Workplace safety today

Peter Cianchette is correct when he writes that we must keep an eye on workers’ comp in the coming years (BDN oped, Feb. 4). We have all seen abuses of workers’ comp, and most of us realize costs interfere with workers and businesses. However, while he writes, “Safety in the workplace must remain everyone’s highest priority,” it’s clear to anyone really looking around that there’s a safety abuse which doesn’t get a lot of attention – unless it’s from those regulatory agencies some business managers regard as intuitive.

If Cianchette [a Republican candidate for governor] really wants workplace safety, will he tell corporate managers safety is more important than what’s called the bottom line? We all know some workers work unsafely, but what about management decisions, in deference to the bottom line, which create unsafe working conditions?

If you go into a big store in Maine with a freight-receiving area, you might see posted on the wall some productivity goals. This is usually expressed in terms of how many items each worker is supposed to unload in a minute. Beside this arithmetical idea of productivity, the time clock is sometimes divided into hundredths of hour, so bottom-line accountants can match the time a worker works to dollars and cents. A situation like this invites injury – even if there’s a lot of hoopla about stretching exercises and safety belts.

Then, we’ve all heard those stories of things falling off shelves, and shoppers getting hurt. One company founder said, Stack it high, sell it low (price). This practice of stacking things high and often unsteadily has become so accepted by some businesses, that lawyers are retained to fight the consequences of the practice. And – if a USA Today piece, published last August, is any indication – these lawyers are fierce, tooth and nail fighters, who think more about the bottom line than they do about the injured persons.

These are just a couple of examples. If safety is to be the top priority, will managers be instructed to pace freight work to something other than posted goals and time clocks divided into dollars and cents? If safety is to be the top priority, wouldn’t it be wise to display merchandise at reasonable height and with reasonable steadiness? Could we give more to safety than the lip service of stretch exercises, safety belts? Than signs reading Wet Floor (why not dry it?), Ask for Help on These Shelves (why not put it where shoppers can read it safely?, Keep Your Child Strapped In?

Cianchette seems like a nice, knowledgeable guy. However, until some businesses and industries rethink their blind obedience to the bottom line, Cianchette’s call for safety to be the highest priority will be in trouble. We can agree with his analysis and support his prescription. And we can wish him success. For slackers among workers and bottom liners without conscience can be expected to lobby against measures they see as threats to their feathered nests.

Ron Cuddy is a former reporter and editor who lives in Calais.