Safety Knights

It's OSHA's low hanging fruit. Why does it stay the same? Because our industry, as a whole, is complacent with the "it can't happen to me" mentality. Industries place profits over safety, use the lowest bidder for contractors/subcontractors, and do whatever they can to finish ahead of schedule.

While some employers truly don't know, many do and come up with a variety of reasons as to why they can't comply. However, technical and economic feasibility, as defined by OSHA, is not the same as the employer defines it. I think that, alone, is a major reason. OSHA says the solution to your problem is feasible, yet employers think of 100 reasons why it's not and play a game with it.

If you look at fall prevention and the changes to the regs in 2018, I believe that OSHA went backwards. They decreased the guarded fixed ladder height from 30’ to 24’ , but now I can run a 150’ stick, without platforms for rest, as long as I provide a pfas. Dumb. Those things jam, the center beam gives you something to bang your knee on, super fun when you are climbing a ladder!, and you have the age old employee and PPE paradigm. You can train them all day, have the greatest policies ever written, and the employees still have the opportunity to ignore it all. The cages are an engineered solution. Pfas is PPE that relies upon administrative controls. How did OSHA justify sliding backwards?

I always thought that fall protection was on the top of the list because it is such an easy violation for an inspector to spot. When OSHA inspectors drive by a construction site and sees people on an elevated surface without fall protection they can issue a citation. Also its easier to cite because its cut and dry, and almost any inspector can cite for it. Issuing an overexposure for chemicals requires special inspector, analytical testing with many variables.

Overall I feel like OSHA does a good job issuing citations for the hazards that exist in the workplace.