NOTE: This document is provided for historical purposes only.
Paddy Dennehy, Carpenters' Safety and Health Fund
MR. SCHNEIDER: Our next speaker is going to talk about the carpentry trades, and his name is Paddy Dennehy. He has been a journeyman carpenter for 23 years, was business representative of a carpenters' local in Butte, Montana, for 11 years, and secretary/treasurer of the Montana Building Construction Trades Council for 5 years.
For the past three years he has worked at the UBC Health and Safety Fund teaching ergonomics, fall protection, hazardous waste training, -- abatement, confined spaces and asbestos abatement, and the OSHA ten-hour course, and is working on the curriculum for fall protection and ergonomics for the fund.
Paddy.
MR. DENNEHY: Thank you, Scott.
The Carpenters' Health and Safety Fund initiated ergonomics awareness programs back in 1992 from a grant through NIOSH. We have trained over 5,000 workers since then, mainly apprentices and journeymen.
Even though the awareness has increased among the workers, we have found the overall ergonomics problems have also increased, and changes on the jobsite are small or nonexistent.
Factors that have contributed to this are, one, changes in the trade and the carpentry trade. At one time a carpenter performed all facets of the trade, going from form work right to the finished work on the jobsite using different positions and different muscles.
Today the craft is more specialized, where a person might do nothing but hang sheetrock or frame for months and years at a time, keeping their bodies in the same position, using the same tools, and abusing the same muscles, tendons and nerves day after day.
Two, changes in the tools. The screw gun, an air-powered nailer, has virtually replaced the hammer as the tool of the trade. Although the power tools have made the job easier, it has also made it faster, pushing productivity, requiring more of a constant use for longer periods of time in the same position.
Third is the competition. The percentage of the work going from the union to the non-union has gone up, increasing the number of workers who have not gone through qualified training programs where ergonomics awareness is being taught. The competition in construction has also placed job safety as a low priority, and concern for musculoskeletal cumulative trauma disorders is only after the fact.
We have just completed a four-year ergonomics training grant from NIOSH. And recently we went back to one of our major areas, Seattle, Washington, and asked all the trainers we trained in the last four years different questions on how the ergonomics has changed or affected the jobsite.
We asked them 21 questions, but I thought these 4 were the most significant. Are you aware of ergonomic changes in the construction? Yes, said 21 percent, but 64 percent said no, there wasn't change at all. And 15 percent said somewhat.
How do we change the awareness of the contractors? By far, training was the number one answer at 76 percent. Fifteen percent said show by example, but 22 percent of the workers said you couldn't, there was no way to change it.
Have you ever been injured on a jobsite? Ninety-two percent of those workers that we trained said yes. No were eight percent.
What caused the injury? Lifting too much was 42 percent; carrying too much was 22; poor housekeeping, 51; and repetitive motion. On the poor housekeeping aspect, we asked what was the common safety hazard on the jobsite. Ninety-eight percent said it was housekeeping, walking over tools and the place not being clean. It shows an enormous amount of injuries could be prevented by simply cleaning up the job.
To reduce the musculoskeletal problems in the construction industry, we have to incorporate and educate the following people and organizations: First, the contractors. They need to be made aware that the employee is the producer, and the cost-saving measures of keeping them healthy is also a guarantee of continuous qualified work and also a drop in their insurance and workmens' comp rates.
We have found that when we also train the supervisors and the contractors, the safety on their particular jobsites improved greatly for the employees.
The worker. The worker needs to be educated to know what does affect them and what they need to do different to save their bodies.
The manufacturers need to be brought into this. And I feel that the American manufacturers have lagged behind the European nations as far as creating tools that are ergonomically correct. They are missing a great opportunity.
We took a study of all the so-called ergonomically correct tools and brought them out to a jobsite. Fifty percent of our workers refused to even deal with those tools if it didn't say "made in the United States."
I would like to show you a few of them that have been promoted as being ergonomically correct. But in reality, because they have not gone through the workers for testing, are not -- this two-wheeled wheelbarrow was designed to stop the tipping. And you could use your muscle and push it across. Now it works great on flat, level surfaces, but what they found is, number one, on construction sites there is no such thing as a flat, level surface. It was harder to turn, and it no longer went up on one board. You would have to build a ramp for it.
So after a study of this, everybody that worked with this wheelbarrow said that this was infeasible on a regular construction jobsite.
This right here is a sheetrock carrier. On the bottom part of it you lay the sheetrock, and you hold it up with one hand and you lift the sheetrock. And you carry it across to wherever you are going.
The intent is good, but the practicality of it is, you have to actually lift the sheetrock on top of the board, on top of the bottom base of it, it doesn't slip underneath. So actually what they are doing is, it's creating more of a job to move the sheetrock than it would be if they didn't use it at all.
Below this is a small, simple design thing for carrying sheetrock. As opposed to the other thing, this thing is only about this big right here. It's a three-pronged thing. The top and the bottom things work as handles, and you just slide it at the end of the sheetrock. Two people lift it and carry it to the jobsite. This thing is one of the things that we found that contractors are willing to buy and use, and productivity greatly increases.
Another organization that needs to be brought into this is the United States Government, especially OSHA. OSHA needs to develop a standard on ergonomics to include all industries. It was needed a long time ago. And every day that we do not have it is one more day that we add up the statistics of workers who have been hurt on the jobsite.
Without the full participation of contractors, manufacturers, government and, most importantly, workers themselves, the construction industry will continue to be plagued by debilitating musculoskeletal injuries.
Thank you.
MR. SCHNEIDER: Thanks very much, Paddy.
