When I first started as a safety supervisor, my motives were pure. All I wanted to do was help other people. My goal was to show fellow employees how to work safely. Hazards were my enemy and I swore never to let company "politics" lure me away from the pure and noble causes I was pledged to. How much my efforts reduced pain and anguish was the only benchmark I intended to use. I even posted a poem - an ode to safety - on the wall of my cubicle.

The End of Innocence

For weeks, I remained pure. My time was spent in noble endeavors. Yes, I had to keep paperwork to track and classify all incidents and accidents. You see, the law required it. But this was simply an administrative sideshow that in no way distracted me from my mission of saving life and limb.

But then I began to change. No one incident stands out as a pivotal moment. The changes were slow, gradual and all but imperceptible.

I first recognized the change in my attitudes and concerns when the plant manager called me and asked for the "latest stats." It was the first time the manager displayed any real interest in my work. I was excited. I quickly fished the stats out of my "active file" and delivered them to his office.

The New Me

From that point on, statistics went from being a distraction to a point of genuine concern. I told myself that it was only natural to want better numbers. I reasoned that when our incident rate went down so did the pain and suffering. As I calculated man-hours and lost-work day rates I tried to remember that the numbers were just symbols.

I've been a safety supervisor for two years and now I spend most of my time chasing numbers. (You should see my wonderful charts and graphs!) I can't help it. When an employee is injured, I no longer worry about his or her well-being. I just want to know if the injury is recordable or not.

You may think I'm heartless, but it's not my fault; as I said earlier, I started out "clean." It's just that, well, the only time my boss and the other managers give me any real attention is when I show them the statistics. Do you suppose it's the attention I crave? Or, heaven forbid, maybe I really am the integer addict I've turned into?!

EDITOR'S NOTE

What you have just read is a fictional account intended to dramatize a point about the safety profession. I wish to assure SafetyXChange members that in "real life," Richard Hawk - although he may be a lot of things - is no numbers cruncher!

HISTORIC MOMENTS IN WORKPLACE SAFETY

Richard Nixon: Founded OSHA and then almost destroyed it.

Richard Nixon & the Legacy of OSHA

Almost nothing about Richard M. Nixon was simple. Not the man; not the presidency; and certainly not the imprint he left on OSHA.

On the one hand, the Nixon Administration founded OSHA. In addition to signing the law that brought OSHA into existence (the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970), President Nixon worked to establish the agency as a credible and effective enforcement authority. Nixon's OSHA waged an aggressive program of inspection and fines.

The Nixon Administration also developed OSHA rulemaking capacity. It was under Nixon that OSHA promulgated its first standard, covering asbestos fibers. In fact, OSHA rulemaking during the Nixon years was criticized for being overly aggressive and for publishing rules without sufficient industry input.

But, alas, Nixon's OSHA also had a dark side. In 1974, at the height of the Watergate crisis, Congressional investigators unearthed an internal memo from 1972 in which senior administration officials discussed tailoring the OSHA program to gain the business community's support for the President's re-election. Among other things, the memo suggested that OSHA go easy on companies that contribute large sums to the President's campaign.

There's no evidence that this talk actually affected OSHA's activities. But it took the agency years to recover from the damage inflicted on its reputation by the so-called "responsiveness program" memo.

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