Local 1245 Safety Committee
The Local 1245 Safety and Health Committee met on May 27, 2009 at Weakley Hall in Vacaville. Committee members present were: Robert Burkle, Michael Gomes, Darryl Rice, Sergio Munez, Al White, Dan Boschee and Ralph Armstrong. Committee member absent: Art Torres.
New Committee member Dan Boschee was introduced. Dan will be replacing Thomas Greer on the committee as a representative for telecommunications.
The May Safety Committee meeting was in almost full attendance.
First order of business was to review minutes from the prior months meeting. No changes were noted.
Topics discussed and action items assigned:
Gas Crews and access to up-to-date maps:
This subject remains open item and was discussed with PGE again on June 10 at the IBEW / Joint Health and Safety Committee Meeting. The Company has indicated that they are looking into this issue from a couple of different perspectives. One being a mapping issue and the other researching possible test methods that could be used on existing steel pipe that would aid in ruling out the possibility of plastic pipe had been inserted into the existing steel. The concern from the committee is with the increase in gas work projected over the next year and the lag in mapping from the time the replacement work is completed to the time the corrected maps reach the field crews the potential for future incidents could increase dramatically.
This discussion on mapping has also led to general discussions on the trend of utilities going to electronic mapping and the ensuing problems with transitional use of paper maps not being updated correctly or in a timely fashion.
Accident Reporting
At the May Safety Committee meeting we had only two unit meeting report form submitted for review. Of the two forms submitted the accidents that were discussed, one of them was reported in the April Safety Committee report involving the 12kv wire pulling accident which can be found in the Safety Committee Archives on the Local 1245 web site.
The two green report forms submitted in May was an increase from the Aprils meeting by one and both were submitted by committee members. As a reminder these forms should be filled out during all unit meetings and returned to the safety committee each month. New forms and guidelines are on the website. Units should start using them as part of their unit meeting and submit them to this committee whether or not there are accidents or concerns. This should be a standard reporting practice at every unit meeting every month. All accidents reported this month on green form as well as accidents reported at the Safety Committee meeting are listed below;
Accidents
- An ATV accident occurred when the operator of the ATV was maneuvering along a dirt road while holding onto some steel slings that were riding on a rack at the front of the vehicle. One of the front tires of the ATV drove off the edge of the dirt road which caused the ATV to start to roll over. As the employee jumped off the ATV to avoid going over with it, he landed on his feet but fell forward striking his face on a jagged rock. The employee was taken to the nearest hospital where he received 14 stitches to close the cut. The employee returned to work the next day.
- Report of a bucket truck from a municipality hitting a car backing out of driveway. Woman driving car was ejected, after her right rear quarter was hit by the truck. She did not have seat belt on. Woman may have been on drugs.
- Two accidents to report out of Nevada and outside of LU 1245 jurisdiction:
a) Employee suffered flash burns from a 3-phase 480-volt meter after work had been performed on the customer’s panel by a contractor. Employee was not wearing his PPE and received moderate to severe burns.
b) Employee working in a doghouse at a power plant tripped and fell suffering a broken neck, burns on his hands and back. Not sure why the employee was there in the first place and not much more is known about the accident at this time. At the time of the reporting the employee was in an induced coma and not doing well
- Report of a Pit Bull attack on meter reader. Hand was severely damaged. Finally able to get dog off with help from neighbor. Shoved stick down throat of the dog, after pinching it’s nostrils, causing dog to open it’s mouth
- Report of one of our members who experience what is described as a breakthrough seizure while driving to work. This employee was involved in a vehicle accident several years ago with another employer at which time he struck his head. He was given an anti-seizure medication and has never had an issue until this incident. What makes this troubling is as a result of this accident he has lost his driving privileges and somewhat unemployable.
- Hazard report from the tree industry was discussed. Follow-up on this item revealed that there was a fatality back east as a result a chipper accident. A guard housing over rotating drum was being cleared of brush. When the clearing was completed, the guard unit locking pin was not re-installed correctly or at all. When a limb went through, the guard housing, which is made of heavy gauge steel, lifted up and flew forward on its hinges. It made contact with an employee who was standing in its path, on the tongue side of the unit. The employee was struck in the head and killed instantly.
Inspection of other units revealed missing safety pins and/or bolts that could cause similar accidents. Actual hazard alert was not available at the meeting.
International Accident Reporting Requirements
A major part of the need for all units to report accidents is our requirement that is stated in the IBEW Constitution to report all recordable accidents to the International Safety Office. This information is very important because it allows the International Office of the IBEW to track types of accidents and/or track trends that are taking place in our industry. This information can be used to make our work place safer, which was the primary principle behind the formation of the IBEW over a century ago.
Article XV section 15, of the Constitution states:
Each L.U. shall have a safety and health committee which shall: investigate and report serious accidents and fatalities; cooperate with the I.O. on safety and health matters; promote safety and health; and cooperate with safety and health organizations as determined by the L.U. and as directed by the I.O. Each L.U. shall investigate and report to the I.O. all serious lost time accidents and fatalities. Reports shall be submitted using the web-based, electronic version Form 173 IBEW Report of Occupational Injury, Illness or Fatality. (emphasis added).
Near Miss
One near miss was reported at this meeting. The Safety Committee is encouraging everyone to report all near misses to the committee through our IBEW1245 Safety Matters web page. Anyone with a near miss should sanitize the report to omit names and companies as the intent of reporting a near miss is to provide others with information about potential hazards that members find in the field in order to provide awareness to others of those hazards.
· Tree crew was assigned a job of removing a tree limb that was hanging over an energized distribution line. When the crew arrived to perform the job a test was performed at the base of the limb to make sure the limb could support the work that was going to be done on it. The test revealed that it could not and the crew asked for the line to be de-energized. The job was postponed at that time and the supervisor was supposed to arrange for an outage. The supervisor assigned the job to another crew without an outage but before the crew made it to the job-site the limb broke and fell across the energized power-lines causing an outage. There could have been a severe accident if the second crew had arrived before the limb fell and not been as diligent as the first crew. When the first crew declined to do this job in an unsafe manner, the supervisor should have asked for the line to be de-energized, even though it meant having a lot of people out of power. Don’t bend the rules just to save time or money. This creates an atmosphere where some employees may be pressured to perform work that is unsafe or someone else will perform the work and make the employee who turned down the work look bad.
FR Clothing
New FR Clothing allowances should be allocated for PGE employees with a couple of new items and colors being made available also to help deal with the heat issues. This is a subject that will remain open for a while as the summer months are here and things are heating up. It remains to be seen how these new fabrics and colors perform in the hot conditions.
Requirements to wear only Class 3, FR, and safety traffic vest being discussed at the board of director’s level of PG & E. This is a safety vest with all of the reflective strips that meet current requirements, however there are extra sleeves associated with them and is not required at all times like the company initially propose as their requirement . This creates issues in relation to over heating of employees, who would have to wear all FR protection under this vest at all times. Changes in this requirement should be made and will be available for view when the new Safety Attire document comes out. Looks like Class 3 vests will only be needed when required by DOT and in all other cases the Class 2 will be used. More to come on this.
It was also reported at this meeting that 8 cal shirts are becoming standard at MID as well as other properties. MID FR clothing has name and company tags which are flammable. This has been brought up to management, but it is still being used. These should be FR.
Painters Grounding
This has been an on-going issue that I believe will be resolved in the very near future. To re-cap on this old item: the use of painters to install grounds in substations as well as on towers with one Qualified Electrical Worker present has become an issue on whether or not the practice is acceptable per the CalOSHA standards.
Our position on this is that the CalOSHA requirement states that there needs to be two qualified electrical workers or one qualified electrical worker and one qualified electrical worker in-training and painters are neither. PG&E position is that it does meet the standard since the company has provided training to these employees.
Like I mentioned at the start of this section this is getting close to some type of resolution and I will report on it as soon as there is movement.
Round Table
The committee discussed as part of the round table session a couple of items:
· Blue Hat Safety programs. These are programs that are run jointly with the IBEW and the utilities and have been received well by the employees. This led into some further discussion pertaining to new company safety rules that are implemented as the result of an accident. Most of these rules are reactive and are put in place by non-traditional workers who have never performed the type of work they are writing the rules about. These workers know the laws and regulations and only know how to deal with these accidents by tightening up the rules and it is always reactive to an incident. We need to find ways amongst ourselves to eliminate those stupid accidents by making sure everyone is following the current safety rules that are in place and we would almost eliminate future rules we already know we won’t like.
· Discussion pertaining to the new Administrations focus on OSHA inspections. The Obama administration has allocated an additional $25-30 million for OSHA compliance. If there is any doubt about this visit the USAJobs website and under DOL look at the number of new OSHA jobs being posted throughout the US. With the focus on inspections and compliance this will put more pressure on employers to have everything in order. With more pressure on employers we can expect more pressure on the employees from the companies, which will ultimately lead to more discipline.
· Walk around vehicle inspections and lack of them was also discussed.
Discussions pertaining to a company ProTran1 and their new personal warning systems for track workers. These new devices are catching on all across the US and are designed to warn workers working on train tracks of on-coming trains. These devices are designed as secondary protection after all other procedures are followed and are an excellent tool for our light rail workers as well as all rail workers. Had these been used last year we may have avoided the fatality of one of our workers who was killed while performing maintenance on a light rail system in Sacramento.
Local 1245 Safety Committee
Ralph Armstrong, Chair
Posted: June 25, 2009