Sara Stone cries as her husband Stephen Stone, a Transocean, Ltd., employee and survivor of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington Thursday about the night that led to the BP oil spill. He told the hearing that he went back into his collapsed quarters on the night of the accident for his life jacket, shoes, and wedding ring.
Cliff Owen/AP
No doubt a simple mechanism such as this will save lives and prevent economic losses as well. When a company 'hums' and their workers are safe, their opportunity to make profits becomes higher and CLEANER. There should be no company on this planet willing to have a profit line that includes blood money.
The employees should be given reminders of such an opportunity to help themselves by having hotline numbers posted on their job sites and employee reports on working conditions should be a requirement for operation within the USA for these industries.
OSHA needs to be more 'preventive' in its approach to assessing working conditions by including annual worker assessments from these industries. In other words, these industries will have to submit workman assessments of their working conditions annually, forcing a bottom up approach to management. It will improve working conditions and make businesses include same on their agenda of planning and budget. If these assessments are required by law there can be no retribution for any submission.
At his own professional peril, Mr. Stephen Stone made testimony regarding the dangers on the Deepwater Horizon.
I am quite confident he lost friends from the explosion and fire. I am also confident his spouse is grateful he is alive.
But, he was there. He knows the truth as he understands it and working for petroleum companies are inherently dangerous.
No employee of any company should feel as though they are putting their lives on the line in order to make a living. He made testimony and may very well save countless lives in the future.
A very simple way of 'helping' these people is to establish a hotline that is backed up by inspectors that respond to reports of questionable conditions. The hotline can be anonymous reporting and it can be established for every dangerous job within the USA, including the mining industry.
It is something that can be done now and can start to turn the corner on the dangers as they exist today to make working conditions safer in the future.
Every union involved with these professions should establish their own ways of helping by empowering their workers, but, that should not be a substitute for an employee to directly report any suspicions of dangers that can imperil their lives. Nor should such reporting be interfered with by unions. This has to be an autonomous mechanism whereby there is no fear of a paper trail to cause a person their job by reporting what they understand to be dangerous.
I am quite confident he lost friends from the explosion and fire. I am also confident his spouse is grateful he is alive.
But, he was there. He knows the truth as he understands it and working for petroleum companies are inherently dangerous.
No employee of any company should feel as though they are putting their lives on the line in order to make a living. He made testimony and may very well save countless lives in the future.
A very simple way of 'helping' these people is to establish a hotline that is backed up by inspectors that respond to reports of questionable conditions. The hotline can be anonymous reporting and it can be established for every dangerous job within the USA, including the mining industry.
It is something that can be done now and can start to turn the corner on the dangers as they exist today to make working conditions safer in the future.
Every union involved with these professions should establish their own ways of helping by empowering their workers, but, that should not be a substitute for an employee to directly report any suspicions of dangers that can imperil their lives. Nor should such reporting be interfered with by unions. This has to be an autonomous mechanism whereby there is no fear of a paper trail to cause a person their job by reporting what they understand to be dangerous.
The employees should be given reminders of such an opportunity to help themselves by having hotline numbers posted on their job sites and employee reports on working conditions should be a requirement for operation within the USA for these industries.
OSHA needs to be more 'preventive' in its approach to assessing working conditions by including annual worker assessments from these industries. In other words, these industries will have to submit workman assessments of their working conditions annually, forcing a bottom up approach to management. It will improve working conditions and make businesses include same on their agenda of planning and budget. If these assessments are required by law there can be no retribution for any submission.
