Construction workers required to take safety course
June 10, 2009 by Fred HosierPosted in: construction safety, Fatality, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, New rules and regulations
PDF In response to media coverage of a rash of construction worker fatalities, one state is now requiring such employees to get safety training.
In Nevada, construction workers will have to complete a 10-hour OSHA safety course within 15 days of being hired. Supervisors will be required to take a 30-hour OSHA course. The new law takes effect Jan. 1, 2010.
Employers must fire any worker who fails to provide proof of completing the required course. Companies can be fined for employing workers who don’t have the training.
The new law was prompted by 12 construction deaths at projects along the Las Vegas strip during a 19-month period between 2006 and 2008.
State Assembly Majority Leader John Oceguera (D) helped draft the new law. He told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “Hopefully this will be a step in the right direction to have everyone recognize safety is the most important factor.”
The bill passed the Assembly 39 to 3 and the Senate 20 to 0.
Do you think safety training requirements like this one will help prevent worker fatalities? Let us know what you think in the Comments Box below.
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Tags: 10-hour OSHA course, construction worker fatalities, Nevada safety training
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June 11th, 2009 at 8:50 am
“Employers must fire any worker who fails to provide proof of completing the required course. Companies can be fined for employing workers who don’t have the training.”
So who has to pay for this course, the employee or the employer? Is there any type of testing done to insure the training presented was understood? I didn’t have to take a test for my 10 hour and the guy next to me was half asleep for a good portion of the two days. Hopefully they have changed things.
June 11th, 2009 at 10:38 am
This sounds like a feel good law to make it look like something is bing done. While additional training is a good thing, I have to wonder with Jason what they will do to ensure that the training is effective. It sounds like more task training may be the way to go as opposed to sitting in a classroom watching videos half asleep.
I don’t know much about OSHA, but under MSHA we have to compensate our employees for the training they recieve. The only way around that is to say they would have to have the training before being hired. By them giving them 15 days after begining work, it may be that the company will have to foot the bill.
June 15th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
I think that the “quality” of the training is a key factor in reducing accidents on the job. I have attended many mandated “Annual Training Courses” that lacked good quality. It was basically a waste of my time.
The people who write the rules should have a good working knowledge of what is actually needed by those in the line of fire. Again, it all comes down to the quality of the course contents.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
The companies will provide the training. In Nevada most GC’s now require an OSHA 500 safety person in town and on the job once a day for subs. All the GC’s have OSHA 500/501 or 500/503′s on the job at all times. If your a sub and don’t have one, you don’t get the job. They also look real hard at all the E-mods too. I’ve seen subs get the bid because they had the lowest Emods, not bottom lines. I’ve had as many as 14 jobs going at once. But having been in Nevada and holding a 500 and teaching classes you can’t make people be safe just with classes. In the Southwest there’s the Mexican and Central/South American immigrant safety problem. South of the US border there is no safety programs, no OSHA, nothing. A lot of my crews were entirely Hispanic and a lot didn’t speak a lot of English. They come here and simply don’t know. They are used to being told to perform a task and they don’t think. In Mexico (and south) if you question the boss or say you don’t know how to do something, you’re fired. I’ve shut down many parts of jobs to require shoring, fall protection and give out PPE sending the offenders home on the job because they ‘forgot’ their PPE. You have to send them home and hit ‘em in the wallet (Foreman and Supers too) then they get the idea. And they’re learning to sue employers. If this Safety First mentality doesn’t start at the top levels of management, it’s business as usual and the safety program may as well not exist. Been in Nevada and done that.
June 15th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
How often is the class going to be offered at least in this area the class is only offered in the spring of the year and registration must be completed at least 2 weeks prior to the first class and the second class is 1 week later. Then training completion certificates are not issued until the paperwork is returned to the office and entered, this on average takes about 30 days. Then the certificate is done in a bulk mailing that may not occur for another week as well as the amount of time it takes the postal service to deliver it. As far as payment by employee or employer goes this class is part of the approved apprenticeship required coerces and the employer pays a certain % of the total. If you require the cores of any employee after they have completed the apprenticeship you have to pay for it unless you make it a job requirement to already have completed it prior to hire.
Also the only local occurrence of the class is for those in the apprenticeship program. Anyone else has to travel about a 100 miles to the course. Who pays this travel time and expenses?
My question is so when does the counting stop for the 15 days when signed up for the course, when you attend the first class, when you have attended both classes, when the certificate is issued, or when you physically receive your certificate? What happens when the post office does not deliver and it takes them several more weeks to reissue your certificate and get it to you? Who is going to compensate the employee for all the time he/she is unable to work because the law does not allow them to work more than 15 days without that little piece of paper.
June 15th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
As a Safety Director for one of the Construction Companies here in Las Vegas, I have to say this is definatly a step in the right direction. After the “Worker Walkout” at City Center on the Las Vegas strip, a mandated OSHA-10 hour class was required of all workers on site. The class was provided by the General Contractor and was part of a 2 day orientation. It is amazing, over the past year, the recordable (and unrecordable) accidents have fallen drastically.
As of yet I do not believe that it is stated whether the employer or employee pays for the class. Depending on who is teaching the class the average price seems to be around $140 for the 10-hour and $210 for the 30-hour. I know many of the Union Halls supply free training to memebers in good standing. Before signing up for the class I would definatly make sure they are certified in teaching the OSHA class. Many un-certified trainers are poping up saying they offer a “Fast Track” OSHA-10 class that only takes 4 or 6 hours. The “10″ in OSHA-10 stands for 10 hour. When taught right, there is so much information it takes every minute of the 10 hours.
I personally do not think that the employer will be required to pay for the employee’s time or fee to take the class. The OSHA card that you recieve is tied to the employee and not the company. As of yet, the OSHA card does not expire either, though I would suggest renewing it every 3 years max. Once again I personally think that not just construction workers but also the Project Managers and Owners should go through the class also. Therefor setting up a class with a group discount rate would be beneficial to all. It is also a good show if OSHA hits you up for something in the near future, you can say show you are pro-active in safety and want to become compliant ASAP. Many times just that will reduce your fine or drop it all together.
“Safety First… or Go Home!”
June 15th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Well, sitting here in Nevada (NOT LAS VEGAS) being subject to this new law;
a member of AGC NV safety committee;
10 years experience in my field;
and the safety officer for a small construction company with a mostly Hispanic workforce,
this law is creating chaos and is a nightmare. This bill was a political manuever based on 3 miles of construction work happening on the Las Vegas strip, and the rest of us are now paying the price.
There are currently 182,000 construction workers in the state and ALL of the available classes now scheduled through the end of the year have seats for about 12,000 people. For our fompany, most of our Hispanic workers, are not literate in Spanish, let alone English; therefore, we have to be able to VERBALLY do these classes (in Spanish) so they can pass. Because, we cannot discriminate, and you have to teach the material in a method and language that the worker can understand.
For some workers in small communities, they will have to travel well over a 100 miles to take the classes. Is this fair? Not even a little bit. Do we have to comply? Absolutely!
I believe that it will help the overall safety levels in this state, but it comes with an INCREDIBLY high price. Most of it to be paid by the workers who will have little or no opportunity to be able to comply with it, and come January 15, 2010 will be unemployable in their trades…….
June 16th, 2009 at 8:42 am
If they are not literate in English, which is unacceptable, much less Spanish, their native tongue (scary) they should not be here working in the US. How else can you properly train someone on the dangers present in their jobs? HazCom, PPE, etc. the list goes on. They need to be “teachable” and until they are they shouldn’t have a job. I believe what NV has done is a step in the right direction. I’m sure I will be called a racist for my comment but it couldn’t be further from the truth. I am a realist.
June 16th, 2009 at 10:01 am
You can properly train them verbaly, just as she said.
While I agree that reading and writting is important, you can’t call them unteachable for their lack of knowledge. I know several people who are very book smart, and very common sense dumb. Construction work is physical labor. Often times these are the jobs filled by folk who either can’t or don’t want to work in the highrise offices they are building.
I do think this is a step in the right direction, but I don’t think they have thought it through enough.
June 16th, 2009 at 11:58 am
In my opinon they need to be able to read and understand NFPA/HMIS labels. It is a requirement of our workers. They need to be able to fill out accident/near miss reports. They need to be able to read and understand MSDS sheets. Even with physical labor they need to read!
June 16th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Ok, that makes sense, thank you for making that more clear.
I think it would make training more difficult, but I think those faced with the literacy and language barriers find a way to make it work effectively.
June 22nd, 2009 at 4:04 pm
It is obvious that people posting to this rule change have not read AB148 or their comments would be totally different. For example, their is a provision in the law to allow the employer to provide alternative training for the first year that would qualify all employees and give them an additional year to get their 10 cards through the DOL. I personally believe that 18 months should be enough time to get into compliance.
It also mandates that state OSHA will write the new rules and track all trainers through their offices. They will also decide who is qualified as a trainer by way of an approval process. The state will issue approval certs and maintain the list of approved trainers. Their process will be similar to the current approval process for safety people on all OCIP and CCIP jobs. The state will decide who has a job and who will be unemployed. This is a very scary situation if you know or have ever had any dealings with Nevada OSHA. Politics will be rampant in this office.
AB148 also requires continuing education as all 10 and 30 hour cards will expire in 5 years from the date of enactment of the law. 10 hour card holders will be required to do 5 hours of continuing education over the 5 year period and 30 hour holders will need 15 hours.
The list goes on and on….take the time to look up the bill and see how it will affect you and your career and then make your comments.
December 29th, 2009 at 11:32 am
The OSHA 10 is now available online so seating should not be an issue. However, I don’t think you get the same information retention by doing the class online. As an OSHA Authorized instructor I can’t help but to see this as an opportunity for people in my field to make some extra money. You can see the increased demand in Nevada has already put a strain on things.
I also believe that this is ultimately the wave of the future, but at the same time feel that the workers will no longer have the excuse that they didn’t know. This is something that is required in order to make each worker fineable by OSHA sometime in the future. We all know that not enforcing safety rules renders the safety program ineffective, well seems to me the same should apply with OSHA. If the workers know they can be fined by OSHA they will take the same measures the employers do to avoid be fined as well.
January 5th, 2010 at 11:31 am
Giving fines to workers would be a big mistake. If they thought they could get fined how well do you think OSHA would get information in an investigation? Right now I have people who don’t want to talk to OSHA because they somehow think OSHA is the enemy. If they gave fines to workers how far wrong would that be? The employer needs to have safety rules in place, then enforce the rules. Employees that don’t follow the rules should be diciplined (then fired if they continue) for not following the rules. Instead many employers ignore the safety rule breakers because they are good producers (at least in construction it seems to be a prevalent thing). Employees know within the first day of employment if the job they are on is safe or not and this comes from the top down, not the other way around.
January 5th, 2010 at 11:54 am
As long as good companies that have good safety programs, enforce the safety programs only to have that one guy get hurt from violating the safety programs get fined, then OSHA will be the enemy.
As for OSHA investigations go, Police Officers have to conduct investigations all the time without a lot of assistance from the people, but they still manage to get it accomplished. If a worker refuses to co-operate with the investigation then it’s simple enough to cite them for interfering with an investigation.
What I know is that the workers are exempt from punitive measures from OSHA and they act as such. There is now accident rating for each worker like there is for a company. There are no fines for workers as there are for companies. If a worker is not offered a position because of previous jobsite accidents he can then sue the company. This workers of the world unite crap is ruining things for this nation rather than making things better.
January 5th, 2010 at 6:11 pm
“good companies that have good safety programs” if they were a good company they would get rid of a problem person that continuously ignores safety protocall. I am reading that you would punish the worker for getting hurt. Are you really saying you want to punish a worker that gets hurt just because they got hurt? This is taking a big step backwards in my opinion.
If you are trying to improve behavior based safety you need to weed these people out before they get hurt themselves or others. If they continualy refuse to wear their PPE or to refuse to follow other protocalls, a good company will weed these people out before (hopefully) they are injured. If someone gets hurt is not simply their fault just because they were the one who was injured. Thsi is why we get paid to do the root analysis (among other things). Were they trained? Did they have the correct PPE? etc., etc…. Many times we see that the company manual states one thing but the foremen out on the jobsite are putting accross a totaly different message. If the company has a good safety culture it should not be necessary for OSHA to fine someone on an inspection because a good companys dicipline policy will do that already. Which is why OSHA want’s to see your dicipline policy when they look at your safety policies.
January 6th, 2010 at 1:04 pm
Dana B, the flaw in your argument is that you presume that the only people who get hurt are the ones who continuously ignore safety protocol. This is an absolutely incorrect presumption. Most of the times the person who gets hurt is the hard worker who does the right thing most of the time. However, sometimes in an effort to do a better job he may take a shortcut. He may lean to the side while working from the ladder and have the ladder tilt over creating a fall. His safety record is clean, never had a an issue with him before, but he decided to try to finish up right away instead of moving the ladder. It happens. After the accident I would write him up for improper use of a ladder and then let him get back to work on my jobsite once he’s available.
Now, as a company, a safety officer may do all the right things, but then miss that one item. Maybe it’s paperwork, maybe it’s a guardrail being removed before the stairwell gets secured. Does OSHA give the company a break for that? Not at all. As a company we could prove that the guardrail was taken down by a subcontractor without permission, it doesn’t change the citation. An unhappy employee can harass the employer daily just by complaining to OSHA anonymously.
My point is, is that if every single person on the jobsite was OSHA 10 certified then they have a responsibility and documented knowledge of the safety protocols and should be held accountable by OSHA just like the company they work for.
January 7th, 2010 at 5:24 pm
Hey Guys. Just wanted to say that I think this course is a great idea……I cannot imagine any type of safety training that isn’t a good idea. My husband is a plumber, has been for 25 years, and having him come home everyday healthy and safe is of utmost importance to me, our kids, and grandkids.
That being said, my issue is the time and cost of this training. Due to the economy and the foreclosure crisis, not only is my husband making a fraction of his usual pay, but work is so very scarce. Who wants to fix the plumbing in a home they are losing anyway? However, we had to pay for this course out of pocket….as well as my husband having to take 10 hours of free time to complete the course. He was not even partially reimbursed….but its a requirement from OSHA?? I know the card will go with him where ever he goes…and thats great. But $95 kinda hurt a little….especially right after the holidays when his work week was already cut short. Anybody know if the employer is required to pay? Our son-in-law is also a plumber, and his employer paid for the class, but not the 10 hours. I tried to find out if the employer is required to pay for the class, but could not find anything definitive anywhere…..frustrating!
Thanks in advance for any shared knowledge in this regard!! Best wishes for all in 2010!
January 7th, 2010 at 6:39 pm
As of this moment, it is not required for employers to pay for this class, though many do. This falls into the same category as education and educational requirements. Employers can require bachelor’s degrees and so they can also require OSHA 10hr as a condition of employment.
January 14th, 2010 at 12:38 am
The employer is not required to pay as Nevada Law (not OSHA) states it is the responsibility of the employee to get the training and the employers responsibility to suspend or fire them if they do not have it. There are some FAQ’s at http://www.nv1030.org/main.asp?pID=1 that may be helpful. It also expires (in the state of Nevada) in 5 years. You can get free 10 and 30 hour courses through Nevada OSHA if you plan far enough in advance.
February 9th, 2010 at 6:49 pm
First of all! If they are employed at the time the law was introduced, they employer must pay! The law states that no employees are required to attend any type of meeting, discussion, or cant even be talked to about work related topics off the clock! US dept of labor.
The OSHA 10 hour and 30 hour will never be overbooked its online and there are instructors in all 50 states! I have been in safety for almost 20 years and work for the largest construction company in the world, a OSHA authorized construction,general, and maritime instructor, for the people that are in the safety field that are opposing the law and do not agree YOU NEED TO GET ANOTHER JOB< cause your not doing yours!!!!! People who hire illegal aleins to do the work there is another law thats called ICE, laws against hiring them! I get really upset when I hear people in the safety field opposing this, I think it should be in every state and its headed that way! I quote a real safety professional"you asking me to overlook a simple safety rule is like you asking me to compromise my entire attitude towards the value of your life!!!!" Come on wake up!
OSHA has a inspection program to help employers get on the right track! OSHA isnt the bad guy they are there to help the workers and employers regardless of what you hear! Do the research and stay safe!