ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, October 23, 1996 TAG: 9610230046
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
General Electric Co.'s Salem plant has become the first and only manufacturer in Virginia allowed to police itself under a new program in which the state stops making surprise safety inspections.
And Tuesday, state officials credited the plant with refining its safety program. The inspectors and company leaders raised a symbolic flag over the plant to mark the occasion.
In an unrelated industrial safety announcement, Medeco Security Locks Inc. of Salem said its 400 employees worked their millionth consecutive hour without an injury that forced somebody to take a day off. That's a first for the 26-year-old company. The tally of the million hours worked had begun in September 1995.
GE's Motors and Industrial Systems division plant, with a work force of 2,100, about half of them hourly, has had one so-called lost-time accident this year. That compares to 13 all last year, said Tom Stack, the plant's manager of safety, health and environmental issues. Less-serious injuries fell from about 85 to 76.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has agreed to give safety-conscious companies leeway on inspections under its Voluntary Protection Program, because it frees inspectors to focus on other companies. Inspectors still will respond to complaints at GE and conduct a safety audit every third year.
The employee union backs the new safety program, said Ronnie Carter, a vice president with the International Union of Electronic Workers Local 161.
Although GE faced surprise inspections only every three or four years, executives found tackling ways to avoid them could make safety pay in terms of fewer accident-related costs and higher productivity, Stack said. That process required GE to lower its accident rate below the average for the nation's electronics manufacturers.
GE also saw the program as a chance to end the cat-and-mouse game that many companies have played with safety officials.
"For the last 25 years, we did everything we could to keep them out of our plant," Stack said. More recently, GE officials - eager to win the special clearance - invited OSHA to have a look. "It's a total culture change in the relationship between industry and OSHA," Stack said.
LENGTH: Short : 48 linesby CNB