I am a safety professional who works as a safety trainer and consultant. I teach OSHA safety classes for various industries like construction and manufacturing. Until recently, when I was “Karened”, I taught up and coming safety people who would in turn train other workers, primarily in their own organizations.
Some background. OSHA divides for training purposes industries into four groups, two of which are construction and general (think manufacturing) industry. I am qualified to teach both.
I was working as a trainer for a non-profit safety organization (NPSO), whose client I’ll refer to as “BFD”, a construction safety class so its safety committee would be more knowledgeable, a laudable move on its part. The BFD company is a manufacturer. It requested construction training, which would not address their needs. I tried to convince them to change what class they wanted to no avail.
A BFD student who is a manager – Karen – complained about several of my comments, all of which are innocuous and I have used in my classes for a decade now with no complaints. An example: OSHA is available to any workers and companies that ask them for help. I shared that with the class. Karen then complained to NPSO that I had promoted something against her company’s policy (How as I to know?), even though she herself contributed to that discussion reinforcing the benefits of doing so.
She also complained that I had, using OSHA statistics showing that people from a certain culture had an inordinate amount of injuries compared to the overall working population. From my experience I observed they often don’t follow safety guidelines as they should and we as safety people need to keep different cultures in mind when communicating with them and ensure they stay safe.
So, NPSO called me to discuss her complaints, which I explained to them honestly and fully. They fired me. In spite of the fact that:
• I was the only person in NPSO qualified to teach general industry safety.
• I was the only person in NPSO who was qualified to teach both construction safety and general industry safety in the region where I live, which is several hours from the NPSO offices, which was one of the reasons they hired me to begin with.
• I had done nothing wrong.
Several things have come of this:
• Karen’s coworkers now don’t have safety training they requested. (Did they realize that they asked for the wrong course and pulled this stunt to cancel the contract without penalty?)
• I can no longer teach others who would become instructors and in turn, teach many others. I would probably have taught 100 people each year who would themselves train another say, another 20 or more each? You do the math.
• I discovered how weak and sensitive NPSO is and it’s willing to eliminate safety training programs out of misplaced, and illegitimate concerns that some Karen may complain. Which means I’m better off not working for them any more. But I feel bad that so many people will be affected by this.