure.
DR. SWEENEY: So over the past year, we have
developed an outline in conversation and in
consultation with all the folks who have come to the
workgroup meetings over the last year.
And then, put together this document. The
document includes text on definitions, on factors
associated with musculoskeletal disorders, a checklist
owners, operators. contractors, workers to look at a
work site in terms of factors related to
musculoskeletal disorders and then at the very back a
list of issues and activities that happened on the
construction and solutions for perhaps preventing or
reducing musculoskeletal disorders among workers or
operators.
This is merely a draft. We ask that the
committee take a look at it. Look at the contents.
Don't look at the typing. We know there are plenty of
typos because we had two expert typists working on it.
And to give us your comments, if we have a
chance tomorrow, Mr. Chairman, because we have
recommendations that we would like to propose relative
to this document.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: All right. The
document is accepted. But what I would like to have
the committee do tonight is take a look at the
document.
At the last meeting, we took a look at the
multi-employer document on the first night, make some
comments, mark it up. And then, tomorrow, we will have
some discussion time at which time we will open the
Musculoskeletal Disorders Workgroup report.
We will discuss the report. And then, any
recommendations that the co-chairs wish to make to the
committee can be made at that time.
DR. SWEENEY: Okay. I wanted just one other
thing to bring to light before we -- thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Is that OSHA has produced a number of
documents, brochures, activities that do relate to
ergonomics and musculoskeletal disorders, none of which
are specifically related to construction.
There are -- there is one on DDTs. There is
a safety and health guide for the meat packing
industry. And also, I saw a very nicely done video,
but it only deals with musculoskeletal disorders in
manufacturing.
And as we well know that the risk factors or
the factors associated with musculoskeletal disorders
are the same in all people, but the conditions under
which a construction worker may be exposed to those
factors may be different.
And so what we ware providing here is the
focus on construction. We will bring our
recommendations tomorrow.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Have you we got a
second on the highlights?
Yes, go ahead.
MR. BUCHET: Okay.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: You have plenty of
time.
MR. BUCHET: Take my time?
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Take your time.
MR. BUCHET: Somebody is in the back of the
room giving me the stretch.
MR. BUCHET: Being a new co-chair in ACCSH,
it took awhile. The Musculoskeletal Disorders
Workgroup took awhile to catch up to where they were.
There is an incredible amount of information that is
provided in the documents that you get to go over and
consider tonight.
In the meeting notes from yesterday, there
are some key points that I would like to bring out.
There was discussion.
There was fairly heated discussion at some
points, but ultimately the workgroup agreed on a great
many things. And I would like you to keep that in mind
as you go through this.
Some of the considerations that were brought
out is the fact that this brochure is to be a brochure.
It is to be informational, not a blueprint for
enforcement activities. And the workgroup agreed that
that concern should be passed onto OSHA.
Another consideration was that any
suggestions for useful practices or best practices or
successful practices, keep in mind that they should be
financial doable. And that consideration is also
covered in the report of the meeting.
There were simple examples of things that can
be done. I think we have an example from steel
erectors in the western part of the country, saying
that they are now ordering 50-pound kegs instead of
100-pound kegs.
And you can see that that would make it
easier move 47-pound sacks of cement instead of 90-plus
pounds of cement.
We had a suggestion that we might be able to
copy what some European countries are doing. And that
is making sheet rock smaller.
And realize that this one might be stretching
the envelope on what is possible. It might require
completely redesigning the studs in building. So that
one is probably on the less-likely-to-be-done.
But getting things repackaged so that they
could be handled, reducing the weight, reducing the
size, reducing the bulkiness of them are simple things
that can be done.
We talked about hooking suspenders on tool
belts and then combining suspenders, tool belts, and
fall protection, simple, simple little things that are
being done.
These ideas are from the industry. And what
we will recommend tomorrow and what I am going to
highlight right now is that this is an ongoing process
and that the workgroup will continue to solicit input
from the industry on these simple little ideas that are
being implemented by individual organizations,
contractors.
In some cases, we had examples of workers
developing shoulder pads that allowed them to carry
things more comfortably with less strain and potential
damage to the shoulder.
We would like to continue to get that
information and bring it to OSHA's attention.
DR. SWEENEY: One other thing that you might
consider while you are reading this document is to
think about what kind of audience this should be
focused on.
And if you think that there is a number of
different types of audiences, whether you talk about
folks who are working on the job or foremen versus even
the general contractor, there might be recommendations
to actually do several levels, several reading levels,
informational levels, different types of booklets that
can be developed and handed out to individuals.
We are also thinking about different kinds of
media. As I said, there was a video. And we were
thinking there is the advisors on the web that OSHA
has.
So you can put it on a web site and have
different screens and other things like that. So it
does not necessarily only have to be a written
document. One might think about putting it on CD-Rom
or on a tape of some kind.
So we would really enjoy hearing your
comments and getting your ideas about what can be done.
That's it, Mr. Chair.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you very much.
There has been a lot of years spent on this
subject by this committee. And I think when we receive
the new charge from the current Assistant Secretary of
taking it out of the standardization text and putting
it into an informational brochure text, it made the
workgroup's job somewhat easier.
For the committee members, I want to make a
couple of comments. If you turn back to the page 1 of
the draft entitled "9-1-99 Preventing Musculoskeletal
Disorders Instruction" where the actual body of the
text is, this introduction was a conglomerate of ideas
from about everybody in the room that attended the
workgroup.
And Michael drafted this from all those
comments.
And I would like you to look down to line 18
which I think Marie talked about and Michael talked
about, but I think it is very important that we all
understand why at 18 and it says OSHA recognizes this
information brochure as not to provide an enforcement
blueprint, but for the Agency, but the purpose of the
brochure is provide industry-tried practices that will
its contractors and its workers to reduce
musculoskeletal disorders.
And if the outcome of this document was the
committee reviews it and we talk about it tomorrow
during discussion and depending on the motions from the
co-chairs, that I think is the main object of this
document: information, to provide information, assist
people.
There is a lot of good things in there, a lot
of good definitions. A lot of work went into doing
this.
So with the committee's perspective, I would
like you to look at this not from an enforcement or a
standardization text, but from an information
dissemination text.
Thank you very much.
We will hold any discussion on this until
tomorrow.
The next workgroup is Data Collection.
Michael and Marie.
ACCSH Workgroup Reports: (Continued)
Data Collection
DR. SWEENEY: Good morning. We had a very
active two days here. The Data Collection group has
kind of been over the past year looking at various
aspects of what the Directorate of Construction and
OSHA has at their fingertips for looking at
construction-related problems.
And one of the items that came up -- and we
decided that there were so many things that we really
need to take things in little steps because there are
just so many things. There are a lot of issues and a
lot of things to uncover and to perhaps change.
So we have been working with the Directorate
of Construction on the OSHA 170 supplemental data form.
And the 170 form is used throughout OSHA, but
there is a supplemental data form that is used for
specifically construction and for maritime. This form
is specifically for recording construction fatalities.
There is another group. It is the 170
Workgroup that is talking about reformatting the form.
We are talking about the 170 in terms of the data
collection elements and also how one might use the data
once in fact it is collected.
We have a number of epidemiologists,
statisticians, and other folks on the committee.
As we are going through the 170 form, we are
making some recommendations to OSHA as we see it
because we think the form needs some changing.
We also think that the process for, one,
training people how to input the data needs to be
changed.
The focus of the form needs to be changed.
And also the program itself needs to be updated and
revised to facilitate data quality, data consistency,
and data entry.
In your packets, you have a list of
recommendations from the Data Collection Workgroup that
we came up with over the past -- from our discussions
over the past I'd say a year.
The overall recommendation is to improve the
qualify of the OSHA 170 supplemental data form for
construction by the compliance officer and OSHA through
training and better data entry programs and data
analysis.
Our first item was that the 170 form needs to
be upgraded and reprogrammed to allow for easier input
of data.
It needs drop-down screens, mandatory fields,
data validation for data validation input, range
checks, air field validation, and links with the
various other OSHA forms that are used for recording
fatalities and injuries. And these are the OSHA 1, the
OSHA 36.
They also need to pre-fill automatically-filled key fields. Right now, the form is totally
blank. And whoever is filling in the data has to fill
it in from scratch. And that does not really need to
be done as far as we understand.
There needs to be consultation with the
Department of Energy regarding the programs that they
are using for field input of data.
They have an accident-incident reporting
system that they have been working on. And the DOE has
an iterative process to get information and input from
people in the field who are actually collecting the
data and inputting it into their system.
And Janet Macon from the DOE has been
extremely helpful in describing what their program is.
So I would encourage the Directorate of Construction
and the other folks at OSHA who are dealing with this
program to talk to the DOE.
We think that once the new program if one is
developed needs to be piloted in at least two or three
willing states, for example, the state plan states and
in area offices.
Some folks like to do computer work more than
others. So maybe, they would not mind fooling with it.
You really cannot just write a program at
least from my experience. You cannot just write a
program and expect people to use it because there are
always going to be glitches. There is always a
disconnect between the programmer and the people in the
field who are using it.
We also recommend that OSHA consider
expanding the use of the 170 form to include fatal
injuries to one or more employees any serious injury or
illness and a serious exposure, an inpatient
hospitalization regardless of duration of three or more
employees.
The state of California has expanded their
170 form to include this kind of information and have
found it extremely helpful in tracking the kinds of
injuries and illnesses that are occurring on
construction sites, particularly the serious ones and
identifying those factors that might be prevented in
future types -- on future sites.
We also encourage OSHA to discuss if in fact
that they are going to redevelop this program or revise
this program to encourage OSHA to discuss the user
requirements with field staff to obtain their input and
buy-in at all phases of the revision process which
again is what DOE is doing. And it seems to have been
working quite well with them.
OSHA needs to institute processes to ensure
uniform use throughout the federal OSHA region so that
they get consistent data.
OSHA needs to institute uniform training on
entry of data for all individuals responsible for data
entry and coding.
And we understand that this program that the
compliance officer is actually responsible for entering
data as well as data entry clerks.
So there is also a difference in the kind of
knowledge about an accident or an incident between a
compliance officer who has been investigating that
incident versus the data entry clerk. So there needs
to be some training.
There needs to be a quality control program
that is instituted for data entry and for data
analysis.
There needs to be instituted a regular data
analysis of the data to ensure data quality,
consistency of the information, and timeliness of the
data reporting.
There needs to be a consistent update of the
170 forms even when an even-related fatality occurs
after the event.
And what we mean by that is that if an
individual gets injured on a work site, but then dies
some time after that incident related to that accident
or instant, it really needs to go back in the 170 form
because it is not -- right now, the 170 forms are not
being consistently updated with that information.
We recommend to OSHA to assist the workgroup,
the Data Collection Workgroup and the 170 Workgroup to
conduct information gathering activities to collect
information from the trades and construction workers to
expand the task on page 34 of the document.
And unfortunately, they do not have a copy of
that in there, in the packet.
But anyway, we have developed a document.
The workgroup has developed a document that explains
some of the -- a lot of the codes and a lot of the
information that goes into the 170 form. And this,
recommendation specifically deals with that.
And also, we need to get information from the
contractors on the kinds of tasks that are being
because the information right now is very spotty.
And finally, the workgroup recommends to OSHA
to assist the workgroup members to conduct field trips
to field offices. These are OSHA field offices to talk
to compliance officers and other appropriate field
staff about 170 use.
Thank you.
We have thought a lot about this form. And
it could be extremely useful given the kind of data
that is in it.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Do you have anything
you want to do with these recommendations?
DR. SWEENEY: I would like to put them before
the committee and recommend them.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Do I hear a motion
of such?
MR. BUCHET: I so move.
VOICE: Second.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Well, what do you
move?
MR. BUCHET: I thought you covered that.
DR. SWEENEY: We move that the recommendation
--
MR. BUCHET: We move that the recommendations
be adopted by ACCSH and forwarded to OSHA, the
recommendations included in this listing, 1 through 12.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Do I hear a second?
VOICE: Second.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Second. And the
motion is seconded.
Discussion on the form?
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Felipe.
MR. DEVORA: Marie and Michael, do you all
have -- yesterday, at the Diversity Workgroup, there
were some agenda issues that came up.
Is that addressed in the 170 as far as types
of injuries? Or is there any kind of bio-ethnicity or
any kind of boxes for those that we're tracking? This
just came to light in our discussion.
DR. SWEENEY: Let me look at it at the form.
MR. BUCHET: There should be. I'm not sure.
We have to look it.
As Marie was saying, the 170 form is a
computer screen that has a series of questions on it.
I don't know that it identifies --
DR. SWEENEY: Sex. Right.
MR. BUCHET: Ethnicity, I don't know. And
the supplemental data is about the causes and the event
that took place that created the injury. So we can
certainly recommend that the 170 form includes it.
DR. SWEENEY: It includes --
MR. BUCHET: Sex, age, and part of body
source of injury, human factor. It does not include
ethnicity.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Age was not --
DR. SWEENEY: Age is in there.
MR. BUCHET: Age is in there already.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Jane.
MS. WILLIAMS: In the 170 Workgroup, and we
are talking having a combined workgroup for these two
at some point in the future, those issues were
particularly discussed and are going to be in the next
working draft, maybe not the one that you are going to
be getting in a few moments.
But all these facts are being worked on now
by the 170 Workgroup in conjunction with staff, at
least most of them. There is two that are not. But
they will -- this document will be worked on with the
170 workgroup.
MR. SMITH: Mr. Chair.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Owen Smith. Owen,
go ahead.
MR. SMITH: Could I ask what the benefit of
this ethnicity and sex thing would give to the form?
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: You can answer.
VOICE: Maybe, that is he probably did not
read the sign or something like that.
MR. DEVORA: Exactly, that was on the
questions when we were talking about diversity in the
construction work force was the type of problems that
we run into and the type of problems we may need to
address.
And questions like you just mentioned
signage, cultural differences and, yes, as that relates
to construction and particularly construction safety,
those were issues that we were wondering statistically
had ever been tracked.
Ethnicity, type of injuries, is it more to a
certain type of worker than it is another type of
worker?
These are informational areas that we thought
would be important as to where we could focus our
information and training efforts and better pinpoint
that segment of the construction industry that was
having these problems.
MR. SMITH: Mr. Chairman, Owen Smith again.
Wouldn't language then be more appropriate?
MR. BUCHET: There are two workgroups that
are looking at this slightly non-parallel tracks, the
170 Workgroup and the Data Collection Workgroup. And I
know it has come up in the Data Collection, the
question of language.
What is the primary language on the job site?
The signage, the language of supervision. And what
language is the worker fluid in? That may get at that
particular issue.
One of the other reasons for including the
age and ethnicity that it allows this data to be
compared with nationally correct data.
And if we do not capture the data, we do not
capture as much as we can, then this becomes an
isolated pocket of information that we will have a hard
time comparing against other nationally accepted data
sets.
DR. SWEENEY: Mr. Chairman, I have one other
comment.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Okay.
DR. SWEENEY: I would suggest that the
workgroup is going to be meeting probably before the
next ACCSH meeting. And there will be a joint meeting.
And then, in addition to that, there will probably be
another meeting right before the ACCSH meeting.
We would really like your input on this. And
anything that you might think of in terms of, I'm not
sure ethnicity is the right word, but I think language
skills and other kinds of things.
And in fact, if one thinks about in terms of
ergonomics, that the whole term ergonomics, perhaps
body size might be something that we want to consider
in terms of ability to reach whatever height or
something like that.
So there are other things that we might want
to consider.
So please do not hesitate to send us a note,
an e-mail of those issues.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Any other comments
from the committee?
(No response.)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Based on the fact
that there is three workgroups that are intertwined in
a sense, Data Collection and 170 and in some parts the
Diversity, I might suggest to the motioner and the
seconder that they withdraw their motion and second and
return this to the workgroup.
We let the workgroup share information with
the other two workgroups. And maybe, at the December
meeting, we can come back with a more complete set of
recommendations that might include some of the concerns
that the meeting has discussed today.
Mr. Buchet.
MR. BUCHET: I will have to give my second is
withdrawn.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Mr. Smith.
MR. SMITH: That is --
MR. BUCHET: I would have to think about it.
(Laughter)
MR. BUCHET: I'll withdraw. I'll withdraw
the motion, Mr. Chairman.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you. We will
return the document to the workgroup and not discuss it
any further at this time. Thank you.
For those of you that came in late, make sure
you sign in outside there on the table. There is a sign-in sheet. And please make sure
everybody signs in so she has a record of your being
here. We appreciate it. Okay.
Cranes, Mr. Edginton.
ACCSH Workgroup Reports: (Continued)
Subpart N - Cranes
MR. EDGINTON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Yesterday, the Subpart N Workgroup for the second
follow-up meeting.
As with the first meeting, I was impressed by
the attendance. We had representatives from
manufacturers, owners, users, regulators. It was
really a good group. I think we had 15 or 16 people
there.
In spite of the fact that we had a major
meeting conflict, the ANSI authority was meeting in
Dallas yesterday. So many of the people that we have
otherwise had in addition to those that weren't here
yesterday were in Dallas.
What we did yesterday was, one, reviewed the
results of a survey that we had conducted amongst
ourselves in terms of taking a look at the subpart or
subject matter that would be appropriate under the
subpart and sort of looking at it in three ways, three
sets of criteria.
We looked at it as, one, what was the
importance of the subject? How great a hazard did the
subject represent? And thirdly, how easily could we
bring about the change?
From that review, we then flowed into a
discussion about how to give some better shape to our
work for the future. And our work for the future at
least for now is structured as follows.
One, all members of the group are going to be
submitting to me their notion of what the scope of the
subpart should be.
We had considerable discussion yesterday with
respect to the changes that have occurred in technology
over the last 20 or 25 years in terms of what is a
crane.
And we think it is very important that we
clearly identify what is and what is not a crane. So
scoping ideas will be coming into me by the 15th of
October. And I will be getting that back out to
people.
Secondly, as we begin to work through this,
we think definitions are going to be crucial. And so
an additional task for all of the workgroup members are
to again develop a list of terms which we think we may
need to include in the definition section.
And then, thirdly, we do not believe that we
are going to have reinvent the wheel on a lot of this.
There are awfully lot of good ideas out there, industry
practice that is already in place.
And we are doing -- or going to be conducting
a search of relevant reference materials which could be
useful. And again, all of that information is going to
be back into myself by the 15th of October.
I have committed to the workgroup to give it
a quick turnaround time to get it back out to everyone
by mid-November so that we are going to be well
prepared for a meeting in December.
Now having said that, I think what the
workgroup understands now after we have had a couple of
good meetings on this is this really is a large
undertaking.
And in the context of that, we think it is
very important that OSHA make sure that there is a
rapid of rechartering of ACCSH this next year so we can
continue to move quickly with this.
Because even if the workgroup is moving as
quickly as we can, again we think this is going to be a
very lengthy project.
And as a matter of fact, there was some
conversation yesterday afternoon with respect to
perhaps we may be recommending not just modifications
to Subpart N, but in fact there may be some subject
material under the subpart that warrants their own
subparts.
So we really got our hands full we think.
And again, we think that there is all the more reason
to make sure that we do not have a lengthy lapse in the
chartering.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you, Larry.
Discussion?
(No response.)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: I don't know whether
it is the seats that is limiting the discussion or
what.
Thank you, Larry.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: I think that it is
worth noting that the turnout workgroup sessions this
week has been exceptional. And the participation from
the people who came, the diversity and ideas and the
sharing of information was excellent.
Hopefully, we will continue to have that and
continue to develop good products from the attendance
of the workgroups.
If you have not attended a workgroup meeting,
you ought to come. They are doing some good things.
Okay.
We are 30 minutes ahead of schedule. Why
don't we go to Jane and Construction Certificate and
Paperwork Reduction Workgroup.
ACCSH Workgroup Reports: (Continued)
Construction Certification and
Paperwork Reduction
MS. WILLIAMS: Mr. Chairman, this workgroup
met on the 31st. And I will start with just a brief
background as to what our charge was.
Basically, at the last ACCSH meeting, Mr.
Jeffress asked ACCSH to evaluate and respond with
opinions or recommendations to delete OSHA requirements
for certain selected certificate documents that are
presently called for in various standards.
The issues that were presented basically
encompassed the fact that when the compliance officers
on site witnesses what he believes to be an unsafe act
by an employee, that it is presumed the employee has
not had adequate training or any training or if either
he has been provided -- he has forgotten his training
basically.
It would result in the fact that they issue
citations to the employer of the employee. And then,
it is up to someone to demonstrate what really
occurred, the effectiveness of training or whatever.
Because the documents are not maintained on
site --
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Wait a minute.
You know, if you do close the door to cut the
noise down, please. Thank you.
MS. WILLIAMS: Because the documents were not
readily available on site, this automatically --
automatically is not correct.
It resulted in most times in a certificate at
which time the employer had to demonstrate at a pre-hearing, informal hearing as to whether or not he was
in compliance, that he had in fact accomplished his
task and so forth which hopefully would result in
negating the citation.
The point was that are then these useless
documents? And that was one of the issues that we had
to be responsive to in our deliberations.
Our first task was to try to determine which
standards this affected. And we requested the
assistance of DOC to help us identify those issues.
In the meantime, we were provided a document.
We the co-chairs which is Mark Ayers and myself were
provided a document that had in fact been developed a
policy who was in the process of identifying these
items for consideration for deletion in response to
paperwork reduction.
And they had accounted for the items that we
needed to be responding to and the hours that they
would possibly reduce by their elimination.
It was also requested of the co-chairs to
meet with the policy in an informal meeting which we
did respond to and attended on August 4th. And we had
some very significant discussions as to these
documents.
And as a result of that and also our
discussions in this workgroup meeting, the conclusion
of the ACCSH co-chairs are that the certification
documents do represent best practices and employer
proactive compliance.
They help establish workers' mind set. We
believe that training is a vital part for their safety
awareness.
And we questioned that if they were
eliminated, would this send a message to workers or
employers that OSHA was not paying that much attention
to these issues.
We questioned would their elimination deter
the employer's opportunity to demonstrate proof of
training. You go into various levels of response.
That is the document typically that is
presented by the employer to show in fact that he did
affect training, that it was conducted at an
appropriate time, that the subject matter was delivered
by a competent person qualified to do so.
The most significant concern though
throughout the entire discussions came back to the
worker.
We truly believe that without this level of
documentation or proof, that there is a good
possibility that maybe some training exposures would
not occur and therefore would possibly expose the
worker to some -- or to the lack of knowledge and
awareness of the situations that he was going to be or
she was going to be exposed to.
We did acknowledge that are very much aware
that employers in many cases are over responding with
this type of document.
And we attributed that primarily to the legal
system. There is the feeling that they have to dot
every I.
And they really truly add more than three
specific areas that OSHA is asking to be identified in
the training certification record: date, who did it,
and primarily what was covered.
But we did not feel that that warranted at
all any elimination process. So we came up with the
following recommendations.
OSHA develop an issue in acknowledgement form
to be consistent with all standards. We are not
recommending reduction. We are recommending an
increase.
We see this as a very good idea in that one
document that could be used throughout various
standards would certainly give a guideline to am
employer as to what is expected so he would not have to
be choosing his own type of document content and
overkill and therefore burdening him own self with the
paper that he is creating maybe unnecessarily.
We would like to have OSHA to its compliance
personnel to every employees and employers when unsafe
acts are observed if in fact they are permitted to do
so by agreements or by other conditions that might be
on the job site, not to continually presume that the
observance of an unsafe act was a lack of training or
education process by the employer, that the ACCSH
chairs refer to the crane Subpart N Workgroup, the
referred crane certification documents that are being
proposed to be eliminated.
I spoke with the co-chair yesterday on that
issue. He was very receptive to receiving that. And
that is going to be part of his task in the overall
review of all of those type of documents contained in
that Subpart N. And I will be doing that within one
week.
That the proposed certification of record
reduction for explosive and cadmium which are two
issues in that report continue if the elimination
process involves rulemaking and a notification process
to stakeholders for comment.
Those two items are felt to be covered by
other agencies and other standard requirements. But we
really did not have the detail at that point in time of
our meeting yesterday to have that as a total opinion.
So I feel that with it being referred to the
stakeholder for additional comment that these comments
certainly could be picked up in that manner.
That OSHA require in the future revised or
new standards, training acknowledgement forms to
demonstrate worker awareness and employee compliance
with minimum paper burden.
The Certification Workgroup chairs continue
to work with policy and offer our input. In our
discussions, it was very evident that we felt that some
construction logic into their decisionmaking process
could be very beneficial and save a great deal of time
both on their efforts and ours when it comes to comment
period.
That the designated federal official respond
to ACCSH at the next ACCSH meeting with OSHA's
acceptance of our actions and these recommendations.
And I will have those in a prepared typed
format very quickly. I did not have access to
equipment after 5 o'clock last night.
The ACCSH members of the workgroup do not
support the elimination of the certification of records
as proposed, except for the two areas that I mentioned
which was the cadmium and the explosive issues as long
as there are additional considerations regarding those
two issues.
Mr. Chairman, that ends this report.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you, Jane.
MR. SMITH: Mr. Chairman.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Owen.
MR. SMITH: Yes. The problem that I have
with some of these certifications, especially the lead
one has to do with the cost.
In southern California where I'm from and the
union with which I work takes in that area from about
halfway between Bakersfield and Fresno, south to the
Mexican border and from Nevada at New Mexico over to
the OSHA.
And we had as a matter of practice required
that all of our guys on the out-of-work list take lead
training. And there is a certificate.
The problem is that the states, and I
understand a lot of them done it, in order to get that
certificate, there is a $100 fee.
And we were picking that up out of our
promotional funds. But, you know, after I ruled a few
of those $17,000 checks, it became a problem.
So now, you have a guy that has the training.
And he does not have a certificate unless he pays for
it because we don't want to pay for it.
It is not that we are opposed to the
training, but we are opposed to the fees. And we would
like to find some kind of way so that we still deliver
the training. And we do not mind to require a take it.
But in order to get that certificate, the
states issue them. And in California, it costs $100.
Now, with respect to the first-aid training,
I don't think there is a cost on that. But when I was
with the Commission of Industrial -- for
Industrialization With Apprenticeship, we put in a
requirement that every apprenticeship that graduates
has to have the first-aid training. And I think we
renew it on a yearly basis.
That was not a big deal, but this other one
is really a problem. And I understand in Illinois,
about $100 for that lead certificate also.
If you guys could find a way around the fee,
it would be a good deal.
MS. WILLIAMS: Stew.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Jane.
MS. WILLIAMS: The documents -- and I think
this is where we get into one of the concerns. There
is a misrepresentation of what OSHA is requiring versus
interpretations of training and versus employers
assuming they have to substantiate information.
The list of items that was being proposed by
policy in fact, I do not -- I am looking at it very
briefly here. It does not reference lead or these
other issues.
And I can provide copies of this as an
attachment to my report which you will be getting
hopefully tomorrow.
It goes into crane barracks, underground
construction, air quality construction, posting
requirements, concrete and masonry, construction crane
and derrick annual inspection, construction crane
rating limitations, electrical standards, design of
cave-in protection systems, crane and derrick
suspension personal platform, cadmium training
certificate record, construction of fall protection
record certification, modification of area listing
construction blasting, transport of explosives,
construction records test for personal hoists, crawler,
truck, locomotives, rigging, steel erection, R 750
through 761, and roofing.
So these additional requirements, like Owen
is referring to with lead, are not really specific
certification records that are proposed to be
eliminated and the attributed man hours according to
those issues.
From the list I just read, you can see Larry
is getting a bunch of them into his consideration.
So again, on the ones that we were
specifically charged to address, we felt they were too
important a stimuli to employers to mandate the
training and have a follow-up and an accountability for
it.
MR. SMITH: Well, let me ask you this. With
respect to the organized sector and the idea that we
may provide the training and keep the records in a
centralized place, and certainly this would allow the
employer not have to deal with a lot of paper work
because we can pay other people to do that, do you see
it somewhere that there could be a centralized place
where all those records could be kept and the employer
himself would not have to have them in his files and he
can just get a copy of whatever might be required from
this other place?
MS. WILLIAMS: It would be great. I do not
know that that could be accomplished.
We also were leaning towards issues like the
OTI, the 10 hour. We know that there exists records of
everybody who has accomplished.
And that can be certainly accessible to all
employers or at least to the employee who has
accomplished the 10-hour training.
And we got into some of those levels of
discussion, but we vacated those discussions because
they were not part of our task for this process.
However, those issues are going to be
referred to. Other workgroups are looking at those
issues.
MR. SMITH: I would continue at the next
meeting.
(Laughter)
MS. WILLIAMS: Mr. Chairman, being as I do
have to type this report, I will try to do so with Mr.
Swanson's assistance today for equipment.
Would it be appropriate that my
recommendations be discussed tomorrow when the
committee has an opportunity to have them in front of
them?
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Yes. We will defer
any motions or recommendations from the workgroup until
tomorrow.
MR. EDGINTON: Mr. Chairman.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Larry.
MR. EDGINTON: Jane, could you tell me some
more about what your thinking is on this training,
training acknowledgment form I think you mentioned.
MS. WILLIAMS: Yes. It will be a
recommendation. We truly did recognize the burden and
the employers receiving this burden of paper being a
requirement of OSHA. And that is who he will discuss
these issues with.
When in fact it is typically demonstrated
that a lot of these additional requirements are
employer generated to assure he is covering every base
he needs to because he does not truly know what is
being required and what often exists.
Our thought that we were kicking around was
that if the agency would come out with an appropriate
example forum that could be consistent throughout all
the standards and contain the actual information that
would demonstrate that that might save other employees
a lot of time in reinventing wheels and adding
unnecessary burden hours to paper, help clear
understanding.
So that is a recommendation to be pursued if
in fact it has merit or considerations by the
committee.
MR. EDGINTON: I am not -- and bear with me
because I am slow with this stuff sometimes.
MS. WILLIAMS: Sure.
MR. EDGINTON: But I am still not sure what
we are talking about there. Are we talking about an
employer acknowledging a training obligation that they
have?
Or are we talking about workers acknowledging
that they have received training?
I mean, I am not clear what we are talking
about there.
MS. WILLIAMS: We are talking or what has
been suggested -- and again, it needs an individual
process, a thought process to go into it.
But the initial concept was that we were
looking at a simplified document that the employer
would use to demonstrate that he has met his
obligations for appropriate training to protect the
worker prior to his exposure.
MR. EDGINTON: Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Any other
discussion?
(No response.)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: If not, Jane will
move your report until tomorrow.
MS. WILLIAMS: Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: And your motions
until tomorrow.
It's 10:15. Why don't we take a 15-minute
break and come back at 10:30 to continue?
(Whereupon, at 10:15 a.m., the meeting was
recessed.)
AFTER RECESS
10:33 a.m.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: For the record, Mr.
Cloutier's proxy is myself. Mr. Masterson's proxy vote
is Felipe Devora. And Mr. Cooper's proxy vote is Larry
Edginton. Mr. Ayers vote is not here and will not
vote.
For those of you who have this document here
with you, if you will get it out. Hopefully, you all
brought it and are studying it and learning what we are
going to be doing from now on.
Page 2, it talks about, about two-thirds of
the way down the page, about workgroup reports.
And I'll read this paragraph so that
everybody understands how the document shuffle works up
here. "A workgroup report is a draft report at the
time of its presentation to the ACCSH Committee. It is
not distributed to the public. The workgroup chair
will incorporate if the ACCSH Committee adopts the
workgroup report any amendments or revisions except
that at the time the report's review and the final
document forwarded to the DFO" which is Bruce. "The
committee chair will at that time announce the
distribution method for the report or the documentation
once it has been approved by ACCSH and forwarded onto
OSHA."
So hopefully, that clears up some of the
questions that are being asked.
Jane.
MS. WILLIAMS: Stew, do we know that -- Mr.
Swanson I am sure can respond to this. Has the final
document that included all the other comments from the
adoption process been distributed to the members?
MR. SWANSON: No, it has not been distributed
to my knowledge.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: We are still working
from the draft amended report. And based on the
amended report, we are implementing it today. And once
we get it all typed up and pretty, we will pass it out.
You all will have a copy. So please refer to
your copy at the last meeting.
MS. WILLIAMS: Stew, I requested of Mr.
Swanson to see if that document could be distributed at
this meeting by its conclusion of the meeting.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Oh, fine.
MS. WILLIAMS: If possible.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Super.
Bruce, do you want my mark-up?
MS. WILLIAMS: He has the one with changes.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: All right. That's
fine. Okay.
Let's start with OSHA Form 170, Jane.
ACCSH Workgroup Reports: (Continued)
OSHA Form 170
MS. WILLIAMS: The meeting was conducted by
myself. Mr. Cooper was unable to attend. Workgroup
participants included Stew, Ken Hoffner, Gerald Reidy,
OSHA Directorate of Construction staff, John Franklin
and Camille Villanova.
And I would like to extend my appreciation to
Camille for all the superb support that she has given
me in this meeting that we had.
Mr. Cooper's summary of the 170 Workgroup of
June 6th was in fact reviewed with the participants so
that we would know where in fact we were at this point
in time.
The documents that were given to us by Data
Collection prior to has been provided to the ACCSH
members.
This is a working document, a continual
document which is why it is not being made available.
All the comments that we had received to date
from the operating engineers as well as data collection
as well as multiple other sources were incorporated in
the draft document that has been circulated to the
members and was our working document for the next phase
of our discussions that we had yesterday.
The OSHA 170 and the construction 170 would
be a useful tool for the construction community if the
data collected on the form was adequate and accurate.
The workgroup recognized that OSHA cannot
target areas for inspection, develop special emphasis
programs nor develop standards without additional
information collected about the construction projects.
The current 170 in construction, the 170
forms in use do need modification. The modifications
are OSHA must use from this form to collect information
about all construction fatalities, catastrophes,
serious injuries, and other hazards.
The form must be user friendly and designed
in a manner so that the picture of the construction
site is created by the order of information collected
on the form.
OSHA must install computer edits so that
there will be an automatic by the computer to ensure
that the information is correct.
The title of the Construction Accident
Information 170 form must be changed to Construction
Investigation Summary Form 170 for a broader
application.
The fields and all categories must be
expanded and construction categories representing the
13 construction trades established.
For instance, more information about the
project and contract cost, type of construction, type
of work being done at the time has to be collected.
And I might add a note, the subsequent
conversations regarding the 13 construction trades, we
may have to look at adding additional language or
making that more work product oriented to pick up other
persons who are in the construction areas that may be
responsive to these particular 13 categories.
The annotated OSHA 170 Construction Accident
Information document was evaluated. The annotations
were in response to Mr. Cooper's request to place the
information or codes below the data line and to include
all comments from the June 170 and Data Collection
which in fact we did.
This document again that was passed out is
the paper format, 37 pages long. And that is our
working document.
The OSHA 170 Construction Accident
Information codes were addressed first. Several
modifications, changes, additions were made to the
existing data collection points and will appear on the
ACCSH 170 Workgroup working document that is going to
be entitled Number 2.
This document will be available prior to the
next workgroup meeting. I do want to ensure that Mr.
Cooper can review this document before it is issued at
that workgroup meeting.
A summary of what we were doing to date, the
addition of the scope section was reviewed. And the
group agreed to continue the discussions with the
construction SIC and the North American Industry
Classification System Codes where available.
And input was received from the Data
Collection Workgroup on that. And as you already
heard, they have additional comments that we will work
together with.
The workgroup agreed that the combination of
the type of construction and end use of construction
site would provide information about the type of the
project being affected.
The recommendation is that when an end-use
type of construction site is selected that a drop-down
screen with a type of construction would appear.
The workgroup recommends that these fields
appear one after another. If a building site, number
of stories would be if a building structure height,
distance to fall, height above ground or floor of the
worker when the fall occurred.
We are trying to find out cause and affect
and exactly to lead more of a picture as to what was
truly happening that was involved with the injury.
The workgroup recommends the expansion of the
project cost field and the addition of contract cost
field with the same dollar values.
The workgroup recommends the addition of the
following information to collect employment and
training information that we felt would be vital to
contribute the whole fixture as to the cause of the
injury at that time.
The workgroup would like a joint meeting with
the Data Collection Workgroup to discuss commonly used
codes of the data fields, causes of accidents,
operation being performed by the victim, and
contributing factors.
The workgroup would like this joint meeting
to occur prior to the December, 1999 ACCSH meeting.
Mr. Chairman, there is several
recommendations in here, but I feel that these are
recommendations for the working activities of the
committee more so than the approval of the ACCSH
Committee at this point in time.
So I would suggest that this remain a working
document of the workgroup.
And as far as the meetings, I think that I
would feel most comfortable in passing that by Mr.
Cooper to be sure he is in agreement with that approach
and the work of the committee to date. And we could
come up with a date that he would be accessible for
that meeting and then serve notice accordingly.
That concludes that report, sir.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: I am in agreement.
We will leave it as a workgroup document.
MS. WILLIAMS: Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Discussion by the
committee on the report?
MR. EDGINTON: Mr. Chairman.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Larry.
MR. EDGINTON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I
guess this thought first crossed my mind as I was
listening to the Data Collection report. And I find
myself revisiting this thought as I listened to your's,
Jane, is that the amount of information that we are
proposing to capture is a significant amount of
information.
And of course, what is paramount to the
information being of value is that it is true and
accurate information.
So I'm wondering if your group and Steve's
group have thought about this is we talk about the
formatting on the screen and pull-down screens and one
thing or another, but I am also wondering if we are
thinking about somewhere that has some level of
intelligence to it where it can begin to recognize
whether or not there are human errors occurring in the
data input.
For example, if you have someone classified
as a painter and the injury occurred as a result of
operating a backhoe, you know, just hypothetically, the
question might be, when you enter that operating a
backhoe, you are sure they are a painter.
I mean, I don't know. But my thought is that
there could be value to doing that.
MS. WILLIAMS: Yes, we did discuss that,
Larry. And we are trying to attempt to achieve
compatible data entry to be able to present that level
of a fixture because we are concerned as with falls
that it is not the work activity.
It could be as a result of some other
activity causing that condition that is really making a
misrepresentation of the actual cause of the injury
versus the correction actions that would be needed to
do that.
As far as the computer software system, we
are going to be at the mercy of what would be available
to accomplish all of this.
So we are assuming from our discussions and
what we have available that it would be able to support
the information levels that we are going to recommend
for the form to reflect.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Owen is first up.
MR. SMITH: I just had a question about the
occupational codes and the categories.
MS. WILLIAMS: Yes.
MR. SMITH: And I notice it says for state
use only, was that for the federal, state, or is it the
50 states?
And I was also wondering if it is possible to
find out whether or not these are the same categories
that are being used maybe the insurance companies?
MS. WILLIAMS: I want --
DR. SWEENEY: Excuse me. I have a response
for that.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Marie.
DR. SWEENEY: The codes that you are looking
at right now which are on page -- it is on the top, on
top.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Let me get it here.
MS. WILLIAMS: Yes. What page is that
because there is lots of codes?
These are occupational codes.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Page 7.
MS. WILLIAMS: These come from the census,
from the Bureau of Census and the 1980 census, actually
they are from. And they were adopted by the OWPC which
is the Office of Worker's Compensation for the federal
government. These are old codes.
We did talk about insurance companies trying
hard to get that information out from them. But whet
we have been talking about in the Data Collection Group
is having a consistent set of codes between if Census
is using it or BLS is using it or some other, the negs.
We would like to have something that is
compatible and comparable among the groups. This is
just being used right now.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Michael.
MR. BUCHET: This cross-talk is going to be
confusing.
But going back to what Larry Edginton was
asking about the integrity of the data, in the Data
Collection Workgroup we suggested to OSHA -- or we will
suggest it, that OSHA talk to the Department of Energy
because they have been doing coding with logic.
We had a BLS representative attend a number
of meetings. And they coding with logic. So that if
you put information in one field in the form, there is
an internal logic in the computer that says you cannot
put some other piece of information in there.
In the particular example. that was given, a
painter operating a backhoe, there would be an ability
to override the logic if in fact the painter was
temporarily assigned to operate a backhoe and then an
accident resulted in not being trained to operate that.
And one of the things about construction is
the assignment of a variety of people to a variety of
types of jobs which will make some of these logic
processes difficult.
And there may have to be overrides for any
number of them if something that appears to be
illogical has taken place, like the painter operating a
backhoe.
But that is being worked on. And we hope to
bring this all more closely together when we have our
compliant workgroup meetings.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Jane.
MS. WILLIAMS: Stew, I have made notes of the
DOC conversations to pass that on to Mr. Cooper. And I
do think that that next meeting would solve a lot of
these issues.
In regards also to those codes, it is my
understanding they are basically not existent now
unless someone has that old book and was able to scan
these in which I think was done by a lot of tedious
effort.
And lastly, I did not and wish to acknowledge
Alan Hoskin of the National Safety Council for his
support not only to Data Collection, but to the 170 by
providing us the ANSI 162 and 165 which has very
beneficial for us to have in these deliberations.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: I have a question on
page 33 of 37.
MS. WILLIAMS: Okay.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: If you read the bold
print up at the top, it says workers recommended that
this field be changed to task of affected employee.
MS. WILLIAMS: Yes.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: And if you look down
there, basically you have drafted this or structured
this in the closed shop format. And you have to
remember that when OSHA goes and do the 170 form, they
do both open and closed shops.
So in an open shop format, you have a mixture
of capabilities and people who go in and out of one
task to another task. And they are not specifically
assigned.
And I think Larry's example of the painter
and the forklift operator may be a -- or a backhoe
operator may be more true than a lot of people realize.
So I think we need to look at this from more
of a generic perspective than a secular perspective.
Michael.
MR. BUCHET: Mr. Chairman, again, in Data
Collection, we will have to combine these two groups.
They brought up the same top that in whatever coding
system we eventually recommend there has to be the
ability to cover the open shop as well as the closed
shop or to find something that describes a task, not
particularly a jurisdiction.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Yes, yes, task
oriented.
MS. WILLIAMS: That was discussed. And
definitely, it is going to be passed on as a
consideration.
And I might add, being as Mr. Cooper is not
here, he is responsible for everything I have said on
this.
(Laughter)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: That is duly noted
in my report.
MS. WILLIAMS: I am learning.
DR. SWEENEY: Mr. Chairman.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Marie.
DR. SWEENEY: One other thing about these
codes and the tasks, that was one of the I guess
working recommendation for the Data Collection
Workgroup is that there needs to be some facilitation
with OSHA so that the ACCSH members can go out and
either use focus groups or other forms of survey
methods to make sure that we in fact have most of the
tasks that are done on site.
And there are going to be a lot of them, but
I think that there are some general tasks that are not
included in on page 33 or on page 22 that need to be
captured.
And so maybe if we -- we are going to have to
do some field work and some ground work to get the
information that we think is appropriate for the 170
form.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Okay.
DR. SWEENEY: Yes.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Anybody else?
(No response.)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you, Jane.
A couple of things for the committee. Bruce
had sent out to us prior to the meeting this document
talks about revisions for certain construction
standards. And he wanted us to comment and mark it up.
Has everybody on the committee brought theirs
with them and have all marked it up and are ready to
discuss it? All right.
This will be discussed in the 1:30 time slot
on your agenda which is Technical Changes to Existing
Standards. I just wanted to make sure that we are all
prepared for that.
Secondly, at the last meeting, we discussed
taking ACCSH out to the field and to where the work is
rather than having all of our meetings inside the
beltway.
And Assistant Secretary Jeffress approved us
having the February meeting in conjunction with the
Chicago Land Safety Council conference, so to speak or
seminar in Chicago.
Michael, would you like to say a few words
about that so we all plan that properly on our
calendar?
MR. BUCHET: Yes, I would like to.
ACCSH Committee February Field Meeting
MR. BUCHET: Just to preface this, the
Construction Safety Council, the Chicago Construction
Safety Council, and the National Safety Council are not
the same organization.
So I am plugging the Construction Safety
Council because they are members of the National Safety
Council's Construction Division. Crystal clear now.
Tom Broderick of the Construction Safety
Council has been doing a regional construction safety
conference annually for 10 years.
It has grown substantially. And last year,
they moved out the Holiday Inn hotel close to O'Hare
Airport into the Rosemont Convention Center.
They drew 1,000 people. It is no longer
regional. We have people coming from Europe. We have
people coming from Hawaii and all over the United
States.
They have 100 and some plus exhibiters. And
it is a super, condensed, 3-day conference and expo.
The exhibit is two days and the conference goes three
days.
The sessions that are presented at the
conference are drawn from people in the industry. You
will meet contractors.
You will meet the insurers. You will meet
the risk people. You will meet the trainers who are
actually on the job doing the work of making
construction safer.
And we extended an invitation to ACCSH. And
I am glad to hear that it has been accepted. The
conference runs the 15th, 16th, and 17th of February.
It will be at the Rosemont Convention Center.
Rosemont, for those of you who do not know,
is the town that surrounds part of O'Hare Airport. It
makes it easy to get to once you get to O'Hare. And in
February, that can be a problem.
(Laughter)
MR. BUCHET: Bruce Swanson's staff is working
with Tom Broderick's staff to figure out what days the
workgroups will meet and what day the ACCSH meeting
will meet. And I do not know how far that has gotten.
Is Bruce here?
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Yes.
MR. BUCHET: I think he just walked out.
So can we defer to them to add any
information that they can?
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Yes.
MR. BUCHET: I encourage everybody to come.
Loosely, we talked about doing a carbon copy of what we
do here. So we will have workgroup meetings. And
then, we will have the ACCSH meeting, a similar format.
And then, we hope that you will attend the
conference and take advantage of the exhibits and
listen to those sessions.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: I think this is an
excellent opportunity to draw upon the construction
industry who are gathering in one place where we can
get some feedback from things we are doing and some of
the workgroup items that they are doing.
And so mark that on your calendar, committee.
That is the February meeting.
Also, at the last meeting, if you all
remember we preplanned the December meeting. And the
dates are 7, 8, 9, 10 December just in case any of you
forgot. All right.
We will now go to Diversified Workforce
Initiatives, Jane and Larry.
MS. WILLIAMS: That is why I did not get
anything typed yesterday.
ACCSH Workgroup Reports: (Continued)
Diversified Workforce Initiatives
MS. WILLIAMS: This workgroup met on
September 1st and consisted of co-chairs Larry Edginton
and myself.
The DOC liaisons were Jill Jones and Nancy
Livesay, ACCSH Felipe Devora, NIOSH representative
Linda Goldenhar, and several interested stakeholders
were there to help with these discussions.
The initial public workgroup conducted
primarily to develop a focus, we were not sure where
this committee and where this workgroup had to go. It
came as a result of several items which I have tried to
summarize for you to give you an idea of what we are
doing here.
The open items are the health and safety for
women in construction report which was presented to
ACCSH in March of 1997. It was reviewed.
And this group will respond to any open item
that was contained in that report. We reviewed each of
those items. And they were captured.
The updated final HAZWIC report will be
available by a link on the ACCSH web site when in fact
that web site is operational which should be any time.
The work of this group will concentrate on
the issues of a diverse work force, not specifically
women's issues that was the focus of the HAZWIC report.
We are very much aware that there will be
gender items that certainly will come into the
conversations when we discuss these issues.
Basically, the work force has drastically
changed from its original makeup. Multi-language,
size, shape, race, background, color, perceptions were
all discussed. And all of these prominent in the
industry today.
So the focus of this workgroup is truly to
demonstrate how all workers of today can be safely
protected in their work environments.
The topics at this time include, but
certainly will not be limited to communications,
effective language and training issues, PVE appropriate
and physical fit, training, selection, age, the
diversity of youth, displaced mature workers who are
entering the work force because we have so many jobs
available to those persons at this time, complacency of
some workers.
Health, sanitation, and accessibility will be
a key focus to assure that we push. As you well know,
the sanitation issue was a result of another workgroup.
And we would intend to keep attentions to the process
of that.
Interface with the Musculoskeletal Workgroup
to produce worker size and physique, recommended
practices for activity such as lifting.
Reproductive hazards that need to be
identified that could result from construction
activities.
Data collection and analysis.
Recommendations and follow-up on existing
data availability on request to facilitate new data.
So again, you can see this workgroup working with Data
Collection.
Intervention strategies targeting employees,
associations to deliver the product of the workgroup.
Recommendations to OSHA for more effective
enforcement of existing standards.
And participation in safe and environmental
awareness activities that may not be captured in
specific regulatory language at this time. And
needless to say, public work forums are being
projected.
The work of the HAZWIC Workgroup is
acknowledged as a major stepping stone for this issue.
Its resulting publications, such as this
brochure that will be soon be available to you, is
excellent. It is entitled "Providing Safety and Health
for Protection of a Diverse Construction Workforce:
Ideas" was totally targeted for the women's issues.
And it is very excellent. And I am sure there is much
use that can be derived from it.
The co-chairs at this time cannot offer a
timeline for the achievement of what we are trying to
endeavor to do. A meeting will be held prior to the
December ACCSH meeting.
Possibly one and another meeting, but that
all needs to be confirmed at this point in time. And,
of course, we would observe the appropriate
notification criteria that has been established for
such workgroups.
Larry, do you have any comments you would
like to add?
MR. EDGINTON: Perhaps, just in summary form.
MR. EDGINTON: Jane gave us a whole lot of
detail of what was discussed yesterday, but I think it
was the consensus of the group yesterday that our
activities might sort of fall into three broad areas.
One, there may be activities associated with
regulatory actions. There may be activities associated
with what I would characterize as providing assistance
and information perhaps much akin to what the MSDS
Workgroup has been doing.
And then, lastly, one of the things we talked
about a great deal yesterday is there is much to be
learned, so given that you may see a range of
recommendations coming out with respect to additional
research which is needed.
MS. WILLIAMS: Mr. Chairman, at this point, I
think it is a working process. And I do not have any
specific recommendations for the committee to act upon
at this time.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Very good. Thank
you very much.
Questions, comments?
Michael.
MR. BUCHET: Sometimes, I get the impression
that we think that diversity in the work force is a new
issue in this country.
A short stroll down our history of
construction will tell us that the Erie Canal was dug
by people who probably behaved differently and spoke
slightly than the supervisors on the job.
The big dams in the west and the railroads
were built by people who looked, acted, sounded
entirely differently than the employers who were hiring
them to do the jobs.
And somehow, we managed to struggle through
and get it done with incalculable loss of life and harm
to the workers.
And I think it would be instructive for the
workgroup and OSHA maybe to look back on how some of
these ideas were handled in those days and try not to
repeat the same mistakes.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you, Michael.
Any discussion?
(No response.)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you, Jane.
The next workgroup presentation is Fall
Protection, Felipe.
ACCSH Workgroup Reports: (Continued)
Fall Protection
MR. DEVORA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am
co-chairing the Fall Protection Workgroup along with
Bob Masterson. And Bob has been key in chairing this
as I was working on some other issues.
But yesterday, I chaired the workgroup as Bob
was not able to be here. And one thing I did notice, I
was very pleased as to the participation that we had.
We had about 15 or 16 folks in there and
diverse groups of the construction industry which I
would like to comment here is invaluable to this
committee and also to the workgroups, especially with
an issue like fall protection and the 10 issues that
OSHA has asked us to respond to.
In this workgroup, what we are trying to do
is we are responding to OSHA's -- or trying to
assimilate some information to help OSHA in their
request for the notice of the proposed rulemaking that
came out in July in the Federal Register, July 14th on
fall protection.
This notice kind of begins, OSHA's evaluation
of the fall protection practices and also evaluation of
the STD 3.01(a) as it is now.
And with regards to 3.1 is the feasibility
issues about the rule raised by the residential
construction industry on December 8th, 1995. OSHA
issued the interim fall protection procedures for
residential construction.
OSHA's instruction in STD 3.1 that differ
from those in the rule on June 18th, 1999, OSHA issued
a plain language rewrite of a STD 3.1 and the bottom
line is now known as STD 3-0.1(a). So they are all
sort of the same animal.
This permits employers in residential
construction to use specific work practices instead of
conventional fall protection systems for foundation
work, some insulation work on roofs and in attics, and
some residential roofing work.
That is only one of the 10 issues. The other
10 issues that came in a request for information, and I
will just review briefly with you.
That is number one is whether or not there is
a need for alternative procedures for residential
construction.
The second issue, whether there is a need for
alternative procedures for pre-cast concrete erection.
Number three is whether there is a need for
alternative procedures for post-frame construction.
Number four, whether there is a need for
alternative procedures for vendors delivering
construction materials.
Number five, whether there is alternative
methods for fall protection while climbing reinforcing
steel.
And number six, what criteria should be used
for restraint systems.
Number seven, whether the strength
requirements for anchorage points for fall protection
arrest systems, position device systems, and restraint
systems should be changed.
Number eight, whether the standard's prompt
rescue requirements should be raised -- revised. I'm
sorry.
And number nine, whether there is a need for
alternative procedures for drilling shafts.
And number 10, whether body belts
incorporated into the full body harness provide
appropriate employee protection for a fall.
As you can see, there is 10 very diverse
issues. And as I said earlier, in this workgroup there
was a good variety of folks that are familiar with
different parts of these issues and obviously more
expertise than others in these areas.
What we are encouraging you to do is respond
to any of these 10 issues. Whether through the Federal
Register, the information is there on how to do it.
One of the things that our workgroup did do
and some of you -- well, the folks that there were at
the group yesterday have this.
We extrapolated the issues on a one-page
questionnaire format. And I think I still have a few
copies of it.
But what we have done -- the reason we have
done that is basically we have extrapolated the -- we
put the issue and then the questions below it.
So if there is an area of expertise that you
are really interested in one of those issues, you know,
you do not necessarily have to wade through all of it.
You can just take the one page that concentrates on
that issue. And we will solicit your comment.
The goal of this workgroup, as I see it, is
to just provide another vehicle for comment to OSHA.
And then, we will bring these consensus type,
whatever you call it comments or instructions from
hopefully folks in the areas that are affected by the
10 issues.
And we can come up with some sort of
recommendation for ACCSH on how ACCSH can tell OSHA,
you know, based on the information that we received,
this is what we think you should do or where we can go
with this.
So there again, it is a workgroup in
progress. We encourage you to review these areas that
they are asking for comments on.
This is your chance to talk about some of
these issues in this form. And as I understand it, it
is the first road, the first step in reviewing or
revising any of these issues under the fall protection
standard.
The one that jumped out the most to me
yesterday and some of the questions are sort of
superfluous, you know, that we should we define prompt?
Well, those questions, I do not know how to answer.
But there are some thought provoking
questions like, would it be appropriate for OSHA to
allow the use of alternative fall protection procedures
on portions of a commercial structure that meet the
definition of residential construction?
I think those are the kind of questions that
we are wrestling with.
The residential folks, we talked about the
perception that residential folks are exempt. There
was even some comments that, you know, inspectors have
gone on job sites and the residential folks have told
them, well, we thought we were exempt from all the fall
protection standards.
It is not an exemption, but it is -- they
like it. So it is a good thing for them.
So having said that, the 90-day comment
period I think will be addressed tomorrow by Mr.
Jeffress.
There was a letter sent to Mr. Jeffress
requesting an extension. And I think he will speak to
that tomorrow.
We have no action at this time on the
committee, other than keep everyone posted and get the
information out.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you, Felipe.
Bruce.
MR. SWANSON: Yes. Just a quick comment.
And I heard Felipe already say this. I would like to
underline it. The work of the ACCSH workgroups and
this committee is great, is being welcomed by OSHA.
In no way, shape or form is it a substitute
for that official record. Those of you with feelings
or anything to add on any of these items, please
respond as outlined in the Federal Register and get
your opinions on the official record so you can weigh
in. This is an addendum to that system.
Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Felipe, as he
indicated, has some extra copies of the questionnaire.
And the Chair will be happy to distribute those to any
of you who want them, other than the committee that got
them yesterday. So see Felipe at lunch or at the
break. He will share them with you until they run out.
MR. SWANSON: Felipe also should not pick on
the residential housing industry. They are general
contractors in Texas that also think they are exempt
from OSHA.
(Laughter)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you, Felipe.
The workgroup is still continuing. And basically, the
questionnaire is a research gathering tool.
So any of you that want to weigh in on this,
please do so.
Also, if any of the public would like to
address ACCSH at the end of today or at the end of
tomorrow, please give me your name and what you would
like to talk about. And I will call you at the
appropriate time.
Thank you.
Next is Silica. Marie.
ACCSH Workgroup Reports: (Continued)
Silica
DR. SWEENEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I am
trying to close out this workgroup.
Larry Edginton and I were asked to chair a
workgroup to provide information information to the
Solicitor regarding five questions that they had.
Most of these questions dealt with the issue
of assessment of exposure to silica on construction
sites, specifically sample collection, when they were
collected, and how they were collected, the sample
analysis and methods and who was contracted to do the
analysis or actually who the construction company did
use by analysis.
Larry and I put our heads together. We
queried all the members of the committee. We in fact
asked anybody who participated in any of the meetings
to send us information.
Larry queried his labor and other
organizations. And I went to NIOSH and asked our folks
who as dealing with the silica issue, if they had
additional information from their contacts.
We also talked to folks from the trade
association and asked for their input as well.
In May, we assembled all the responses that
we had received, developed a memo, a letter, and sent
it to the acting chair.
We request that the memo be forwarded to
OSHA. I don't have a copy of that memo with me.
Sorry.
Given that we have fulfilled the request and
hopefully it has been forwarded to OSHA, we would like
to formally recommend that the workgroup be disbanded.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: The motion to
disband the Silica Workgroup, is there a second?
MR. BUCHET: Second.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Second.
Discussion?
(Pause)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Hold on a minute so
I can see if I have the document.
MS. NASH: Can I speak?
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Sure. Go ahead.
The Solicitor's Office is always welcome. The
Solicitor's Office is able. And speak away.
MS. NASH: I understand that this particular
workgroup was limited to issues concerning sample
analysis of silica on construction work sites.
As you probably are aware, I believe this
afternoon, you are going to be getting a presentation
from Paul Bolon on the work that OSHA is doing right
now in developing a silica proposal, a proposal for a
comprehensive standard for silica.
And I am sure that at some time in the near
future you will want to convene another workgroup that
will consider issues relating to the development of a
comprehensive silica standard.
So I just wanted to clarify.
Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you.
Based on that input -- just a second.
(Pause)
MR. BUCHET: Are you asking us to withdraw
the motion?
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: I would hope you
would be forthcoming to do that, yes.
MR. BUCHET: Mr. Chairman, with great
pleasure, I withdraw my second.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Marie.
DR. SWEENEY: I withdraw my motion, Mr.
Chairman.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Then, we will remain
the Silica Workgroup to be open. And when the new
issues on silica come out that the Solicitor's Office
just told us about, we will be ready to go.
MR. BUCHET: Do we need to reconstitute or
make a motion to change it or silica is enough at the
top?
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: That's fine. Let's
leave it the way it is. That is good.
Thank you, Marie.
DR. SWEENEY: You are welcome.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Now, we have a very
special honor of having a guest speaker, one of the
hardest workers in OSHA. Camille is going to talk to
us about the construction advisor.
For those of you who are standing in the
back, we have lots of soft, comfortable, plush chairs
in the front, unlike those that the committee is
sitting in.
(Laughter)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: While Camille is
getting ready, I think that the ACCSH Committee could
maybe stand up and flex their sore, tired aching
muscles.
(Laughter)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: All right. The
ACCSH members have returned to their hard, non-ergonomic seats.
(Laughter)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: I think Camille has
some extra copies that she is putting in the back there
if any of you would like one. Okay.
Again, those of you standing in the back,
there is soft, plush, comfortable chairs up front.
Camille.
Special Presentations: (Continued)
Construction Advisor
MS. VILLANOVA: I am Camille Villanova,
Directorate of Construction, Office of Construction
Services. And there is a workgroup. This is a kind of
prequel to the workgroup report which I am sure will be
ready for the next meeting once we get everything
going.
This is called the OSHA Construction Advisory
Workgroup. Mr. Mike Buchet and Mr. Robert Masterson
are the co-chairs. And this is a project to develop an
electronic advisor on the OSHA web page available to
everybody to walk them through hazards, safety
programs, abatement methods for construction.
The current advisor that is up on the OSHA
web page that is the closest to the construction
advisor is the logging advisor.
And I wish to thank Federal/State Operations,
Paul White, for funding the advisor and the office --
the OSHA Training and Education Institute in Chicago
for providing the bulk of the expertise to develop and
work with our Salt Lake City technical staff to compile
the advisor.
Right now, we are attempting to put the
advisor on a place where the ACCSH Workgroup and the
ACCSH can view it.
We have to overcome a couple of security fire
walls. And we are hoping that by the time the ACCSH
Committee returns home you will find your password and
your identifier on your computers when you log into
your e-mail.
I cannot guarantee that, but that is what I
was promised. Okay. I will keep you all posted.
For the general public, this should be up for
public review shortly. Right now, we are hoping that
the ACCSH page that the ACCSH has asked for in the past
will also appear shortly.
For now, the reason I handed out the front
page of the OSHA -- it says VPP up in the one corner.
The reason I handed this out is that for now, it looks
like the ACCSH page will appear in the subject index.
I just checked. I checked last night before
I left. It was not there yet, but I was told that it
should appear within the next few days.
So if you go into the subject index, it
should appear as Advisory Committee Construction Safety
and Health or it should appear as Construction Advisory
Committee.
Again, there is a couple of minor
technicalities that we are working with.
The ACCSH page will list the ACCSH members.
At the ACCSH page, we are hoping to have access to the
construction advisor.
But again, let me reiterate, because it is
still an ACCSH workgroup product, the advisor for now
will be available to the ACCSH members only.
And in a few weeks after comments, etcetera,
we will -- the Directorate of the Federal/State
Operations and the OSHA Training Institute will then
decide to make it public.
It will be on the Net for public comment.
And one of the ways to find it will be through the
ACCSH page.
The reason that there is no URL on the top of
the larger handout that I gave you that starts with 1
of 33 is because, again, for security reasons, was
requested by Salt Lake City to eliminate the URL until
they can get a space for you to see it.
As you can see on the first page and if you
flip through it, you will see on the rest of the pages,
there are no graphics. On the 31st, 40 pictures were
added into this advisor.
And again, let me say, this is a work in
progress. They are actual photographs. And the front
page will have a graphic.
It will not be as detailed as the logging
graphic because for now as you can see if you look at
the page 1 of 1 in the left-hand column, you will see
that the concept of this advisor was to address the
major hazards on a construction site.
And you will see that it is the electrical
falls struck by entrenching. So it will be a less
complicated graphic.
And where it is going to differ from the
logging advisor will be when you go to any of these
pages, for instance, if you go to page 8 of 33 which is
electrical incidence, contact with power lines, there
are the plans are to insert where it says contact with
power lines in the upper right-hand corner of the small
little blocks, there will be a correct and incorrect
picture.
And the concept of this advisor was instead
of making it a graphic was to make a real-life picture.
Okay.
They have solicited from our compliance
officers. And they have actually solicited from some
organizations for photographs of right and wrong.
And if you do have any correct pictures,
those are the pictures that we are sorely in need of
because OSHA -- well, you know what OSHA takes
photographs of.
So any correct pictures, we would prefer an
original. If you do have a digital picture, please
send it. And we will see if our Salt Lake City people
can actually use the digital picture. Okay.
The concept of these pages, if you turn back
just to page 7 of 33, if you selected electrical, it
will take you to a kind of a front page for electrical
where a couple of the major hazards then appear, for
instance, an electrical has contact with power lines,
lack of GFCI. You can see the other ones there.
And then, each of those will then take you
into a more detailed explanation. Well, if you turn to
the next page which is 9 of 33, actually what I did
here was -- this is the danger.
But as you can see, as you go deeper into the
program, you get into more explanation, more detail.
And again, this is kind of the internal
training program, a general overview of what the
standards are. There is a link to the standards.
Then, there is another page that kind of
discusses, oh, what could be a tool box talk, things to
look for, things to do.
And then, there will be a page of kind of
like a case study. And the case studies are taken from
the OSHA 170 that you, that the group has discussed so
finely this morning. Okay. So then, there will be
some case law.
And I guess each one is a little different,
but you can see it is still the basic concept. And we
will provide other links. For instance, we will
provide the links to the OSHA standards.
And right now, our programmers are trying to
work with the web design to take you directly to that
standard. Right now, the way the page is designed, it
only takes you to the subpart.
But for instance, in the case law where it
is talking about a direct contact with a crane, with an
overhead line, we are attempting to see if we can
establish links that would take you right into the
1926.550 specific rule that says, you know, the
distances to stay away from overhead lines. That may
take some time, but for now the linkages just go to the
subpart.
This is a quick overview of this. If there
are any questions -- and again, you guys should be able
to review this. I have not been able to review it with
the report that I got that all the pictures are now in
there.
We probably will be adding a glossary where
it says definitions. The definitions are not ready
yet.
If you flip through this and you find the
blank pages, it is because those pages were not ready
to go up into an electronic format.
We are attempting to get approval to provide
other links. And there is an internal review as to
what kind of links we can provide from our home page.
Right now, if there is a link some place
else, say, to a university, we will provide that link.
Providing links to organizations or providing links to
any web site that has a .com has to go through a lot of
internal approval.
We have received requests from some
organizations to provide those links. That is just
going to take a little extra time.
The advisor will probably go up, but it is
not going to be a stationary document. It will change.
We will probably -- the people at Salt Lake
City have been working very hard with the OSHA Training
and Education Division to have more and more cases,
examples in there that can also be used as tool box
talks.
You will actually see some of the pages look
like they can be tool box talks so that they could be
useful. That was developed especially for that way.
And that is a -- a Mr. Bill Wheatley at the
OSHA Training Institute has worked very hard. And Mr.
Bob Curtis in Salt Lake City has coordinated the work
of all of our programmers and all the contractor
programmers to work very hard to develop this.
And hopefully, we will get it to your
committee, your workgroups and the full committee to
review shortly.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you, Camille.
Mr. Cooper and you were dancing on top of the
table because he has been preaching for years or
talking for years about getting something like this out
to the public so that they have access to facts and the
different types of things.
And this is some good stuff. This is some
really good stuff.
Michael.
MR. BUCHET: Could you go over how members of
the public and the industry and construction workers,
anybody can submit ideas and photographs for inclusion
in this or if you -- for potential inclusion in this?
MS. VILLANOVA: Okay.
MR. BUCHET: Do we e-mail this stuff? And if
so, where do we e-mail it?
MS. VILLANOVA: You can e-mail it to me. And
right now, I don't think I appear on the ACCSH sheet in
the back, right?
So if you e-mail to Mr. Boom. I don't think
his e-mail is on there either.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Yes.
MS. VILLANOVA: You can e-mail it to me. The
best thing I can do is I can promise to put a sheet on
the back table. There is 35 characters in e-mail
address. So I am not going to suffer -- have you guys
go through that. I will put my e-mail address on the
back table.
And otherwise, if you pick up the ACCSH
member sheet that is on the sign-in table in the back,
it has the address for the Directorate of Construction.
If you send it to the address of the Directorate of
Construction, attention to me, I will get it.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Great.
Larry.
MR. EDGINTON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I
think what I would like to do is simply express to you
my appreciation for yourself and Bob and others
apparently taking to heart some of the suggestions that
were made by ACCSH, particularly with respect to an
interest that is near and dear to my heart.
And that is developing a product that is
worker friendly. The thing that really strikes me
about this is, for example, when you talk about how am
I danger, how do I avoid hazards, I mean, that is
speaking to workers in the first person.
I mean, that is something that really is of
great value to them. And I commend you for it because
I have to tell you, I was a little skeptical when I had
heard some of the first presentations in terms of
whether or not this was really going to address
worker's needs.
But clearly, it is moving in that direction.
And you are really doing the right thing. And it looks
good so far.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you, Larry.
Other comments from the committee?
(No response.)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Hearing none,
Camille, thank you very much.
If you get out your agendas, we will break
for lunch shortly, come back at -- if we get out of
here at a quarter to 12, we will come back at a quarter
to 1 and hear the presentation from Paul on silica.
After that, the agenda will flow as is.
Tomorrow, this meeting will convene at 8:00
a.m. instead of 9:00 a.m. It will start out with
discussions on Jane's and any motions Jane will have
on the Paperwork Reduction Act that she has deferred
until tomorrow.
We will then go into the Michael and Marie's
discussion on the MSDS document which was handed out to
everybody today. Mr. Swanson has been kind enough to
delete his talk and --
(Laughter)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: And we will go into
Charles' remarks at 9:30 to 10:30.
Then, when we come back, we will finish any
MSDS or paper work discussions that we did not get done
in the 8:00 to 9:00 o'clock hour or 8:00 to 9:30 hour.
So that is the story for tomorrow. Everybody
up early, end early. That limits the night life for
tonight for those of you that like to stay up late.
But us old guys that are always going to bed early
don't have that problem.
VOICE: And read the report.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: And you've got to
stay up and read the report. That's right.
So with that, let's adjourn for lunch and be
back at a quarter to 1.
Thank you.
(Whereupon, at 11:40 a.m., the meeting was
recessed for lunch.)
AFTER RECESS
12:45 p.m.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: For the record, the
committee should have in front of them the final draft
of the RRNAs for the committee. This will be the one
that we will now be working off of in the future.
Jane as the co-chair will mail a copy to the
four members that are not here today.
I would appreciate, the committee and Jane,
if you would add to your mailing to carry this with us,
bring it to the meetings. It is kind of part and
parcel of what we bring to these meetings so we always
have it here to reference and refer to.
MS. WILLIAMS: Yes.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: All right. With
that, welcome back from lunch. We are starting out
with the 1:00 o'clock presentation 15 minutes early on
Silica.
Welcome.
MR. BOLON: Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Are you going to ask
us to move into a comfortable chair so you can show is
something or --
MR. BOLON: No.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Sorry, guys. Okay.
(Laughter)
MR. BOLON: Good afternoon. My name is Paul
Bolon. I am an Economist in the Office of Regulatory
Analysis here at OSHA. I am the current team leader on
the team that is working on developing a silica
standard.
With me is Bill Perry who is in the Health
Standards Directorate and who I rotate with to the team
leadership. And he is actually going to present where
we are on the silica standard.
Special Presentations: (Continued)
Silica
MR. PERRY: Thank you, Paul.
It is a pleasure to be here today with you to
talk about actually all of our silica activities. I
did not want to confine our remarks to just what we
have been doing on the regulatory front.
I understand it has been a year or so I guess
since anyone from our group has addressed this
committee regarding silica. And certainly, a lot has
happened in that interval.
OSHA is serious about developing a
comprehensive standard for crystal and silica. We have
been extremely active this year to achieving that end.
The development of the standard was
identified by a group of labor and industry
representatives in OSHA's priority planning process a
few years ago.
More recently, OSHA has set as one of its
strategic goals to reduce silica exposures in the
incidents of silicosis among workers in all industries.
This goal reflects our concern that there
continue to be high rates of silicosis seen in several
industry sectors, including construction.
One of the more recent studies of this is a
NIOSH finding of 604 cases of silicosis across all
industry sectors in just seven states in a two-year
period between 1993 and 1995. Ten percent of those
silicosis cases occurred among construction workers.
The CDC has also estimated that there are 300
deaths per year that occur due to silicosis and, again,
about 10 percent of those are believed to occur among
construction workers.
We have been addressing our strategic goal to
reduce silicosis in the United States in a number of
ways, including several outreach efforts at both the
national and regional level.
We recognize there is a considerable degree
of noncompliance with our current PEL for silica and
partially for that reason initiated a special emphasis
program in 1996 to increase enforcement of our limit.
Some regions have been particularly active
and during that SEP in looking at construction
operations.
In addition, we are part of an OSHA, NIOSH,
and MSHA task force to address outreach issues. And
while these outreach efforts continue, we view the
development of a comprehensive standard as a critical
element in the OSHA meeting our strategic goal.
We believe that a comprehensive silicosis
prevention program is one of the most effective ways we
could provide employees or ensure that employees have
the necessary protection.
Such a program would include health
screening, exposure assessment, increased level of
training and education about the hazards of silica, I
think education is particularly important here, as well
as efforts to reduce exposures and maintain those
reduced exposures.
We do have some information indicating that
such programs where they have been implemented long
enough ago have in fact had a real impact on silicosis
rates.
At this time, our schedule calls for issuing
a proposed standard by the end of the next calendar or
some time in the fourth quarter of the next calendar
year. That standard is being developed to apply to
general industry, construction, and maritime.
We are looking at several issues that are
unique to construction as part of our research efforts,
including how to best approach exposure assessment for
construction operations and how to best ensure that
adequate controls provided during certain specific
kinds of dusting operations that occur in construction,
as well as in some other places.
Some of the operations in particular that we
are focusing in our research include abrasive blasting,
jack hammering, cutting and drilling of concrete, brick
and block sawing, grinding operations, tug pointing,
drilling and boring operations both underground and
above the surface or above -- on the surface actually.
I must state that our enforcement exposure
information indicates that right now, about 35 percent
of the air samples taken by OSHA enforcement officers
in the construction industry exceed a PEL of 100
micrograms per cubic meter.
Of course, we are doing much of the research
in-house and with contractor help as we often do.
In addition, we are working very closely with
NIOSH on several fronts in supporting some of their
research that I think will provide us with good
information on the control of silica in construction
operations and the effectiveness of different control
options.
Included in that research that we are
sponsoring, NIOSH is conducting an extent of exposure
analysis which includes they are conducting between
five and 10 comprehensive site surveys, industrial
hygiene surveys on construction sites this year.
They are also doing site surveys in
connection with some other research that they are
conducting. We are sponsoring some of their toxicity
studies that they are looking at.
And in general, I think in this rulemaking in
particular, we have probably as much coordination with
NIOSH as certainly I have ever seen on a rulemaking
before. And I think we are benefitting very greatly
from that from their support.
We have, of course, involved the public
already to quite an extent in getting information and
exchanging information on our rulemaking process.
We have held a series of stakeholder meetings
in Chicago and in San Francisco. Both of these
meetings included representatives from the construction
industry, both large firms as well as small,
representing new construction as well as demolition
firms.
We also are planning to hold an additional
set of stakeholder meetings in about two weeks here in
Washington.
Although we have not yet made a firm decision
on to what extent the PEL should be lowered or whether
it should be lowered, we do have information suggesting
to us that the risks of silicosis and of lung cancer at
our current PEL still remain quite high.
We believe that the current PEL deserves
reexamination. And to that end, we are conducting risk
analyses to better characterize the risk of silicosis
and lung cancer.
Of course, we will also be looking closely at
technologic and economic feasibility and the impacts of
changing the PEL as we always do.
That is about all I have to say in terms of
prepared remarks. I think at this point, Paul and I
would be happy to entertain any questions or comments
the committee may have.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Larry.
MR. EDGINTON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I
guess the first question I have is with respect to one
thing for clarification is that you are talking about
having something out in the fourth quarter of the year
2000?
MR. PERRY: That's right.
MR. EDGINTON: Or the fourth quarter of
fiscal year 2000?
MR. PERRY: I'm sorry. Calendar year 2000.
MR. EDGINTON: Calendar year.
MR. PERRY: Yes, proposed.
MR. EDGINTON: Then, I -- am I to assume then
that when the semi-annual regulatory agenda comes out
soon in the next couple of months that in fact there
will be a timeframe in that for this?
Because if my recollection is correct, the
one that came out this spring is still listed standard
development as being long term.
MR. PERRY: I believe there will be a day in
the agenda.
MR. EDGINTON: Okay.
MR. PERRY: I am not the one responsible or
have final sign-off, you understand, but that is my
understanding.
MR. EDGINTON: I was just trying to match
that with what I thought I was hearing.
MR. PERRY: Right.
MR. EDGINTON: And then, am I correct in
understanding that you seem to be -- the context seems
to be a single standard covering all industries?
MR. PERRY: We are not sure yet how the final
form will be. We are looking very hard at how we might
have to tailor the standard to address construction
operations or exposures in construction operations.
If that leads us to a standard that looks I
guess sufficiently different from one we might put out
for general industry, that might be the decision that
is made.
MR. EDGINTON: I mean, it strikes me that --
and, you know, I have just made some notes to myself as
you were talking that the issues of exposure assessment
and medical monitoring may be much more difficult in
construction than in industries where there is a fixed
work place and constant work force and that type of
thing.
And any standard that you develop I think
would have to take those differences into
consideration.
MR. PERRY: I think our plan is to take those
differences into consideration. We have been asking
our stakeholders for input on those very issues in
fact.
MR. EDGINTON: I am sure you will be hearing
more from me in September.
MR. PERRY: Very good.
MR. EDGINTON: Thank you.
MR. PERRY: I look forward to it.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Any other comments?
Marie.
DR. SWEENEY: Bill, thank you for your
presentation. And correct me if I am wrong on these
numbers, but I understand that the NIOSH number is what
35 milligrams per cubic meter. And is it --
MR. PERRY: Fifty.
DR. SWEENEY: Fifty milligrams. Okay.
MR. PERRY: Of silica.
DR. SWEENEY: Part of the problem that we
have is that there is a problem with limited detection
and sampling methods.
MR. PERRY: Yes.
DR. SWEENEY: Is there -- or analytic
methods. Is there any move underfoot to resolve those
issues of detection if in fact you plan to go that low
or --
MR. PERRY: Yes. There are plans to resolve
that. We have been pretty active on that front also.
There was a meeting at the AIAJ conference
this past spring with NIST. It was developing the next
series of primary silica standards for laboratories to
use for calibration.
The latest word I have is that that primary
standard should be available within a few weeks or so.
I think I heard that from our Salt Lake City lab just
yesterday. That will certainly help.
NIOSH is, of course, sharing with us a lot of
their information from the last round of path testing.
And we've got some good information from NIOSH on what
kinds of things labs are doing that might interfere
with getting more sensitivity out of the method. And
we think our standard should address those things also.
DR. SWEENEY: Okay. Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Are you getting any
data or have you looked at any of Susan Moir's data
from Lowell?
MR. PERRY: No. I mean, I'm not -- our
contractors have probably pulled that information. And
so specifically, I don't know, but I'll certainly
contact her now.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: All right. Anything
else?
MR. SWANSON: Yes, let me --
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Bruce.
MR. SWANSON: Let me make the comment on the
record here kind of following up on something you
alluded to I think, Larry.
A couple of organizations have spoken to
Assistant Secretary Jeffress about maybe a couple of
things like powered industrial trucks and fiberglass
and how OSHA handled them and how maybe all of the
construction industry was not as in the loop as certain
elements would liked to have been and help participate
with OSHA in the formulation of those
policies/standards.
I have been instructed to work as a liaison
with the Directorate of Construction, with those
elements in the community.
And in keeping with that, one of Connell's
people have been assigned. As you recognized, this
standard is not being developed in the Directorate of
Construction. It is being done by the Health Standards
Unit.
But we are going to share to the extent that
we can share the time of Carol Saul's out of Noah's
unit and hopefully keep not only ACCSH informed, but
those other elements that are at the ACCSH table here
this morning that have pushed the curiosity on how
other things happened the way they did.
So thank you.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you.
Any other questions?
(No response.)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
Sarah, welcome.
MS. SHORTALL: Thank you so much.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Our Solicitor is
back.
MS. SHORTALL: One of them.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: One of our many
Solicitors.
I think we are now ready for our 1:30
presentation, the technical changes to the existing
standards of which if the committee will take out those
sheets that we brought with us to comment on.
Hopefully, you all have them. You've made lots of
comments and are ready to share those with Bob.
Special Presentations: (Continued)
Technical Changes in Existing Standards
MR. MANWARE: I'm Bob Manware. I am with the
Directorate of Health Standards Programs. And I am
working on this innocuous effort here which I do feel
though is important in straightening out some existing
standards that need to be straightened out.
It is basically a clean-up of these standards
or provisions that are absolute and duplicative,
unnecessary, contradictory.
This little effort is not new. It is a
continuation of something that we started in 1996 and
completed initially in 1998, initial clean-up project.
We have identified the additional provisions
that we think need some treatment in the way of
renovation, straightening out. And that is what this
phase 2 is all about.
The construction standards that are affected
are minimal. And they are described in the memo that
you have, I think all of you have, but hopefully.
Again, they are more informing and corrective
actions in nature. They are really not substantive.
So without going into detail, if you have
read the memo, instead of taking your time, instead of
me giving you an overview of something you have already
know, unless you want me to go on with more detail, I
would be glad to answer any questions.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Yes. Why don't we
start with the change one, employee exposure
notification.
And any members of the committee would like
to comment on the first one?
Larry.
MR. EDGINTON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In
reading the document, it was unclear to me from this as
to what you are considering doing there.
As I understand it what I thought I read is
you are talking about an either/or situation where
there would either be posting or individual employee
notification.
Are you saying that an employer could elect
to use either or are you saying that when you
ultimately make the change, it will be one or the other
but not both?
MR. MANWARE: Any option is available. I put
this in there to suggest what kind of modification
might take place.
We may not even propose necessary a specific
written notification or posting or written notification
only or written notification and posting.
We may just raise the issue in detail in the
notice asking the regulated community what is most
appropriate as far as this issue goes of notification.
Again, we might propose a specific written
notice or posting. That is possible.
But certainly if the committee here has some
suggestions on what is appropriate at this point.
MR. EDGINTON: You know, speaking for myself
and my constituents and the interest that I represent,
workers at least with respect to the construction
industry in particular, but I think all industries in
general, I think it is important that you keep both
requirements.
It is particularly important in construction
where you have a mobil work force. People do not work
for long periods of time.
There is a value to providing individual
notice. And at that the same time, there is also value
to posting.
And I hope that we do not lose sight of that
because one of the things that concern me here is we
are talking about the burden that it is to employers.
But what we are talking about here is
protecting workers. We ought not to be losing sight of
that. And I think the one thing that both posting and
individual notification does is ensure a much higher
level of protection for workers.
MR. MANWARE: Certainly, the record that we
are going to develop as a result of this will certainly
be looked towards in deciding what the final is. We
have not made our mind up.
Putting those two elements in there as a
suggested modification at least goes beyond what we
have in lead, for example, which only requires written
notice.
MR. EDGINTON: Right.
MR. MANWARE: Not posting. So -- but the
proposal will be crafted to clearly raise the issue and
solicit for comments.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: One thing I would
like to comment on. Larry, I understand where you are
coming from when you say both.
But the construction industry more and more
now is a transient work force. And where years ago you
could call your local union shop and the local was
stocked with enough people to send them out from the
local to work, well, now there are so many people
working.
And a lot of the building trades are short-skilled crafts people. So you get a lot of travelers
that come in and out of your projects.
And a lot of times when you get that, the
traveler gives you his local address where he is
staying in a trailer park or in an apartment or even in
a motel in some cases.
So -- and when the employment is terminated
or he finishes the job or he gets a reduction in force
at completion and you are still monitoring for whatever
reason, in a lot of cases it is very difficult to find
that employee to give them some kind of personal
ticket.
MR. EDGINTON: Yes.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Or personal letter
or personal whatever to say here is your personal
stuff.
So I -- when I read this, I thought having
the option of either posting of what is left of the job
or even if it is any part of the job posting so that
everybody on the job can see and maybe even sending a
copy to the local union to post or however they would
wish to do it rather than putting the burden on the
employer to track down an employee who may be clean
across the country working somewhere else. It is
extremely difficult for the employers.
So I, from an employer's standpoint, think
that the four is the right way to go.
Marie.
DR. SWEENEY: I just have one follow-up. In
terms of a transient work force, if you wait five, 10,
20 days after you get the information that there has
been exposure or whatever, you are going to miss a lot
of people on the construction site.
So just bear that in mind when you are
thinking about how many days it takes to post a notice
that has been gotten regarding an exposure.
And you are dealing here with some
carcinogens, too. So it is important that people get
that information as soon as possible.
MR. MANWARE: That is a good point. And it
has not escaped us. And we will craft discussion in
the preamble to this proposal, clearly focusing on
those potential problems.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: An example of that
is a 24-hour, 48-hour turnaround in a refinery or a
chemical plant where you dump 1,500 employees for two
days and they are all gone the third day.
And if you wait even the five days which is
your first one here, your lowest count is five days,
they are all gone.
I think it is absolutely impossible to post
the first day because you are sampling the first day.
And the second day, even if you ask for a 24-hour
turnaround from the labs, by the time you get the
package back, they're gone.
So think about that when you're putting this
thing together.
Any other comments anyone?
MR. RHOTEN: Maybe, just one.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Mr. Rhoten.
MR. RHOTEN: The employers have all the
employee's home address material. And the suggestion
that maybe that material should be sent to the union
hall, I see problems with that.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: My comment with the
home address is usually when a traveler comes, he gives
his local address that he is staying at while he is on
your site.
MR. RHOTEN: Right.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: And his home may be
in some other state, somewhere clean across his
permanent home.
MR. RHOTEN: Right.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: But you are not
getting the permanent home address, you are getting his
local address where he is staying while he is working
on your project. So you really do not have where he
is.
MR. RHOTEN: The access.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Yes.
Any other comments from the committee?
MR. BUCHET: Yes.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Michael.
MR. BUCHET: A little bit on the discussion,
is the ultimate aim to get the information to the
exposed employee and to potentially future exposed
employees?
Or is it simply crafted to create some kind
of legal defense in case somebody says, well, maybe I
got hurt on the job and I don't know?
Because if the job is to get the information
to the person who has been exposed so that they can do
something medical for their own benefit, then all the
discussion about how difficult it is has to be weighed
against the value of giving that personal information
to the worker.
And I do not know how you answer the
question. I am just saying which one of those issues
are we dealing with?
MR. MANWARE: I think as far as OSHA is
concerned, we are interested in ensuring access of
exposure monitoring data for the employee.
Now, obviously there are perhaps some
complications in a transient work force. And you get
the results after the employee has left.
Nonetheless, under another standard, the
access standard, that employee does have access to that
exposure monitoring data, even if he is no longer an
employee of that employer.
That does not solve all the problems. Just
having a legal access for employees does not take some
of the complications that you are raising. I recognize
that.
MR. BUCHET: Well --
MR. MANWARE: I am just suggesting that there
is some framework that we can work with to try to
ensure that the employee does have reasonable access
and can get that data given certain complicated
situations.
MR. BUCHET: And more and more, the idea of a
transient work force is not just construction with
rental workers and temporary help and manpower and more
and more people hiring from some other agency. The
workers may disappear the next day.
OSHA how many contract employees coming in
and out of this building who disappear?
MR. MANWARE: Well, that is -- I understand
that in -- I do not think that any of these standards
have addressed what you are raising. This issue is
just ensuring that the results of the exposure
monitoring are made available to the employee.
So we may be getting into an area beyond the
issues, beyond which we are really attending to here.
What we are trying to do here is simply to
conform the standards, the amount of time that the
employer is given to notify employees, be it written
notice or posting and the fact that it -- and how it is
going to be notified, written notice or posting and in
an amount of days. That is really what we are
contemplating here as doing, just a conforming action.
Now, if it looks like we need to go beyond
that to take care of some problems that you are
bringing up about how is this in reality and
practicality going to occur which has not been
addressed in any of these standards, it gives kind of a
new twist on this issue.
And it is not necessarily something that we
are not going to attend to. We certainly can.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Any other comments
on number one?
Felipe.
MR. DEVORA: The only comment and I think it
is very important that we notice the consistency effort
in the ways folks are notified.
I think that is the intent of these
requirements is that they may be made consistent across
the board. And I think that, if anything, would help
some of the confusion.
Obviously, there is different ways or
requirements on how you notify people for different
issues.
So I think the consistency issue is very
important in that. And I think this does address that.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: All right. Let's go
to number two, the PEL action.
Does anybody have any comments, the
committee?
(No response.)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: None.
Number three, the position signature,
comments?
MS. WILLIAMS: Yes.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Jane.
MS. WILLIAMS: Has any consideration been
given to confidentiality of employee data when you
access electronic processes?
MR. MANWARE: That probably is not
contemplated under this effort. I noted that there is
others in the agency who are dealing with issues of
confidentiality of medical records, but I do not think
that we are going to get into that here, unless there
is something that is raised that is a good issue that
should be attended to here given this chance.
MS. WILLIAMS: Well, if I am reading this, it
is intended to do the elimination of the physician's
signature, that this could then become an electronic
document, reduce the maintenance of the paper
requirement where it can be accessible.
And as soon as you have that on a physician's
facility transferring that electronic data to an
employer, it just seemed to me there is more people
going to be involved in that.
And it would be something that should be
considered?
MR. MANWARE: Certainly, yes.
And on the issue of confidentiality would
certainly be raised in the notice.
MS. WILLIAMS: Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Anything else on
number three?
(No response.)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Number four, the
technical corrections on the coke oven standard, coke
ovens?
(No response.)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Okay. Thank you
very much. You've heard from us and hopefully you will
take some of our advice and --
MR. EDGINTON: Mr. Chairman.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Larry.
MR. EDGINTON: I have a question with regards
to information that is contained in the standards
improvement, the miscellaneous changes to general
industry standards.
I mean, I know that is not our charge, but
one of these things that caught my eye and maybe I ask
this question out of ignorance, but -- and if I do so,
bear with me.
But we talk about revising the x-ray rating
procedures for inorganic arsenic. And it says reason
for action, it says the provision should allow the use
of board-certified radiologists or horologists, ILO, UC
not necessary.
My question there, is why is that?
MR. MANWARE: Well, that was a suggestion
that was provided to us by some members of the
regulated community and agreed to by our Office of
Occupational Medicine. So I have to yield to them. I
do not believe they are here to explain that.
MR. EDGINTON: Yes, but I do not know if it
is good or bad. But my question, I just looked at
that. And I said I don't know why they would propose
to change that.
MR. MANWARE: I cannot tell you in medical
terms, but I do believe them. Again, the issue will be
raised as to whether or not it is appropriate to make
this change.
MR. EDGINTON: Right.
MR. MANWARE: And we will get comments. But
I think it is appropriate to propose this change for
substantive technical reasons which I --
MR. EDGINTON: Right. I was just trying to
understand why it was being proposed.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Does anyone from the
committee have any comment on the attachments?
(No response.)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Okay. Thank you
very much.
MR. MANWARE: Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: The next item on
your agenda, we are going to skip for the time being.
We will ask Manny to, who is always prepared, go up and
share with us Updates on the Construction Courses.
Special Presentations: (Continued)
OSHA Training Institute - Update on Construction Courses
MR. YPSILANTES: Good afternoon. My name is
Many Ypsilantes with the OSHA Training Institute. And
I am the Branch Manager for the Construction Branch.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank you and
the committee members for inviting us to present an
update to you regarding what we are doing at the
Training Institute and to give us the opportunity to do
that.
I have given you all a copy of our catalogue
for this current fiscal year 2000. It is for the
private sector.
It lists all the courses that are available
to the private sector. And it addresses the
construction courses. There are 13 construction
courses.
If you turn to page 8, what I would like to
do is probably introduce or Ed Centers. On page 8, it
lists -- I will not read them because of the time
constraints. But it lists our partners and who they
are.
And in the next column, it shows what courses
we have turned over and allowed them to teach in
conjunction with us across the country.
They have done a good job I think. It has
given the opportunities to people who could not get
training. And I think it is working out very well.
As you get into it on page A-1 in the
appendix, it starts with the 200 A and the courses that
we are offering in construction.
The 200 which is not listed here and the
reason why it is not listed here is because that course
is full. And we pre-register. It is just like in
college. We pre-register the states and the feds.
They get first crack. And they have filled up the
courses, the 200. So we did not make it available to
them.
However, we are offering a 200 A, 209, 301,
302, 303, 311, 312, 326, 500, 502, and 510. In
addition to that, we also teach the welding course
which is the 322, but we don't get credit for it. The
IHs get credit for it, but we teach it.
The instruction guys didn't know anything,
right?
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Manny, 209 is not
here either. Is that --
MR. YPSILANTES: It's not.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Is that full, too?
MR. YPSILANTES: Yes. And that is one of the
new courses that I wanted to talk about. That course
was introduced. And it is for our federal and state
compliance officers, but it is open to the public, but
it is filled.
And we talk about strategies, special
procedures. I will get into that a little bit as we
get into the courses that have changed significantly
and the new courses. That was probably our latest
addition to 209.
Our courses are continuously being updated.
Our course chairpersons are people that are assigned to
courses.
They become chairpersons. And then, they are
responsible for maintaining and updating and keeping
the course in compliance with changes in the
regulations.
And then, we always tweak it based upon our
feedback from the students which we evaluate and assess
every time a course is given.
And then, we look at what those allegations
are, concerns, etcetera.
What I would like to discuss on changes is
the 510. We are presently reworking the entire 510
course. That course was designed originally for
workers. It was the first course that we had that was
specifically designed for workers.
And there was a lot of confusion about this
course and the 500. And when we made the prerequisites
for 500 instructor, we said you had to do two things.
You had to -- and it is based upon the
committee's recommendations that you had to have five
years of construction experience in safety and health
and that they have at least the equivalent to a 510
course which is a 40-hour course. Those were the
prerequisites.
There was confusion for some reason. People
thought, well, if I took the 510, then I can take the
500. And then, I would be a qualified, authorized
instructor, but that is not true.
In addition, we turned the course over to the
Ed Centers, the 510 and the 500. A lot of times an
instructor who does an hour, for example, on fall
protection, well, if they do an hour in the 500 and
they are doing a good job at it, then guess what? They
are going to teach the same thing in the 510 because
they are comfortable with and they get good reviews,
but that was not the intent.
So we are now modifying it so the course is
strictly to do hazard identification. Teach the
students standards. Teach the students about OSHA, how
to understand a law and how to use the standards from a
vertical and horizontal standpoint.
And do workshops, forcing them to demonstrate
that they understand what the scope and application is,
what the definition term for that subpart are, and then
what are the important issues in that subpart and how
that standard is laid out and the source of that
standard. And that basically is what that course is
about.
So we are going to eliminate this problem
concerning the 510 and the 500 hopefully.
The 500 is the other course that has changed.
Starting October 1st of this fiscal year coming up
2000, they will be testing.
And that also has been a concern for a lot of
people, testing for the instructors. They are going to
have to pass. There will be a pass/fail exam based
upon hand golfing. I just found out what hand golfing
is. It's very confusing. It's part of the academia
world.
And apparently, that is what we will be
looking at. It will be implementing it October 1st.
There will be 50 test questions and the passing score
based upon hand golfing will be 68 percent which means
that is where that is presently.
This testing will be done uniformly across
the country with our Ed Centers and ourselves. So that
is going to restructure the course somewhat because
everybody is going to have to teach pretty much the
same materials based upon the hand golfing, the test
questions, and the criteria that people will be
required to know in order to pass the test.
The 209, we developed a 209 course which is
not in here. I thought it was in here. This course
was designed to help our CSHOs understand, our senior
CSHOs deal with issues on policy and standardization
and inspection procedures and also based upon issues
that were complex, but there was confusion, such as
multi-employer which a lot of people have problems with
and the issues concerning it.
Hopefully, that course will work in
conjunction with the Construction Directorate.
Hopefully, whatever issues the field is having problems
with, we can address those in that class and try to
resolve compliance issues and concerns.
Stew had asked me during the lunch break if I
would address the issue about paper reduction and
certification, specifically about maintaining records
concerning our 10 and 30-hour course. It came up
earlier today.
And there are a couple of issues here. Yes,
we do have that information, but -- there is always a
but in the government, right?
The Privacy Act could be a problem about us
releasing that information.
And then, secondly, if we ever retrieve the
data that we have, it is based upon the instructor,
okay, not on the student.
So we would have to know the instructor and
then when that instructor gave the class to look up the
student for your verification and certification.
So those would be the two issues.
The other thing is I would report out since
we are here the 500 course. It has been very
successful.
Starting in 1980 -- I mean, in 1990, I'm
sorry, we started keeping count. And we trained 8,841
students. In 1991, we trained 12,954 students. In
1992, we trained 20,903 students, in 1993, 33,133
students, in 1994, 40,690 students. In 1995, there
were 63,742 students. In 1996, there were 66,818
students. In 1997, there was 74,537 students.
And to date, it is -- when I say to date, it
is from 10-1-98 to 8-27-99, 120,911 students. That is
a combination of the 10 and 30-hour courses given.
So we have had a lot of success with
outreach. It has become pretty much the standard in
the industry. In a lot of states, the employer in
construction either owners or the contractors are
requiring as 10-hour in order for them to work for
them.
They get calls all the time frantically
asking how can I get 50 people trained in a 10-hour for
next week? Well, number one, we do not do the 10-hour.
We just train people so they can do the 10 and 30-hour.
The 10-hour has been the big course. This
year, we trained 113,533 students. With the 10-hour
and the 30-hour, there were 7,378 students taught.
The different trainers for this year, this
fiscal year to date, there was 2,264 10-hour trainers
who conducted classes. And for the 30-hour trainers,
there was 270.
So you can see the thing driving is the 10-hour. For some reason, the 10-hour is the training
that they are looking for. And the 30-hour is just way
out for whatever reason.
The other issue that came up was what are we
planning on doing in the future regarding learning.
We have Dr. Payne who is now in charge of the
institute. He is all for it. He is essentially the
training guru in this area, in this media. He is for
it.
We have discussed the mix that we are going
to be looking at. And one of the mixes you talked
about today was the construction advisor, putting that
on the computer and on the Net, cable, telephone.
We see telephone. We have a CDV set up where
we talking directly with the construction director and
his staff for our students in a class.
And they give the students update, a just-in-time version of whatever is going on in that curriculum
and what is going on in construction.
And we turn over to the students. And then,
they kind of quiz both us and construction director
regarding issues of concern.
It helps us to keep up to date and helps the
students who come from across the country to keep up
with the various media. And it is very successful.
And it helps the just-in-time issues.
In addition, we are looking telephone,
satellite. As a matter of fact, we have done in the
past, we have done some pilot projects with satellite.
We did confined space a couple of years ago.
It worked out fine.
We are looking to do training for our entire
fed and state people regarding safety and health
programs here in the next fiscal year.
And we are looking at training all of them
through satellites will be linking up and down and
doing it across the country. We are looking at
developing tapes and computer-based programs.
So we are looking at the mix of technologies
here. There is no reason for us not to do it. Now,
the issue becomes, will they give us the money and the
people and resources to do it?
And hopefully, we are looking forward to the
year 2000, 1 and 2 hopefully to allocate us people and
monies to do those things.
Essentially, that is where we are at.
The other thing is we are looking at moving
in the year 2001. And we are looking at moving to a
larger facility so we can accomplish these changes and
keep up with technology.
Hopefully, we will be moving to facility that
will be larger, be able to accommodate us. And
hopefully, it will accommodate our new staff, our new
equipment. We are purchasing equipment this year for
the new technology. So we are on our way.
With that, we are running out of time. I am
going to turn it over because I know you have questions
concerning the updates and what we are doing in the
testing. So I will just turn it over to the committee.
And I'll try to answer your questions.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: I'm glad to see that
you are hand golfing me.
(Laughter)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Any questions?
MR. YPSILANTES: Right.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: That is a
complicated procedure.
MR. YPSILANTES: Yes, it is.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: And if you have ever
had an opportunity to be through a hand golf study, it
is a pain in the butt.
MR. YPSILANTES: It is too frustrating. It
is very hard to change a question.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: It is because each
question is weighted based on a criteria. And it is
decided whether the questions fits the exam, whether
the materials are covered in the exam. And there is a
whole bunch of things.
But it does show when you pass or fail the
exam, you have done so basically the certified exam.
MR. YPSILANTES: Right.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: And there is no BS
to it. You either pass it or fail it.
MR. YPSILANTES: Right.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: And the percent rate
is based on the weighted average.
Questions?
So that's great.
Jane.
MS. WILLIAMS: I only have two questions for
you.
MR. YPSILANTES: Sure.
MS. WILLIAMS: On two separate occasions,
ACCSH has discussed the 10-hour in particular. And on
occasion with Mr. Jeffress, the question was also
posed.
And it was a recommendation that was adopted
by ACCSH to evaluate the 10-hour into an 8-hour to make
it more user friendly, understanding the 8-hour work
day versus having to pull our workers to 5-hour days.
That has always been a receptive idea. Has
it ever made it back to you guys, you folks? And have
you ever looked at that issue?
MR. YPSILANTES: Yes, we have looked at that
issue. And I agree with you. Training should not be
punishment, especially for workers because that's
training in the job with workers.
And when you make them do 10 contact hours,
it is very difficult if you do it in one day. And
then, the issue about pay comes up. Who is paying for
it?
Do you eat lunch out? If you eat lunch out,
now it is not a 10-hour program, it is an 11 or 12-hour
program because they have to go to lunch and come back.
It has been looked at. We want to do -- we
at one time discussed turning it into an 8-hour, one
day like you do for hazard training. That would
include your breaks and lunch, and eight hours as
opposed to contact hours.
The reason why we stayed with the 10-hour is
because that is how it got its recognition, number one.
So it was an established program that everyone in the
country was using.
And then, the other issue was the contact
hours. For you to get credit, you had to have the 10
contact hours for college or CSU for you to have to
maintain your certification.
So those were some of the issues that came up
as to why we didn't change it.
MS. WILLIAMS: The second item, it has come
up at this committee several times since I have been a
member.
What would be the appropriate vehicles to
work with compliance officers so they understand the
intent of a lot of our instructions?
And let's use multi-employer. Many, many
issues have been misinterpreted in the citation
process.
And one of the reasons behind the request to
having you come was to how can the ACCSH members either
by participating with you in some future meeting, a
comment there I think was a suggestion by Stew and Mr.
Cooper?
How can we work closer with you so that when
you do do these classes with these folks who is locking
up that class that we cannot get in to say, no, it will
not work this way --
MR. YPSILANTES: Right.
MS. WILLIAMS: How can we work with you to
get this information, this dialogue available to
yourselves so it does get back to compliance so they
can more realistically understand some of these issues
in the field?
MR. YPSILANTES: I think that is a valid
point that you are bringing up. Really, by us
attending and participating, it is the pulse of the
industry.
And the only way you can get it is in this
room whenever you all meet. And there is nobody that I
am aware that is more up to date and more informed
about the issues concerning instruction than the body
here.
And there is no way to do it unless you are
participating in this. And we are open to even having
you all come and teach in the classroom if -- regarding
sensitive issues.
That is not a problem. We would love to have
you as guest speakers, representing industry and your
views.
Sometimes, the issues on policy when you talk
about the multi-employer policy, the issue becomes very
complex because you are talking about law and policy.
I am not sure how OSHA and depending on the
administration, how it is administered. It changes.
So there is a lot of confusion from one administration
to the other regarding policy.
And then, there is the court decisions
depending upon the courts. You can read as many as at
one versus a lot.
So maybe, the issue on some of those things
is maybe turning to a standard as opposed to a policy.
That is way beyond me.
MS. WILLIAMS: Stew --
MR. YPSILANTES: But as far as work with you
all, that is not a problem, communicating with you and
keeping abreast of what is going on here.
I understand now you are on the Internet. So
when we cannot attend, we can get that information off
the Internet so I know what is going on and my staff
knows what is going on.
But being here, talking with you all, and
discussing the issues is probably the way to go.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: We are not on the
Internet yet.
Right, Camille?
We're close.
MS. VILLANOVA: It's close.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: We are not there
yet.
MR. YPSILANTES: I pulled it off of my
system. So you are on the Internet with OSHA.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: But see, you are
important. That's why.
(Laughter)
MR. YPSILANTES: Well, maybe, that is it.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Jane.
MS. WILLIAMS: Is it inappropriate to request
the OTIs participation at all ACCSH meetings?
MR. YPSILANTES: Yes. I think it is because,
you know, depending on the schedule, depending on when
we meet, you know, whether Manny has got all his people
training, Manny has other meetings to go to.
So I think asking them or mandating them to
come to every single meeting might be a little too
much.
MS. WILLIAMS: Oh, I didn't mean mandate. I
meant, to ask.
MR. RHOTEN: How about to extend an
invitation?
MR. YPSILANTES: I like that.
MR. RHOTEN: So at least --
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Probably as their
schedule permits.
MS. WILLIAMS: Okay.
MR. YPSILANTES: We would love to participate
when we can. We would like to.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Very good. We would
love to have.
Any other questions or --
MR. RHOTEN: No. I just want to make a
comment. I think that we have had a good relationship
with your training facility that goes back for 20 years
before I got here.
I think you guys have done an outstanding job
at least in helping us put together that 10-hour
program that we got floating around the country now.
And I think you probably do not get
recognition for all the hard work you do over there. I
think people have been at your facility to see how hard
your whole crew works over there, but doesn't really
realize.
I had the opportunity to go there when I came
on board in 1992 to go through that 500 class. And I
was impressed with the amount of work that you guys
turn out.
MR. YPSILANTES: Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you, Bill.
Okay.
Thank you, Manny. We appreciate it.
MR. YPSILANTES: You're welcome.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Noah.
Special Presentations: (Continued)
Construction Standards Update
MR. CONNELL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is
a pleasure to be here. I will kind of go through our
standards and let you know where we are, starting with
the safety and health programs.
Originally, we had said that we would issue
draft regulatory text this summer. That timetable is
being reevaluated.
Right now, the general industry safety and
health standard I believe is about six months time
their original projected schedule. And that kind of
puts us back as well since we are going to -- we are
not going to go before them. They are going to go
first.
Also, we are at a stage where we have to work
with other OSHA offices before we can release our draft
text.
And other OSHA standards projects outside of
our directorate are ahead of this one. And the trains
are getting a bit backed up behind those other
projects.
On confined space, DOC has completed a plain
language draft regulatory text, but we are very likely
going to miss our December, 1999 target date by a very
wide margin. And that is due to two factors.
The first factor is that there is a
Department of Labor departmental policy for holding
stakeholder meetings before issuing a proposed
standard.
Now, when we originally come up with our
schedule, we were anticipating that because we have
worked so closely with ACCSH on developing the confined
space standard for construction, that we were not going
to be doing those stakeholder meetings.
That may not in fact be the case. And if we
do have to do stakeholder meetings, if that is going to
be decision, that is quite time consuming.
The second is the SBREFA review panel
process. SBREFA is the Small Business Regulatory
Fairness Enforcement Act.
It requires a review panel process to be done
for certain standards that meet certain criteria before
they are issued as a proposal.
When we came up with our target date, our
initial look, the initial economic analysis, a very
preliminary economic analysis, the indications were at
the time that we would not have to do a SBREFA review
panel process.
That economic look has been reexamined. I
guess there has been somewhat of a closer look. And
now, the indications are that we will be doing the
review panel process. That is also a very lengthy
process.
You put those two things together and that
adds a tremendous amount of time to our schedule.
On steel erection at the Directorate of
Construction staff level, we have completed analysis of
the record.
We are now in a process of subjecting our
analysis to the cross examination of both other OSHA
offices and the OSHA decisionmakers.
To try and make this process go as fast as
possible, we have been and are contemporaneously
drafting a preamble and modifying a preamble as we go
along as decisions are made. So it is a work-in-progress.
On the one hand, it is kind of more work for
us because it means we keep redrafting or keep
modifying a work.
On the other hand, our feeling is that in the
end, it makes the process faster because it is always
easier to modify something than to start from scratch.
Unfortunately and very regrettably, once
again I have to say that we will miss our December,
1999 target date, although I am still hopeful that we
are not going to miss this one by as a broad a margin
as the others.
Other OSHA offices are, as I referred before,
getting backed up with some of the other projects that
are further down the track than this one. And more
time may also be needed for the economic analysis than
we had originally anticipated.
On Subpart N, as you know, we issued the
advanced notice of proposed rulemaking on July 14th.
The comment period is scheduled to close October 22nd.
We did receive some petitions for a 90-day
extension of time on that. And I believe Mr. Jeffress
will address that tomorrow.
On multi-employer, we are continuing to
consider the ACCSH recommendations that we received
from you. We are working on a final draft. I am still
optimistic that we will be able to finalize that this
year.
And I will be happy to take any questions.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you, Noah.
We have our workgroup standing by with bated
breath waiting for the safety and health standards. So
if you can get that one, you are eager beavers to
tackle that one.
The slippage of dates, I'm sure and I know is
a concern to you and it certainly is to us. And as you
said, there is certainly reasons beyond your control
and your group's control and Bruce's control for that
happening.
When the new agenda comes out -- and this is
not a question. I'm just giving you some advice. You
may not want it, but I will give it to you anyway.
Do you think the agency could take a look at
realistic dates and then add six months to a year after
they pick a date because that is usually where we fall
out?
(Laughter)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: So if you printed
that upfront, then you would not have to sit there all
the time and say regrettably I am missing the date,
regrettably because the date has already given you some
cushion in there. So just a thought.
Jane.
MS. WILLIAMS: I just had a question on the
steel erection. Do you have any date projection at
all, by spring, fall?
MR. CONNELL: Not at the present time, but my
sense is that we are probably talking about months. We
are not talking about, you know, years or anything, but
I hesitate to be more specific than that.
MS. WILLIAMS: Okay. Thanks.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Bruce.
MR. SWANSON: Yes. If I may respond to the
chair on adding the six or 12 months arbitrarily
because it will be closer to the fact than our well-intentioned estimates.
At the last meeting or perhaps it was the
meeting before, but Charles Jeffress sat here and
indicated to you folks what these dates were going to
be.
And he had only days before indicated to me
that I was going to meet those deadlines and the price
of our not meeting them.
Noah's shop has, unlike many of my earlier
experiences as a federal manager, accomplished its
portion of these assignments.
And he had some expectations that, you know,
you get this thing done in rough form. You put it on
the wagon. You send it off some place else to be
painted. It comes back. And you have met your
deadline.
We cannot send it off to be painted. The
paint shop is not open, we are told. And that is true
for several of our agenda items.
And then, we have had these other assignments
added which I asked in good faith inquiries six months
ago as to whether we would have to have SBREFA or
whether or not we would have to have stakeholder
hearings on confined space.
The answers were different. Things
apparently changed. And we -- Noah has had some more
assignments stacked on him.
And while there is a certain attraction of
arbitrarily putting the butcher's thumb on the scale
and saying something has got to go wrong, let's just
add a year to it, you know, well-intentioned management
made guess estimates with everything that we had in our
possession six months ago and came up with credible
dates.
The Assistant Secretary thought they were
credible dates. He told us we would meet those. I am
just burning incense, hoping that the fact that the
paint shop is closed is going to get me off the hook
for delivering these standards that, you know, you were
going to have reg text for a safety and health standard
by the end of the summer. And that is not going to
come out.
We were going to have confined space. That
is not going to work. Steel, we were going to have,
you heard, by the end of the calendar year.
We are still going to, I think as Noah
hinted. We are still probably going to have a steel
done in -- a steel erection standard done in our shop
by the end of the year, but there are some open-ended
variables on steel erection that could keep this thing
going for a long time.
But thank you for your suggestion, Mr.
Chairman.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Any discussion with
Noah from the committee?
Larry.
MR. EDGINTON: Bruce may have answered at
least part of my first question, but I want to make
sure I am clear on this.
Noah, you had spoken about the delay in the
general industry standard on a safety and health
program standard, rule, whatever we want to call it.
And from what I have heard and read, it
appears to me that much of that delay is associated
with a change in thinking of issuing it as a regulation
rather than a standard.
Is that predominantly what the delay is due
to? Or are there other issues?
And then, sort of the second part of the
related question is, even though the general industry
has been slowed down, I am trying to figure out what
that means for construction.
For example, have you already done your work,
but you cannot move forward with it because there is
nobody else to pay attention to it or paint it, as
Bruce said?
Or have you stopped all work? Or are you
continuing to work on construction even though the
paint shop is closed?
And then, I have a question on something
else.
MR. CONNELL: The firs question, I don't know
the answer to. I have not been following closely the
exact reasons for what is going on on the general
industry side.
We have been following closely t heir work
product internally, but not to the various reasons for
the delay. So I just don't know.
MR. EDGINTON: Okay.
MR. CONNELL: In terms of how are we
committing our resources, we got to a certain point
pretty far along in getting ready for draft text.
And before we can go beyond that point, we
have to work a lot more with other OSHA offices. And
that is where we are running into a problem.
That being the case, you know, we have
committed all of the people in the group are spending
about 75 percent of their time on steel erection. We
have been doing that since January.
And of course, we have had these other
projects that we were trying to keep moving along also
in the remaining 25 percent.
That does not leave much for continuing to do
a lot of work from where we are now on safety and
health programs if we are not going to be able to move
it to the next step.
So, no, we are not doing a lot of work right
now because I do not want to take away from steel
erection in particular to put effort into something
that is going to be sitting where it is sitting right
now anyway for awhile.
So that is where we are right now.
MR. EDGINTON: Okay. And then, the last
question I had to do with your statement regarding
multi-employer and that you were working on that, what
was moved by this body.
Are we talking about revisions to the firm
that you are working on? Or what are we talking about
there?
MR. CONNELL: Yes. It is the revisions to
the firm.
MR. EDGINTON: The reason I ask is some of my
constituents have been usually calling me, saying it
was their understanding that we had made
recommendations, and much I think the same confusion
that we heard about with Felipe's committee's work on
the firm is I was getting phone calls saying that you
all were doing something with respect to regulation
regarding multi-employer. And I'm saying, not that I
know about. So I just want to make sure we are clear
on that.
MR. CONNELL: No. There is no stand-alone,
multi-employer regulation that we are working on. No.
This is the project that we have been working on and
you all have commented on.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Anybody else?
(No response.)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you, Noah.
MR. CONNELL: Thanks.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Frank has joined us
in the back of the room.
We would like to take a 10-minute break,
Frank, if we could and then have you come on.
MR. FRODYMA: Okay.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Let's take a 10-minute break. And then, we will come back for Frank's
presentation.
(Whereupon, at 2:55 p.m., the meeting was
recessed.)
AFTER RECESS 3:05 p.m.
Special Presentations: (Continued)
OSHA Strategic Plan Update
MR. FRODYMA: Good afternoon. My name is
Frank Frodyma. I am the Deputy Director of Policy for
OSHA. And it is a pleasure to talk to these empty
chairs.
(Laughter)
MR. FRODYMA: Maybe, I should turn around,
but then, I would not be able to see the slides.
What I would like to do today is spend about
20 or 30 minutes talking about OSHA's Strategic Plan
and specifically talking about the revisions we made to
the Strategic Plan as we are required to do.
The Strategic Plan that OSHA has is a fairly
thick document. It has a number of different things in
it. There is -- we list our strategic goals. We list
the outcomes we want to see from those goals. And we
list the performance measures that we are going to use
to see if we have achieved the desired outcomes.
And so what we have done is -- a little more
about background. A Strategic Plan is produced by OSHA
as a result of the Government Performance Result Act
which requires every federal agency to put together a
five-year strategic plan.
The strategic plan is supposed to be geared
toward addressing not just government activity, that is
in case of OSHA inspections or citations or penalties,
but it is supposed to address the kinds of results we
hope to achieve and the mechanisms we expect to use to
achieve those results.
We have had a Strategic Plan in place now
since 1997. And the GPRA law requires that once every
three years, at least once every three years, we are
required to revise the Strategic Plan, update it to
make sure it is current with changes in economy,
etcetera.
So the Department of Labor, and, of course,
OSHA is part of the Department of Labor, decided to do
these revisions for fiscal year 2000.
And our Strategic Plan Workgroup which I am
member of began work on these revisions in March of
1999. And I will try to share with you some of the
results of that revision now.
We went through a lengthy process to look at
how we are doing against our current performance goals.
And the ones that really addressed the construction
industry, I am going to address here in a little more
detail in the next few slides.
Specifically, we wanted to make sure that
some of the new Secretary of Labor and the Assistant
Secretary of OSHA's Assistant Secretary's priorities
got reflected in this Strategic Plan that were not
reflected when we first put this document together back
in 1997. And the specific examples I have are
ergonomics and partnerships.
We also updated a lot of the text to reflect
a lot of the current activities. And we did go out to
a wide variety of stakeholders for their comments about
what they thought we ought to be revising. And we
included some of those comments and suggestions in this
revised plan.
We did receive a number of comments from
individual corporations. We got comments from the
construction side from the homebuilders, from the AGC,
from the National Federation of Independent Businesses
which represent a lot of construction firms, as well as
a lot of other groups.
So we got a lot of comments from all sectors
of the economy. We also got a fair number from your
particular industry.
The way we went about this, there was a
number of ways we could approach making changes to
this.
We could have waited -- we could have
evaluated where we were with our current goals and then
drop them and then start new goals, but we decided to
do this on a rolling basis instead.
That is we really did not want to start a new
plan in the middle of a five-year plan because it would
really be a lot of confusion.
So what we did instead was decided to modify
this plan. And as needed, we will continue to make
changes to it.
This revision therefore is going to cover the
period 1999 through 2004. But, of course, the original
plan had things to be accomplished and finished by the
year 2002. So there is a lot of different things going
on in the Strategic Plan at once that it does get
fairly complicated.
So what we want to do is put in a process to
select new targets three years from now which is in
fiscal 2002 which will be for the next revision.
So if we are looking ahead three more years,
we really want to consider at least what new -- now or
at least have a process in place for how we can
identify new targets for our Strategic Plan so this
process can continue on.
Let me just give you some specific revisions
that we made to the plan. Our first strategic -- and
before I do that, I think it might be useful just to go
over the process of how the Strategic Plan is
structured.
We have three strategic goals. Each of the
goals has some outcome goals that we hope to achieve
that support this. And each of the outcome goals have
got a number of performance goals that we are going to
try to measure ourselves against.
So for each strategic goal, there are some
outcome goals and some performance goals. And we have
modified.
We really do not do any modifications to the
actual goal itself. In the next three years, we think
that this particular goal, in fact all three goals, but
this one especially is one that we can retain for the
life of the Strategic Plan.
And it says that our first strategic goal is
to improve work place safety and health for all workers
as evidenced by fewer hazards, reduced exposures, and
fewer injuries, illnesses, and fatalities.
So we are going to keep that goal in place
for the length of the plan.
What we are going to revise is some language
in the outcome goal itself. And some of the changes
are pretty minor.
For example, we changed with four years. One
of our measurements is to measure the effectiveness of
a standard. And I will get into this in more detail.
But we just changed from four years of the
effective date to within six years of promulgation.
And I will explain why that is in a minute.
We also added a performance outcome goal on
ergonomics. And I am going to show you that in a
minute.
These are the performance goals. Remember, I
said there is a strategic goal and outcome goals and
performance goals. These are the actual measures we
are going to use to measure how we are getting to goal
number one which is to improve work place safety.
We said we have reduced three of the most
significant types of work place injuries and causes of
illnesses by 15 percent. That is over a five-year
period.
The three work place, the three most
significant types we identified were amputations,
silica exposures, and lead exposures.
We said would reduce injuries and illnesses
by 15 percent in five industries characterized by high
hazard work places.
And those five, they are going to remain the
same. Construction is one, nursing homes, shipyards,
logging, and food processing. Those are the five
industries we think there is the most high hazard work
places in.
We added -- so the difference here on this
strategic goal, performance measure, we added the
language here in yellow which says reduce work-related
ergonomic injuries and illnesses by 10 percent in
selected industries.
So that is, we added that because when we
first put this plan together, remember, we were under
the ergonomics rider by the Congress that said we will
not put a proposed or final rule out for a particular
fiscal year. And then, the following year they changed
it to say, until the National Academy of Sciences study
is done.
So we did not want to highlight anything in
ergonomics as a strategic plan because the Congress
basically said do not get into this area.
In 1999 -- in fiscal year 99, the Congress
took that rider off of our appropriations bill, in
effect signaling that they were not opposed to us going
forward in the ergonomics area.
So now, we are modifying our Strategic Plan
to include ergonomics as part of our performance goal.
We want to see reductions in injuries and illnesses in
ergonomics by some significant amount in certain
industries.
And then, the last one, decrease fatalities
in the construction industry by 15 percent, focusing on
the four leading causes of fatalities: falls, struck
by, crushed by, and electrocutions.
That remains the same as is in our current
Strategic Plan. So that will remain through the year
2004.
Oh, these. I'm sorry. There is two. There
is some additional measures we have in strategic goal
number one. And these, you can read them for yourself
or I can read them out for you, but they are basically
the same as they were in the Strategic Plan that
started in 1997. So there is no change in this
revision.
So I know you are all dying to know how we
are doing our goals so far, how far along are we in
accomplishing these performance measures towards our
strategic goal.
And I did not put all the stuff up, but I did
think that it was important to show where we were with
the construction-related goals.
I remember the construction-related goals
were to decrease the fatalities in the construction
industry by 15 percent and reduce the rates of injury
by 15 percent over five years.
And I do not know how easy it is to see.
Maybe, if somebody could shut that first light off, the
chart might be easier to read. Yes, there we go. I
should have had that for the whole presentation.
But again, the goal was 15 percent over five
years. Our 1999 goal was to reduce the rates by 3
percent. We broke it down by 3 percent each year.
As you can see, in 1995, the rate was -- this
is the fatality rate now in the construction industry.
And I am not sure that rate is right. It is 4.8. I'm
sorry. This is lost work day injuries.
And lost work day injuries in the
construction industry in 1995 were at 4.8. And the
industry has done quite well. They are down to 4.4 in
1997. And that is an 8.3 percent decline in three
years.
So as far as OSHA meeting its strategic plan
of seeing that there is a 15-percent reduction in five
years, we feel like the agency is on track to see that
that goal is met.
I know it is not OSHA that actually gets
these injury rates down. It is the employers, but what
we want to do is make sure however it happens that the
rates get down by 15 percent over five years.
And it seems like we are on track and the
industry is on track to accomplish, to meet that
performance measure.
The other measure that is important for
industry is the fatality incidence rates. And that
goal, again, was to reduce fatality rates by 15 percent
over five years. The 1999 goal is to get the rates
down by 3 percent.
Here, the change is not as dramatic. We have
only gone from 15 per 100,000 workers here is the
denominator down to 14.5.
So we thought there was a good trend here
between 1995 and 1996. And then, we blipped back up
between 1996 and 1998.
So while overall, we looked like we are still
making progress, the goal is not quite as clear as to
whether we will meet it or not at this point.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Frank, what is your
baseline?
MR. FRODYMA: I think for this, 1995 is the
base. For each of these performance measures, the
agency had to identify to OMB and to the Congress what
we were going to use as a baseline.
And I believe for this measure, the rate --
the baseline is the fatality rate in 1995. So that is
the base we use to measure our progress.
MR. SWANSON: I see that that was a very
clever selection.
MR. FRODYMA: Well, it happens to be
consistent with a lot of our other baseline selections,
but we did take a look at some of the baselines. And
there are some areas that we did not use 1995, but when
we didn't we tried to explain why.
But you are right, Bruce. We did not just
arbitrarily pick 1995.
MR. SWANSON: Obviously, I am not trying to
be morbid about fatalities, but we as an industry.
From 1996 through 1998 and most of us feel that 1999 is
not going to bring us any good news.
The fatality rate in the construction
industry is going the wrong way. And there are many
factors bringing pressure on that, all of them
negative.
MR. FRODYMA: In the Strategic Plan, we do
have -- we got a section. And remember, I said the
plan is quite thick. There is a section in the plan
that talks about externalities or external factors that
might influence it.
And certainly, in the construction industry,
it is true. As the industry grows, as the nature of
technology changes, there is a lot of things that
affect the fatality rates more than an employer can
control and more than OSHA can influence.
And so we did list in the Strategic Plan that
external factors certainly have a lot to do with
whether or not these goals are achievable. So we did
recognize that point.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: One of the things we
have all talked about is your term reportable because
there is several of us, many of us feel that you are
not getting all of the reported fatalities. The number
is actually a bogus number.
So there are many more fatalities occurring
in the construction industry. There is a trend. And
in 1999, I fear that --
MR. FRODYMA: Okay. No, I agree. But on the
fatalities, where these rates come from, unlike before
1992 when BLS used the survey to estimate fatalities,
after 1992 they have done -- they do an actual now
census, their census of fatal occupational injuries.
And they feel that they have captured every
fatality that is related to the work place. And the
way they do it is they get the medical death
certificates from all 50 states. And they scan them to
see if there is any reference in there to the fatality
being caused by work relatedness.
They look at those. They look at the reports
to OSHA. They look at NIOSH data. And they look at
the fatalities that are reported to OSHA for
investigation.
And they merge all those together, throw out
the duplicates, and they feel pretty certain that
they've got a very accurate census of the fatalities
that are out there.
I do not know how the death certificates are
coded, but they feel pretty certain that if on the
death certificate there is mention that the cause of
death had something to do with work, then they list it.
And then, they go back and check it.
So they do a fairly extensive process on
fatalities. So I think we are pretty comfortable with
where the numbers come from.
If there is under reporting to OSHA, I do not
think the medical examiner -- it will not be under
reporting to the medical examiner or wherever the death
certificates come from.
So I mean, we are aware that we do not get
all the fatality stuff, but BLS is pretty confident
that they are capturing the universe here.
Anyway, that is goal number one which for
OSHA we feel like it is one of our most important
goals.
As I said, we had three goals. The second
strategic goal was to try to change the work place
culture to increase the employer and worker awareness
of and commitment to and involvement in safety and
health.
And again, this is we thought that this goal
was well written and would remain as one of our goals
for the next three years.
We did make some revisions to it. And here
is where we added some additional ergonomics stuff.
When we said the goal was to change the work
place culture, we were really trying to encourage
programmatic kinds of approaches. We wanted to see how
much integration there could be between management and
the safety community at the work site.
So it is not something that OSHA was going to
do, but we wanted to change the way employers and
workers view the safety. And so we wanted to emphasize
programmatic approaches.
Being free of the ergonomic rider, we added
an ergo program component. We added a goal on
voluntary partnerships. And we eliminated some
language talking about worker involvement.
And I will go through the ergo and voluntary
partnerships in a minute.
In the original strategic plan for this goal,
we had a performance requirement that says every OSHA
regulation or OSHA initiative should have some
component involved making sure that there was worker
involvement.
The agency felt very strongly that worker
involvement was very critical to improving safety. And
we wanted that reflected somehow in the Strategic Plan.
Unfortunately, we could not find a good way
to measure how much worker involvement there was or
whether even some of the initiatives had requirements.
On the standards, it is pretty easy. The reg
says you will have worker involvement. Then, at least
the initiative shows OSHA said there should be worker
involvement.
But even for some of the standards, if we are
rewriting some of our regs into plain English, it is a
new OSHA initiative that we are not really changing any
of the requirements and there would not be necessarily
be a worker involvement requirement in the rewrite.
Or for putting out an internal initiative to
change our penalty structure or something like that,
there would not be automatically be worker involvement.
So we could not find a way to come up with a
number of initiatives or even define what initiatives
were for this one. So we took the coward's way out and
eliminated the whole performance measure.
These are the performance goals that are left
in strategic goal number two. In the first one, the
white language is the same as we had in the earlier
strategic plan.
It is the 75 percent of employers who are
targeted or request an OSHA intervention will implement
an effective safety and health program.
The yellow is what we added here since -- on
ergo including where appropriate an ergonomics program.
See, not knowing yet the precise scope of an
ergonomic regulation or who it is going to cover, we
could not put exactly what we mean here, but we wanted
to make sure we emphasize that where it is appropriate,
they do have ergonomic programs.
What we are hoping to do is after we do an
intervention, whether it is an enforcement action or a
consultation visit or just any other kind of
intervention, that we would encourage employers and
workers and everybody else to address any ergonomic
problems they have. And we will try to measure this in
a number of different ways.
We did add another performance goal for
strategic goal number two. And it says reduce injuries
and illnesses by 15 percent at work sites engaged in
voluntary, cooperative relationships with OSHA.
This is a new initiative, a new performance
goal, partly because when we solicited comments about
the Strategic Plan, a number of employers emphasized
that you really ought to emphasize cooperative
relationships, strategic partnerships.
We got comments from the construction sector
as well that we ought to emphasize more voluntary
cooperative programs.
And so we think this is the place to do it.
Adding a voluntary cooperative program does change the
nature of the work place. It is voluntary. The work
place has got to do things that they were not doing
before. There is a new relationship with OSHA.
We think we can measure this in a number of
ways. And we are going to put this in our goal from
1999 to 2004.
The last one down here is some measure of how
well we are doing. It is we want to know. We want a
goal of 90 percent of employers and workers rating
OSHA's compliance assistance, all these different
packages we have as useful in improving their safety
and health in their work place.
That remains the same the previous year as do
these two remaining items for strategic goal number
two.
We want to have 100 percent of our OSHA on-site activities have some sort of worker involvement
component. So this remains. We can define what on-site activities.
By that we mean that they will walk around
with the OSHA inspector or will walk around with the
consultant or they participate in a settlement
agreement or in a pre- or post-conference.
And the next one is that 90 percent of all
workers in establishments where there is an
intervention rate their involvement as satisfactory.
That is that they are satisfied at least that they got
to say -- they got their voice heard in the safety and
health process.
So that is strategic goal number two.
The last goal is to secure public confidence
through excellence in the development and delivery of
OSHA's programs and services.
When we put this goal down in the first
place, what we wanted to do is just to make sure that
not only were we doing the job of getting injury and
illness rates down and that we were changing the --
helping to change the culture.
We did not think that those things were going
to be enough unless the public had confidence that we,
OSHA, were a first-rate agency, that we are
professional at our delivery of services that the law
requires us to deliver are done in a professional and
excellent manner and that we know what we are doing.
So we made a goal to make sure that the
public confidence in OSHA is high. And we have revised
that a little bit. We have revised a little bit of the
whistleblower goal.
We rewrote some of the performance goals on
our internal financial operations so that we are
current with our own spending.
And finally, we did eliminate one thing which
I need to mention. We eliminated the goal related to
reducing OSHA's paper work burden.
This is not -- but the reason that we could
eliminate this is that in the first year, in the first
measure of how we did on paper work burden which was to
reduce the paper work by 25 percent, we met that goal.
The way we met it was a little bit the way
government meets a lot of number goals by a little bit
of creative accounting.
But the Paperwork Reduction Act requires that
we have an inventory of the burden we place on
industry. We list what the burden is for each
regulation.
Process Safety and Management which
principally affects the chemical industry had a very
heavy paper work burden associated with it in the early
years.
Well, those early years have now passed. So
we no longer have to count that burden. So in effect,
we have reduced our burden by 25 percent. So we feel
we can drop this goal.
So it is a little bit of creative accounting,
but in fact it is the real, the measures that OMB and
the government uses are the ones we are using as well.
And so we have dropped that as a measurement for this
strategic goal.
The performance goals for number three here -- and I am not sure there is any yellow in these slides
to show where the actual changes were. Let me see.
No.
But on the whistleblower, we changed the
whistleblower which is the third bullet down here to
complete 80 percent all of our cases within 90 days
because we also have to pick up whistleblowers, not
just 11(c) that OSHA is responsible for now, we are
responsible for all the whistleblowers for all labor
laws.
And some of the Department of Transportation
laws, the Surface Transportation Act requires or gave
the truckers and other transportation workers the right
to file complaints.
OSHA now has the responsibility for following
up in those cases. So we have to change that goal a
little bit.
And let's see. What was the other one we
changed? And the other one was a financial operation
which is more of an internal procedure.
So those are sort the -- and these
performance goals give you some idea of how we are
going to measure this public confidence.
We are going to actually end up doing
employer and worker/employee surveys to find out how
OSHA is rated. We did this about five or six years
ago. And I have some baseline information.
OMB has agreed to allow us to do these
surveys. They will be done. The design of them has to
be done in the year 2000. We will actually carry them
out in the year 2001.
Remember, this is a five-year Strategic Plan.
So we hope we can show that we are achieving this goal
through certain mechanisms.
Yes, sir.
MR. FRODYMA: A question of your analysis,
the second one of going through the strategic goal two
I think it was.
MR. FRODYMA: Back to two.
MR. FRODYMA: On ergonomics. Right there.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Felipe, you need to
use the mike.
MR. DEVORA: Your analysis, you said that the
appropriate -- the ad -- the appropriation bill was
removed. Therefore, you added this as a strategic
goal.
Are we assuming -- or I take it that you are
assuming a regulation or an intervention as you called
it to be forthcoming in this area. Is that right?
MR. FRODYMA: Right. Remember, we are doing
these revisions because both the Secretaries and the
Assistant Secretary for OSHA's priorities need to be
emphasized.
And there is no question that the Secretary
of Labor and the Assistant Secretary have ergonomics or
a reduction of ergonomic injuries --
MR. DEVORA: But how can you list -- I'm
sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you.
MR. FRODYMA: Yes.
MR. DEVORA: But how can you list a strategic
goal as with something that hasn't really happened yet?
MR. FRODYMA: Because this goes out to --
this goal is for a five-year plan. And I would think
it is fair to say that both the Secretary of Labor and
the Assistant Secretary expect that certainly within a
five-year period, there will be an ergonomics
regulation out.
The plan now is that the ergonomics reg is at
OMB for review for general industry now.
MR. DEVORA: Right.
MR. FRODYMA: I cannot tell you the schedule
precisely, but there is at this point at least the
schedule.
The President's regulatory agenda will be
published in November which OMB puts out every year.
And I am pretty sure that in that regulatory agenda
that is coming out there will be a schedule for what we
plan for ergonomics.
So this November, there will be some
specifics. Now, OMB may change some of the dates, but
we have submitted to OMB an ergonomics plan for --
which includes regulatory action in ergo. Yes, the
agency has been on the record with that for a number of
months.
MR. SMITH: Does that mean that it is going
to come whether or not there is a scientific study?
MR. FRODYMA: Now, there is a bill that's
passed. We are getting into some other issues here.
But there is a bill that's been passed in the House,
the Blunt bill, H.R. 987. It says that OSHA should be
prohibited from promulgating a final.
What that law says is passing a final
ergonomics rule until such time as a National Academy
of Sciences completes its study. That bill has passed
the House, but has not passed the Senate.
And the President sent a letter to the
Congress, saying if it reaches his desk, he proposes to
veto it.
So the administration is on record as saying
we want to go forward with an ergonomics standard.
And if there is a law passed to prohibit it,
unless the Congress can override that law, the
President plans not to implement it through his veto
authority.
MR. DEVORA: I guess the analysis that I was
questioning was --
MR. FRODYMA: Right.
MR. DEVORA: Was assuming, was putting an
assumption in as a strategic plan.
MR. FRODYMA: Yes, it is a clear assumption
by putting this in here that there will be some
ergonomic requirements.
MR. DEVORA: And we are also assuming on the
next one that the paper work reduction is not going to
be affected by the ergonomics standard.
MR. FRODYMA: Well, I cannot tell you that or
not because I do not know what the paper work burdens
would be, but, yes, they --
MR. DEVORA: On reducing paper work, let's
see what they assume.
MR. FRODYMA: There is a good point. There
certainly would be probably a little bit of paper work
associated with ergo.
(Laughter)
MR. FRODYMA: And that might change our
burden, your burden somewhat or the burden OSHA has to
take.
Hopefully, that clears up the ergo stuff.
But, yes, there is a bill passed the House. The
administration is on record as opposing that bill. And
therefore, we still have plans in place to take some
regulatory action in the area of ergo.
And the Secretary is on record, the Assistant
Secretary is on record, and the President is on record.
MR. SMITH: You had indicated that you were
going to try to do something about the image with OSHA
and the public. Is OSHA planning on hiring a PR firm
or something?
MR. FRODYMA: No. We don't think that's
necessary. No. What we want to do is the agency does
want to be thought of as really a professional
organization.
We are trying to make sure that everything we
do in the field is professional even though -- and we
understand that employers are not always going to agree
with everything we do, but at least we want employers
to think that when we do something, it is done in a
professional and competent manner, that we know what we
are talking about, that we hire professional people,
that we treat people with respect.
And we understand as a regulatory agency, we
are never going to be loved by employers, but we want
the public to expect that OSHA is a competent agency
and is competent at what it does.
MR. SMITH: Well, I think that everyone feels
that you are professional. I think the question is
whether or not you are user friendly. And it seems to
me that you can certainly use some imagery in that
respect.
MR. FRODYMA: Yes. Well, hopefully, if we do
our job the way we are supposed to do it, then we will
not need a PR firm. It will be self evident.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Does the committee
want to come back up to the ergonomically unsound, hard
chairs?
(Laughter)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Frank, can you
supply the committee copies of your slides?
VOICE: That would be great.
MR. FRODYMA: The ones I have here are
somewhat incomplete, but I can do that.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Okay.
MR. FRODYMA: I can certainly get them to the
committee.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: One of the things
that bothers me when I wrote my response to Paul White
on this issue, I guess being an employer and looking at
it from an employer's perspective, OSHA is using
percentages.
And I assume they are understanding that they
need the employer's buy-in to accomplish those goals
because the employers establish the culture. The
employer's reduce the injury and illness rates by
implementing programs and policies and procedures to
reduce worker's risks.
And one of my comments, you know, why do you
even put percentage on it? I assume you have some kind
of a metric to measure yourself.
But I would think OSHA would look more like
the third one there where you had things that actually
OSHA can accomplish and achieve internally without
relying on an external partner like the employers to do
the statistics for you because you still have a lot of
employers.
And Bruce usually puts up some nice graphs
for us to look at about how many inspections and that
kind of stuff.
And 352,000 construction employers in America
and you are inspecting 50,000, that is a quarter of a
million you are not getting to who are not implementing
any OSHA policies or procedures and waiting for
somebody to show up on their job to tag them. And they
may get there once in every five or 10 years.
So those employers are not going to help you
get to the increased rates that you are asking to get
to.
Where, if you put your focus on the third
strategic plan of outreach and training and that kind
of thing which the committee has been working in
several areas, I think you would have a much better
opportunity of achieving your metric than you are going
to have based on reduction in fatalities, reduction in
recordables, reduction in lost work day cases.
And OSHA cannot really go out and mandate
that it be done.
MR. FRODYMA: Now, those are all valid
points. Some of the -- the agency is working in a
couple of different levels here. One is trying to
comply with the GPRA law.
And in terms of your comment about
percentages and using some metrics, our Strategic Plan
is going to be rejected by the Department -- by OMB and
by Congress if it doesn't have some metrics in it
because the law was written specifically to -- the way
it is written and the way it is being interpreted and
forced on us, it is requiring us when we put our plan
together to put specific numbers.
They want to see measurable results. And
they want them linked to agency activities. And they
do not want them to be internal to inside the beltway
actions. They want them to be external to the
community that we deal with.
So we had a lot of debate in putting this
plan together about what to use. And we did come up
with these and also whether these percentages are
actual numbers and how -- and low rates or how they
ought to be displayed. We went through a lot of agony
about that.
But having said that, with regard to focusing
on the third goal rather than some of the other ones,
we are trying to emphasize that all three of these
things have to work together, that one goal, for us at
least, that the third goal is as important as the first
two.
And, yes, I think you are right that the
first one is not OSHA's to do per se because we are not
the ones that are going to actually reduce rates.
It is the employer that has to put abatement
practices into place and engineering controls. Or
whatever interventions have to be made have to be done
on the employer's part.
What we can do is make sure that the
employers we do not get to understand their
responsibilities as well.
And that is why we are trying to do more than
just enforcement. We are trying to balance this with
the three goals rather than one.
So but your point -- I mean, we did a lot of
internal debate about how to do the Strategic Plan.
And this is sort of what we came out with.
But you are not the only one that has made
that comment about the employers' responsibilities
rather than OSHA's.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Sarah.
MS. SHORTALL: This is just a quick comment.
I just wanted to have something on the record that this
afternoon is the Office of Policy's annual picnic.
(Laughter)
MS. SHORTALL: And Frank is here to make sure
that his report is given to you. Thank you.
MR. FRODYMA: I did have a hot dog.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Any other comments
or questions for Frank on the Strategic Plan?
(No response.)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Good. Frank, thank
you very much.
MR. FRODYMA: I also thank the committee for
I know a lot of you submitted comments on the plan. We
took a lot of them. We took many of the comments.
Hopefully, the plan is better as a result of your
efforts because it is not an easy document to wade
through.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you. We
appreciate it.
Noah has kindly agreed to share with us
through one of his people the -- where we are on the
new revision to Subpart B, the electrical standard.
So Noah, your person is here that is going to
do that?
MR. CONNELL: Joe Pipkin.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Good.
Joe, welcome.
MR. PIPKIN: Yes.
Special Presentations: (Continued)
Subpart V - Electrical Standard
MR. PIPKIN: My name is Joe Pipkin. I am the
Director for Electrical and Mechanical, that office. I
am also participating in the new pilot program. So I
am also a team member which is doing safety and health
and the revision updating of Subpart V and also
welding. That is quite a mix.
I have no slides. And my presentation, just
a status report will be very brief.
As you are aware, we have gone through
several drafts of the updating of Subpart V. As you
know, Subpart V has been around almost forever in 1926.
And what triggered this was the work that was
done in 1910. In 1910, of course, the 1910.269 deals
with power generation distribution and transmission.
But for construction, we do not do power generation.
We just do distribution and transmission.
And our approach to this is that the
mechanics of it was to use the update of Subpart V as a
medium for making changes, as well as updating the
standard, of course, but using it as a medium for
making changes in 1910.269.
Since that standard has been promulgated, we
have learned a lot. We made mistakes. And we are
trying to correct those.
So therefore, we have a two-fold project
going here. And if one looks, our latest draft was
dated May, the end of May of this year. And it is in
two parts.
Part one really indicates those changes that
we are bringing up for public review that we will
making to 1910.269.
Then, part two is where actually go into
Subpart V and make the changes with that standard.
We hope to propose this possibly some time in
the early part of next year. And in one sense, we had
hoped to do this earlier, but we were preempted by our
standard on safety and health.
What we have done so far is this, we have had
a series of meetings with the Edison Electric Institute
folks and their member utilities. We have reviewed the
standard with them item by item.
We also met with IBEW, the principal union
which is involved here and went through -- have gone
through the standard item by item with them.
These are not to be considered shareholder
meetings. They, the shareholder meetings will follow a
slightly different format, a little more formal, but
they are on the way. They are coming.
But this is early-on work. We feel that the
people who will be working with the standard like the
folks from IBEW and certainly EEI, the interchange of
information has been give and take. And it has been
very good. They have had comments. We have put in
their comments. And that is where we stand in the
standard right now.
As I recall, copies of the draft have been
submitted to you folks. And we are moving along with
that.
And again, as I said, we anticipate our
proposed standard some time in the early part of next
year.
And that is really all I have to say at this
point.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Just for the record,
this committee did not get a copy of the draft.
So maybe, through Jim, if you could get us a
copy and supply it? Thank you.
MR. PIPKIN: Absolutely.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: I appreciate it.
Any comments or questions?
Michael.
MR. BUCHET: Michael with the National Safety
Council.
One of my division members is the utility
workers. Have you spoken with them at all?
MR. PIPKIN: We have not spoken with them on
this. We did speak with them quite extensively on 269.
They are aware of what we are doing, but the
meetings that we have just held last week was primarily
IBEW and EEI. We spent one day at the IBEW
headquarters and a subsequent day at the EEI
headquarters, but we --
MR. BUCHET: Do you mind if I pass your name
onto them?
MR. PIPKIN: No. Please do. Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Anybody else?
(No response.)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you, Joe.
MR. PIPKIN: Okay.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: It is five minutes
to three. And we have completed our agenda for the
day.
Based on the uncomfortness of the chairs we
have been forced to sit on, it might be a good time to
adjourn.
(Laughter)
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Or if the committee
is -- did I hear no or's, Larry?
I was going to say we can continue to suffer,
I mean, sit here and go through the Paperwork Reduction
comments, but --
MS. WILLIAMS: They are not ready.
CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: They are not ready.
So with that, we will adjourn for the day.
8:00 o'clock tomorrow morning.
(Whereupon, at 3:55 p.m., the meeting was
recessed to reconvene at 8:00 a.m., Friday, September
3, 1999.)
This is to certify that the foregoing
proceedings of a meeting of the U.S. Department of
Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration,
Advisory Committee on Construction Safety and Health,
Volume 1, held on September 2, 1999, were transcribed
as herein appears and that this is the original
transcript thereof.
SONIA GONZALEZ
Court Reporter
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