A fundamental right afforded by the Occupational Safety and Health Act is the right to report safety concerns without fear of reprisal or retribution of any kind. OSHA’s Whistleblower Protection Program was established to investigate alleged violations of this right.

“Safety officer stopped a job after observing unsafe condition, but line supervisor ordered the job to continue citing high priority, and the project manager agreed with line supervisor's decision. There was one lost-time injury during the job. The management already formed its opinion about the safety officer because the job belongs to one of their favorite customers, but later called for full investigation. Whose job should be saved?

As a famous cliché reads: the devil is in the details. I often get asked about the details of a viable safety accountability culture. An example of visible executive involvement is personal commitment to safety accountability (S/A), to be involved in a review and discussion of appropriate actions for all significant incidents and near misses.

Since the release of my latest book,” Would You Watch Out For My Safety?™ “ in March of 2011, I have had the privilege of sharing its message with thousands of people. During that time, I have discovered a few things I thought I would share with you today.

"Everything you are going to do is going to affect others for the rest of your life. So if you get injured, it's an impact that's going to affect everybody," says Gary Norland, a former lineman and electrical accident survivor.

“We suffer in this age from an indifference toward criminality and a callousness to catastrophe when it comes to poor and working people.” That quote comes from retired Princeton professor Dr. Cornel West in a recent interview in the London-based newspaper The Guardian. Dr. West has been called the firebrand of American academia for almost 30 years.

I was in McPherson, Kansas speaking at the National Cooperative Refinery Association. I arrived to find a great training room they were using for their meetings. They had it set up perfectly to create the best learning environment possible. I will share with you a few things you can do to make your meetings more effective from a logistical viewpoint.

Some terrible things occurred during the course of three short days last month. First of all, a couple of troubled young brothers decided to explode two homemade bombs near the finish line at the Boston Marathon, killing three people and critically injuring more than 100 others. Then two days later, there was a tremendous explosion at a fertilizer plant located in the small town of West, TX, injuring more than 250 people and killing at least 15 people, many of them first responders.

There are certain subjects and/or standards in occupational safety and health that are “untouchable.” They should be aired out, discussed, addressed. But among regulators and lawmakers, particularly in Washington, they are “toxic.” Politics is not the only culprit here. The U.S. has certain cultural “boundaries” surrounding some issues that make them less accessible to discussion and plans than say in Europe.

H. W. Heinrich changed the world of safety fundamentals forever with his pioneering work in the 1930’. One of his concepts that continues to make me think is his accident triangle (pyramid), a concept that we all are familiar with.