Who is OSHA and what do they do? OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, is the U.S. Government body responsible for keeping American workers safe on the job. They have the ability to investigate businesses and issue recommendations and/or fines for any safety issues they find. They publish volumes of standards for businesses to follow concerning workplace safety, and strive to hold all U.S. companies and organizations to those standards. [Return to Top] Who are ASME and ITSDF and what do they do? ASME, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, is the organization responsible for creating many of the standards used in industry today. Their standard for safe operation of lift truck equipment (B56.1) has been turned over to the Industrial Truck Standards Development Foundation for ongoing revision and proliferation. When organizations like OSHA need answers about what is and is not safe, they look to organizations like these to tell them exactly where the line is drawn. [Return to Top] Who is ultimately responsible for forklift safety training? Your company is ultimately responsible for safety training. While many people can see negative effects of lapsed safety (employees, operators, subcontractors, etc. can be in trouble and fined for negligence as well), OSHA holds a company responsible for what happens to its people. You may decide to cut corners on training or accident prevention, but if anything happens to your employees, it is considered a willful safety violation and will result in stiffer penalties and liabilities. [Return to Top] What can happen to my business if I ignore safety training or provide poor training? If you do not make every reasonable effort to provide a safe working environment for your employees, any or all of the following may happen:
Most importantly, your employees or non-employees on your property could be seriously injured or killed.
OSHA can fine you between $7,000 and $70,000 per willful safety violation they find, whether someone has been injured or not.
If someone is hurt or killed, you may be sued and held responsible for medical expenses and also punitive damages.
In the event of a lawsuit concerning an accident, OSHA can and will turn over their findings to plaintiffs.
You may lose efficiency, productivity, man-hours, equipment, and merchandise and suffer damage to the facility in the event of an accident or incident.
If an employee is injured or killed, you will spend considerable time and money hiring and training a replacement.
Even without incident, maintenance costs are higher when employees do not use equipment correctly.
Overall, the cost of training is far less than the cost of not training and gambling the future of your business on blind luck. [Return to Top] How often do people get hurt on forklifts, really? Very often! In fact, of all the workplace injuries reported every year in the U.S. to the Department of Labor, one in six is forklift related - that's over 95,000 injuries!. Over 100 people die each year on or because of forklifts in the U.S. alone. And the majority of the injuries and deaths are people who are not operating the forklifts, meaning that awareness of pedestrians and other workers is seriously lacking in many businesses. [Return to Top] Will I.T.S. train my forklift operators outside of Houston? Absolutely. Currently, our trainers are all based in Houston, but we can and will train anywhere in the United States or its territories. Travel expenses may be incurred by the client, and will be determined on a case-by-case basis, but we freely welcome business from anywhere that our services may keep workers safe. [Return to Top] Can I.T.S. train my operators outside the United States? It is possible that we may be able to train your non-U.S. based operators, however because of foreign laws, regulations and licensing issues, our ability to deliver training will need to be decided on a case-by-case basis. U.S. Safety regulations are some of the strictest in the world, so in many cases, OSHA-compliant training will exceed local expectations, but other factors may be involved, so please call us to discuss the particulars of your training needs. [Return to Top] I have dozens or hundreds of operators. It seems like training them all will be expensive. What should I do? You should train them. You may opt to only train one group of them at a time to spread out your costs, but remember, they still must be trained and evaluated before they can operate the equipment, so this may affect your production. It's true that training a large group is expensive, but suffer one accident due to a lack of training and that cost will seem like pocket change compared to the costs you will incur from damages, lawsuits, fines and lost-productivity costs. [Return to Top]
