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We have been visited by the Ministry of Labour lately. Since I am ostensibly in charge of Health and Safety, a lot of the 'problems' he found were down to my fault. Lucky for me 1) He didn't issue any fines, just orders to fix things
2) My boss agrees that some of these rules are just stupid, so isn't mad at me for not having followed them.
Some of the orders he issued -
1) Our health and safety policy needs to be clearly posted. It seems our current system of emailing it to all employees when they start, and to all employees annually when we update, having a copy in the shop on the table the employees use to fill out their paperwork, having a copy in each truck, and covering each topic in morning meetings once a year when they are updated is not 'accessible' enough to all employees. To be truly accessible the policy needs to be pinned on a wall. He suggested the lunch room or staff room. We don't have one. The guys load the trucks in the morning, and leave to work. They may be in the shop for an hour in the morning.
2) Our Health and Safety reps names and contact information is not posted. There is no list of first aiders posted. There is no list of people trained to use the forklift posted. There is no list of people trained to set up scaffold posted. There is no list of people trained to use certain machines posted. There is no list.... you get the idea. I guess all of this information is supposed to be put up on the wall somewhere. There is training records of all of this in the file cabinet, which I showed him, including test results, training manuals, performance results. There is a list of all of that information in every truck, and also in the binder on the guys table. Every truck that got back to shop when he was there, I called the guys into the office, and asked them, every one of them, including a guy who had been there three weeks could answer, correctly, every one of those questions, without looking anywhere for the information. In his mind that information is not 'accessible' to everyone.
3) Our PPE policy just states that the supervisor must tell employees what PPE is needed for certain tasks, or using certain materials. Despite every supervisor (and all the employees except the newest one) being able to tell him what PPE to use for certain things, with the information they gave being the same as was on each MSDS, our policy still needs to state what PPE to wear, in any given circumstance, ever.
He issued a bunch of other orders, but the gist is, if it's not written down and taped to a wall, it didn't happen. I've put about 60 hours so far into meeting his orders, which all amount to typing up, printing out, and taping things to a wall that everybody who works here knows, and that we actually TRAIN them to do. I had to post a sign on the trailer wall beside one machine that says 'In case of emergency, push emergency stop button'. I had to post a sign on the shop wall that gives my name, phone number and email, which everyone has, as the health and safety rep.
Our shop is currently covered all over with pieces of paper taped to every bit of walls not used to store things against. It's a total mess, no one could find the correct piece of paper if they wanted the information. But at least it meets the OHSA regs right?
2) My boss agrees that some of these rules are just stupid, so isn't mad at me for not having followed them.
Some of the orders he issued -
1) Our health and safety policy needs to be clearly posted. It seems our current system of emailing it to all employees when they start, and to all employees annually when we update, having a copy in the shop on the table the employees use to fill out their paperwork, having a copy in each truck, and covering each topic in morning meetings once a year when they are updated is not 'accessible' enough to all employees. To be truly accessible the policy needs to be pinned on a wall. He suggested the lunch room or staff room. We don't have one. The guys load the trucks in the morning, and leave to work. They may be in the shop for an hour in the morning.
2) Our Health and Safety reps names and contact information is not posted. There is no list of first aiders posted. There is no list of people trained to use the forklift posted. There is no list of people trained to set up scaffold posted. There is no list of people trained to use certain machines posted. There is no list.... you get the idea. I guess all of this information is supposed to be put up on the wall somewhere. There is training records of all of this in the file cabinet, which I showed him, including test results, training manuals, performance results. There is a list of all of that information in every truck, and also in the binder on the guys table. Every truck that got back to shop when he was there, I called the guys into the office, and asked them, every one of them, including a guy who had been there three weeks could answer, correctly, every one of those questions, without looking anywhere for the information. In his mind that information is not 'accessible' to everyone.
3) Our PPE policy just states that the supervisor must tell employees what PPE is needed for certain tasks, or using certain materials. Despite every supervisor (and all the employees except the newest one) being able to tell him what PPE to use for certain things, with the information they gave being the same as was on each MSDS, our policy still needs to state what PPE to wear, in any given circumstance, ever.
He issued a bunch of other orders, but the gist is, if it's not written down and taped to a wall, it didn't happen. I've put about 60 hours so far into meeting his orders, which all amount to typing up, printing out, and taping things to a wall that everybody who works here knows, and that we actually TRAIN them to do. I had to post a sign on the trailer wall beside one machine that says 'In case of emergency, push emergency stop button'. I had to post a sign on the shop wall that gives my name, phone number and email, which everyone has, as the health and safety rep.
Our shop is currently covered all over with pieces of paper taped to every bit of walls not used to store things against. It's a total mess, no one could find the correct piece of paper if they wanted the information. But at least it meets the OHSA regs right?
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