[00:00:00] :  This show is brought to you by safety FM. Warning. The following broadcast contains adult language, adult content, frank safety discussions and stories that might sound unbelievable. But believe me, every one of those stories is true. We didn't start the safety war, but we are going to fight to win it for our families, for our communities, for our workplaces and for our lives. Mask mandates today on safety wars in the last few weeks. Covid numbers have ratcheted up. Many organizations and communities are talking about going back to indoor mask mandates for all venues. Most medical facilities continue to have mass requirements they're talking about in my area, new york. Uh, doing it with schools again with mask requirements. What are your thoughts on this? Think about it for a minute. The safety people I know are dreading the comeback of masks. I'm not going to get into the effectiveness of them. Everyone should know my opinion by now. I always recommend NIOSH or other rated respirators. I never recommend quote unquote masks. Okay, why are we getting this pushback? Especially from safety professionals? You would think we'd be the last people to can push back on a supposed safety issue. Well, let's think about it. We will have worked in some cases fought for our careers. But doing everything that we do. We have people who apparently have very little expertise on the other hand, and respiratory and infection control that go around mandating things. I think that's one of the problems we have. Then they often that's our leaders with the mandates often place the responsibility of the organization's compliance on one person? So you may have a boss or someone else? A decision maker saying we're gonna go to masks and then they dumped everything onto the safety professional. What happens the safety person? Let's keep this in perspective. Especially the mask police are usually the lowest paid people at the firm. If you're employed by a union shop, the union members usually are paid more than the safety managers on the low the low level ones, as I said to a client recently who was having a bad day, got blamed for an organization bowl failure. Do you have the authority to hire fire or discipline anyone? The answer was no. And I said to her then why are you responsible for an organizational failing? The folks in the C suite need to address the system and change it. Not. You j Allen on the radar safety show recently had some very good input on the C suite and getting into the C suite. That's a discussion for another program. What's the end result? The safety professional is the one who is often blamed for lack of compliance and as we know, viruses are extremely difficult to stop even if you do everything, quote unquote. Right. I say that with air quotes often the safety person is blamed for viral outbreaks at facilities. How do I know I got listener emails and comments on social media that bear this out. And also my own experience dealing with this and managing several sites were hated by both sides of this equation management and workers. So what are we left to do? What do we do? How do we manage these situations? The solution always ends up being the same when you're dealing with controversial things in the workplace or are getting directed by someone usually HR or your boss or something to do something. What do you do? Come on all together now get it in writing, if I am responsible for mass compliance or some other safety rule that may not make sense. It could be a mask of the fallen financial or anything else. I get it in writing from whoever is in charge. I asked them, how am I supposed to enforce the rule and I get the low down right from the source, it's not to defect blame. People say, well you're deflecting blame or responsibility but I'm gonna mention two scenarios that have actually happened to me or someone on my staff and how we managed all of it. So will fall for dashing Scenario one, I was not a project being managed by a nationally known engineering firm that had a rule, any time you leave the ground, you need to wear a fall production note I said, where Fall protection? Not actually use it, not actually connect to something, you are probably thinking, well, if its construction, you mean six ft or higher according to OSHA or general industry, four ft or higher. And before you even do that, you're supposed to apply the hierarchy of controls among other things. No, that's not what happened. The rule was any time you left the ground. This actually happened. If you're on a catwalk and being an oil facility, there's plenty of them with a complete top rail, mid rail and to bore to board with no open holes. You had to wear a harness, not actually connect to anything. Yeah, you heard me right? You had to wear a harness, not actually connect to anything. And it was a zero tolerance. Also known as a zero intelligence policy meaning that if you didn't do it, you were thrown off the job. The managers that made up this rule never backed anybody up, meaning the safety person who was hired to enforce the rule. Even if the manager saw the protocol violation air quotes again and you know, if they saw the violation, they wouldn't enforce it. They rely on the safety person so they did not have to go and confront the employee. If the person violating the rule was a favorite employee and the safety manager enforced the rule, it was always a safety professionals fault that the employee wasn't doing their job wasn't working safely and this safety professional got the blame for lack of appliance. Again in air quotes, this one's scenario, number one fall protection stupid rule didn't really, you didn't really trust your employees to do the right thing and put on fall protection cause a lot of animosity. Scenario number two mask policies? Think about scenario number one, except with masks. Again, safety professionals blame for everything at some organizations. So the mass policy, you gotta wear a mask at the facility, but I'm not around anybody got to wear it. That's what the rule is. Why do I have to wear it if I'm all alone? Well, this is what the rule is. It's really difficult to deal with people like that and to deal with rules like that for anyone. So what happens at some point in this situation, your annual view comes in where there's an opportunity to renew or deny you a contract? Well, no one likes you and your review does not go as well as it could go in the past. We didn't have a way to manage this stuff. I couldn't really manage this stuff. But how is it managed now? Remember when we first started doing this back in the 90s, I did no smartphones email. No, the first email I sent I think was January of 1998, no smartphones nothing. And it was difficult to have absolute proof unless you were out there in the old fashioned camcorder and of course you're the expendable person on staff because your support staff, so you're not going to get believed they're not gonna listen to you or anything else. That's the situation most of the older safety people like me, the veterans grew up in now it's exceedingly easier. What do we do number one? We get everything in writing. If you want to enforce the rule, whether it's reasonable or not, get the enforcement policy in writing. Every month. During the pandemic, I write a formal email asking what the enforcement policies are and what any of the requirements are and an important one. Are there going to be changes in them? I get everything in writing. Why is it important people are getting fired for trying to enforce the rule or are getting fired because they did not follow a rule and they are trying to litigate it as a wrongful firing and a violation of the collective bargaining agreements. It has happened on my projects or a manager then goes and blames the one person who is not allowed in the C suite and not allowed to make decisions. The safety manager for lack of compliance. If you get any of this stuff in writing up front, you're less likely to have any of this situation happen. And when it does guess what? You have a defense, it's in writing another thing, if you there is litigation, you have something to C. Y. A saying, hey, we were doing exactly as instructed by our contract. This is exactly why if you're a consultant, you get things in writing something else. I want to make sure that I point out here with this. This is a double edged sword. If you're told to do something you gotta do it and again if you ask for it in writing they may reconsider the policy because nobody wants to look like a fool. The next thing to consider is that if the work force pushes back on you you now have the defense with him. Look this is what I was told to do in writing. You have to do what you have to do in writing. Are you okay without doing your job? The way it's supposed to be done as the employer says it's supposed to be done. I don't think you know you're not gonna violate the rules. I'm not gonna violate the rules. I'm not gonna violate my inspector instructions. If you have a grievance with the management, take it up with management, I'm doing my job. If you're that upfront with them. Usually the problem go I'm not gonna say it goes away. But people are much more understanding when they're given direct responses and you do not have an awe and sugarcoat things as we discussed in a previous episode. The people doing the most complaining complaining on anything will never take it to management often. What happens is they want you to take it to management and have you expend your political capital and you get into trouble while they sit back and oh well laugh or yeah I've had that happen while they don't have to put themselves out there to change the policy. However like I said if you're direct with the workforce workforce is usually understanding and you're giving them at least to respect to be upfront with them. Often the safety manager gets spent on the hot seat. Especially management. If you have it in writing the chances of you getting on that hat seat are lowered and a manager is less likely to risk their situation either especially right if the instruction came from the C suite. What's my point And both of these scenarios the safety person will be blamed by the managers. The enforcement or lack of enforcement of these policies. If you are direct hired by an employer you your career will be I'm not gonna say might be will be negatively impacted if you're a contractor your career will be impacted with getting fired as a consultant or a contractor. There's also there's a good chance it will be held liable for enforcement or lack of enforcement of these policies. What do I mean? I mean court you could get sued over this especially if you're not the employer if you are a subcontractor. Some of my competitors for safety wars and J. C. P. Technical have ensued for getting an employee wrongfully fired. They ended up settling out of court for ridiculous amounts of money just to make the problem go away and of course they lost their clients. So it's critical that you have everything in writing. You have documentation. if only to protect yourself and the work force. That's what we're going to do here. We're gonna be protecting the workforce here. We're gonna be protecting ourselves but also the workforce. I recently sent him a letter to a client who was dealing with an extremely difficult contractor who refused to work safely or attempt to work safely. I stated and I quote this no safety professional will risk their own life and career to enforce the safety rule without management's backing. So I would suggest you manage the contractor not the safety professional. This was in response to a G. C. Subcontractor who has the reputation of physically assaulting managers especially safety managers for enforcing rules. The contractor kept hiring them because they did good work and they had a personal end with the managers and with the owner of the company. So what are we to do to fight and win this safety war? The running theme of all these podcasts as a beer leader have backbone handle things professionally. Here's an important one. don't lose control and always get stuff in writing. This protects you your employer and obviously the workforce because that is why we are safety professionals to save lives. Keep us safety wars and JCP technical in mind. Contact us at 8452695772 or gym at safety words dot com so we can schedule some training for your company and help you manage these situations. The difficult situations that we all find ourselves in for safety wars. This is jim proposal. The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the host and its guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the company. Examples of analysis discussed within this podcast are only examples. It should not be utilized in the real world as the only solution available as they are based only on very limited and dated open source information, assumptions made within this analysis are not reflective of the position of the company. No part of this podcast may be reproduced stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means mechanical, electronic recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the creator of the podcast, J. Allen.