Shop Floor Safety — A Cause for Concern

THERE ARE two ways to view the current state of safety in the printing industry. On the one hand, as manufacturing industries go, printing is a relatively safe profession that has witnessed a steady decline in the rate of recorded injuries and illnesses, according to the PIA/GATF figures maintained by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

According to the most current reporting data, in 2006, the manufacturing sector had an injury and illness rate of 6.0 per 100 full time employees. Printing and publishing had a rate of just 4.2 per 100 full time employees.

Unfortunately, the worst of our injuries have been splashed across major newspapers and Websites in the past few years. Simply put, people are dying on the job.

A disturbing number of workers are losing their lives in equipment-related incidents. Gary Jones, director of EHS affairs for PIA/GATF, reports that between 2004 and 2006, there have been 22 industry deaths (including fatalities related to nonproduction work). Jones feels the headline-grabbing events should act as a wakeup call to the industry.

“The current state of safety isn’t rosy right now,” he says. “I don’t want to paint a picture of doom and gloom, but many printers don’t realize that there’s been a sudden spike in fatalities associated with working on (printing) equipment.”

The examples are mounting. Margarita Mojica, 26 years old and four months pregnant, was killed in late January when she was apparently trapped by a diecutter at San Francisco-based Digital Pre-Press International (see full story on page 8). In the last two years, two workers were killed on stackers for web presses. Another person was pulled into and asphyxiated by a sheetfed press. In Maine, a female worker was decapitated when her pony tail got caught and wrapped around a web press’ drive shaft. Two other workers were killed in paper baler accidents.

“From a safety perspective, we’re going backwards fast as an industry,” he remarks. “The scary thing is, it’s not isolated to any one particular type of activity. The commonality is they’re all equipment related.”

Deaths aren’t the only problem. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has identified printing as a “high hazard” industry for amputations. And while it may only be an unhappy coincidence, an unusually high amount of fires have struck printing establishments in the past year, the safety expert notes.

The amputation phenomenon has become so prevalent that Jones has successfully lobbied the PIA/GATF’s board of directors to fund the creation of an amputation prevention guide. The publication, which will be provided free to all association members, will address the core value requirements of safe equipment operation, as well as outlining the standards for OSHA and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) requirements.

With the recent raft of high-profile incidents, Jones hopes the silver lining in these clouds will be companies taking a long, hard look at their safety programs. Safe equipment operation, he says, embodies three criteria: machine guarding, lockout/tagout procedures and safe work practices.

Jones is amazed when he visits printers and finds evidence of the most basic safety breeches—long hair/pony tails, jewelry, long sleeves and other adornments that hang from the bodies of employees. Most issues can be remedied in a matter of seconds, but can potentially jeopardize lives. Other workers have taken a cavalier attitude toward the handling of equipment, perhaps attaining a comfort level after years of interacting with certain pieces of hardware.

“We see operators who have the tendency to take a lot of chances with equipment, who will defeat machine guards, defeat safety systems and interlocks, because they view those as an interference in productivity,” Jones remarks.

“There are also instances where the safety systems don’t work and (printers) either don’t get them repaired or don’t realize that they have stopped working. Often there is not a routing program checking to see if the safety systems are working. You don’t want to find out the stop button isn’t working when someone’s being pulled into a machine. Most importantly, you never rely upon an interlock or interlocked guard as your primary means of protection.

“The sad truth is: Every one of the equipment-related fatalities could have been prevented,” he says.

The news isn’t all bad. Many printers have undertaken initiatives that have enabled them to drastically reduce their recordable incidents. Fort Dearborn Co. (FDC) of Elk Grove Village, IL, which manufactures labels, has made great strides since it landed on OSHA’s “most wanted” list of companies whose injury rates were higher than the industry average.

In early 2002, two of Fort Dearborn’s plants received OSHA letters advising them that the respective facilities far exceeded lost workday injury and illness (LWDII) rates. Several other Fort Dearborn plants, while not written up, also exceeded the average. That soon became reflected in the company’s worker’s compensation insurance rates: In 1997-98, it paid a premium of about $220,000, a figure that had grown to $1.2 million by the 2001-02 policy. This represents a robust 491 percent increase. FDC’s carrier strongly advised the printer to hire a professional safety director.

Under the guidance of Mike Saujani, corporate safety director for the company’s 1,500 employees, FDC now has a model safety program. Its policies and procedures are consistent and feature an accident investigation program, monthly safety committee meetings at all FDC locations and safety team leaders for each facility. Accountability and involvement now permeate the company, from associates up to division presidents.

“Senior management commitment to safety is key,” Saujani says. “We used to pay $600,000 to $700,000 a year (in losses). Now, we pay about $135,000 for eight months. We only used to have one insurance carrier that would underwrite us; they all want our business now.”

The investigation process has paid dividends. With the discovery of root causes comes corrective measures. For instance, FDC followed the ergonomic training plan blueprint promoted by OSHA and PIA/GATF, and developed a program. That led to the purchase of mechanical lifting devices, which has enabled the company to drastically reduce its number of strains, which at one time stood as FDC’s biggest LWDII problem.

For some companies, it’s a matter of changing a mindset. Dan Ritter, manager of quality, safety and maintenance for Midland Information Resources in Davenport, IA, believes meaningful improvement was achieved with a change of culture at the company that elevated expectations for everyone.

The 160-employee firm saw its level of recordable incidents reach a high point in 1998. With the increasing number of injuries came more pain and suffering, more disruption and escalating worker’s comp costs.

Repetitive motion was the main culprit. Employees felt discomfort but, with the push on production, many just kept working until the pain became worse and prompted the workers to seek out medical treatment. That was part of the motivation that prompted Ritter to develop its “wheel of change” and alter the mindset.

“Midland wanted to build a bridge from where it was to where it wanted to be,” Ritter explains. “Every safety activity or task was a step on that bridge, and everyone was expected to take those steps together. We constantly used the example of building our bridge to help employees see what we were doing to achieve our safety vision.”

The program is a work in progress, with a focus on identifying issues early on and not letting them get to a point of loss. Repetitive motion is still a major focus, and Midland supervisors can intervene to remedy employees when they initially feel discomfort. The idea is to maintain a dialogue.

“We investigate all injuries, monitor all first-aid injuries, keep and post injury data, and discuss it monthly,” concludes Ritter. “The difference between an actual minor injury and a recordable incident, quite often, is just luck—the right conditions falling in place to make it more serious or not.” PI