Isn’t safety supposed to be on-site at all times? The point of the law is to prevent people who don’t know the risks from jumping in the hole, right?
I think this is too simple of a view. I think the interesting point is many workers dont want to use the safety features, and it isnt a simple matter of education. This is why a simple training class dont work.
Instead it is a matter of incentives, so you need to have someone onsite whos sole job is to make sure workers do it the way the company wants, not they way the the worker want.
>The point of the law is to prevent people who don’t know the risks from jumping in the hole, right?
>prevent workers from jumping into the hole without safeguards, regardless of what they know or think about the risks.
That is typical when someone disagrees with something.
Just to try to make this tangent more constructive and thoughtful and less argumentative, it’s true that my last sentence is incomplete when taken literally. In retrospect, it’s certainly not a perfect summary of the point of OSHA’s on-site supervision rule. Keeping people out of the trench who don’t know the risks is one reason to have a supervisor, other reasons include keeping people who do know the personal risks from being allowed to choose to accept them, because they might not know the collective or company risks, or because their risk tolerance is unacceptably high. Maybe a better way to say it is that the point of the law is to prevent individual workers from having the choice to take such risks. In any case, I’m pointing out that my comment could be improved by starting with “One point..” rather than “The point..”. I assumed the context mentioning on-site supervision twice made it pretty clear, but that’s on me, my bad assumption. And it’s not uncommon for me to realize my writing is not as clear as I thought.
When the contractor rents or orders a trench box, delivers it to the site, arranges for the excavator, or even a crane for larger operations, and lays out the construction plan, there is no such thing as ignoring it. Just in case you missed it in the article, not only are trench boxes required by law in the US, a safety supervisor on site overseeing the operation is also required. The laws were written to prevent individual workers from being able to ignore the construction safety plan, and require company oversight. The only way it gets ignored is from the top.
Maybe you haven’t much experience working on job sites. Maybe you’d know about subcontractors who don’t gaf or workers who are told to do something and they don’t listen. Maybe you’re just unaware of the facts of reality? Utopian fantasy is not real life.
As GP said:
a safety supervisor on site overseeing the operation is also required
You don't want to listen? No more job. You don't need cooperation, you need authority with incentives to act (i.e. stiff penalties).
I already agreed with you and I’m aware that workers can make bad individual decisions, but that is not relevant here. We’re not talking about any and all construction safety, we’re talking about trenches and trench boxes. A few simple facts of reality that you might be ignoring that I’ve already mentioned are: 1- trench boxes require heavy equipment and advance planning; 2- the law requires a safety supervisor to ensure workers follow the plan. Neither of those is up to individual workers and cannot be undermined by individual workers.
To your broader point (that doesn’t apply to trench boxes), workers only get away with stuff when the company doesn’t care enough. The company is paying, and has all authority to monitor and enforce any and all safety concerns, should they be sufficiently motivated.
No. You're jumping to conclusions that you seemingly think support your goal, but actually do the exact opposite. From the legal perspective, the company being "solely responsible" would mean the owners and management of the company would get to declare bankruptcy of the company and walk away (free to set up a new company). Small construction companies generally don't have very many assets, so it would also hinder the families of the dead getting compensation. And from the perspective of wanting to prevent collapses happening in the future, solely blaming "the company" is essentially concluding "nobody's fault" - companies don't actually do things, people to do.
My comment was focused on trying to look at all of the contributing causes, which is generally how we improve processes so that these failures don't happen. There are many comments talking about the dynamics that lead individuals to eschew personal PPE. But with trench boxes, it's not really up to an individual whether to install their own trench box or not. So I was attempting to visit the group dynamics and incentives that affect whether trench boxes end up getting installed.
Companies do use bankruptcy to thwart legal actions all the time, which is crappy, but what bearing does that have on who is legally culpable for a trench collapse? And what is the alternative? You are suggesting OSHA should fine or sue individual workers? You are saying that companies are not solely responsible for installing trench boxes and providing on-site supervision? If not the company, then who is responsible? The law is declaring the company solely responsible, and I don’t see how it could be any other way, trench boxes are a company management decision. You even said “it’s not really up to an individual whether to install their own trench box”, so I’m double confused by your whole reply.
I think you’re talking in generalizations about the subtleties of the reasons that bad things can happen, and not about legal responsibility, and not addressing directly what I was talking about which is who should be legally responsible for meeting OSHA guidelines. Which, to be clear, isn’t exactly up for debate, OSHA already says who’s responsible. Anyway, these are two different questions, but for the purpose of assigning responsibility, OSHA doesn’t care if there are ‘group dynamics’ that lead to structural accidents. They put the company in charge because the company has to provide the supervisor and ensure safety. It’s simply not up to the workers.