Tradesman Viewpoint

Hey all you iron workers, when the next thunderstorm comes to your job site, feel free to walk on the high steel, and wear your Florsheim shoes with the slippery soles, if you prefer. You might as well live on the edge, because when it's your time to go, it's your time to go, and there isn't much you can do about it.

To all the laborers and plumbers working in those seven-foot-deep trenches, you can shore up the earthen walls, if you want. You'll probably be fine, even if you don't. Everything you have heard about those nasty collapses only happens to workers whose number is up - not you.

Thankfully, that kind of thinking is nonsense to the vast majority of construction workers who have a healthy respect for the hazards around them and have the sense to come in from out of the rain.

They know that workplace accidents causing injury and death are often preventable with proper training, use of the right tools and equipment, and an on-the-job culture that urges and rewards safe work habits and constantly reminds workers to look up or keep an eye peeled for hazards.

Workers and their employers can make their workplace safer.

Now along comes Kalmin Smith. He's deputy director of the Michigan Department of Consumer and Industry Services, which oversees MIOSHA and workplace safety standards.

Smith was quoted in a published report on April 19 which revealed that workplace deaths in Michigan dropped 32 percent in 2000 from 87 deaths in 1999, to 59 deaths in 2000. Of those 59 workers, 23 were in the construction industry.

"While we're pleased when the number goes down, I don't know what that tells us," Smith told the Detroit Free Press. "We have to be very cautious about seeing trends in fatalities and coming to conclusions. Fatalities are often the consequence of fate or luck as anything else."

To make sure you got that right, here is the last portion of his quote again: "Fatalities are often the consequence of fate or luck as anything else."

So there you have it: when it comes to workplace safety in Michigan, fate and luck are placed on the same level of importance, or perhaps are more important - than good planning, proper worker training, effective workplace laws, and punishment for lawbreaking employers.

Smith's comments bring into focus the attitude that we have long observed about the Engler Administration, which has pushed through an anti-worker agenda from Day 1. Smith's comments are incredibly insensitive, display ignorance for someone in that position, and should anger anyone who cares about worker safety.

Worker safety laws, penalties and enforcement can make a difference. During the 1960s, before the existence of OSHA or MIOSHA and with a mostly booming economy, Michigan averaged 44 construction fatalities every year. During the 1990s, with OSHA and MIOSHA in place and a mostly booming economy, the state experienced an average of 24 construction fatalities. Workplace safety laws, combined with a workplace culture that stresses safety, brings workers home alive.

One of the definitions of fate by Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary is "an inevitable and often adverse outcome, condition, or end." Fate plays a role in some world religions, and luck has its place in the casino halls, but it is ludicrous, irresponsible, and distressing to suggest that worker safety depends on a roll of the dice or has anything to do with some abstract concept like fate.

Back in 1849, writer Matthew Arnold observed, "They who await no gifts from chance have conquered fate." And Thomas Jefferson once said, "I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."

We would welcome the same kind of can-do attitude from the Michigan Department of Consumer and Industry Services.