NOTE: This document is provided for historical purposes only.
Presentation by James Fredrick, United Steelworkers
MR. TYSON: Next, it's my pleasure to present Jim Frederick. Jim is an industrial hygienist with the United Steelworkers of America. He's part of the health and safety and environmental department there in Pittsburgh.
Jim came to the Steelworkers following the merger of the Steelworkers and the United Rubber, Cork, Linoleum, and Plastic Workers of America Union. His position with the prior union, which I won't try to say again because I barely got it out the first time, was the director of industrial hygiene.
Jim works extensively with local unions and companies for whom they are there in the development and implementation of effective ergonomic programs.
Now I think it would be useful for us to hear from Jim with a perspective from the other side.
MR. FREDERICK: Thank you, Pat, for the introduction. I'd like to steal a little bit from what Peg said, talking about prohibition on ergonomic issues. I guess what I'm going to speak to today is ergonomic bootleggers.
I also thank Tom for your presentation.
I'd like to express my appreciation for the opportunity to speak this morning. I'd like to also thank the staff from both OSHA and NIOSH for organizing this conference.
Additionally, I want to thank all the management and safety representatives from several tire plants who provided me with much of the information and the slides that I'm going to be using this morning.
The Steelworkers Union, as well as all of organized labor, values the importance of the gains which have been made by our members supporting safe and healthful workplaces. The Steelworkers Union represents about three-quarters of a million members in the United States and Canada. Many of our members of our union work directly in the basic steel industry, but the majority of our members work in other industries, such as rubber and plastics, chemicals, nonferrous mining, transportation equipment, general manufacturing, health care, and the public service industries.
As the diversity of these industries dictate, our members face a multitude of occupational safety and health problems, including ergonomic issues.
Our union, through its health and safety and environment department, as well as a network of district staff and local union health and safety advocates, works closely with our members, providing technical assistance to address workplace occupational health and safety hazards. The steelworkers provide health and safety related training and education programs to our members to provide them with the means to correct hazards at their plants.
My associates in the health and safety department and I spend much of our time working directly with our constituents at their factories or workplaces, as well as at their local union halls to address workplace health hazards.
Health and safety hazards existing in our plants vary as widely as do our workplaces. Local union representatives contact our office concerned with ergonomic issues as frequently as any other safety problem. For every ergonomic concern that is brought to our attention, many, many more are addressed at the plant level by hourly and salaried employees. Often, safety and health concerns, in particular, ergonomic hazards, are best addressed by the employees working with, on, and around them.
This process of floor level problem solving has always occurred. It occurs daily in the workplace and is often done without notice. In many workplaces, the seniority of the hourly employees is far greater than that of supervisors. In these plants, workers may have some additional insight to their workplace, to the companies they experience.
Some of the floor-level fixes that may alleviate the ergonomic stressor may not be recognized by management or the workers as ergonomic hazards but rather making the operation more efficient and/or comfortable to the operator.
Workers can always contribute and often correct ergonomic hazards in the workplace. Ergonomics can be defined as the science of work or fitting work to the workers. I believe ergonomic issues can best and very effectively be addressed by workers.
A union member once summed this up very well to me when he stated the ergonomics is simply workers fitting work to ourselves.
A local union president from a steelworker plant contacted me in December with some questions about ergonomic issues. During the course of our conversation, he explained to me that in 1995 there are 18 cases of carpal tunnel syndrome recorded by his employer. This plant employees just more than 200 people. Over that 12-month period, one out of every eleven workers suffered an OSHA-recorded cases of carpal tunnel syndrome.
This rate of incidence indicates to me that workers at this plant are in need of some ergonomic help. Obviously, not every plant which employs members of the steelworkers union experiences ergonomic-related health and safety problems to this extent, however, we strongly encourage every workplace to approach this issue in a proactive manner. Many workplaces that our union represents do have sophisticated and proactive occupational safety and health programs that are inclusive of ergonomics. In some cases, this is addressed as a separate manner, while in other places, ergonomics is inclusive in the other safety and health programs.
It is in these workplaces within the union we find cooperative, proactive, labor management, health and safety, and our ergonomic programs working effectively.
As I mentioned, the Steelworkers Union works with an immense variety of employers who approach ergonomic issues with a vast array of methods. I'm going to describe one example of a facility level ergonomic program.
This program is from a tire manufacturing facility and is inclusive of floor level input and participation. I am also going to show several examples of workplace improvements made to reduced ergonomic stresses. These improvements were made with the involvement of hourly employees from several facilities throughout the US.
Management in the local union at a relatively small tire plant recognized that a problem existed with an excess of ergonomic illness.
This was particularly apparent in their workers' compensation costs. The nature of tire manufacturing includes much material handling, as well as tasks requiring excessive, repetitive motions.
This plant initiated an ergonomic program to complement their existing safety and health structure.
The goal of this facility's ergonomic program is to reduce work-related injury and illness by systematically eliminating their causes through education and awareness modification to the workplace and work practices.
Management at this plant hoped to improve upon the problems associated with the ergonomic hazards through the actions of an active ergonomic committee. The configuration of this Committee includes, hourly and salaried employees representing a cross section of the plant. Everyone concerned at this facility wanted to take advantage of the ability of the workers to fit the work to themselves.
The Committee benefits greatly from the experience of the workforce.
An Ergonomic Committee was established. Management at this plant states that the committee is designed for success. Also, a management ergonomic coordinator was named. This plant addresses specific problems with this established committee.
Some of the Committee members rotate on to the team from those areas or departments currently concerned or involved with projects. These rotating positions are imperative to effect the changes that will work in their respective departments.
The Committee is represented by an equal number of hourly and salaried employees. Each member of the Committee has an equal vote in all of the decision-making. The Committee meets on a regular basis.
The Committee at this plant operates in both a proactive and reactive manner. They regularly review information contained in the employer's reported injuries and illnesses to react and assess areas which may have a problem. Data such as this also provides them with indications about departments and their jobs for which the Committee has already performed improvements.
The Committee relies heavily upon this data. For example, the Committee may review data for a department of concern from the Plant OSHA 200 lot.
This slide shows injury by body part for the plant.
They also review injuries by job task within their plant. Through this strategy the Committee believes that they are able to effectively focus their efforts in areas which are problematic. By focusing their efforts, the Committee is able to justify expenses associated with some of the solutions that the Committee recommends because the injuries and illnesses experienced by these workers are costing the employer money today, not to mention the cost on a personal level.
As I mentioned earlier, this Plant Ergonomic Committee works in both reactive and proactive manner. One example of their proactive actions is their regular performance of plant walk-through audits and surveys. The members of this Committee also make themselves available regularly, both individually and as a group, to listen to concerns from the shop floor.
One factor that this Committee stresses is that some kind of response or feedback should always be provided to employees, hourly or salaried, who raise issues. If no response is provided, the employer is less likely to provide additional input.
Another item mentioned by some of the hourly members on this Committee is that salaried employees often approach them to comment on ergonomic concerns.
This slide shows a sample checklist utilized when this Committee performs a type of a job hazard analysis in conjunction with ergonomic walk-throughs.
With the assistance of the workers, supervision, and this checklist, the Committee members begin to analyze specific hazards associated with job tasks. After the job has been analyzed and the problem has been identified, the Committee attempts to improve or correct the tasks associated with the problem. While the Committee proceeds with the project, they continually provide feedback to workers in an area of concern.
Many times a project will take weeks or months, but the feedback process informs the workers of the timing. Throughout the process, the Committee documents are steps for their records.
The Committee members, as well as the facility employees, have received ergonomic training as a result of the Committee's efforts. The ergonomic coordinator received initial in-depth training, and continues to receive regular training. This person, then, brings some of the experience and knowledge he gains back to the rest of the Committee and shares it with them at their regular meetings.
The Committee members have also received some outside training. On a plant-wide basis, the Committee members are provided most of the training through their existing educational safety programs.
Let me now discuss a few examples of ergonomic improvements, changes, or fixes made at several tire plants. These alterations involved input of floor level employees. Some of the input from the floor level was minimal, while other scenarios were almost totally handled amongst hourly employees.
Material handling is a major concern for most workers and tire manufacturing facilities. Throughout the process, workers are handling materials and product many, many times a day. Rubber and other raw ingredients are compounded together to create rubber stock used to produce tires. Natural and synthetic rubber arrives at tire plants on pallets. A bundle of rubber weighs about 75 pounds.
For years, compounding operators would manually lift bundles of rubber, along with bags and bundles of other materials on to conveyor scales to be charged into a Branbury mixer. The compounding area was a very dirty and labor intensive area in the plant to work.
Vacuum hoists have been installed in compounding areas in most tire plants. This example was not initially received well by the entire work force. The lift or hoist was thought to be a slower process to move stock and material from Point A to Point B. Many operators and supervisors were initially convinced that these devices slowed the production. Today, however, if a hoist in a plant Banbury area is not operational, workers don't want to work on that line. This engineering device required a period of time for workers and supervision to become familiar with its use and function. Over the time, workers became comfortable with the operation and using the lifting device and are now able to keep up with their production rates and their speeds while using the lift.
The vacuum lift or hoist, provides the Banbury operators with the means to handle the material without the manual manipulation.
In addition to bundles of rubber arriving on pallets, many tire plants receive bulk materials in railcars. This operator is using a tool called a rail car inch to move a railcar of carbon black into position to be unloaded. The lever is appropriately named because it literally moves a car about one inch at a time. The distance that the operators are required to move this railcar at this plant would range from 10 to 20 feet.
Obviously, this operator had a heavy, highly repetitive task every time the carbon black railcar arrived. This operator faced serious potential problems with repetitive motion injuries. It didn't take too much to persuade upper management at this plant to make a capital investment for a motorized rail car motor.
This purchase eliminated the task which was targeted as being problematic.
This example depicts a scenario which some people express in an initial concern of an Ergonomic Committee of the chance that they may eliminate some jobs. It's important to express that at the facilities that I have these examples from that no jobs have been lost as a result of implemented ergonomic solutions for a problem.
In fact, one safety committee chairman expressed to me that the solutions at his facility have allowed the affected workers to perform their work much better. I think this is a real key in ergonomic issues for the buy-in of the workers is to have that understanding and that assurance.
Tire beads become the rigid rim of the opening of the tire. This operator is moving beads from the area that they are made to a storage rack. These beads for large tires weigh between 30 and 40 pounds each. This powered industrial truck is now used to move the beads at this plant. This allows the worker to place them onto the truck at a comfortable level.
This truck allows the operator to place the beads into the storage racks without being required to lift them up over their head.
The operators working in these areas are called tire builders. Tire builders experience many repetitive operations in the course of their work. Normally in a tire plant, tire builders experience a higher rate of repetitive motion type illnesses than any other job class in the plant.
In this plant, a stool was used to stage tires during the building process. The stool that was used in this plant was too low to the ground and rather awkward to use.
Operators in the tire room implemented a temporary or quick fix to assist this task. The stool is placed under a crate to allow the tire to be at a better working level. This improved the task from an ergonomic standpoint for most of the operators, however, the stool continued to be in an awkward position for some of the operators and it could potentially tip, causing other problems.
The floor level improvement was considered by the plant, joint labor management, safety and health Committee. The Committee determined that a new stool could be manufactured in house by the employees. This new stool is height-adjusted at very stable at the base. This is a very good example of workers fitting the process to best fit themselves.
The employees in this area are very pleased with this improvement. This example demonstrates the effectiveness of simple in house engineering design and manufacturing.
After a tire is built or assembled, it is cured. The curing process, essentially, bakes rubber, giving its final shape and durability. This slide demonstrates the process of curing operators placing tires onto curing stands from the floor. The curing press in this photo picks the uncured tire from the stand and places it into a mold to be cured.
The operator job entails keeping many of these presses in operation. Due in part to production requirements, the workers would place the tire next to the stage, onto the ground next to the stand. This task required the operator to remove green or uncured tires from a rack, place them onto the ground next to the press, then move from the ground onto the curing press stand when it became available.
Curing operators worked on a hard-surface floor for an entire shift, and they're constantly moving back and forth along a row of curing presses to keep them stocked with tires.
Contact with the floor also caused some impurities to sometimes affect the quality of the tire.
Engineers and operators working together agreed that multiple rotating arms would allow the curing press operators to efficiently place multiple tires. This provides better quality assurance for the product.
It also allows the workers to keep up with the production requirements. This improvement reduces excess bending and lifting to complete the task. It also does not increase the amount of movement required for the operator up and down the row of curing presses.
After the tires have been cured, they are inspected, stored, and shipped. Operators working as inspectors check tire quality. This worker removes tires from this conveyor. The side rails, or skates, keep the tires from falling off the side of the line. The operator lifts the tire up and over the side rail. This task places the operator into some awkward positions. The suggestion that was implemented to improve this task was to modify the side rail so that it could be flipped down to allow the operator to pull the tire straight from the conveyor.
This allows the worker to remove the tire from the line without lifting vertically.
In the next example, operators handle finished tires. They are moving them from waist or chest level to floor level. Think about changing a flat tire. Lifting a flat tire into your car trunk is not an easy task. Imagine lifting hundreds of tires into your trunk for an 8- or 12-hour shift.
A lift was placed at this workstation to assist the operator in moving the tire from the conveyor level to the shop floor. This lift, like the first example I discussed, created a time period which operators found difficult to keep up with their production quota. However, over time, operators have adapted to utilize this tool and maintain the quantities.
The worker in this photo is turning a tread tray. The tray is loaded on one side, then rotated 180 degrees and loaded on the other. A manual lift is used to assist the rotation. The conveyor line which feeds the strips of tread to this area continually feeds.
There are nine employees between three shifts assigned to this operation. In the late '80s, these operators were reporting to the plant medical department at a rate of 1 employee per month. The workers were experiencing back, shoulder, and/or elbow injuries.
In 1989, several representatives from the Plant Safety Committee, both hourly and salaried, attended some ergonomic training. Following the training course, the employees returned to the facility and, working with the Safety Committee, identified this job as problematic.
The Safety Committee reviewed the job. As a result of their review, a motorized list was placed into operation. Since this lift was placed into operation, none of those nine employees working on this job have reported back, shoulder, or elbow injuries to the medical department.
This lab worker cuts pieces of rubber samples for testing. Here, she is using paramedic scissors to cut samples. She was experiencing pain in her thumb when cutting the samples. As you can see, she is wearing a doctor-prescribed support.
A pair of spring-loaded Fiskars were purchased for this task. These reduced the stress on the worker's thumb enough to allow her to function without the support.
Once again, the message that I hope I have relayed today is that floor-level input is invaluable to the employer addressing ergonomic issues. Additionally, the employees who work on the shop floor are imperative to the success of the program.
The examples that I've shown this morning vary in almost every aspect, however, they all involved input from the workers. The experience and hands-on knowledge provided by the union members cannot be replaced. I think that those of us in this room can agree that there is a prevalence of ergonomic problems in the US workplace. This problem does not appear to be diminishing.
The cost at several levels associated with this problem have brought ergonomic related issues to the forefront of occupational safety and health and brought all of us to Chicago.
More and more workplaces are implementing ergonomic programs of some manner, however, the specifics of these programs are varied. We at the United Steelworkers Union look forward to the continuation of the OSHA process. This process provides all of the stakeholders with the opportunity to continue meaningful discussions on this topic.
An OSHA standard will provide some continuity between workplaces and create an even level for workers.
Thank you, again, and I'll turn this back over to Pat.
MR. TYSON: Jim, thanks very much.
