At what price for production...

[UNBforester]

Friends of mine who still work for the big green company in Detroit told me about the new philosophy at their company nowadays. New management came in and shook things up making them work harder to bring the jobs in. Since this summer, a forman cut his hand on a chainsaw, another almost broke his leg in a tree, and 2 weeks ago that same climber rode a hazard tree down to the ground. The dead tree he was taking down was almost down except for the spar. A roped off log hit the spar a little too hard and snapped something at the base. He went down while bucked into the 20 ft mark. They say he's bruised and sore but still alive.
All these accidents happened after 3:00 in the afternoon. Their office is now 3rd in the nation for the highest accident/comp rate.

Is it really worth it?

 

[MasterBlaster]

Soooo... WHATS your question?

 

[UNBforester]

Do you push yourself and your crew harder to get the job done at the expense of safety OR do you put yourself first and the dollar later?

I may not even have a point to make here except that these guys were friends of mine and hearing this kinda made me think. Do you do the job right and safe or face the boss and look for another job? These men have invested a lot in the company and their future and they want to stay there.

No question really.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Originally posted by UNBforester
Do you push yourself and your crew harder to get the job done at the expense of safety OR do you put yourself first and the dollar later?

Of course its the latter choice. The company may want production, but if it requires getting sloppy on safety then the companys gonna eventually pay for it.

After the workers paid for it with some injury, or death.

 

[wiley_p]

The reason I went into business for myself was because of tree co's that had a "production oriented atmosphere" I worked for a unnamed company here in Wa, it took me about six months to figure out that they had no concept of the work involved safety was just a word nothing more, I ran my crew like a crabboat crew there was one word mine, did 760,000.00 in busuness the first year, in that time I fell out of a tree, a climber broke a maple he was in, avoided serious injury but still I didn't back off. I fired 36 guys that year, not all were bad, thye wouldnt get on board was all, I told some that they showed good instinct by resisting my wishes, The ownership set a relativly high goal my plan was to exceed it, I did by alot at the expense of almost everrything, headlamps were mandatory equipment. the owners thought this was great. I finally blew up because they were never happy, always asking more after I left they managed to cripple 3 men on three different incidents. From now on safety of myself and my employees is the MAIN focus, money the project etc, are all secondary.