Jim Frederick from OSHA- Provides An Update

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[00:00:04] spk_0: this show is brought to you by safety. Well hello and welcome to an all new episode of the J Allen show. I really do hope that everything is good and grand inside of your neck of the woods. So let's start talking right away. If you hung out last week with us, we were streaming live for at least part of the event. We were hanging out at the Job Hopkins Hospital or john Hopps Children's Hospital. I probably should better say at the ST Petersburg florida for the safety to practical application conference that was taking place and listen, there was a lot of stuff that was going on and I will tell you we were able to stream some of this on safety FM dot com. So hopefully you did get to listen to it. And as I was going through this whole agenda and taking a look around, I did notice that there was kind of a special event that was not announced and did occur. And Jim Frederick from OSHA showed up and he decided to come on down and let us know about what is going on with OSHA. And I thought that this might be an excellent episode to bring to you about what is going on with OSHA, What things are in place. What has been happening over the last year or so with what is going on with OSHA. So definitely not make you wait any longer. And let's bring in the speech to Jim Frederick, the deputy assistant Secretary at the U. S. Department of Law Labor. OSHA, let's go ahead and have him go ahead and let you know what exactly is going on. All right,

[00:01:45] spk_1: So good afternoon. It is a pleasure to spend a few minutes chatting with you. And I really really do hope that this is as much interaction as we can have in a room with 300 of our closest friends. So so you know if there are questions as we're talking here, I would love to to pause here. The question let's talk through them because that is is truly the more important thing of being in this room with you today is to to have that chance for some dialogue and interaction. And again as I said earlier, I am going to be here all day. My flight back to Washington D. C. Is at least delayed until 10 p.m. So you know, there's a chance you may see me looking a lot like this again tomorrow. But um, but you know, we'll just see how that goes when they tell you that your eight o'clock flight is delayed at like 11. I am you know, you're in trouble. Right? So um okay so I thought it was it would be important to to kind of start with a little bit of just just a little bit more deeper introduction of of why I'm here at a safety to conference to talk with you all and and again um um in about nine days I'll have been with OSHA and the federal government for for two years and I had never worked for the government before that. So it has been an experience of real learning and you know, if you take yourself back two years ago, I know we've all been trying to forget the last couple of years, but if you take yourself back two years ago, it was truly um an incredibly challenging time for all of us. Um but for for me I had to land in a new organization and learn the organization on a teams meeting in front of me in my kid's bedroom. And so you know, it was truly a challenge because I'm so such a spatial learner that you know, I learn and understand where people are by where kind of where you came from into the meeting and to just have all of the brady bunch boxes on the computer every day after day after day after day after day um was was really difficult for me to, to learn the organization. I also try to explain that and I'll talk a little bit about my work before being at OSHA. Um uh if OSHA had a frequent flyer program, I thought I was a diamond member, but I really have learned a great deal more about the agency. There's a lot more to the organization and the agency and the operations and the administration of the agency than I ever recognized as a stakeholder from the outside. But but it's important to keep in mind um that that just like all of you, you all are impor and stakeholders to the agency and that's what I spent 30 years doing DNA stakeholder um For from my perspective in the work I did the most of that time over those 30 years was doing worker health and safety um in the labor movement with labor unions and representing workers on health and safety related issues. Um So and I wanted to talk just a little bit about because for them that time period while I was working the vast majority of the time before I was at OSHA was 25 years of that time period was with the United Steelworkers Union and you know, the steelworkers are a union with a really bad name because the name doesn't explain what the organization, the members actually do. The members of the steelworkers union work in all different kinds of industries. And the quick best way to describe that is is Is on the day that I retired from there in 2018, I think it was 2,018. Um the three largest local unions at the steelworkers were the workers at the Newport News shipyard making um aircraft carriers and some work on submarines. Um the faculty and staff at the University of Toronto and a health care facility in California. So those were the three largest local unions at the steel workers and I think they still are the three largest local unions of the steel workers, so, so, you know, so there are, are are members of the steel workers doing all different kinds of work. And so one of the things that, that did 25 years that I was there was gave me the opportunity to be in all different kinds of workplaces and, you know, everything from from, from mining to uh department of Energy, weapons complex facilities. Um, and you know, a joke about the fact of one day being in um um saskatoon Saskatchewan in a mine and literally two days later having to put a suit on and being at a hearing on capitol Hill. So really some variety of work, the couple of things that were very prevalent over the course of my career, um, was one a program that the union does. That actually was very proud of the fact that the union did this, but but would respond to workplace fatalities and serious injuries and and kind of a team of a couple of people would come out from, from our office in Pittsburgh pennsylvania and and help with the investigation process and, and I used kind of help in air quotes, because our role was try to engage and involve being a representative of the victim, um, you know, in the course of a fatality the victim was no longer there, but um um, also to try to help the local union understand what transpired and learn from it, so that we could also take back and share that with workplaces with similar hazards. And so sometimes, you know, if this was a piece of mobile equipment involved or something, we could share it with a broad array of, of local unions, across the steelworkers unions, and, And other times it was something very specific to a workplace that didn't have much ability to share about it, but, but so we did, unfortunately, a lot of that, and over the course of 25 years at the Union, um, I started out being one of the investigators and eventually was kind of the person that coordinated and led that program. We investigated 750 fatalities over 25 years. And so, you know, there's a rough number actually did not keep track because I'm not sure I could stand here today if we were really keeping Of that number, but 750 fatalities. And again, we learned a great deal. But one of the things that I took from that experience was, there was often the responsibility to go to the victim's house and have a conversation with loved ones about what happened. There were always a lot of questions. And, and you know, two things I've always taken from that experience of sitting at a front porch or a kitchen table with a family member or family members. We're one all of our lives are very complicated and to, um, they always had a lot more questions than I will ever have answers for and, and I know many of you have have similar experiences with the work that you do and some of that very similar work with serious injury and fatality investigations and that's something we share in that front. Um the other thing that I spent a lot of time dealing with over the course of those years at the Steelworkers Union were workers being blamed for health and safety problems and you know, we could, I could spend hours, we can talk nothing about anything else, but this for the next several days, um but but it's fair to say this was just a very regular, frequent occurrence and, and came in many different shapes and sizes, I guess it was kind of the, the all you can eat buffet, that Todd was setting up earlier with the Fajitas or apps in their own place, but it was the various ways to blame workers for things that were taking place that were really system and operational airs in workplaces and, and I think back of of the discipline that is typically would come along with that and, and discipline for many times was often people lost their jobs. Um, at the Steelworker Representative workplaces, generally speaking, it was the best job in town, it was the best job in town if you had, if you were working at an hourly workplace and people were losing those jobs and losing their livelihood as a result of things that were really systematic in nature and operational in nature and and I think back to that and just you know, wish we could have done things differently for a lot of years. The only reason I wanted to frame that is when I was first introduced to new view of safety and safety to was was through a variety of sources and reaching out and reading and some of the materials that were out and about 15 years ago, um doesn't seem like it was that long ago, it seems like it's just the other day, but 15 or so years ago and and really taking to a number of things and then having the opportunity to, I think Todd, one of the first people I saw, so I speak on the topic and and really taking and resonating the message that Todd was sharing with the audience about so many things that we were experiencing across the work that I was doing with the Steelworkers union and others were doing across um the labor movement with health and safety and so we really tried to, I tried to really internalize that and how could we take what we're learning from from this group, talking about new view of safety to and try to integrate it into the work that we were doing. Um so, so that's a quick kind of foundation and background of, of where that came to um a couple of things I had to, I had to accept and understand and have tried to to learn and move on from was was shifting my mindset from one of of really focusing on prevention, on workplace health and safety and moving toward prevention and control's and making certain that the robust controls are in place to guarantee that when something does operational upset occurs that we have the control in place to to provide the person with the capacity to get back to work the next day. Um another thing that, that I think was discussed earlier today was was the area around just hazard identification and for me it was the realization that hazards. Um I always had thought of them as a very static thing of its kind of a noun and hazards are much, much more of an action word, a verb. And you know, coming to that realization also gave me the ability to think in terms of the question earlier from, I think it was from the florida in the panel about how do we change the mindset of of every accident that is preventable. And one of the things we were, we were starting to do around the time I was ready to leave the Steelworkers Union and they're still working on is to change the dynamic of the conversation around um prevention to prevention and control and also to better understanding that that those hazards that we're trying to identify and control and workplaces are really a moving target. And if we only look at it as a static photograph, we're not going to ever really make a difference in the control of those hazards. Um, so that was just again, a bit of background of, of kind of where I came to to this conversation around around this topic and and again, what I hope in the next few minutes is to share with you some a few things from the occupational safety and health administration. Um, OSHA, as we said earlier, you know, the only person here that gets to start from being a four letter word from the organization, um, but to talk about a few of the things we're doing, but then to leave you with some concrete ideas of some things that we can be doing together, um you from your your workplace or your industry with the agency as we try to move forward and progress on health and safety. Um, so one more thing that, that, you know, kind of again to frame to frame, kind of, the way that I tick and operate is um, I start every day by thinking about the number 14 and the number 14 to me, the reason I think about the number 14 is 14 is the number of workplace fatalities that are going to occur today, tomorrow and every day this year. And so I start my day by thinking about that because I want to think about it in terms of the, the human toll that that really takes and you know, again, going back to that experience of, of sitting at kitchen tables with family members who have lost the loved one and understanding the impact that that is and and again, I recognize again, and talking with a group like this, y'all have had similar experiences and I certainly um certainly, you know, we can talk about it in the hallway conversations a lot easier than talking about it with the full group. But I start the day to think of that because it also helps me to motivate and understand the things that OSHA needs to be full focusing on in order to try to shift the dynamics now, like I said, I've been there almost two years and the 2021 BLS um fatality data was released just a month or so ago and the numbers from 29 2022 2021 actually increased on the number of workplace fatalities. So there's a lot to be discussed on that as well. And you know, again, not quite the conversation of this topic in this presentation, but, but always happy to have further conversations on that and what's going on. Um the other thing and the other reason I think of that every day is it's kind of my motivational factor of, of the work that we're doing across the agency and how, how we're putting those operations in place to try to have an effect on workplace health and safety. But um, one of the things I do at the end of the week, this is my motivational factor at the end of the week, on friday afternoon or evening or night. The last thing I do before I turn off the computer for the day is to just simply look back on my calendar and I try to pick out three, maybe four things that happened across the entire footprint of OSHA's an agency that were really important. Um, um, things that took place to address workplace health and safety and hopefully have an effect on those serious injuries and fatalities. Um, the last thing I want to mention around the fatality and serious injury issue is, you know, my take is that fatalities. Um, for workers happen in one of two ways. One is really fast happens like that split second, something changed, Some operational upset occurred and the hazard shifted and a fatality occurred. The second way is very slow and it's, it's typically related to occupational health issues that are not to be, you know, mistakenly included in that 14 a day because those are above and beyond what we're talking about in that data. And, and so it's just important when I've thought of these is to think of how fast something can change and how we need to have. Um, the interventions at work places that are systematic in nature and try to make certain that the controls are in place. Um, so with that, the moving on into a couple of things, um, see if I can do this. One of the things we've been talking about for the last two years at OSHA is to to try to make certain that we are when we're having the opportunity to talk to to employers to industry associations, um to talk about the concept of of health and safety being established as a core value in every workplace, and that's kind of, you know, this ambiguous term. What are we talking about with that? And what we're really talking about with that is integrating health and safety management systems in workplaces to make certain that every workplace has a health and safety management system. Many of them just don't recognize it, to making certain that we are doing a better job of recognizing and understand the system that's in place and making the improvements to that system to try to improve it and keep it moving in a positive area. I certainly had spent some time prior to this work working on health and safety management says systems and really truly focusing as with a couple of folks that are in the audience today, um really focusing on on things like the N. C Z 10 Standard of health and Safety management Systems of integrating and involving um safety to a new view of safety principles into the the management system standard and, you know what, I hope that it's fair to say that you all as practitioners in the health and safety space, thinking about safety too, have utilized that and see that as a valuable tool in your work. Um certainly something I hope about that you all have done, but but that's really what we have been meaning when we're talking about health and safety is a core value. We know that that people value safety and health for themselves and their families, when you ask people about what, what's important to them, the safety of themselves and safety of their family is always one of the top things that are listed. And so the role of OCE is to really ensure that employers understand this, that all of our stakeholders, the workers that go to work, understand that they have a right to voice their concerns to raise their voice and be heard. But unfortunately as we talked earlier on the panel, there are some employers in some workplaces where that's not easily done and you know, we hear a lot of that and we'll talk a little bit more about that as we go through here. Um so a couple of things that we're trying to do to help advance workplace health and safety. 11 of the principles that that we identified as a priority item for the agency was to better address um heat as an occupational health and safety hazard and and so earlier, oh gosh, it's not the same year anymore. Last year, I'm so used to saying earlier this year, but we're in the new year. Um so last year OSHA implemented a heat national emphasis program. And so what does that mean for the agency? And what does that mean for for you all as the regulated community for the agency? A couple of things that are of importance. One, it's the first time that the agency has ever had the capacity or put the resources into place to address heat hazards um in uh in something other than a responsive fashion that we are progressively acting on hotter days to work with employers to make certain that they have controls in place. Um pretty basic and simple controls in place at this juncture to to ensure that heat is addressed as part of their overall health and safety management system for employers. What we're hoping that the messages that were conveying our a couple of things, one we want to be seen as a resource. If there are questions and concerns, call us, ask us, let us talk about what's going on at your workplace in regard to this hazard and how you're putting in place the controls to make certain that this hazard doesn't cause serious illnesses or fatalities. Um, one kind of side note and uh, you know, a pitch for the OSHA website, um which, you know, one of the things of figuring out the system of the government that I'm still working on this food, figuring out breaking the code of how things are placed on the, the OSHA website. But if you go to the ocean website and you go to a heat page, um there is, there's a very useful video. It's a seven minute video that tells the story of a fatality of a young man that went to work and didn't come home because of heat exposure in the workplace in Western new york. And and there's a couple of things that really resonate for me on that one is sometimes we don't think of new york state is the place where we have to have a really robust heat um program. So it's important excuse me to recognize that we have to have heat integrated into our health and safety management systems everywhere for all kinds of workplaces. And the second one was, this was a person, a young person, um and he was, you know, in very good physical condition. So he really emphasizes the importance of addressing heat in a proactive stance. And it's a seven minute video. And what I always say is if every person, every workplace in this country and around the world could watch this video from the Ceo to the person punching in on the time clock is a wonderful opportunity in seven minutes to really convey the message around the importance of heat as a health and safety hazard. So the, the OSHA workplace um heat national emphasis program is in place where right now in, in colder months in the Northern hemisphere, but we will continue on this work and there are other activities around heat that will be continuing from the agency as we move forward in getting our arms around how better to address this hazard on a long term basis. Um, the one other side note is within the OSHA National Advisory Committee on occupational Safety and Health. Kash is the acronym often used for that. We have established a heat working group and have, I'll watch the number but 25 or so experts from across industry and worker organizations to help us understand how he is addressed in various industries and where other industries need some help on that matter. So we're trying to do some things around heat to, to really help employers integrate better programs into their health and safety management systems. Um, I also wanted to say a couple words around trenching and and it kind of starts with a bit of a story and this story is not something that involves me personally, but involved a couple of ocean compliance officers in Omaha Nebraska and and to OSHA compliance officers went out to a construction work site uh, to do what we do and the enforcement lane of the work of OSHA. And when they got to the work site, they saw a couple of different activities going on, they saw some work being done on a roof and they also saw a trench. And so since there were two of them, they could have both of them gone to the roof first or both of them gone to the trench first, but they split up and one went to the roof to make sure that folks didn't disappear if they were folks working without fall protection system in place. And the other one went to the trench to see what was going on over there. And when, when the person got, when the show got to the trench, he realized that was a worker in the trench working and there was not proper shoring in place for that trench. He asked the worker to come out of the trench so they could talk about what was going on and talk with the supervisor about what was going on. The supervisor was actually operating the back. Oh, so he was right there. And as the worker came out of that trench, the part of the trench actually collapsed. And so you know, it's one of those scenarios had the ocean inspector not showed up, had they not split up and one got onto the roof and one got to the trench, they may not have gotten that worker out of there and that worker might have been very seriously injured, injured or killed in that workplace on that day. And so that's one of those examples of how things happened so quickly because the the slide of that trench happens like that, but it's also something to talk about in terms of, of controls of hazard and, and one of the things, again, one of the learnings I've always taken from, from understanding um, safety to is always say it's not about safety one or safety to its safety one and safety to, we need to make certain that workplaces continue to do the proper blocking and tackling as we take on these new challenges associated with the new view and safety to principles. Um, and so that's a great example entrenching where one thing that we're seeing across the country, the United States is an increase in fatalities entrenching the calendar year last year we had about twice as many fatalities that we heard of from trenching as we had had in any of the prior several years. So what's going on? Why is there an increase of fatalities entrenching? I don't have all the answers, but we know a couple of things that have been going on. One is, there is definitely some increased amount of construction that has been taking place in this country over the prior couple of years. A second is we recognize some earlier conversations around um, workers that have left the workforce, um, also effects in the construction industry contractors that have left the workforce. And so what we have are significant amount of contractors who up until recently, perhaps were not a contractor and don't have the same lead experience, knowledge and institutional capacity as some of their predecessors. Did. They just happen to have the pickup truck with, um, um, the ability to rent tobacco and come out and do the trenching work. And so we need to be cognizant. And again, what we have been trying to say and the message we've been delivering from OSHA is we want to be part of this process to help to make certain that controls are in place. We certainly have the perception and I think this is very fair that we understand and collectively the hazards associated with trenching, and we also know how to control them so that we can safely do work in a trench. Um, but um, but we know that it's not happening in all cases. And so, so we also are making a focused effort, um, in the portion of OSHA that is the enforcement arm of the agency to, to be cognizant of trenching, going on to make certain that, that our compliance officers are getting out. They see trenching when they're going to another worksite, they're stopping, they're taking a look at the trenching operations. And when we find trenching hazards that are not properly controlled, we want to do strong enforcement to make certain that we're able to share that message across not only that contractor, but other contractors in those communities, so that they'll do trenching with proper controls because we certainly would like to see the number of fatalities and trenches be zero. Um, and we know how to control those hazards. Um, I talked a couple times about health and safety management systems and you know, I love that the fact that there are 27 different acronyms utilized for health and safety management systems, but at OSHA we have have seemed to institutionalize and used safety and health management systems or as we refer to them as just as shims. But I was always kind of an occupational health and safety management systems or the O H. S. M. S. But um, safety and health management systems. Um, one of the things that we have been trying to do is to help employers have the tools that they need. Um, to to do kind of the couch to five K. Um, conversion get off the couch and get to the point that you can start running the race. And so we have been putting in place step by step, very user friendly short training tools for employers to recognize and understand the essentials around health and safety management systems and implement them in their workplace. And and this work is primarily taking place um, through the program at OSHA that's referred to as safe and sound. So, alright, so this is, this is my question. First question for y'all anybody here heard of safe and sound campaign at OSHA anybody, a participant of safe and sound. Okay, so good. There's a couple. All right, so you guys are my my guinea pigs on this. I hope, I hope you guys I did not plant this right. You were you were not a plant that I brought in. Okay. Um, is it a pretty user friendly operation for you to be part of the safe and sound system at OSHA? Very user friendly. So we have this program as we saw there were only a few hands. Not very many people know about this, but there are thousands of workplaces that are involved with are safe and sound campaign on an annual basis. And what we try to do is focus on um kind of a week long inter invention with with workplaces where we focus on health and safety management systems through safe and sound. And that happens generally speaking in the summer months. It's moved around a bit over the years, but I think it was like the first week of august last year if my bad memory is working correctly. And what we tried to do is to capture the good works that are going on in workplaces and share them with other employers of what's going on to improve interventions around health and safety management systems. So for those of you that didn't raise your hands and haven't heard about the safe and sound campaign at OSHA, please use don't go to the OSHA website and use the search engine on our website. It's not good. I didn't say that by the way. I didn't say that wasn't said here didn't happen. Used your favorite search engine. I was gonna say one by name, but I'm probably not supposed to write, but, but use your favorite search engine and just search OSHA safe and sound and it's safe with a plus sign for the and um, and please, we encourage everyone to participate. There's, there's really, it's like a money back guarantee it causes your and we'll give you nothing back. But, but it's a money back guarantee that you can enter into this. There's there's nothing that you have to share with the government. You don't have to tell us where all of your, your hazards are hidden. We don't want to know. We just want to know the good things happening on health and safety management systems and would love to grow that from 5000 to 500,000 over the next couple of years, if possible. So, so safe and sound is one thing that we'd love for folks to do while I'm on the OSHA website. The one other thing I would love to point your attention to is the OSHA Quick Takes electronic newsletter. And again, I don't know how many folks have heard of Quick Takes a few more. So there are roughly 503 100,000, 389 thous and I think was the number on the report on monday morning. Um, um, subscribers to the OSHA Quick takes electronic newsletter. Um It doesn't bog down your inbox with a with an email every couple of days. It's it's roughly twice a month um with maybe uh an add on once in a while and again, if you just google search OSHA Quick takes, it will find the area that's signed up for a Quick Takes newsletter and really encourage you to do that. It's very short quips about several things that are happening at OSHA on any given time because one of the things I hope that we're able to do is to to make available all of the parts of the agency to everyone. Um that is a stakeholder in part of the regulated community of the occupational safety and health administration. And the Quick takes is one for a two to kind of understand where OSHA is doing some things. So please sign up for quick takes while you're while you're looking for the safe and sound campaign to sign up for that as well, um blah blah blah blah. So um one other thing I'm going to come back to it in a few minutes is I want you to to think about this. I'm gonna plant this right now where you come back to it in a couple of minutes um is to think about in terms of health and safety management systems that include um a safety to practice as part of that system of of what information you may be able to share with OSHA the agency. And in sharing one more thing before I move off this slide in sharing with the agency. Um there's one more, one more interaction audience interaction question here I have for you all, how many of you with any of the facilities that you work with have had a proactive pick up the phone and call your area OSHA office and have a conversation about what you do at your workplace. Alright, that's about five. That's five more than than happens in some rooms. When I asked that question, um, I wasn't eavesdropping earlier, but I think I heard you say that you're from Pittsburgh, is that right? So, um Pittsburgh area office, great area office. I lived in Pittsburgh for 25 years. So I'm speaking with a little bit of bias about, you know, the steel, some things. So, um, but how was your interaction when you called ocean and chatted with? Okay, okay, very interested in. Cool. So, so