Mastering the Safety Message

Training is key to preventing accidents and lost time.

By Jim Parsons

The construction industry employs nearly 8% of the nation’s workforce and generates nearly 5% of the Gross Domestic Product, but it can be hazardous.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1,186 fatalities were recorded at private construction sites in 2005, the latest year for which figures are available. Despite a 4% drop from 2004’s total, the figure remains the highest of any industry, according to the BLS.

The trend is no better for lost-time occupational injuries and illnesses. Construction’s incidence rate of 239.5 of injuries and illnesses for every 10,000 workers surpassed all other sectors.

Although some aspects of construction are inherently risky, it is possible to make sites safe, says Tom Broderick, executive director of the Hillside, Ill.-based, nonprofit Construction Safety Council.

“We have seen many contractors work millions of hours without serious injuries,” he says. “The challenge they all faced was to first make safety a core value of their respective companies.

They then build accountability into every job description so that the core value is transferred from the CEO through the organization to the workers. And they provide the proper safety and skills training.”

But Broderick concedes that in a highly demanding business environment, safety may be competing with other priorities. “Many construction firms feel pressured to avoid schedule or cost penalties, causing workplace safety to suffer in the process,” he adds.

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Albuquerque, N.M., safety consultant Bill Green says that while many contractors appreciate how safety contributes to their bottom line, “they also see it as individual worker’s responsibility. We need to see a paradigm shift to make safety a company responsibility.

Green adds that the formula for safe workplaces is “training, training, training to make workers understand that it doesn’t take much for something to happen. But contractors and subcontractors alike must also follow through on that commitment, such as being willing to pull people off a job when an unsafe condition arises. That’s an important message to send to employees.”

Safety without borders Safety is difficult to convey when language is a barrier. As more foreign-born Hispanics have joined the U.S. construction workforce over the past two decades, their fatality and injury rates has risen as well. A BLS study found that the number of fatal work injuries involving foreign-born Hispanic workers more than tripled between 1992 and 2002.

Multilingual worksites are also increasingly common outside the traditional Hispanic population areas in the Deep South and Southwest. The 2000 U.S. Census identified North Carolina, Arkansas, Georgia and Tennessee as having the fastest-growing Hispanic populations, but any part of the U.S. with significant construction activity will likely have a significant number of foreign-born Hispanic workers.

Organizations such as the Association of General Contractors have been particularly active in developing tools to help construction firms adapt their safety programs to the needs of workers with a limited grasp of English.

“In the past five years, AGC has trained more than 6,000 attendees and produced more than 60,000 training CD-ROM’s distributed in both English and Spanish through OSHA’s Susan Harwood Training Grant Program,” says Michelle Myers of AGC’s Safety and Health Services Department. “We also provide dozens of online training courses through the Online Institute, including 12 in Spanish.”

Still, employers must be sure that they cover all facets of the language issue, Green says. “Hispanic workers represent different nationalities, cultures and dialects of Spanish,” he adds. “Employers need to make sure that they not only translate safety information accurately, but that their workers fully comprehend the messages.”

Building bilingual understanding was a key goal in a safety-training curriculum developed by the Georgia Tech Research Institute. Project Director Art Wickman, head of the Health Sciences Branch in the institute’s Safety, Health, and Environmental Technology Division, says that the technical jargon and idioms found in many Spanish-language safety materials may still leave workers unsure of what they’re supposed to do. 

GTRI’s safety curriculum uses a combination of carefully crafted presentation materials, posters and pamphlets to cover topics such as fall protection, scaffolding, trenching and excavation, electrical hazards and material handling. The materials have been distributed throughout the Southeast by building associations, OSHA offices and the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, as well as online.

Wickman says Hispanic workers are much more engaged at training sessions where the materials are used. “I see a significant increase in comprehension when the training is done in a way that’s understandable to them,” he adds

Researchers at Iowa State University’s Center for Transportation Research and Education have crafted a similar program that provides language and cultural training for both Hispanic workers and their American supervisors.

 “Iowa’s Hispanic population increased 153 percent in the 1990s, and the continuing shortage of craftworkers will continue to attract more Hispanic workers,” says Iowa State professor and principal investigator Ed Jaselskis. He adds that language wasn’t the only barrier to effective training. 

“The interest among contractors was there, but it’s difficult to schedule classes during the busy construction season,” Jaselskis says. “The off-season is no better because Hispanic workers often leave in search of other jobs.”

The Iowa State team focused on finding the best delivery mechanism for the training. It developed a toolbox of language-training materials that could be conducted during 30-minute sessions before the workday started or during lunchtime.

Although elements of the toolbox program are still being refined and evaluated, “contractors that had better communication also had lower turnover rates and better productivity,” Jaselskis says. “More research will be needed to assess the effects on injury prevention, but my sense is that safety should improve as well.”

Proactive partnerships Many of the industry’s leading trade and professional associations are helping workers of all nationalities and language skills prevent accidents by participating in OSHA’s Alliance program. These partnerships are designed to encourage collaboration across the organizations and with government safety regulators.

“The core elements for making these cooperative programs successful are employee involvement and utilizing comprehensive safety and health systems,” says AGC’s Meyers, whose organization is part of the Roadway Work Zone Safety and Health Partners, a coalition of five leading construction trade associations and the National Institute of Occupational Health.

The other construction associations working with the OSHA Alliance program are the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors National Association, Independent Electrical Contractors Inc., the Mason Contractors Association of America, the National Association of Home Builders and the Concrete Sawing and Drilling Association.

AGC is also an administrator for the OSHA Challenge Pilot Program, which is designed to provide employers with a “roadmap” for obtaining Voluntary Protection Program status for their programs. In exchange for working directly with OSHA representatives on developing and implementing comprehensive workplace safety programs, a VPP employer is removed from the agency’s programmed inspection lists.

In addition, OSHA does not cite VPP sites for standards violations as long as they are promptly corrected.

According to OSHA, the lost-workday incidence rate at an average VPP site is 50% below its industry average.

“Several AGC members have already earned the VPP Star designation for achieving exemplary success in implementing safety and health management programs,” Meyers says.

The cooperative approach was brought to the state level in March when the American Subcontractors Association of New Mexico and the state Environment Department’s Occupational Health and Safety Bureau signed the Safety and Health Initiative Partnership Agreement to help create safe working conditions for the state’s subcontractors.

“This is the first agreement of its type that primarily covers subcontractors nationwide,” says Chuck Cambron, safety coordinator for Commercial Enterprises Inc. of Albuquerque and chair of the ASA-NM committee that helped formulate the program, which is structured similar to the federal-level Alliance program. “Our goal is to bring down accident and injury rates and make New Mexico the safest state for construction in the nation.”

Cambron adds that such a program is particularly important given that subcontractor employees make up approximately 75% of workers who are exposed to hazards.