THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, December 5, 1995 TAG: 9512050004
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 39 lines
Anyone who has ever peeled apples or potatoes knows an accident can happen faster than a blink. One moment your thumb is pink with good health; the next, it is red with your blood and you're wondering, ``How did I do that?'' It's a truism that an accident, once started, cannot be stopped. Accidents can be only prevented.
It was no accident that the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration recently named Newport News Shipbuilding the safest workplace of its kind in the nation. With 19,000 employees, the shipyard was the largest of the 200 workplaces in the nation, and the only shipyard, to receive OSHA's top ``STAR'' rating.
Owing to an active safety program, the shipyard's lost-time rate from accidents is 4.2 percent - half the industry average. That means half the usual pain and cost are avoided.
The story of how the shipyard made itself safer could well be told in management textbooks in years to come. Paul Linton, the senior safety engineer, was completing a safety inspection when he asked an older employee what could be done to improve safety in the area. As staff writer Christopher Dinsmore reported Saturday, the employee handed Linton three pages of ideas and said, ``Son, you couldn't identify this stuff unless you were here working every day.''
Slogans and management edicts will never make a workplace safe, but management-worker cooperation will. The shipyard has management-worker teams cooperating to prevent accidents. Their methods are worthy of study and emulation elsewhere. by CNB