I've had to deal with both OSHA and MSHA both over the years. Given that I am self employed, have no other employees, and have never had a serious accident I don't really fall under OSHA,or MSHA directly, but anyone on a construction or mine site falls under their rules to some degree regardless of the size of the company, simply because your working around so many other people who you could injure by doing something stupid and unsafe.
That said, if either body came to me and tried to tell me how to do my job 'safer' I'd tell them exactly what I told the 'safety' guy at one of the quarries I work at on occasion. He had commented that MSHA (and OSHA too on other sites) regs stated that I needed to be tied off when I was working on the top of one of their machines as it was over 4 feet high. I looked up, saw nothing overhead to tie off to. So told him as plainly as I possibly could that unless he came up with a sky hook of some type, I couldn't tie off safely to anything. Further that I WOULD NOT tie myself off to the side of the machine as doing so would have insured I swung into and hit something metal (the side of the machine) if I ever fell, vs just hitting the ground. I told him that if he tried to force me to 'follow' some regulation, that some idiot behind a desk, that had never done my job, came up with, I'd load my tools and carry my butt back home (and leave them with their crane sitting in a million pieces)before I ever did anything that I knew was going to get me hurt than hitting the ground, if I should happen to fall.
Needless to say he didn't want the machine left sitting, so he left me alone and let me do my job safely, LIKE I KNEW HOW, not like some idiot wanted me to.
Taken to another level, the regs in the book don't really mean anything as they are all open to the 'discretion of the inspector'. By that I mean the book says you can do something, but if the inspector says you can't then you get fined even though you are doing things by the book. I went through this whole deal while attending a MSHA course. He had told me that when we got through with the course I wouldn't need to load up my stuff, and leave the minute MSHA walked on side (usually what the quarry operator/owner wants you do do anyways.) As the course went on, the instructor would say you couldn't do something, but the book said you could. After calling him on things three different times, and being told each time that ultimately it was "up to the discression of the inspector"....I told him that was the very reason that I will always load up my stuff and leave, as I wasn't going to be forced to argue with some idiot that wanted to enforce their own will/thoughts on the issues, over what their own guidelines stated.
That said, you can never completely protect idiots from themselves, but the two bodies go out of their way to try. The bad thing is that no matter how hard companies try, no matter how much training they give, people get complacent, they get stupid, and ultimately preventable injuries occur. Heck, accidents occur that would have happened no matter how safe someone tried to be. In the end though all it does really is take the personal responsibility to be safe away form the individual and force it on the business owner, and that's not right.
Now that's not to say that I believe people should be forced to do unsafe things in order to keep their jobs (what OSHA was formed for origionally). However I believe a safe work place, and the individual safety of the worker, is a product of the workers themselves, NOT the ultimate responsibility of the employer as our illustrious leaders would like people to believe.
I could go on about this, but I think I get my point across.
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Today's Featured Article - Restoration Story: 1951 Farmall H - by The Red (John Fritz). I have been a collector of Farmall tractors since 1990 when I first obtained part of the family farm in Eastern Indiana. My current collection includes a 1938 F20, 1945 H, 1946 H, and the recently purchased 1951 H. This article will focus on what I encountered and what I did to bring the 1951 NEAR DEATH Farmall H back to life.
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