Have you ever violated a safety procedure or a regulatory requirement and tried to rationalize it afterward? You know the excuses:

• "It's no big deal."
• "It was necessary under the circumstances."
• And the always popular "It was only just this once."

But no sooner do we sweep our own dirt under the rug then we express outrage upon learning about a big company's OSHA violations. But it's not simply about hypocrisy. Letting "little" violations go also has a big impact on our program and on the overall health and safety of our workplaces.

The Temptation to Take Shortcuts

Safety policies and procedures are often regarded as a nuisance that make work less efficient. So it may be tempting to take short cuts and work around the rules in the name of productivity or customer service. Companies and employees break rules constantly. We've all seen it happen.

The transgressions that get committed usually aren't headline types of things. They're "little" violations. Should we be concerned about these little things? After all, there's a world of difference between something like not wearing a seatbelt on a short trip and failing to follow the Lockout/Tagout procedures when servicing a piece of dangerous machinery.

How Shortcuts Undermine Safety

Or is there? I suggest that the difference between "little" and "big" violations is not as great as some may think. The very act of tolerating a violation - even a little one - does great harm. Sure, it might not create an immediate danger like a LOTO violation would. But if we turn our back on the little violations, we're basically giving our workers and supervisors discretion to ignore the rules. Even if the discretion to break rules is limited to "little" rules, do we really trust the people on the work floor to distinguish between what's little and big?

And, even if supervisors and workers are able to distinguish between the big rules that they must obey and the little ones that they can ignore, the very toleration of violations breeds a lack of respect for the rules that undermines the overall safety culture. When it becomes known that little infractions will be accepted, more and more of them will occur. Before long the "little" things will add up to significant hazards.

How to Deal with the Problem

How should you deal with this situation? Safety officers need to discuss the situation with supervisors. We can help clarify the issue by asking ourselves a few simple questions:

• Is the rule required by OSHA? If so, you must follow it even if you don't think it's necessary.
• Is the rule consistent with industry standards?
• How would you feel if you or your co-workers was injured?
• What would you do if your son or daughter had to perform the task?

Conclusion

The first thing we, as safety professionals, need to do is to resist the temptation to tolerate "little" infractions. We must understand that little violations have big results. If managers, supervisors and workers all think a safety precaution is unnecessary, then it shouldn't be a rule in the first place. Strike it from the books. Better to have no rule than one you know is unnecessary and not taken seriously.

THIS DATE IN HISTORY

Automatic couplers: Became mandatory under law enacted 114 years ago on this date

March 5, 1893

By Glenn Demby

On this date 114 years ago, the U.S. Congress passed the first piece of railway safety legislation in the nation's history. The law had a catchy title: An Act to Promote the Safety of Employees and Travelers upon Railroads by Compelling Common Carriers Engaged in Interstate Commerce to Equip Their Cars with Automatic Couplers and Continuous Brakes and Their Locomotives with Driving-wheel Brakes, and for other Purposes. And that pretty much sums up what the law required.

The law, whose name was mercifully shortened to The Railroad Safety Appliance Act of 1893, was the culmination of the railroad safety reform movement that began in Massachusetts in 1871 in the aftermath of a disaster in Revere where a train packed with tourists was struck from behind by another speeding train that was unable to brake in time. Although a handful of states adopted railroad safety legislation after Revere, the railway interests were powerful and it would take another two decades for Congress to enact badly needed federal measures.

As a sop to the railway industry, the effective date of the new federal law was pushed back seven years to 1900. This turned out to be a disastrous decision. In 1894, a year after the law's enactment and six years before the date it was scheduled to go into effect, 1,823 workers were killed in railroad incidents; another 23,422 suffered serious injury. If you were working on the railroad back then, your odds of getting seriously injured were 1 in 33; if you were riding in the trains themselves, the odds increased to 12 to 1.

When the law finally did take effect, it produced the desired effect. The Railroad Safety Appliance Act was credited with the significant drop in railroad accidents in the early 20th century. The law, which has been amended many times, remains in effect to this day.

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