Local 182 acting BM-ST Casey Tibbs, center, accepts the national NACBE safety award as IVP Tom Baca (Western States), l., and NACBE Exec. Dir. John Erickson join in the presentation.
Locals rack up best year ever for OSHA recordables
THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION of Construction Boilermaker Employers (NACBE) presented its annual safety award to the top-performing locals from the Boilermakers’ five U.S. vice-presidential areas March 2. The presentations were made during the Brotherhood’s annual construction conference at Marco Island, Fla.
Local 182 (Salt Lake City), from the Western States area, won the national honors. Casey Tibbs, acting BM-ST for the recently-combined Locals 182 and 4 (Page, Ariz.) accepted the award. Local 182 was among seven Boilermaker locals with perfect scores: zero lost time injuries, zero compensable injuries, and zero OSHA-recordable injuries.
Four other lodges finished first in their areas: Local 1 (Chicago — Great Lakes); Local 592 (Tulsa, Okla. — Central); Local 108 (Birmingham, Ala. — Southeast); and Local 5 (New York — Northeast).
NACBE maintains a safety index for 54 construction locals. John Erickson, NACBE Exec. Dir., said 2007 was an excellent year for safety, with OSHA recordable injuries at their lowest rate ever — 3.73 per 200,000 man-hours. The lost time injury rate came in at .052 per 200,000 man-hours, the second-lowest rate since NACBE began the index, in 1990. Thirty-five locals reported zero lost time injuries in 2007.
Erickson reported a 38 percent rise in man-hours over the last two years. “That’s a tremendous increase,” he said, noting that many Boilermakers have been retiring over this same period. He also cited a “significant uptick in the percentage of man-hours covered by the index and contractors participating in the index.
“Safety is probably one [of the best measures] of how a job is going,” Erickson added. “If you have a safe job, you’re going to have a productive job. As an industry, we’re having some very productive times.”
