You know, there are rules about operating forklifts. There are thousands of violations every year, and yet it seems that the message isn’t getting through that forklifts are dangerous vehicles when not used properly and used outside of the rules meant to govern activities and behaviors around forklifts.
In this installment, we’ll take a brief look at the compliance issues that currently exist surrounding forklifts and how they should be operated safely. This is the third post of a series that drills a bit into a recent Professional Safety magazine article written by Christopher Janicak and Tracey Cekada that discusses the tragic reality of the dangers of forklifts and addresses strategies of how to make their operations safer and reduce the numbers of incidents involving these vehicles. (See other posts here and here.)
Compliance vs. Safety
While Janicak and Cekada’s article is pretty long covering six magazine pages), the pair commit a small amount of the article on compliance issues, which is noteworthy in one respect. The key to the article isn’t so much the compliance aspect, it’s the safety aspect.
The authors clearly understand that yes, there are compliance issues from OSHA, ANSI and the U.S. Department of Labor, but they don’t want companies just to be in compliance with rules and regulations; that doesn’t necessarily guarantee safety nor does it alone mitigate incidents and injuries.
If that were the case, they would already have taken effect. To mention compliance is a “due diligence” effort by the authors about an awareness of these standards and to remind readers how and where to get this information in order to start the process of becoming safer with forklifts.
Motion of the OSHA
The most prominent source for information about compliance with forklifts is, of course, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The organization not only provides rules and regulations about workplace operations, but it also tries to help by providing guidance and interpretations of various standards so they are more easily understood and thus are easier with which to come into compliance.
The first initiative that OSHA undertakes is what are called letters of interpretation. Periodically, OSHA will present a letter that is meant to interpret some standards of which there may have been some confusion or questions.
These letters are provided on the OSHA website and address examples of how to apply a standard in a way to bring about compliance. These can be vital resources for employers and safety officers to help implement their safety programs and protocols.
Another tool OSHA likes to use is called the directive. With a directive, OSHA gives guidance to compliance officers about specific enforceable portions of various standards, answering popular questions about standards and providing guidance to inspections or enforcement needs to ensure compliance.
A ‘Labor’ of Love? Sorta?
While OSHA is the primary source for many rules and reulgations sureounding safety workplaces, the U.S. Department of Labor is not an agency to be left out of the rgulatory process, or even in helping Congress draft legislation meant to promote safety.
One piece of legislation that the Labor Department has long held to has been that which helps your younger workers. Labor keeps a sharp eye on a law that forbids minors younger than 18 years old from driving or operating forklifts or other hoisting vehicles. Fines can be up to $11,000 per minor in violation, and fines could jump to $100,000 if a death or serious injury comes to a minor who operate a forklift, and the violation is considered intentional or had occurred multiple times.
Next time, the final post of this series will get to the main topic of Janicak and Cekada’s article; namely, the strategies that can be employed to not only be compliant with forklift standards, but to actually lower the rate of incidents involving these vehicles.