Here in the United States, we pride ourselves on safety. At Induron, we have monthly meetings taught by outside professionals on a whole host of safety topics – fire safety, safe practices for lifting with overhead cranes, proper use of respirators, and many, many more. We launched, last year, a new incentive program for our staff to reinforce how seriously we take safety at Induron. We ended 2013 as one of our safest reporting years ever, thanks to our staff’s commitment to keeping their workplace safe.
You wouldn’t think that industries in this country were in any way lacking in safety practices and oversights, because of agencies like OSHA, educational and training policies like Induron’s, and the industry’s overall improving safety record.
Conversely, on a recent trip to China I saw huge high-rise buildings under construction that were being built using bamboo scaffolding. That’s right – I saw workers more than 70 feet off the ground, working with concrete and steel beams, supported by nothing more than an organic material that lots of us in the South think of as a weed. China has some of the world’s most interesting modern architecture, and many of the tallest buildings in the world. All this, and China is adjacent to the proverbial “Ring of Fire” in the Pacific Ocean, home to 90 percent of the world’s earthquakes.
So Chinese construction crews are doing the same type of building we are here, at a much faster rate, but with less concern for safety and often in more dangerous circumstances and with inferior materials. And yet, they may even be seeing better results when it comes to worker safety. (It’s tough to say for sure, since the Chinese government will never release safety statistics.) I couldn’t get over the contrast between conditions on construction sites here and in China.
So why do we still see so many headlines about worker injuries? Why does OSHA feel the need to publish worker injury and illness records online, in what some are calling a “naming and shaming” report?
Regardless of the number of rules and regulations that try to make sure we’re giving workers the safest possible environment, safety ultimately comes down to the individual and making the right choices.
Worker safety is serious. Please do it right.
Founded in 1947, Induron manufactures high performance coatings that serve a range of industrial applications, including the wastewater, transmission and distribution and groundwater storage industries. Learn more about us at www.Induron.com.