The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is responsible for the safety of American workers. In the EU, The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work has a similar job, though with some significant differences. Firstly, the various nations in the EU maintain their own job inspection agencies that actually conduct the inspections and investigations of workplace safety concerns.
OSHA keeps a running tally of the most common workplace safety violations they have found every year in the United States. These include insufficient fall protection, poor respiratory protection, and bad ladder safety. While these statistics are taken from US workplaces, comparable job sites around the world are likely to have similar issues. As one can imagine, construction sites are some of the most hazardous, along with work involving chemicals.
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While it might seem counterintuitive, OSHA actually isn’t responsible for checking the safety measures in mines and energy infrastructure, even though it’s pretty easy to imagine all these dangers present there. This is not a result of some gross oversight or aggressive deregulation, quite the opposite, the Federal government actually has separate agencies to check if, say, a mine is complying with health and safety rules. This helps OSHA employees focus on their specific competencies without needing a specialized education to work with mines and power lines.
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Many of the suggestions and regulations presented by safety inspection agencies seem like added costs for managers. New equipment, training, and other measures mean more spending, naturally. But safety experts argue that this is a misleading analysis. Worker compensation, fines, and loss of reputation are arguably worse than paying for some equipment, but human psychology tends to undervalue the chances of a disaster, so these precautions “feel” wasteful to upper management. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
More often than not, workers will go through a near miss or two before something dangerous actually happens. Normally, this is celebrated, since nothing bad happened, but experts say that these situations are an excellent time to learn. Just because this time nothing bad happened, doesn’t mean that next time will be the same.
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Often there can be a disconnect between the workers exposed to hazards and managers, since the managers are the ones actually capable of resolving the issue, while the workers are the ones most aware and affected by possible dangers. Companies need to ensure that all employees are able to report and detail hazards easily and without fear of repercussions.
