Safety to personal

All, or be exposed to liability for any accidents that may occur, insurance companies will require it.

Yes all are to comply. However, people are lazy and complacent. They think nothing is going to happen to them because they are just too good to have something go wrong.

OSHA doesn't perform compliance inspections on everybody. They normally only go for the deep pockets. The small companies go for decades without ever actually being inspected by anyone other then the fire marshal or health and safety.

Companies don't have to report an incident unless it involves death or at least three people being injured at once from an accident.

You can teach people the dangers, you can show them with examples and personal experiences and they will still not conform, you have to police them diligently.

So, bottom line is very few follow the rules when they are not being closely supervised.

Yeah, I agree with your analysis. Of course when an accident does happen then, as Labyguy says, lawsuits will follow. But with the "nothing bad ever happens to me" attitude that is so prevalent this path seems inevitable.

Agree with your view.

For some reason, it is near impossible to make people realize that everyone is ultimately responsible for their own safety, whether it is in the workplace, at home, or driving their automobile.

I consider myself lucky to have been indoctrinated by my first employer (a company that took safety extremely seriously - they made explosives). Repeated hammering on the details of safe job practices (and the responsibility of the worker not to take stupid actions) at our safety meetings was coupled with some very serious accidents by my officemates to bring the point home. The lessons stayed with me through other employers and some 39 years of working experiences.

Some companies don't recognize that for every $ invested in safety, saves them $6 on the bottom line. I happen to work for a company that won't do anything about a safety issue until something actually happens. Things like someone having his teeth knocked out for not having a guard on the table saw. Another person having both his legs busted from a machinery sub-assembly only being braced by 2x4's rather then having a locking mechanism already in place.

Even after an accident occurs they are hot on it for awhile then everyone forgets.

The manufacturing company that work for was just awarded OSHA SHARPS status in September. Some of us do care.

Hey, cheer up guys. In my country, when safety violations, even with documents proving the violations, are reported to the Ministry of Manpower, the report, supporting documents and all, is simply forwarded back to the company who committed the violations because its regarded as "an internal matter of the company."

The company in turn will notify the manager responsible for the violations to investigate the matter because "it's his department." And to top it all off, the identities of whistle-blowers are not protected, let alone the whistle-blowers protected from reprisals from his employers. This is despite the fact that the rate of industrial accidents in my country is twice that of the EU, and despite the fact that there has been a spate of scandals involving publicly funded charities. And the best part of it all? The government doesn't understand why we have such a high industrial accident rate!

Where do you live (if thats not too personal a question)?

Believe it or not, Singapore.

Believe it or not but countries that are behind in matters of safety and worker's rights are coming around. Singapore may not be up to date yet but they will eventually. Issues with quality for the import/export and ISO9000 will eventually catch up to narrowing things down to worker safety and they will have to start making changes. I've read articles from a newsletter I get from OSHA about some of the incident reportings made by Eurasia OSHA and fines being levied.

It will catch up.

Congratulations for being able to maintain a good sense of humour and mental balance despite the horrendous safety standards in your country!!Don't worry, God takes care of persons not cared for by their governments!

Thanks. There are a number of horror stories I could tell, but I won't as my intention is not to bad-mouth my country or government, but rather to advise anyone who's thinking of working here to take note of some possible issues.