Steve Ramsey was minding his own business one day at General Electric Co. headquarters in Fairfield, when outside he saw a worker in a hardhat striking what he termed a “workers of the world” pose, with one arm stretched toward the heavens.
“The next thing I know, he catches a crowbar that”™s being tossed down two or three floors,” Ramsey said.
A cast-iron completion like that could send a corporate vice president like Ramsey back to the ol”™ drawing board regarding assumptions of safety. And it did.
In a process that took four years, GE”™s headquarters facility this month gained entry into the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration”™s “Voluntary Protection Program” (VPP), with membership reserved to entities that demonstrate a rigorous schedule of safety requirements.
Under a separate program, small businesses can qualify for recognition under OSHA”™s “Safety and Health Achievement Recognition Program” (SHARP). The Danbury nonprofit Midwestern Connecticut Council on Alcoholism is the lone Fairfield County entity to achieve SHARP status, among 11 in Connecticut.
GE becomes just the third corporate entity to achieve VPP status in Fairfield County, after BlueLinx Corp.”™s Newtown distribution facility and Wheelabrator Technologies Inc.”™s waste-fueled power plant in Bridgeport.
“A couple of people said to me, ”˜This is going to be a piece of cake ”“ it”™s just a bunch of offices, nothing but desks,”™” said Marthe Kent, deputy acting regional administrator for OSHA.
The path to last week”™s cake-cutting ceremony turned out to be a bit harder for Ramsey, GE”™s vice president of corporate environmental programs, due in part to VPP”™s requirements that also apply to onsite contractors for construction, landscaping and kitchen services.
GE”™s 860-employee headquarters becomes the 110th VPP site the company runs, among more than 1,860 VPP sites in all OSHA has recognized. GE has the most VPP sites of any company.
The facility is 66 percent below its peer-group average for injuries, and 93 percent below the average for days away from work.
“You can go out in the Fortune 500 ”¦ and see a lot of companies that are not committed (to safety),” said Ed Foulke, U.S. assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety, addressing GE employees this month. “The fact (GE) has 110 facilities in this thing sends a message.”
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The company”™s achievement comes against a backdrop of an overall decline in U.S. workplace injuries among private employers. Connecticut”™s injury incidence rate in 2006 among private employers was 4.8 cases for every 100 employees, down from a 5.0 incidence rate in 2006.
While those statistics include transportation accidents, the industries with the highest incidence rates reflect what are commonly believed injury-prone industries: health care professions, metal manufacturers, trash haulers and some construction subcontractors.
Hospitals, metal manufacture and waste-management sites were the most dangerous worksites, followed by construction sites.
The safest jobs in Connecticut appear to be financial jobs, which had an injury incidence rate below 1.0 for every 100 workers.
Foulke said it is difficult to gauge the financial impact of VPP, due to the difficulty of assessing accidents that never occur thanks to the program”™s emphasis. Ramsey thinks that companywide GE may have saved tens of millions of dollars thanks to VPP measures the company has introduced.
Ramsey said the company hopes eventually to implement VPP at every corporate site, including overseas facilities it acquires whose reckless practices “would absolutely make your hair stand on end,” in his words.
Closer to home, GE plans to seek VPP status for its contractors that will dredge portions of the Hudson River polluted by company facilities upstream, a dangerous project “which speaks volumes” about GE”™s VPP commitment, Ramsey said.
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