Newsletter - Spring
2003Newsletter home Worker
Memorial Day: Honoring and Remembering Fallen Workers
"On this day,
we pause to recognize and remember those workers who lost their lives making a
living, supporting their families and contributing to their communities,"
said OSHA Administrator John Henshaw in a statement commemorating Worker Memorial
Day, April 28. Henshaw said that worker fatalities had been cut by more than 60
percent over the past 30 years and injury and illness rates had declined 40 percent
during the same period. He also described some of OSHA's ongoing efforts to improve
job safety and health, including Hispanic outreach, enhanced enforcement, construction
partnerships, emergency preparedness planning, and a focus on toxic exposure and
illness.
OSHA Publishes Tools to Aid in Emergency
Evacuations
OSHA has recently developed new tools to help employers plan
for emergency response. The Evacuation Planning Matrix provides assistance to
employers in reducing vulnerability to workplace emergencies. The matrix helps
employers evaluate their existing plans or helps them construct new ones, and
provides on-line resources to help develop emergency evacuation plans. OSHA also
developed the Emergency Exit Routes fact sheet, a tool to aid employers and workers
in safely evacuating workplaces during emergencies. The fact sheet complements
the agency's standard on exit routes, and emergency action and fire prevention
plans.
OSHA stays with lift truck
operator restraints
It isn't very often there's a story when something
doesn't happen. But the decision by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration
(OSHA) last month not to make any changes to its requirements for the use of operator
restraints on lift trucks is a major story - if not a major victory for the Industrial
Truck Association (ITA). Late last year, OSHA announced that it might ease
the 1995 requirement, which ITA had championed for some time, under four conditions:
if the warehouse is clean; the truck is well maintained; the truck is used within
its limits and; the driver is well trained. ITA immediately protested the
move on safety grounds. Interestingly enough, OSHA's proposal was prompted by
automakers that claimed seatbelts hurt productivity. In fact, ITA called the change
"an awful idea," and made opposition to it the group's number one goal
for 2003. "I am pleased to say that ITA has achieved it," says Bill
Montwieler, executive director of the association.
--Moderm Materials Handling
magazine
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