NOTE: This document is provided for historical purposes only.
Fran Devlin, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E)
MR. JANOWITZ: I'm going to ask that we hold questions until after the speakers are finished, because some of the subsequent speakers might address an issue that you had in mind. Our next speaker is Fran Devlin. Fran is a Nurse Practitioner whose been working on a contractual basis with the San Francisco Division of Pacific Gas and Electric since 1989. Fran is a Nurse with two Masters degrees, worked for United Airlines Medical Department from '86 to '89 and has a wealth of experience. And without further ado, Fran, you're on.
MS. DEVLIN: Hi, everybody. Many of the issues that I'm going to actually be addressing or talking about has been covered this morning, lots and lots of overlap. And I thank Pam because she covered some really good stuff that I really won't have to go over. But first of all, I'll tell you about the company.
PG&E has been around a long time, just like Puget Sound. We are both gas and electric. That's the way it's been. PG&E, too, is expanding as of this month. No longer is it a company. It's now PG&E Corporation, so a whole big change in the structure because they're looking towards other and new areas of endeavor. We have 18 divisions within PG&E, a pretty big place. That's about two-thirds of the state that they cover. We have about 20,000 on last count. Our numbers kind of go up and down depending on what's going on.
And the two primary unions are IBEW, (International Brotherhood of Electric Workers)and ESC (Engineers and Scientists of California).
Now, we're going to talk about San Francisco, because that's where I work, and that's where a lot of this stuff has been going on. The rest of the company is doing lots of good things, too, in ergonomics. And actually, Ira is one of the consultant advisors to the company as a whole. But I'll stick with San Francisco right now. We have approximately, again, last count as of last week, 675 employees. We have physical and non-physical work force. Physical are the line men, underground electric workers, gas service reps, gas construction, and gas maintenance operation. We also have mechanics who fix the equipment. We have the non-physical who would be our customer service reps. They would be on the phone doing a variety of tasks at the computer. We have our estimators engineers who use this wonderful gizmo called the "CAD Board," Computer Assisted Drawing. So they spend time at their computer working on that as well as going in the field.
Mean age, 42. Range is approximately 19 to 66 years of age, but I was informed by the employee that was trying to help me staple some of these things together that he's 67. So I apologize, but we go from 19 to 67, 80 percent male.
I started from the point of cumulative trauma, and then I used ergonomics as a preventive approach. CT is wear and tear, repetitive strain, if you will, pressure on the muscles, tendons, joints, and it leads to problems over time. And OSHA considers it an illness when reporting, and they keep bringing that up all the time. 'Cause that helps with tracking if you put it in the right place. Unfortunately, it doesn't get there. It usually ends up being a strain or a sprain. So it's hard, then, to know, like, what you're really dealing with.
If you're calling it a sprain or a strain, then to me, you deal it with differently. If somebody tripped and fell, that's different than wire cutting multiple times a day. Prevention, again, involves the ergonomic approach, because it's related to work processes and tools, the way jobs get done.
When I came to the San Francisco Division and PG&E as a whole, just like Puget Sound, had a really, sound safety program in place for the company as a whole. If an incident occurs, management, safety representatives talk about how could this accident be avoided. It had to be an acute type injury. There was no such thing as CTD.
But meantime we continue to see all these injuries and illnesses. These problems kept occurring. So PG&E decided that maybe they ought to have an in-house person look see. When I came to PG&E who was coming through my door as a health care professional were the employees with wear and tear injuries, Carpal Tunnel, elbow problems, tendinitis, back problems, shoulders, etc.
What I noticed in 1990 that at least 27 percent of the reportables were related to cumulative trauma, just like they said this morning, responsible for the most amount of lost time. Lots more in the physical work force than the office workers. Had problems with the office workers, but the physicals were worse, especially at our gas construction --- I think we had about five cases of Carpal Tunnel in 1990 at gas construction. Leads to the loss of productivity and it's costly as they mentioned this morning.
Not only is it costly in term of workers' comp claims, how much money gets paid out, but costly to the individual themselves that can't do their work and to the co-workers who have maybe -- instead of having three do the job, you have one person. Or if you have only two to begin, now you only have one left, and/or they're using their other arm because one hurts, so they switch to the other. So it's more pressure on the other side of their body.
Further data collection included, going out and looking around to see how people are working, and then talking to the workers, of course. Because they have the clues in their pocket. They know if you converse with them. And if they don't, sometimes it helps just to point things out, see where they think the problem is coming from and which tool maybe they think is the source.
With me being in the position of being on site, I'm calling the shots in terms of what the problem is. As I am prevention oriented, I don't just sit there and say, well, here, take a few pills, call me in the morning. I want to see where it's coming from. I want to go find out. So besides making the diagnosis, the education is more on a one to one work modification.
We are fortunate that we can modify the work so people can still come to work but don't have to do the same activity. Monitor to see if we're making any improvements. Ergonomic consultation, if necessary. And I often use lots of -- well, I send a lot of people to physical therapist to work with for their specific problem. But before I send them back again, I want to make sure everything is in place, that we don't start from ground zero again.
On this, I chose just a few years because I can't go through all the trends that I've been following, but I would like to stress how important it is to follow trends. And again, the speakers have said this before, just to see where you're going, where all your problems are. And when I looked -- of course, all of our injuries or illnesses, everything was kind of lumped up. And what I'm showing you now in the cumulative trauma "pile".
Gas construction had 11 back problems 1993, and I'm just going to jump through a few, and customer service, their predominant problem was hand problems from being on the telephone, reaching, lifting, whatever, just with their hands, leaning improperly, leaning on their elbows.
In 1995, a little bit of movement here. Things kind of jumped back and forth, too. You'll go from one part of the body to the next depending, and maybe you can find the work process as the culprit. Maybe there's something else out there, too, that that's a problem.
In 1993, too, we were going through downsizing, and that's a very difficult time. With downsizing, though, I saw more of an increase in acute problems, not so much on the wear and tear. 'Cause people weren't really thinking, not focused, were nervous, they didn't know if they were going to have a job tomorrow, and less people to work with.
Here, things are starting to mellow out in 1995. Some improvements as you jump around. Hasn't all gone away, and it probably won't. And then it's also when people report. They all don't always report at once, they might wait a while.
1996, we have a change to our names. It's now Gas Maintenance and Operations. We kind of change depending on the nature of the work. And again, they're doing maintenance work. They're doing some, a little bit of construction in terms of gas lines to the person's house. And back problems started to go down. And are we using tons of back belts? No. But I'll get into a few other things with our customer service.
What happened was the mouse came along at PG&E for our computer operators. The mouse was just placed on top of the desk. Well, the keyboard might be below it, so employees were reaching. And our other group we call capital investment, that's our engineers, the CAD board is just not in a good place causing the employee to reach and stretch.
But meantime, our physical people started to improving, but we were putting a lot more effort here, too, with our programs. Before I get to this, I will also say that what Pam mentioned is our electric linemen aren't complainers. They usually wait until they really have a problem before they'll come in the door and chat with me about it. I have developed a fairly good relationship with them, so they might whisper it in my ear, but they don't make it a recordable. So I never get swayed by the data in terms of OSHA reportables, because I still know some of them have problems with their shoulders from working with cross-arms.
We have within our group, within San Francisco, in all the divisions a safety committee, and that is key, I think, to be able to get anything done. And employees and supervisors are represented. If it's really heavy on employee empowerment. They meet on a monthly basis and have a member attend system-wide meetings. It's a very key group, and that's part of the reason why I'm here, because they thought this would be a wonderful idea, too. They are key to implementation of a program.
With gas maintenance operation, because we were having problems, we began looking at what could we do, or could they do to improve it? And before, they would do all the digging in San Francisco, dig up the concrete, go through the cobblestone. They didn't bring in equipment to do it because it was difficult in the city. Well, now they're using a saw cutter contractor. Now, I don't know what happens to the saw cutter, but at least, the saw cutter shows up, cuts the pavement for them, so we reduce the risk of exposure.
We did try reduced vibration pavement breakers as well anti-vibration gloves. Unfortunately not every glove fits every person. And sometimes they have to work harder. But we went through a whole bunch of trials, came up with one that seems to be working fairly well. But again, one doesn't always fit everybody's, so you have to look at other vendors. I'll show you some pictures of some of the rest of the stuff as I go through.
We had three person crew. Then we went to two person crew. Now, we're back to three person crew.
And the Stretch-N-Work: We have a stretching program. Does everybody do it? I'm not going to stand here and say they do, because they haven't totally bought into it, at least in the San Francisco Division. They know it's important. They do get training on CT prevention and recognition. So they are aware of the signs and symptoms. So at least they'll come forth if they are having a problem.
Okay. What he has is an impact bar. Is anybody familiar with this thing? They look for leaks, but they go through basically any kind of crack they can find in the pavement. And that has a nice little small radius on, and you can see his hand around there. This is the newer one. What happened was with the older model, this one, elbow problems. Because when I had asked them, well, what do you think is causing your elbow problem? Oh, it's that impact bar, "'cause that's the killer". So they would go through these small holes and then bam, bam. And you have to really take your whole body and go down with it which not everybody does. Also, come in various sizes but not the same size in each truck. So you might have the little person working with the big one.
This is a device that holds their ....
MR. JANOWITZ: Whacker.
MS. DEVLIN: Before it was behind in the truck so they'd have to crawl over everything and pull this thing out. And I think it weighs about, what 100?
MR. JANOWITZ: 150.
MS. DEVLIN: 150 pounds. So they don't have to do that anymore. It just swings out and they can bring it down. It's level with them, so there's no more climbing over everything.
This is where -- we don't have this on all the trucks. This was -- this idea was formulated by one of our employees who came with the idea of when they do have to use their pavement breaking devices, to have a cabinet that's easily accessible. So again, they're not digging, going through their truck to get to their stuff. This one is actually controlled by a little button. It's on a lift, so you push it, it comes down, and it goes out. So again, it's equal to the waist.
The only drawback they tell me is they can't double park with this. Somehow, it gets in their way. So we haven't quite gotten through this whole thing yet, but it was fitted on one of the trucks. Unfortunately, we still don't have a 100 percent buy-in.
Pam mentioned this, too. Like the trucks, this guy was trying to jump in all the time. He went on his own and had those installed in his truck because he didn't want to use the steering wheel to lift himself in.
Instead of bringing in sometimes the back hoes, you can bring in this to do the digging. And it's smaller for those who work in the city. In the country, it probably doesn't make that big of a difference, but in San Francisco, it does. And so, using this instead of digging is a better idea. And there's another thing that fits on there called the "pecker," and you can put the holes in the ground that way. Just these little simple things.
And this person is taking their little stretch break here that I put them in.
We had a class, too. This is a person who is an ergonomist and a physical therapist who went through a back training class. Also, we were watching them work to see how they lifted, how they put things into their truck.
Electric construction. Some of the things that have occurred there was that -- and one of the other speakers will speak to this, the crimping device. But cutters, instead of having the usual cutters like this, we have a battery powered one. I think I'll show some pictures of the man hole lift. That's easier.
Again, the theme is the training, the awareness training of the importance of using proper tools if they're available. Sometimes they're not, they don't exist. If anybody could come up with a wonderful idea, then giving him credit for that and then signs and symptoms. If your hand is feeling numb, please tell us about it. Please tell me about your shoulder.
On the right there is the Fargo wrench versus the traditional standard wrench. You don't have this jerking movement. And then there's the regular hacksaw and then there's the power cutter. And, though, this might weigh a little bit more, they find it easier on bigger jobs just to use the power saw which makes sense.
What he's demonstrating is a traditional way of doing cable. This is electric underground and then the hydraulic operated cutting device. Unfortunately, this thing is kind of a heavy thing you lug around, so it hasn't had wide acceptance. It works, but it's just not that accessible.
And this is the last -- this is the one person lift, but you have to have the right kind of cover to lift it, and not every cover is the same in San Francisco. He prefers, he told me, the two person lift, because it's easier to maneuver. But he's able to do that with one and not much effort. There he is. And this is a two person lift. I was telling the members of the panel earlier that they were putting on this new cover. It didn't have the holes in it. Our division has a welding shop, and they had them put the holes in there so they could put their hooks in there. So in the future, they'll be able to get this thing on and off.
Our other workers, Gas Field Service, our gas service reps. A lot of problems, and that's -- the numbers are going up, but these would be more of our older employees -- called H-4's, --40 to 50 years of age. And what they did earlier on was start using knee pads, simple little pads, because they had knee problems from kneeling on the floor. Also, they use a tool pouch rather than heavy metal boxes. They also have lighter tools and use hand pumps for pilot lights to avoid having to place their back in an awkward position.
We tried the Stretch-N-Work with them. It hasn't been working that wonderfully well for this group in San Francisco, but the gas service representatives are doing it in another division. Again, training to prevent problems, and encouragement to report problems when they occur.
Office Field: All of our office people do get an evaluation, and they started doing this, maybe, in 1990, but even more so now. I think what I see in terms of antidotal notes, if you will, is people are calling and asking for ergonomic evaluations, and the bosses are asking for them, too. Employees will also rotate to another area then it's real important that we keep re-evaluating so they don't go into the six foot four office space and they're only five foot three.
Sometimes the pointing devices are problematic so if an individual has specific complaints that maybe related to the pointing device, I do office visits and I sit there and watch them work for a while, make corrections, and write out my report.
Seating: Important for the office workers as well as for our crews, and we've done a lot more in that area, too, with out back hoe operators giving them better seating. So the seat takes the absorption of the vibration from the ground versus their backs. Unfortunately, the physical have gotten forgot in the past, but now we're pushing for improved sitting in the physical.
This is just, you know, typical of people when they're working and the kind of positions. And her mouse is way up there. We've seen that. Maybe some of us are guilty.
This person's working with the CAD board, and they prefer, because right now the CAD program is on that pallet there. It's going to go on windows next year, and some companies really have it on the computer. They don't even have to use the digitizing board. But we have that for another year or so, so we kind of have to make do.
And this person liked having their arms supported that way.
Another person, what we did was come up with this device that we found. And this works for them. You got to move a little bit with this, but at least they're not stretching. But again, it's all going to be automated onto the Windows program.
MR. JANOWITZ: Excuse me, I just want to make the point that these workstations were set up to put the keyboard, as the primary input device, in front of the operator even though the keyboard's used 10 percent of the time, and the CAD board is used about 80 percent of the time, and then the mouse, 10 percent. So that the fact that these workstations were originally set up as cookie cutter workstations with the keyboard in front caused, I think, the major part of the problem.
And this is just the person actually who installs some of these devices. He's got one in there, but I took a picture of this because he's working smart. He's got his bucket, and he's got his little wheely. So instead of carrying this thing up and down the elevator, up and down the stairs, he just wheels it around. A simple thing like this can save his back and his arms.
Basically, we'll continue with an ergonomic approach, if you will, to CTD prevention. We have to keep including the employees. We need to -- oh, this what the employees had to say.
What they had to say, and I'm going to skip to the second one here. One of their goals, and I underlined it, was to continue to educate employees in the area of CTD prevention. So they, themselves, feel it's important. It's not management saying this. This was not me in the room prompting them, but they came up with this, and they're also big on exercise. And we actually do have an exercise facility at our place, but not everybody uses it.
We have purchased some new tools. Some of them are user friendly. Some of them we still have to work with. We have a reduction of lost time days. Our rates are about the same, maybe 27, maybe 33 percent are cumulative trauma. But we don't have that much lost time. They're not as severe as they once were in the past. So that's good. A lot of these, we cut short at the pass by just making things available to people, the right tools.
Again, early reporting and work process changes again instead of digging everything. Plan the job ahead of time, the design of the job is important, too. In San Francisco there are curb meters. I don't know if other people have them. It looks good. The house -- the owners are really happy with curb meters, but they're hard on the employees. So we're really looking at that, because they really have to work hard to adjust those meters once they're in the ground. So that's been brought up as an issue to try to talk customers out of curb meters if they can.
And these are two of our happy healthy employees, a little stretch there, but very happy with the job they have accomplished. And that's all. Thank you.
