Time to ‘walk the talk’ If you want to talk the talk, you’ve got to walk the walk, says the Wey- erhaeuser company. Continuing where MacMillan Bloedel left off, Weyerhaeuser is taking an aggres- sive and proactive approach to achieving healthier and safer work- places. National Safety Council chairper- son Bob Patterson and Local 1-85 member Ron Tramer, both working hard to assist Weyerhaeuser in developing and delivering better safety programs within company operations, presented a workshop examining the issues of leadership in safety. You have to be persistent said Brother Tramer. “It’s not something you can do today and something more impor- tant comes along tomorrow,” he _ said. “You've go to do it everyday.” “It’s hourly employees and com- mittee members and supervisors that need to ‘walk the talk’ - who need to show by example,” he added. The presenters said that safety must be worked into the business process of the company. Proactive measures should be taken and visi- ble performance should be mea- sured. Brother Tramer highlighted an incident, when in one logging divi- sion a high-ball trucker was given positive reinforcement for always getting the extra load. Nobody spoke to him about driving too fast. He eventually got nailed by the Ministry of Transport. “The system let him down,” said Tramer. He said the system kept Peer safety audits on the rise in operations Many operations in the forest industry of British Columbia are doing their own safety audits - some to be just in compliance with WCB regulations, other to exceed those standards. Former WCB official and now con- sultant Jim Allman told a workshop that the Board considers due dili- gence (in safety enforcement) and compliance with WCB standards as the same thing. He said they are not, but being compliant with WCB regulations “certainly helps.” Allman said that, in a court case, that compliance with WCB regula- tions is only one step, and that a judge will have to look at the whole issue to see whether due diligence is being followed. The judge has to look at the reality of the situation and the reality of the standards in the industry. “Due diligence is where you are doing everything reasonable in the circumstances of a case,” he said. “It’s a moving target.” He said he thinks that even though some organizations are not in (com- plete) compliance (with WCB regu- lations) they may not be prosecuted if they are practicing due diligence. “They are using regulations as a saying “it’s OK to get the extra load.” There was no clear standard set. “If there was, there wasn’t any compliance to those standards,” he added. “That’s where we break down in not ‘walking the talk.” Patterson said the system is often at fault. “We sometimes try to blame the worker. It’s not always the worker’s fault,” said Tramer. The presenters said standards must be set that workers can respect. Causes of accidents have to ana- lyzed and control measures have to be put in place. Patterson said accidents are likely caused by a sequence of predictable events and happen due to more than one cause. Weyerhaeuser’s safety program is first focusing on areas of its opera- tions where the greatest room for improvement is. “It helps you to be able to see improvement right off the bat,” said Tramer, who added that when work- ers see improvements their interest increases. The Weyerhaeuser program is based on employee-driven participa- tion, said the presenters. They said active intervention of rank and file I.W.A. members is important for the program’s success. Weyerhaeuser is hiring supervi- sors and foremen with a safety back- ground. The company is training those supervisors and safety com- mittee members. In some opera- tions it is training union committee members to get more people involved. . ¢ National safety council chairman Bob Patterson (r.) and Local 1-85 mem- ber Ron Tramer filled in a workshop in on Weyerhaeuser’s proactive approach to its safety program. ¢ Both I.W.A. Canada occupational health and safety representatives and management reps interacted during the SAFER conference workshops. guide for the way you should be doing business,” said Allman. Lorne Pelto of the WCB of B.C. said the Board policies and approached are based on compli- ance with the standards and that there is no judicial review in such an administrative process. The primary role of WCB inspec- tion officers is to inspect, consult and educate. Pelto said the forest industry has not made the administrative bench- mark of being completely in compli- ant with WCB regulations yet. “T simply know that is not true,” he said. Allman told the workshop that when a company does an audit in its operation, it’s important to know how the operation works. He said small, flexible, fast-moving opera- tions need different approaches than big operations. Pope and Talbot human resources manager Dale Hurren, who has been working with others at studying the possibility of a safety association run for the forest sector, says the industry’s performance in B.C. (on safety) “is not the greatest.” He said that such a association would “raise the bar” on best prac- tices and compliance with safety standards. “We don’t care whether it’s a non- union contractor up in Prince George or MacKenzie or on the (Vancouver) Island or whether it’s an I.W.A. operation - we're talking about the forest industry,” he said. Mr. Hurren said an association could assist in the audit process. Jim Parker, Safety Director of Local 2171, who was a workshop parsaipents said hag coRpaMIES like Weyerhaeuser and TimberWest are running safety programs with good results that require large resources. Local 2171 has over 440 certified companies, many of which are small contractors. z Safety consultant Jim Allman. a ae 14/LUMBERWORKER/April, 2001