OSHA looks to keep injuries down as economy goes up

Oregon OSHA officials hope a new safety program will keep workplace injuries from increasing as the state's economy grows.

Safe Jobs, Smart Business, an outreach program designed by Oregon OSHA's parent agency, the state Department of Consumer and Business Services, will promote greater safety and health awareness as industry across the state picks up speed.

We were very concerned about the possibility that Oregon's economy was going to improve dramatically in the next 18 months and that, as employers worked to improve production to meet new demand, we'd see a sharp spike in the number of workplace injuries occurring, said Kevin Weeks, an Oregon OSHA spokesman.

Representatives of the agency, which enforces Oregon workplace safety and health mandates including those of the federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration, fear that, as demand for production increases, employers will send workers to job sites without properly training them. Because statistics show that new workers are most at risk for on-the-job injuries, Oregon OSHA wants to stop problems before they start.

That's why the agency has a new Safe Jobs, Smart Business program to make employers aware of safety issues before they bring on new hires.

Of the 24,000 claims that the workers compensation division accepted for benefits last year, about one-third were to workers that were on the job less than one year, Weeks said. Perhaps even more alarming was that 10 percent were in the first 30 days of the job being completed.

Weeks and his fellow Oregon OSHA representatives are aware of the division's reputation to some employers as an enforcement organization. To connect with them, the representatives are speaking a fiscal dialect - a language to which those employers respond.

A serious injury on the job, from our research, costs about $43,000 to the employer in various expenses, Weeks said. Most businesses can't absorb a sudden expense like that, not to mention the human toll. If a business is operating at a 4 percent profit margin, to make up that shortfall the business will have to generate $1,000,000 in new gross revenue.

Oregon OSHA began promoting Safe Jobs, Smart Business to employers and workers earlier this month. Program planners divided the program into five focus initiatives - one for each of the agriculture, construction and health care industries, one to emphasize training and one to address the needs of new workers.

The program has been launched statewide, with 30 regional training sessions scheduled for July in 10 Oregon cities. On-site training will be available for employers with a large number of workers; smaller companies can obtain Oregon OSHA training videos, publications and CD-ROMs, as well as a safety and health consultation, at no cost, Weeks said.

The program will see a greater rollout early next month when Oregon OSHA unveils the Safe Jobs, Smart Business portion of its Web site at http://www.orosha.org. The Web site will make available 10 courses that workers can download and study at their own discretion.

One component of Safe Jobs, Smart Business already on the site is Programa en Espanol de Seguridad e Higiene en el Trabajo de OR-OSHA, or PESO, a training tool for Spanish-speaking workers.

What happens frequently when there's a need to communicate with Spanish-speaking workers is an employer will tap someone on their own staff who's fluent in the language or bring in an external speaker, Weeks said. Because the employers don't understand Spanish, he said, the drawback of that is that the employers don't know exactly what material is being communicated to the workers. The PESO program's training modules are identically presented in English and Spanish.

The Safe Jobs, Smart Business program will continue indefinitely, Weeks said.

Considering that economic indicators suggest a slow up-turn recovery, we'll have several more months - if not years - in terms of educating employers on safety and health.

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