Shipbuilding is one of the most dangerous industrial jobs. However, over the past 14 years, the shipbuilding and ship-repair industry has seen its rate of recordable injuries and illnesses cases requiring medical care beyond first aid fall sharply.According to the Labor Department, in 1992, there were 37.8 job injuries and illnesses per 100 shipbuilding workers. By 2005, that figure had dropped to 10.9 cases per 100 workers which is a 71 percent reduction. Shipbuilding was the third most dangerous industry in 1994. Today, it's ranked 24th.
There's just something about cutting and bending steel, welding thousands of parts, hooking up electrical systems, crawling through confined spaces and working on small platforms hundreds of feet in the air that carries great risk.
Northrop Grumman Newport News (Rhode Island), the country's largest shipyard and maker and repairer of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines, has helped reduced the workplace accident problem. The shipyard, which accounts for a fifth of the private shipbuilding industry's work force, has seen fewer cases than the industry average in each of those 14 years.
Shipbuilding still has national injury and illness rates more than double the average workplace. The Northrop Grumman Newport News yard hasn't been immune to the dangers even fatal ones: In 1997, three pipe fitters died on the Harry Truman when a pump room that they were working in filled with lethal gas and sewage. In 1998, a subcontractor was found floating near a pier, the victim of a fatal accident. And in 2004, a 23-year-old apprentice electrician was electrocuted while working outdoors on an air conditioning system.
A shipyard worker and member of the safety committee says the declining injury rate at the yard was mostly about teamwork where workers get after each other to be safe and staying vigilant about it. Recent improvements in the injury rates for the shipyard and the nation began in earnest with the Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA) Act of the early 1970s, which regulates everything from protective gear to tools to hazardous materials and everything in between.
The Newport News yard is the only private shipyard in the nation that participates in OSHA's Voluntary Protection Program, which goes beyond the basic regulations. The shipyard has morning meetings, called "Take Five for Safety", in which supervisors and workers spend five minutes going over safety issues.
Safety has taken big leaps over the decades. One area that has seen particularly big improvement is in the scaffolding systems on which workers stand during construction. Years ago, it was untreated wooden staging and it would catch fire by welding and burning. Now, most of it is interlocking fabricated metal. Employees working on those scaffolds in dangerous locations never used to latch themselves in with a belt and clip. But they are required to do so now - as well as wear goggles, earmuffs, steel-toed boots, and helmets.
Workers universally say they are glad that safety is stressed at the yard. Without reminders, it's easy to forget a policy on wearing protective gear. The shipyard has committed to the view that employees have the right and the expectation to be able to leave here in the same condition they came at the start of their shift.
Even with the workplace safety improvements, taking steel and turning it into ships is dangerous work and safety will always have to be an ongoing priority.
(Source: The Providence Journal)
http://www.projo.com/business/content/BZ_shipbuilding_07-28-07_V94A13P.25d965a.html
