• Final rules regarding Cranes and Derreicks in construction will go into effect  90days after August 9, 2010,  View the final rules and regulations at: http://www.osha.gov/doc/cranesreg.pdf

• OSHA’s final rule updating recordkeeping requirements to add a separate column for recording musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) is at the Office of Management and Budget for review.  Employers should expect to see it issued in the near future, and to be effective for the 2011 year.

• OSHA’s final rule regarding MSD’s will also include the removal of the existing language from its recordkeeping compliance directive that “minor musculoskeletal discomfort” is not recordable as a restricted work case “if a health care professional determines that the employee is fully able to perform all of his or her routine job functions, and the employer assigns a work restriction for the purpose of preventing a more serious injury.” OSHA stated it was concerned that this language created confusion among employers about recording MSDs.

• OSHA’s has increased efforts to address particular hazards and a high fatality rate in the construction industry. OSHA sent additional inspectors to Texas to confront the state’s high rate of construction worker deaths. OSHA conducted almost 700 construction inspections throughout Texas during this initiative, issuing more than 1,000 violations resulting in $1.6 million in fines.

• To further address the high fatality rate in the construction industry, OSHA has developed a  pilot program to work with building inspectors in 11 cities across the country to reduce worker deaths on construction sites–particularly deaths caused by falls, electrocution, and being caught between or struck by objects.

• OSHA has redesigned its On-site Consultation Web page to enhance its usefulness to small and medium-sized businesses across the country seeking free and confidential advice on increasing workplace safety.  An improved On-site Consultation directory gives users the ability to quickly find offices in their states to contact for further information about the program, or to request a visit.

• OSHA issued a directive July 8 extending its National Emphasis Program to inspect facilities processing large amounts of highly toxic or flammable chemicals and gases.

• President Barak Obama issued a July 19 memorandum calling on all federal agencies to “improve workplace safety and health, reduce the financial burden of injury on taxpayers, and relieve unnecessary suffering by workers and their families.” The goals of the president’s four-year Protecting Our Workers and Ensuring Reemployment Initiative include setting aggressive performance targets for reducing occupational injuries and illnesses among federal workers and speeding the return to work of employees who do suffer serious job-related injuries or illnesses.

2 NFL players have received Workers Compensation benefits from being injured while working as a NFL player.

Gabe Reid was awarded $325,000 after suffering a right knee injury while playing for the Bears from 2003-2006, according to a Chicago Tribune report last week.

It is the largest workers comp settlement for a pro athlete in the state of Illinois, an attorney told the newspaper.

Mr. Reid is an unrestricted free agent, but has not played in the NFL since the Bears released him in 2006.

The state agency also awarded former All-Pro safety Mike Brown, who led the Kansas City Chiefs in tackles last season, $140,000 after he suffered leg and foot injuries during his time with the Chicago Bears, according to the Tribune.

This information has spread like wildfire and many are outraged that players in the NFL, often with very large paying contracts, are drawing on the Workers Compensation benefits.  I am more on the fence.  Yes, many players are paid A LOT of money, but does that waive their rights to receive benefits if they are injured?  I know many workers that are paid better than others based on the “risk” of the job.  For example, Crab Fisherman.  One of the most dangerous jobs.  They are paid a lot of money, based on the intensive labor, and risk involved.  However, they still have access to Workers Compensation benefits if they are injured on the job.  Is there a “magic” number that if you make above “x” dollars that you are not allowed to recieve benefits when injured on the job?     Is it fair to hold different industries, or employees salary to different standards?  Where is this line drawn?

What do you think???

This brings up an interesting topic.  Do you sit all day?  If so how do you feel at the end of a day?  Do you find that prolonged sitting aggravates your low back, neck etc?  Or do you find that your backside has gotten – well a bit bigger?  Do you find yourself trying to find a “comfortable” position-all day long?

Researchers have show in preliminary results that not only does sitting lead to being overweight, decreased circulation and lower metabolism but also can increase risk of heart disease and even death. 

So what can be done?  Do you have a workstation that allows for standing all day?  Do you think exercise balls in place of office chairs are the newest trend? 

I would love to hear your thoughts!!!

Costs have risen dramatically. For example, the average workers’ compensation medical costs per lost-time claim rose 27 percent in the last four years, according to Marsh’s Dimensions™ database. Additionally, Mercer Oliver Wyman estimates U.S. workers’ compensation exposure to be $64 to $104 billion.

As costs continue to soar and negatively impact bottom lines, workers’ compensation is fast becoming a C-suite issue. But what can be done to decrease claim costs? 

One method getting more and more attention is the concept of “wellness”. Wellness comes in many shapes and sizes, but the idea is that if your employees are healthier, they are less likely to be injured, and when injuries do occur,  they will be of lesser severity.  This is a great concept, but many have found that wellness as a prevention strategy has failed in the real world. 

How many companies have installed a “fitness” area, equipped with treadmills, and weight machines? Did they work? 

What about medical screens?  Certainly they can detect employees with health risks but are they effective in decreasing work place injuries and their costs?

If your company has tried a fitness-area or medical screening chances are that neither approach has resulted in any “real” change in your workers’ comp costs, let alone any “real” changes in your employees’ health. 

”Wellness” programs and medical screening have typically missed the mark in preventing injuries because participation is often low, those that do participate are often not the most at-risk employees to begin with, and as it relates to medical screening in particular, the finding of these screenings do not result in reduced risk of work place injuries.  

Since 1990 InjuryFree has developed industrial injury prevention and risk reduction solutions that work. Imagine a “wellness” program that achieves:

• 80-90% employee participation over a 3 year period!
• 65-75% employee participation per year
• A positive ROI after just 2 years
• Reduced Workers Comp Costs
• Reduced Workers Comp Claims
• Increased productivity
• Increased profit
• Increased employee morale
• Increased employee health

Learn more about the InjuryFree programs and start to truly impact your company’s workers’ compensations costs, claims, and ultimately your employees’ health. Explore our website, or contact us today for a guided tour of our services and how InjuryFree can improve the health of your organization.

Change MSHA’s (Mine Safety and Health Adminstration) safety process from a primarily punitive to a rehabilitative process, which would include publicly posting Mine safety records on MSHA’s website.

Giving MSHA Appropriate Enforcement Tools

• Give MSHA additional authority to order training.
• Give MSHA authority to seek injunctions when there is a course of conduct that constitutes a continuing threat to the health and safety of miners.
• Clarify the definition of a “significant and substantial” violation.
• Give MSHA expanded authority to subpoena documents and testimony.
• Increase maximum criminal and civil penalties.
• Ensure that operators pay penalties in a timely manner.

Protecting Workers Who Speak Out About Unsafe Conditions

• Strengthen protections for workers who speak out about unsafe conditions.
• Ensure that miners don’t lose pay for safety-related closures.
• Ensure that miners can speak freely during investigations.

In addition the proposal would expand to all industry to:

• Ensure that all safety personnel are well-qualified.
• Ensure that inspections are comprehensive and well-targeted.
• Require pre-shift reviews of mine conditions, and communication to ensure that appropriate safety information is transmitted.
• Reducing Safety Risks such as the risk of Coal Dust Explosions.
• Increasing Safety in Other Workplaces that would provide similar protections in other workplaces covered under the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

For details on the full proposal please click here. 

This proposal seems  right in line with the OSHA 6 year plan.  What do you think, will this help protect our workers?

6/16/2010
(HAMILTON, Ohio) — A Butler County grand jury has returned indictments against United Oil Recovery Services Inc. and several of its employees on charges relating to the death of a worker at the company’s Middletown facility.

United Oil and David Weber, the company’s environmental health and safety manager, are charged with one count each of involuntary manslaughter, reckless homicide, violation of wastewater permit, deviation from pre-treatment permit and criminal endangering. United Oil President David Brown and Plant Manager Jay Black are each charged with one count of criminal endangering.

The charges stem from an incident on June 21, 2008, at the Middletown facility where wastewater was being improperly treated using sodium hydrosulfide. As a result, a chemical reaction took place and lethal doses of hydrogen sulfide were released, killing United Oil employee Thomas Rogers. The Warren County Coroner’s Office concluded that the cause of Rogers’ death was hydrogen sulfide poisoning.

In 2007, United Oil was issued a permit from Ohio EPA for the pre-treatment of wastewater. The permit outlined the approved treatment processes. Soon after, however, the company deviated from the terms of its permit by using sodium hydrosulfide to speed up the treatment process.

Involuntary manslaughter and reckless homicide are both third-degree felonies that carry penalties of up to five years incarceration and a $10,000 fine for individuals and $15,000 for an organization. Criminal endangering is a first-degree misdemeanor that carries a penalty of up to 180 days incarceration and a $1,000 fine for an individual.

The office of Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray prosecuted the case at the request of the Butler County Prosecutor’s Office. The Environmental Enforcement section of the Ohio Attorney General’s Office represents the interests of various state agencies in criminal, civil and administrative matters intended to enforce Ohio’s environmental laws and rules in order to protect the health and safety of the public and the state’s many natural resources. In 2009, the Environmental Enforcement section was granted more than $37.4 million from civil, criminal and bankruptcy proceedings, including a record-setting $15 million in judgments secured by the section’s hazardous waste unit.

Full News Release

• OSHA Compliance Staff to increase by 110 people
• 40,000 inspections this year (2010)
• Increased focus on industrial hygiene (especially relating to noise and hearing loss)
• The Voluntary Protection Plan (VPP) will lose funding; but The House Education and Labor Committee is looking at ways to keep the program running and are considering a fee based system.  In addition the ASSE is trying to gain support to tell OSHA to continue funding VPP.
• OSHA will be changing the penalty calculator soon to have increased dollars associated with fines.
• Fines will increase on average three to four times.
• Larger penalties are being considered for “Serious” hazards.
• The National Emphasis Program will present and post inspection findings violations, and types of hazards
• OSHA will be looking at ways to help employers look at all work hazards including ergonomics.
• According to David Michaels, “OSHA’s field staff will be looking for ergonomic hazards in their inspections and we {OSHA} will be providing them with the support and back-up they need to enforce under the general duty clause.
• “In addition we will be examining employer logs to see if MSD’s are accurately reported.”
• The Labor Department released its Spring regulatory agenda which includes a new enforcement strategy – Plan/Prevent/Protect – an effort designed to expand and strengthen worker protections through a new OSHA standard that would require each employer to implement an Injury and Illness Prevention Program tailored to the actual hazards in employers’ workplaces.
• The Severe Violators Enforcement program is designed as a supplemental, special enforcement tool to address recalcitrant employers who fail to meet their obligations under the OSH Act. This program includes:
• more mandatory inspections of identified companies
• mandatory follow-up inspections
• inspections at other locations of the same company
• And a more intense examination of an employer’s history to assess if there are systemic problems that would trigger additional mandatory inspections.
• OSHA supports a provision of “Protecting America’s Workers Act (PAWA)”, that would require employers to abate serious, willful and repeat hazards after a citation is issued during the contest period. This provision would also enable OSHA to issue “failure to abate” notices at a workplace with a citation under contest, enhancing the right of workers to be protected from the most egregious workplace hazards.

InjuryFree CEO, Trent Shuford

At InjuryFree, we believe in a world where peoples’ work environments are safe, and injury-free.  This is accomplished through prevention of injuries by promoting personal responsibility in health and safety. If we focused on prevention first, work would become a place where people gain the skills, knowledge and capability to reach these goals.

Work environments go through many changes and with those changes one fact is true; having a healthy workforce in a safe environment, working injury-free, will save your company money. Currently, over a billion dollars a week is spent by companies on injury related hard costs, not to mention the hidden costs!

The reactive injury response process has led to increased claims costs and a medical service model that has become too expensive. Both employers and employees are feeling the rising cost of healthcare with higher premiums, insurance deductibles and co-pays. The cost of healthcare and regulatory compliance is driving companies to transition from a reactive process, to preventing injuries before they occur. Focused correctly, prevention can reduce if not eliminate risk that results in injuries.  Prevention does require time and a financial investment, but the return on investment in prevention becomes a bigger opportunity for businesses year after year. The value of prevention unfolds over time and its benefits are decreased absenteeism, fewer health expenditures, increased productivity and profit. For businesses, prevention provides a competitive advantage for those proactive, World Class companies.

Change is needed; we can’t keep doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result!

Wouldn’t you agree…?

If you are interested in transitioning your organization to a prevention model that helps employees first, we at InjuryFree would like to partner with you. Contact us today and we will work together to identify solutions that reduces your workplace risk, prevents injuries, and increases workers’ productivity for a competitive advantage.

Thank you!

Trent Shuford, CEO

Memorial Day, Formerly known as Decoration Day, commemorates U.S. men and women who died while in military service.  Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, and was first observed on 30 May 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery.

Ways to observe Memorial Day in 2010 -

• Put flags or flowers on the graves of soldiers.
• Visiting cemeteries and memorials.
• Display the American Flag at half-mast until noon.
• Observe the “National Moment of Remembrance” which asks that at 3 p.m. local time, for all Americans “To voluntarily and informally observe in their own way a Moment of remembrance and respect, pausing from whatever they are doing for a moment of silence or listening to “Taps”.
• Offering thanks to the veterans and appreciating the ultimate sacrifices of the soldiers to the families

So in reflection, I do wish each of you a very safe and happy Memorial Day.  But I also would like to thank all of those that have died, served, or had family members that served our country.  Your service is greatly appreciated, and you are remembered on this day, and all days that follow.   THANK YOU!