NOTE: This document is provided for historical purposes only.
Presentation by George Gruetzmacher, Wisconsin Consultation Program
MS.GIBSON: Let me introduce my first panelist. George Gruetzmacher has a B.S. in aeronautics and astronautics from M.I.T. -- now I know why he is so smart -- and an M.S. in industrial engineering and human factors from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is a CIH, which is a certified industrial hygienist, and a P.E., professional engineer. He has more than ten years experience with OSHA Consultation Program in Wisconsin doing industrial hygiene and ergonomic evaluation.
George Gruetzmacher.
MR. GRUETZMACHER: Good morning. The purpose of what we want to do today is to give you an idea of the kinds of resources that are available to you if you are trying to find help for ergonomic issues. We have ordered what is going on today, to start from my end, which is basically free, you don't have to pay for it, but that also means that there are certain limitations, all the way through hiring a regular consultant. So we are going to give you a flavor of the different options that you have available and what each one can do for you or what they can't do for you.
I work in the OSHA Consultation Program. When the Occupational Safety and Health Act happened in the early '70s, there were three branches created. Everybody is always very familiar with OSHA enforcement activity, which is one branch. The second branch is NIOSH for research. A third branch was consultation. Consultation was created at that time, and we have been around since that time.
We are available in all 50 states. The main purpose of consultation is to focus on providing assistance to small business. We can discuss and argue over what small business is. The primary point is, the smaller the business, the less resources it might have. So using its resources efficiently is an important thing, and we are there to find help to do that.
We are a combination of federal and state funded, primarily federal. We consist of state employees. We are completely separate from federal enforcement. The reason for that is so we don't accidentally trip an inspection. If you call us, we do not give OSHA compliance any information on the companies that we work with as a routine part of our activity. Also, there are no fines or penalties associated with coming to us initially.
Again, we are trying to focus on small businesses. For us at the moment, that means companies of under 500 employees. So you can figure out how much business actually qualifies as small business, which is the vast majority.
Again, there are no fines, no penalties. The one trick that we get in, if you will, the condition for participation with the consultation program is the fact that you need to be sincere about trying to address hazard. So if you are interested in actually looking at a hazard and taking care of it, you can come to us, no fines, no penalties. However, if we find something, especially something that would require a monetary penalty, we have to verify that you have corrected it. We help provide technical assistance, we provide a whole variety of things, but basically if you refuse to correct something, then our only recourse would be to turn the company over to the enforcement folks.
I have been doing this for ten years. We do somewhere in the ballpark of 300 to 600 studies a year. That gives you a ballpark figure of about how many studies we have done. I don't really know how many companies, we have numbers in the 4,000 category. I can only remember 2 or 3 companies in the course of the ten years I have been there that have basically participated and refused to do anything.
So it is not something that happens very often. To tell you the truth, I am backlogged normally 3 to 6 months. So if you are not interested in fixing it, I can go to the people who are and say have a nice day. That is basically how we work from that perspective.
Wisconsin is a little bit different. We are the only state left where the consultation program is broken into two pieces. We exist in two separate departments of the state government. We have a Department of Commerce where the safety inspectors are and we have the Department of Health and Family Services where the industrial hygienists or health inspectors are.
The one advantage that leaves us is the fact that from an industrial hygiene and an ergonomic side, we can call on the resources of the Health Department in order to do a number of other things. For example, within our program, immediately adjacent to the OSHA consultation individuals, we have people who are NIOSH-funded to do research. In fact, we do carpal tunnel research with the people, again, immediately adjacent to the consultation program.
We do a variety of things. But what irritates me is when I go to meetings like this and we start to focus in on one hazard, and the point is that we want to make sure that we address all kinds of hazards. And again, from our perspective, we do this from an industrial hygiene side. So we look at air contaminants, we look at noise, we look at nonionizing radiation. I mean, whether there is an OSHA standard or not is not the issue. The question is, is there a potential health hazard for employees, and that is what we look at, that is the reason that we get involved in ergonomics.
The purpose here is to try to provide professional resources. I can only tell you how our program is set up in Wisconsin. There are a variety of other things; but we have industrial hygienists, including CIHs; we have degreed engineers, including Pes; we have masters-prepared ergonomists, we have immediately adjacent certified occupational health nurses, we have board certified occupational physicians, and we have a variety of people available to be able to deal with whatever issues come up.
Our purpose is in a number of directions. The main purpose is to identify and abate hazards, and that is what we do for ergonomics. You might ask how many ergonomic studies we do. The answer I would give you is every one because when you go into a facility and look at the hazards that they have, you at least consider ergonomic hazards along the way.
Now, you might determine a high likelihood that someone is going to get killed from a confined space problem and that repetitive motion disorders are sort of a second- or third-tier issue with this company, so you put your effort in that. However, wherever you go, you need to take a look at that.
Throughout the consultation program in general, consultants, safety consultant or industrial hygiene, are supposed to have had at least some basic ergonomic training. The OSHA Training Institute has a course which the staff throughout in general take, so they are familiar with these types of issues. Again, in some states you may not have a masters-prepared ergonomist, but you will at least have someone who can get an introduction and can start to evaluate the workplace for ergonomic hazards.
Along with that, we provide expertise in trying to deal with control measures, that is probably the main thing that consultation is for; I mean, abatement assistance, you can use whatever terminology you like to do. We try to stay away from terms that are similar to what compliance calls things, so we try not to call it inspections and we really try not to call it abatement. But it is all the same thing. You look at a hazard and determine how you can control it.
The first thing is to identify if the hazard is there, but the real work comes in trying to look at potential alternatives and solutions. We don't have nice stock answers that we can apply from engineering textbooks with high reliability. People complain about ventilation as being somewhat nebulous; however, I can sit down and do an awful lot of ventilation calculations to figure air flow and reducing an air contaminant as compared to being able to do calculations on exactly how I am going to reduce potential ergonomic hazards. However, again, providing that kind of assistance is something that we are available for.
Another thing that we do, and again a very important part that consultation can do somewhat differently, or at least in conjunction with a lot of the other resources, is help focus effort. We complain about vendors all the time. You will have someone come in the door and want to sell you the newest widget in order to take care of your problem. Often the sales person will guarantee you that it will take care of your problem and forget anything else.
Well, at least we are a resource that can have a balanced perspective on certain things so that you can get a better outside judgment call regarding where you really need to focus effort and where you may not need to focus effort. That is one of the things that we can do for you.
Our main purpose is to try to make employers self-sufficient. We are not there to be the health and safety program of a company. We are not there to be ergonomists or the industrial hygienist. We are there to help you learn what you need to do and to help develop your own capability to deal with health and safety issues in your specific company.
We go out and identify a variety of hazards. We do repetitive motion disorders. We do noise hazards. These are the types of things that we look at on a regular basis. We provide ergonomic program assistance. From my perspective, at least as far as repetitive motion disorders are concerned, you will always hear me talk about it in a context of an overall health and safety program. Personally, I think it is almost impossible to implement an ergonomics program if you don't have a health and safety program in the company to start with. I just can't fathom it.
What kinds of activities might we do? We do a variety of things. Visual inspections are probably the most common thing. Walking into a facility to see what may or may not be there. We do training of employers, we do "train the trainer" types of training, and we do training of employees so they are aware of potential hazards, again, in the context of trying to get an employer started.
We work with companies that have less than ten employees on a fairly regular basis. Going into a company with three employees and an owner, they usually don't know what they need to do at all. So certainly providing some basic training on what the health hazards are; yes, the tingling in your arm in the middle of the night might actually be something associated with all those types of issues.
We can do videotaping to try to analyze what is going on. We can do task analysis. I have just gone through the procurement process to get some motion analysis equipment so we will be able to do more detailed motion analysis. We recommend control measures.
One of the pieces I didn't put up here because it is integrated completely with what we do is employee interview. We interview employees, we interview the employer. We talk with people to try to find out what is going on at a specific worksite. That is so embedded in our process that we don't even think of it as a separate type of activity.
Who have we helped over the last number of years? Again, I was brought on ten years ago as a masters-prepared ergonomist and going from that perspective. We have worked with a large variety of companies. We have done apparel manufacturing and a variety of sewing operations. In fact there is sewing, assembly, operations, as well as some welding operations, which is when we talk about nonionizing radiation. Again, you have hazards that go together.
We clearly have office ergonomic issues. Office problems are somewhat repetitive, but it is not uncommon for us to sit and talk to an office of four or five people in order to deal with the problems. That is the office where life is very, very different, because everything is flexible. There is no standardization and getting people to be aware of what is going on is sometimes a challenge.
There is a variety of electronics operations in Wisconsin, especially electronics assembly. They do wire harness assembly. We have worked with those companies. We have done a number of things in health care, and in fact sort of being loaned off to our own department. Our department operates hospitals as well as facilities for people with mental disabilities. So we have done some work within our own department in those facilities, especially dealing with patient handling issues. We have worked with metal fabrication companies that do a variety of kinds of manufacturing operations.
How do you get in touch with us if you want to? The web is the place to find us. Since this was a meeting where the only place you could actually register was to get on the web and download it, or find someone to download it for you, then I figure that most people can at least use the web site.
There is information on the general program available on the OSHA home page. But there is a consultation project directory which gives the phone numbers and addresses, points of contact within each state of the program within your state. If you don't have that, you certainly can call the regional office that covers your specific location, and they will be able to provide you information with the specific points of contact.
I think that what we are going to do is have questions and answers at the end. So that is basically my introduction to the consultation program.
MS. GIBSON: Thank you, George.
