) PUBLIC MEETING ) REGULATIONS FOR MINER ) SAFETY AND HEALTH TRAINING ) ) Pages: 1 through 152 Place: Dallas, Texas Date: January 5, 1999 BEFORE THE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR FEDERAL MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION ) PUBLIC MEETING ) REGULATIONS FOR MINER ) SAFETY AND HEALTH TRAINING ) ) Adolphus Hotel 1321 Commerce Street Dallas, Texas Tuesday, January 5, 1999 The above-entitled matter came on for hearing, pursuant to notice, at 8:00 a.m. BEFORE: KATHY ALEJANDRO, Chairperson ROBERT ALDRICH RODRIC M. BRELAND KEVIN BURNS ROSLYN FONTAINE ROBERT STONE I N D E X SPEAKER PAGE Chairperson Alejandro 3 David Pfile 9 Gifford Hill & Company Joe K. Kinnikin 45 Associated Contractors of New Mexico Ralph Richards 63 Jobe Concrete Products, Inc., El Paso Hector Paquian 70 Jobe Concrete Products of El Paso Ed Elliott 79 Rogers Group, Incorporated William Scarbrough 90 Arkhola Sand & Gravel Co. Peter Ward 116 Hanson Aggregates Elsa Roman 119 James Murray The University of Texas at Austin Don Summers 143 Safety Consultant P R O C E E D I N G S CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Good morning. My name is Kathy Alejandro, and I'm with Metal and Nonmetal Mine Safety and Health, with the Mine Safety and Health Administration. On behalf of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, I would like to welcome you to the sixth of seven public meetings regulations for miner safety and health training. These meetings are intended to give individuals and organizations, including miners and their representatives and mine operators, both large and small, an opportunity to present their views on the types of requirements that will result in the most effective miner safety and health training. These regulations would apply at those nonmetal surface mines where MSHA currently cannot enforce existing training requirements. I would like to take this opportunity to introduce the members of the MSHA panel who are with me this morning. To my far right is Rod Breland, who is with the newly formed Educational Field Services with MSHA; he is Western Operations Manager for that agency. To my near right, who was sitting here, but I guess he's just coming up the aisle now, is Kevin Burns who is also with Metal and Nonmetal Mine Safety and Health in Arlington. To my left, immediate left, is Robert Stone, who is with the Office of Standards, Regulations and Variances for MSHA; Roslyn Fontaine who is also with the Office of Standards, Regulations, and Variances; and to my far left is Robert Aldrich, who is with the Office of the Solicitor. Since 1979, MSHA has been guided by a rider to its appropriations. The restriction currently states that "none of the funds appropriated shall be obligated or expended to carry out Section 115 of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977 or to carry out that portion of Section 104(g)(1) of such Act relating to the enforcement of any training requirements, with respect to shell dredging, or with respect to any sand, gravel, surface stone, surface clay, colloidal phosphate, or surface limestone mine." In the Omnibus Budget passed by Congress on October 21, 1998, MSHA was directed to "work with the affected industries, mine operators, workers, labor organizations, and other affected and interested parties to promulgate final training regulations for the affected industries by September 30, 1999. It is understood that these regulations are to be based on a draft submitted to MSHA by the Coalition for Effective Miner Training no later than February 1, 1999." MSHA expects to publish a proposed regulation in the Federal Register sometime in early spring of this year. The regulations that MSHA will be developing must include minimum requirements in Section 115 of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977. And I'll give you a brief summary of these requirements. Section 115 provides that every mine operator shall have a health and safety training program that is approved by the Secretary of Labor and that complies with certain requirements. Section 115 specifies that surface miners are to receive no less than 24 hours of new miner training, no less than 8 hours of refresher training annually, and task training for new work assignments. Section 115 also requires that the training cover specific subject areas. It provides that training is to be conducted during normal work hours at normal rates of pay. It requires that miners be reimbursed for additional costs they incur incidental to this training and provides that mine operators must maintain miners' training certificates and furnish such records to the miners. In addition to these minimum requirements, MSHA is looking for suggestions and comments as to how best to achieve effective miner safety and health training, consistent with the Mine Act, including any additional requirements that should be included in the proposed rule, and most importantly why. Public meetings have already been held at five other locations: Northbrook, Illinois; Denver, Colorado; Albany, New York; Portland, Oregon; and Ontario, California. One additional meeting will be held later this week in Atlanta, Georgia. These meetings are intended to give as many individuals and organizations as possible an opportunity to present their views. This meeting will be conducted in an informal manner, and a court reporter is making a transcript of the proceedings. Anyone who wishes to speak at this meeting and has not signed up in advance should sign up on the speakers list, which is currently located up here, but I will ask if there is anyone who wishes to speak before we finish the meeting. We also ask, as I indicated earlier, that everyone who is here today, whether or not you wish to speak, that you sign the attendance sheet which is currently located on the table at the back of the room as you enter. Anyone who wishes may also submit written statements and information to us, during the course of this meeting, which will be included as part of the record when a proposed rule is developed. You may also send us written comments after the meeting, if you wish. Although there is no formal deadline established for this, I would encourage you to submit written comments on or before February 1 of 1999, to ensure that any comments that you wish to submit are fully considered by us as we develop the proposed rule. Although we are most interested in what you all have to say to us, we will also attempt to answer any questions you may have to clarify the process and the purpose of this meeting. We're specifically interested in comments addressing certain areas, although you are encouraged to comment on any issue related to miner safety and health training at currently exempt mines. These issues were outlined in the November 3, 1998, Federal Register notice that announced the schedule of these public meetings, and I will summarize those issues now. Should certain terms, including "new miner" and "experienced miner" be defined? Which subjects should be taught before a new miner is assigned work, even if the work is done under close supervision? Should training for inexperienced miners be given all at once, or over a period of time, such as several weeks or months? Should supervisors be subject to the same training requirements as miners? Should task training be required whenever a miner receives a work assignment that involves new and unfamiliar tasks? Should specific subject areas be covered during annual refresher training? If so, what subject areas should be included? Can the eight hours of annual refresher training required by the Mine Act be completed in segments of training lasting less than 30 minutes? Should the records of training be kept by the mine operator at the mine site, or can they be kept at other locations? Should there be minimum qualifications for persons who conduct miner training? If so, what type of qualifications are appropriate? I would now like to introduce the first speaker this morning. We ask that all speakers state and spell their names for the court reporter before beginning their presentation. Also we have a podium set up and a table; whichever is most comfortable for the speaker is fine. Thank you very much. The first speaker on our list is David Pfile from Gifford Hill & Company. MR. PFILE: Yes. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Mr. Pfile? MR. PFILE: I won't be using 25 minutes. My comments will be briefer than that. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. Great. MR. PFILE: Good morning. I'm David Pfile. I'm the safety director for Gifford Hill here in Dallas. We operate in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, and California. We have about 700 employees right now, and I want to thank you for the opportunity to comment on this. I am going to respond first to the questions that were published, that you outlined there briefly. The first one is: Should terms be defined, such as "new miner" and "experienced miner"? Obviously a new employee with no training, has never been on a mine site, is a new miner. Somebody that has been trained and received the training would be an experienced miner. I'm curious as to why this question is even asked, because we have been regulated for more than 20 years, and we have not been able to agree on a definition of "new miner" and "experienced miner"? It seems to me that that should be obvious, and once a person is an experienced miner, as the original Mine Act showed with -- if you were a miner, I believe it was, October 13 or 18 of 1978, you were forevermore an experienced miner. I believe that the people in the industry now that have the experience should be classified in the same way. They should be experienced miners, and we really ought to put this issue to rest, as an industry and as the Agency. Enough on that. Subject matters questions and the tying of things: Again, I have seen -- and I'm sure we all have -- training sessions that would go on all day long, an eight- hour session, that the miners would be brought in once a year for their annual refresher, or with new miners, they would be brought in all day long. I don't know if that's the most effective way. I don't think it is. I think that training should include a brief discussion of all the subject matters that are required under the regulations, followed by walk-around training or a tour, something of that nature. Oftentimes, we're asking new employees, new miners, to identify with the training, and yet they don't even know -- they have no hands-on experience or real-life experience with what we're dealing with. It has happened time and time again, where after the training was completed, a person was taken into the operation, and the light bulb went on over their head as they realized, oh, that's what they were talking about for the last four hours. And I don't think that the Agency should force the industry to structure themselves to give all this classroom training prior to going into the operation. It should be a mix. The operator, of course, has to have the flexibility to do that. Adult learners: I wanted mention about the fact that we're dealing with adult learners. Adult learners typically are task-oriented. They are there to learn a task or to learn information that affects their livelihood or their job. They are not sitting in a classroom, like a student in school, accepting the information verbatim. They will challenge things. They also typically do not have the attention span, not because of lack of intelligence, but they have other things on their mind. And to present training in long blocks defeats the purpose of the training. And, again, anybody that has done any training has seen it. Two hours into the presentation, the eyes glaze over; people start to yawn; and that's when we generally call for a break. And -- good morning. We ought to be able to spread this training out over a period of time. Again, questions will come up over the course of employment, where -- the performance of people can be analyzed over the course of their employment, and retraining can be given when we see that the initial training may not have been completely effective. There are other examples of this in your sister agency at OSHA. Under the fall protection standard, one of the issues is when people are not performing according to the way they were trained, they are to be retrained. And using this approach would be more effective than just putting people into a block and 8 hours of training or 24 hours of training, and turning them loose. The other issue on this: The training should take place close in time to the actual task at hand. Oftentimes, as you put an employee in a probationary position, they start up with simpler tasks and move on to more complex tasks, the availability of promotion in job functions, say, from clean-up man around the plant to an operator. That training for that operator should come close to the time he is to perform the task, while it's fresh in mind. Again, we've had examples of annual refresher training, where people forget the issues at hand and the issues taught in a short period of time. The other part about letting employers stretch out the time for training is that it places a less severe economic burden on the employer or the operator, should the employee not work out for one reason or another. Should he leave the employ, the operator has not made a large financial investment in an employee that is shortly gone, maybe to another operator. There is a good bit of turnover in our industry, in the metal/nonmetal industries, 10 to 12 percent a year. Many of them go from operator to operator, but there are those that do leave the industry completely. You asked about supervisors' training. I don't think there's any question that supervisors should at least receive the same training as the other employees. Oftentimes, supervisors are called on to do task training. Many supervisors are, indeed, instructors themselves, and to hold them to a lesser standard than the employees in the workforce, they are just as important, and they need to have the same training. Task training: There was a question about task training. And obviously anytime you're going to start a new or unfamiliar task, you should have task training. But to limit the task training by time through regulation isn't appropriate. If I was going to train an operator to be a crane operator, I may take weeks to train that person. It would not be a five-minute lesson, whereas somebody in a clean-up or utility position may only need 15 minutes of task training. There should not be a constraint within the regulation on the amount of time for task training. The task training should be appropriate to the task at hand, whatever that might be. Annual refresher training: The -- I think the subjects in annual refresher training should be appropriate to the mine. We have sand and gravel operations. We never discuss explosives at the sand and gravel operations, because there are no explosives on the site. We never use them. Likewise, we do discuss explosives in a hardrock situation, in a limestone mine. We may have more emphasis in our sand and gravel operations around training about operations near water, life jackets, boats, those types of provisions. The annual refresher training should be appropriate to the individual mine site. It shouldn't be a canned presentation that is given universally throughout the industry. The other issue on annual training is, again, anybody in the business has seen the eight-hour annual refresher where everybody gets together for a day, and about four o'clock in the afternoon, whatever the last subject is, people's eyes are glazed over, and they're not paying attention. And how effective it is, I don't know. I don't have a way of evaluating the effectiveness of it, but I certainly, from my own experience and my own receiving of annual training in this manner, find that I don't think it's very effective. I think it should be allowed to be spread out throughout the year, an hour here, a half-hour there, an hour a month. In many of our locations, we do one hour a month, so our miners in the locations that do that are receiving 12 hours a year. That way, if someone's on vacation or on a holiday and they miss, they still meet their minimum requirements. That should be allowed. And as far as the amount of time, there's a question about 30-minute segments. Absolutely, they can be less than that. There are certain training issues that take longer and certain training issues that can be done in a short period of time. They are not that lengthy. Confined-space entry: If someone was going to do training on that, I probably wouldn't do it any less than four hours' training. Lock-out/tag-out may take longer, to teach people to do those types of tasks appropriately, that type of safety training. But there are other issues, such as even the rights of miners that are repeated annually and repeated every year, that could be reviewed in a briefer session than an hour segment. Training certificates: Again, we have the Form 5023s that we're all familiar with, and we have stacks and stacks and stacks of paper in files for years and years of training. I believe that operators should be allowed to computerize these records. They should be able to keep them in an electronic database, and if the Agency would like to review them, they should be able to be made available in a reasonable amount of time. Fax machines are commonplace, and internet access is becoming more and more commonplace for operators in many locations. There's -- I don't think there should be an issue that an operator can keep these records in a central location and distribute them as needed. Again, comparing yourselves to your sister agency at OSHA, OSHA allows MSDSs, material safety data sheets, to be stored electronically and given out as requested. You don't have to have these large, three-ringer binder, voluminous volumes of MSDSs out of your workplace. It should be allowed in a centralized storage system. Qualifications of instructors: Several years ago at the Mine Academy, at the National Mine Instructors Conference, when they joined with TRAM, Training Resources Applied to Mining -- I believe that was four years ago -- Mr. McAteer spoke, and he even discussed the issue of instructors, that the database that the Agency has, there are people that have been deceased for years still in the database. And we all know it. There are people that are retired from the industry, and I believe -- I don't know what the number is, but you can probably imagine that everybody in the industry in numbers is a certified instructor under the Agency's blue card rules. The courses range from a day to two weeks. Penn State runs one for, I believe, a week, four or five days. There are a variety of different criteria involved. Some people discuss adult learning; some people discuss training techniques, preparation of lesson plans. All sorts of things are discussed in these training courses, but they are not consistent at all. I believe that the Agency should set -- if we're going to have this certified instructors, which I'm not sure we need, there should be criteria; there should be a core curriculum that is consistent for everybody in the industry and for MSHA's own forces as well. Modern -- from the time that the Mine Act was passed to now, there have been great advances in technology, and there are a variety of new and different ways to conduct training. There is CD-ROM-based training; there is interactive training; there is web-based training; there is teleconferencing. All of these types of training techniques are valid in certain circumstances. To have an instructor sitting next to someone that is working on a computer, on a self-paced training program, is not a good use of resources. The flexibility should be allowed. An instructor can review these things, again, if indeed we are going to have certified instructors. Another issue is who are the certified instructors. I've never seen a list. Does the Agency publish a list of who the instructors are and -- who the certified instructors are? Do they? CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: I don't think so. MR. PFILE: I've never seen one. Oh, they do? MR. BRELAND: You can get it. MR. PFILE: You can get it, but is it readily available? MR. BRELAND: It's not readily available because of the size. MR. PFILE: Okay. Well, my comment there is that the Agency should at least make these names available, who the certified instructors are, again if we're going to stay with that. And they also should purge the database of the individuals that are no longer either active in the industry, active in training, active in education, or in other ways associated with us. And as far as whether we need certification, I don't know. The certification process is inconsistent at best, and I don't know that I've ever been followed up, in my years of training. I don't know that anybody has ever sat in -- from the Agency, has never sat in on one of my courses, to see how I'm doing. I've never been recertified, that I know of. I've been to several courses, because I'm formally recertified. If we have that, then we need to follow up with it. I don't know that we do. There are other trainers. There are organizations that are pushing for certification of trainers in any subject, as a certified trainer, to train adults in pass training and other things. I really believe that that needs to be looked at carefully, and I don't think that the certification process should continue as it currently exists. And now I think I answered the questions that you posed. Now I have a concern about enforcement. There are individuals in the Agency, compliance officers, who are citation-driven, in that they pride themselves in the number of citations they write, and, in fact, they even brag to operators about the number of citations that they write. Training records and the documentation involved in it would be fertile ground for an individual that had that inclination to write citations. I'm sure that errors on a 5023 could immediately generate a $55 citation, and he may even try to make it S&S. I've seen that type of behavior before. I think that the citation issue and the enforcement issue needs to be addressed by the Agency, maybe administratively, but this should not be a fertile ground to increase citations. I'm reminded of the sign I saw in a location that said, The beatings will continue until morale improves. If anybody has seen that, I don't think that we should allow the change in the regulations in Part 46, if you will, be used as a tool to just issue citations and beat up operators. We should work together, try to have this work out a little bit better. My thought is: The sole arbiter of what is effective training is going to be a compliance officer in the field at the time an inspection is being conducted, because he can write the citation. And, yes, the operator can conference it, and, yes, the operator can contest it. But, again, that takes time and money and resources that would be better spent on actually doing the training. So, again, if it's going to be an enforcement issue, the compliance officers need training on the same issues: What is effective training; adult education; examination of training plans; what to look for. We need to be consistent with the operators and the Agency internally. Thank you. That's all I have. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Mr. Pfile, I've got a couple of questions -- MR. PFILE: Sure. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: -- and other people on the panel may also have questions. MR. PFILE: Sure. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: You indicated you questioned why we were revisiting the issue of definitions for terms such as "new miner" and "experienced miner." MR. PFILE: Yes. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: And, essentially, our position is that, you know, the minimum requirements in Section 115 obviously have to got to be incorporated into any regulation that we develop. That really is sort of open, as far as anything else that we include, so we were interested in knowing whether the -- you know, the definitions in Part 48 were appropriate or whether some other definition would work better for the industry that we're attempting to develop training regulations for. I take it from your comments that you believe that the Part 48 definitions would be appropriate for a Part 46 regulation. MR. PFILE: It would be. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. PFILE: And I believe that once you are an experienced miner, that forevermore you should be. I read some literature about an acronym called ANEEM, a newly employed, experienced miner, and it seemed to me that we were getting into minor details that I didn't know needed to be addressed, that we ought to keep it as simple and straightforward and clear as it can be, so that we don't follow up with 25 pages added to the program policy manual on how to interpret the regulations. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. I'd like to go back to the issue of qualifications for instructors. MR. PFILE: Yes. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Are you taking the position that you're not sure whether qualifications for instructors are appropriate in this regulation? Has it been -- I mean, what has your experience been? MR. PFILE: I am not sure that the Agency certifying instructors is even an appropriate role for the Agency, that there are other standards that could be used. I'm not exactly sure what they are. For example, I'm an OSHA instructor for the OSHA 500 courses, and teach the OSHA construction outreach, 10- hour and 30-hour courses. That was a one-week course, and even at that, it wasn't long enough. And they have recertification from that, from time to time. And they keep a closer track on who their instructors are and what they're doing. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: I see. MR. PFILE: I'm not saying that you're not doing a good job and OSHA knows everything, because I don't believe that either. But I don't know if the Agency's role is certifying instructors. In the past, I don't think it was -- I think the history of it is that it was done the way it was done, in order to get enough certified instructors into the field and into the operations, in order to comply with the law, I think is what really happened years ago. And that has been continued, and I don't know that it has been followed up effectively. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. We've just gotten a lot of comments on that particular issue, I mean, some who advocate maintaining the Part 48 status quo as far as how instructors are, you know, deemed to be approved or qualified, and others who say there should not be any type of requirements at all, and that, you know, people who've got the hands-on experience at the mine sites are frequently in the best position to give -- MR. PFILE: And frequently they can be appropriate instructors as well for certain tasks. I don't think it's clear that, you know, you can have -- I don't think some operators are even clear that you can have a, quote, noncertified people conduct the training, while the certified instructor, quote -- CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Overseeing? MR. PFILE: -- present or overseeing it. I'm not sure that everybody's even clear that they can do that. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. PFILE: And it needs to be clear. Again, I don't know that if some colleagues of mine and friends that are doctorate in mining engineering do some training of their own, I think that they would certainly meet any criteria or qualification that the Agency would have. There should be a mechanism for saying, if a person has this, that they meet the requirements as well, whether it's a professional recognition, professional certification, certified safety professional. I don't know. Whatever they are, there should be a mechanism to allow others to conduct training as well, but particularly if it's in their field or it's an appropriate training. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. PFILE: I don't know that the Agency needs to be the sole certification unit. There should be some flexibility there. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. One issue that you did not address that I'd like to ask you, and if you don't feel like you want to comment on it, that's fine. I don't want to put you on the spot. But the Section 115 requires that the operator develop a training program that's approved by the Secretary. Do you have -- MR. PFILE: Yes. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: -- opinion on what that approval should look like? MR. PFILE: Again, it has -- and I'm not exactly sure in history how it happened. It seems to have degenerated to a certification program. We haven't had one, because you're not allowed to expend any money on approving our plans. We have the plans, but they have not been revised or updated in a good while, because the only approved ones we have are the ones that were approved prior to the rider being put on the Agency. Again, I don't know that the Agency needs to -- even though it's in the Act, there has to be a way to approve an operator's plan without creating a barrage of paper. And I'm not exactly sure how that mechanism would work. I know you've seen enough -- I'm sure you've seen enough training plans to know that -- and how will the instructor know that the student got the message? Oral response and -- you know, they're rather poorly written in many cases, and I don't know that, again, the Agency should be the one to approve or disapprove these. The Act says we have to do it; there has to be some sort of approval mechanism. I'm not sure that shoving paper back and forth to district managers and district offices, and then when an operator makes a change, such as the approved instructor listed leaves and goes to work someplace else, then back to recertifying or reapproving the training plan. I don't know if that's an effective use of anybody's resources. And I think it would tie Rod down and his staff with approving plans and not actually being able to get out and do any effective training. I don't think -- there has to be a mechanism. I don't know what it is, whether it's a blanket approval of a generic plan and the operator is allowed to customize it, to fit his operation, or if the Agency would even write up the plans using a cafeteria-type thing, that could be selected for the appropriate subjects for the individual mine site, that this is the approved training plan for sand and gravel operations or for limestone mining or for shell dredging or whatever the case may be. And one of the exempted industries is the Agency might prepare a plan and then the operators could choose the appropriate subjects, just like a cafeteria-type system. And that may be the answer, because then it would be an approved plan, follow the Act, and reduce the paperwork burden tremendously. And, again, that could be an issue of enforcement. Your approved instructor left last week, and you haven't had your plan reapproved. And you may think I'm being reactionary in my concern about enforcement. In some cases, zealous compliance officers -- I know of one case that I have personal knowledge of, that the compliance officer attempted to write a citation because the operator had built a new office building 200 yards from the old office building, and he had not submitted a new legal ID, giving new directions. And I think that's stretching it, and I don't think those types of citations help health and safety or protect the miners in any way, so I'm speaking from experience. I'm not speaking from something imaginary in this case. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: I just have one final question, and, again, I don't want to put you on the spot. MR. PFILE: Oh, go ahead. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. We're under an obligation to develop a final rule on or before September 30, 1999, and that will be published in the Federal Register, and at some point after the date of publication, the rule will go into effect. And one of the things that we have to do is figure out when the effective date on this rule should be. And I just was wondering whether you had any sense for what kind of a deadline, compliance deadline, would be appropriate, whether the rule -- I mean, obviously it's going to depend to a large extent on what's in the rule, but nonetheless, I mean, do you have any sense for how long the affected industries are going to need to come up to speed with a training regulation? I know that there's a lot of operators, obviously, who are already giving good, comprehensive training and complying with Part 48, but there are others who may not be. MR. PFILE: Again, I believe the major operators, the larger operators, are probably very close to compliance right now, if not completely in compliance. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. PFILE: And I believe that it would probably be more difficult to get to the smaller operators. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. PFILE: As we all know, there are still operators, as discovered from time to time, that don't even know that they're regulated by the Agency. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: That's right. MR. PFILE: And I don't have a feel for what is going on with them, other than occasional outrage when they do get visited. I would not think that any less than a year would be -- with the Agency working with the industry to try to address some of the questions that come up during hearings like this. What are we going to do about approved training plans? What are we going to do about the certification of instructors? We're only talking 21 months from now. If we set a year from September, that would be 21 months from now, and that is not a long time to build a consensus, particularly between the Agency and, say, the coalition, to address these issues. Most things in industry and government don't operate that quickly, so -- CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Do you see any value in -- rather than having all the requirements of the regulation go into effect at once, to some kind of phase-in? I mean, for example -- MR. PFILE: Phased in, stepped enforcement as well. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: You know, a plan has to be developed by date X and miners trained by date Y or -- MR. PFILE: And that would probably assist the smaller operators, to give them a chance to get up to speed, so to speak. Again, the larger operators typically have larger staffs and more resources available to them and can -- although it may be burdensome, they can get completely in compliance rather quickly. And there also ought to be some sort of provision for stepped enforcement, to give people that for some reason did not get the message, did not hear of these things going on, did not know about the regulation, and the first time they're visited, then they ought to have the opportunity to come in to compliance, rather than immediately facing citations. There ought to be -- CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: You're talking about at the initial stages of -- MR. PFILE: Yes. The initial stages. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: -- when this rule goes into effect? MR. PFILE: To allow those individual operators that are not in compliance, to give them, so to speak, a warning. Okay. This is what you need to do; here are the resources that you can avail yourself of from the Agency. Give Rod a call, and he'll send you a bunch of stuff, so you can get in compliance. I might -- is that okay with you, Rod? MR. BRELAND: Sure. MR. PFILE: That's how I would see a rational approach to the compliance issues and the enforcement issues. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. PFILE: Rather than immediately -- again, it creates for a contentious environment, and particularly if it's a smaller operator that for some reason has not stayed up with what is going on. His resources are limited. They might not have access to all these things I talk about, like fax machines and computers and CD-ROMs. They're out there; they exist. And it is not fair to them -- they are business men, as well -- to immediately whack them with high fines and citations, due to their inability to stay current. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. Do you have -- MR. BURNS: Thank you. Kathy covered most of the questions I have, but one of the things you mentioned, David, was the -- you mentioned the OSHA fall protection standard -- MR. PFILE: Yes. MR. BURNS: -- and the retraining after observation of unsafe acts. MR. PFILE: Yes. MR. BURNS: I take it that, in your operations, new employees, you generally observe or have someone observe their work. MR. PFILE: Yes. MR. BURNS: And then based on those observations, either retrain them or continue the 24-hour training in certain areas, if that wasn't completed at that point. MR. PFILE: Exactly. They would be watched; they would be observed under close supervision, and their work activities would be observed. And there are people that, in the past anyhow, that have not taken well to training. And generally they are helped to find alternative employment through a step discipline system that we have in place. MR. BURNS: Now, this would be more like one-on- one training, I take it. MR. PFILE: Yes. MR. BURNS: Okay. MR. PFILE: A lot of it is one on one. Some of it would be in groups. An example of groups might be a group of utility men, car cleaners, somebody like that, a group of individuals doing things like that. There might be three or four of them working together, one supervisor. MR. BURNS: Would you see counting that towards the eight hours' annual refresher training or -- MR. PFILE: I don't see that so much -- MR. BURNS: -- do you see that as being an option or -- MR. PFILE: I don't see that. It's more like task training -- MR. BURNS: Okay. MR. PFILE: -- that could apply towards the 24 hours. I don't see that type of hands-on, one-on-one training on task activities necessarily applying to 24-hour new miner training. It could; it would depend on the subject material and the tasks at hand. If we were dealing with hazardous chemicals and the personal protective equipment involved in that, yes. That might apply towards it. I think it would depend on the task and the subject matter at hand. Again, there should be flexibility for the operator to apply that training in the manner that he feels is appropriate. MR. BURNS: The other issue was task training. Now, the current Part 48 is silent on this, concerning the time frames. MR. PFILE: Right. MR. BURNS: So -- MR. PFILE: I wouldn't want to see a time frame put in there. MR. BURNS: Right. Of course, you'd mentioned it's appropriate to the task, but I guess you'd also agree that it's appropriate to the experience of the individual. MR. PFILE: Absolutely. MR. BURNS: So, I mean, there's a lot of factors that play into how much time it takes. MR. PFILE: Absolutely. MR. BURNS: Okay. MR. PFILE: I don't think the regulations should put any time constraints on that, and, in fact, I have not read the Part 46. I don't remember what it says, the Part 46 issue, on task training. It escapes me right now. MR. BURNS: Okay. I think it's very similar to what's in 48, except less wording. I guess the only other thing: One of the things we've been hearing at other meetings is the issue of experienced workers versus experienced miners, particularly in the aggregates industry. MR. PFILE: Yes. MR. BURNS: It's an issue where -- it's not so common in some of the other mining industries, like coal or something like that, but you do have -- people have raised the issue where they have experienced equipment operators from construction industry coming in to their industry, and maybe they'll be a truck driver and that's what they've been doing for 20 years, and that person somehow seems a little bit different than, you know, the young person that right out of high school has no experience. MR. PFILE: Right. MR. BURNS: We're not sure how to address this, but their suggestion is that they should not be treated equally, as new miners. MR. PFILE: I agree. I agree with that. There are many operators in the United States that are, if you so want to call it, double-breasted. They have construction operations and mining operations both, and the equipment is interchangeable. And in many cases, the tasks are interchangeable, and in many cases, the individuals, the people, are interchangeable. When the construction activity would be slowed down, some of them might go into the mining operation to work, and vice versa. There should be a way of addressing people that have life experience, and maybe we ought to treat them somewhat differently than any new miner right out of high school, somebody trying to get into the industry in general. MR. BURNS: Okay. I have no other questions. May Rod does. MR. BRELAND: Yes. I have a couple. You had talked about the initial -- the training, being allowed to stretch it out, some initial indoctrination, and then -- MR. PFILE: Right. MR. BRELAND: -- maybe some walk-around, and then more specific. But you didn't mention -- what did you have in mind for some time frame to complete initial training? MR. PFILE: The initial 24-hour training? MR. BRELAND: Yes. MR. PFILE: I would not think that you should -- you probably could stretch that out over six months max. I wouldn't think you'd want to exceed six months for the first go-round. MR. BRELAND: Okay. And then you -- MR. PFILE: And you may even have it at four hours of initial training, before you start working, maybe two. I don't know exactly what the right amount of time is before you start work, but I do believe that you need to stretch it out. You could do -- and six months is kind of arbitrary, but I'm thinking something like 24 weeks. If you did an hour a week on a different subject, again, the -- my experience with training people is doing it in small bites like that and giving them the opportunity to go back to whatever they happen to have on their mind, whether it's last night's ball game or back to work, keeps their attention span up and keeps things fresh. And the other thing it does is allows them to take the training that they have had into the workplace and come back for the following session, say, another week later, and they have questions that are legitimate questions about what they have been trained in. Gee, you told us this, and this is what we saw here. Let's see what's going on here. MR. BRELAND: In some of the earlier meetings, you know, we presently have 8-16 split that, by policy, has been allowed anyway, and some have suggested 5 to 6 hours, and a number have been at 8. But the time frame for that is 60 days for completion. You feel that's too restrictive? MR. PFILE: I think we ought to be able to have more time to do that. And there's nothing to say that an operator can't exceed the numbers of hours as well. MR. BRELAND: Okay. Also you mentioned the 10 to 12 percent turnover. Actually, I thought that might be higher. Are you talking as an industry-wide, or some mine sites are pretty seasonal. And a lot of theirs are probably higher. MR. PFILE: I'm not sure what the industry is. I'm just kind of thinking about what happens to us. MR. BRELAND: That's mostly yours. Okay. MR. PFILE: Some plants are lower and some plants are higher. MR. BRELAND: Recordkeeping is a big concern that we have as well. You've suggested the short bites of time, both for initial training and annual refresher. How do you see tracking that for an individual's purposes? You say you get 12 hours; they might miss a month, but if you have the mandatory subjects that must be covered -- MR. PFILE: Yes. MR. BRELAND: -- that are appropriate to the site, do you see that as a burden for the operator for tracking? MR. PFILE: In its current form, yes. The 5023 doesn't lend itself to doing what we do. The instructor has to carry basically a book of 5023s, partially filled out, checking off subject matter, until the eight hours are completed, and then signs off on it and distributes it to the operators or to the individuals, the employees, and they may not get their 5023 until September. And then the following year, they get it in June or whenever the eight hours is achieved, so it's an ongoing process. Yes. The way it exists right now, it is a bit of a burden. We deal with it. MR. BRELAND: So your main suggestion, though, is allow flexibility for the operator's system, whatever it might be -- MR. PFILE: Right. MR. BRELAND: -- for tracking purposes. MR. PFILE: Absolutely. Put it into a computer, on a spreadsheet or a database. With the things that you have now, if someone's missed a certain subject, an alert could come up and you'd know it. MR. BRELAND: As long as the operator's able to track it and make it available. MR. PFILE: Right. But I don't think that, again -- in my case, I don't have a problem because of fax machines and computers. It's not an issue with me. Again, with a smaller operator, it may be an issue, to keep it in a central location. There are other operators that may not have that technology available to them at this time, but there needs to be the flexibility to allow electronic recordkeeping and computer-based databases, to again be efficient, keep better -- actually, it would be a better recordkeeping system than it is now. MR. BRELAND: Okay. As far as making the record available, you talked about the fax machines and what have you. Did you have some time frame in mind that you might think reasonable, because you've got to remember, there will be a lot of operators may, if you allow flexibility where they keep it or the type of records they have, if an inspector was on site and asked for it or a training person -- MR. PFILE: You know, I -- MR. BRELAND: -- what's a reasonable time to make it available? MR. PFILE: I don't know what a reasonable time is. I really don't, because I recently had something show up in the mail that was 13 months old, and that wasn't reasonable to me, but somebody else thinks that it is, so I don't know what -- From the date of a citation to date of assessment was 13 months, two weeks, so I don't think that's reasonable, but I've been told different, that that's a reasonable amount of time. So I don't know. I don't know what -- I'm being flippant, but I don't know what reasonable is. MR. BRELAND: Well, it's a consideration we'd have to have -- MR. PFILE: Yes. MR. BRELAND: -- you know, because if you have -- MR. PFILE: Generally inspectors are at a site at least a day and oftentimes two. I don't think that having the records available the following day would be unreasonable. MR. BRELAND: Okay. That's -- MR. PFILE: Again, it depends on the technology available to the operator, whether they do, indeed, have fax machines and central recordkeeping. If they don't, they probably ought to keep the records on site. But, again, they ought to have the flexibility to make that choice. MR. BRELAND: Okay. And then you suggested the Agency should establish criteria for the instructor- approval process. MR. PFILE: Yes. A core curriculum. MR. BRELAND: For canned curriculum? And Kathy Alejandro will address that again, but any of these kinds of suggestions, if you have some ideas, it would be helpful if you'd submit those, if you have some criteria in mind, you know, yourself. MR. PFILE: Yes. MR. BRELAND: Does your company use criteria when they select trainers? MR. PFILE: We follow the Agency's -- if you've got a blue card, you're a trainer. MR. BRELAND: Okay. MR. PFILE: That's what we have done. We do try and do some innovative things and develop some training programs that -- we haven't submitted them for approval, but they're certainly fun and different, and they get the point across. And we will do training on other subjects that aren't even addressed in any of the standards, as more of a philosophical type of training. So -- and I shared those with Beckley [phonetic] as well. MR. BRELAND: Okay. Thanks, David. That's all I have. MR. PFILE: Okay. Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: I think we may still have some more questions. MR. STONE: I'd like to ask you just a couple of questions, and I don't want to put you on the spot either, and you may not want to answer -- MR. PFILE: Go ahead. MR. STONE: You may not want to answer them at all, or you may want to submit them perhaps at a later time in writing. They really have to do with costs. MR. PFILE: Yes. MR. STONE: I don't know if you have any sense of what it currently costs you to provide training and for recordkeeping associated with the training under Part 48. MR. PFILE: Okay. Well, we have approximately, at all of our locations right now, 700 employees. It doesn't take much to figure out 700 employees at eight hours annually, at whatever average wage you want to plug in there, to see what investment that we're already making, just in annual refresher training. MR. STONE: Right. MR. PFILE: And with recordkeeping and clerks and other administrative staff, we have a substantial investment. MR. STONE: Right. MR. PFILE: And we do it, because philosophically, we believe it's the right thing to do. We do training for all our plant managers and supervisors that -- basically they get a week annually of nothing but the program policy manual, the Mine Act, and the regulations for their initial. They get a week for the initial training on that, and we continue with updates on that. So we've made substantial financial investments in training, not only safety training, but just in training. I don't know what -- I can't address what other people do, but I do know that the investment is substantial. The truth of the matter is the payback is substantial as well. MR. STONE: No question. MR. PFILE: But I won't tell you what those figures are. MR. STONE: Are there elements that you could envision in the new Part 46 that could be designed in a way that would save you costs over what you're currently paying? It could be in terms of flexibility that you described, could be in terms of ease of recordkeeping over what you have to do now, or -- MR. PFILE: Certainly all of those things would assist. Oftentimes, particularly for the smaller operators, I can use hypothetical examples. They'll have to go out, and they'll rent the local VFW or fire hall or American Legion Hall or something on that order, and they'll provide a meal, and they'll provide all this for their eight-hour training, and they'll have their employees there, and they'll pay them for that day; Whereas technologies like I had mentioned, such as computer-based training, interactive video, things like that, can be done one on one or with small groups in the mine office or in the back room of the mine office, and those expenses wouldn't be incurred there. It doesn't seem like much, but if you take the number of small operators that there are in the United States, there's a substantial investment in doing these types of things. There should be the flexibility to conduct training in small groups, do it with some of these other technologies. I think all of that could help allay some of the investment, the cost involved in this, and still have effective training. MR. STONE: What about for recordkeeping? MR. PFILE: Again, I think the -- I know that we have file drawers and boxes packed away and stored at plants that have training records going back to day one. And we keep them because we never know when we're going to be asked to produce them. MR. STONE: Okay. That's it. MR. PFILE: So there should be -- the other thing is with the new reorganization of the Agency, with the education arm, perhaps some of the Agency's budget in the education arm could be directed more towards these affected folks, to assist them in that way. MR. STONE: Okay. Thank you very much. MR. PFILE: Anything else? CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much, Mr. Pfile. MR. PFILE: Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: The next speaker on our list is Joe K. -- and I apologize for the pronunciation -- Kinnikin. MR. KINNIKIN: You did just fine. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: And I'm afraid you're going to have to indicate what your organization is. I can't tell from the -- MR. KINNIKIN: I'm director of training and safety for the Associated Contractors of New Mexico, which is the highway-heavy branch of the Associated General Contractors of America in New Mexico. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Could you also spell your name for the record, please. MR. KINNIKIN: K-I-N-N-I-K-I-N. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you. MR. KINNIKIN: Thank you for the opportunity to be here to address the group. We do have some concerns, and I'll start off, first of all, with the written program. As was stated by the previous speaker, many of us have written programs that were approved back when Part 48 was coming on board. And the Association or the AGC in Texas and New Mexico both have a program that was written and approved by the Department back with Texas A&M. These programs or the canned programs, then, are site-specific or contractor-specific, but nevertheless it is a quite voluminous thing. It's about like an inch and a half or two inches thick, but it gives the contractor or the operator the opportunity to take that program and tailor it to fit or customize it to fit his operation. One of my main concerns is that I represent highway-heavy contractors who may have a permanent plant, or they more in likely, in the West, will have portable plants. And our concern is with our portable plants which move from site to site, and they may be there for three months, and then they go somewhere else for three months. Our turnover is quite high. That's one of our main concerns, is the turnover rate of the employees that would be working at the mine site. We don't necessarily have a problem with the initial eight hours up front. We think that we're capable of producing that. What we'll have to do and what we are currently doing is taking these individuals into the nearest location or town, renting the town hall or going to a motel and providing the training there, and then taking them back to the site. Keep in mind that in New Mexico, these sites could be as far as 90 to 100 miles from the nearest town, so this becomes quite burdensome, as you might well imagine. And being mobile, we probably would not have anything at the site, other than a bolt-house in most cases, very limited in the way of facilities. We do have and can convert our own generator electricity. One of the things that I'm quite excited about in being able to provide is CD-ROM and interactive training. We think that that's one way to go, to alleviate the problem and the pressure of getting individuals into town. We would like to see the remaining 16 hours spread over 90 days, as opposed to 60. Somewhere between 60 and 90 days, we think we can do that; 90 days might fit us a little better, in that an individual's not going to be with us more than three or four months. They're gone anyway, so we won't have that expense. We would like to see the eight-hour refresher spread over the year, and as the previous speaker indicated, we feel that 30 minutes or, in some cases, particular subject matter, it could be less than 30 minutes, and that ought to be accountable. We have a problem with records at site. As I said, a lot of times, the only place to keep a record and keep it presentable is probably in the supervisor's pickup or in the back of his tool box. That's a problem with us. We'd like to be able to keep those records at a central site and then provide those to MSHA as needed. And talking about instructors, back when Part 48 came out, we did certify instructors, again through Texas A&M. That was a 40-hour program, and then we proceeded then to do a train-the-trainer. Through my organization, we trained trainers for contractors, and then as was stated, a lot of people don't understand that then that trainer can have a sub-trainer underneath him, as long as he's overseeing that training. Again, I'm here more to listen, to see what MSHA is going to be providing. I don't know what deals have already been cut. I think some deals have already been cut. We'd like to know what those deals are, because we haven't heard them. We'd like to hear that from you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Well, I mean, as far as -- I would say that no deals have been cut. However, I mean, the way that this whole training initiative came about was Congress was involved and directed MSHA to develop a regulation, and our proposal is to be based on a draft that's going to be provided to us before February 1 of this year by the Coalition for Effective Miner Training. So, I mean, if you want to call that a deal -- I mean, I don't know whether it's a deal or not, but -- MR. KINNIKIN: I'm talking about the relationship that now exists or some interactions taking place between MSHA and other organizations, as to what this training might look like or what might be the requirements for it. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Well, I mean, that's why we're here today and that's why we have been, you know -- we're going to be at six other locations, is to find out -- obviously, I mean, we're going to be getting input from the coalition, which is a group of industry companies that have come together to give the Agency recommendations for what ought to be in a proposed rule. But in an effort to get as broad a spectrum of opinion as possible, I mean, we're holding meetings here and other locations, to find out what people like you and other individuals and organizations feel ought to be included in any rule that we promulgate. So, I mean, that's all I can say. I mean, that's really all that's involved at this stage. So, I mean, any suggestions that you have today or if you want to submit something in writing in the next month or so, we would really appreciate it, and we're giving serious consideration to all comments and suggestions given by everyone. MR. KINNIKIN: I will be making some written comments. You said by February 1, 1999. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Yes. I mean, I would heavily encourage you to submit it by then. I mean, if it comes in later, I mean, we're not going to throw it away, but we are under a pretty tight time deadline to develop this proposed rule in. If you get it in before February 1, that would make it easier for us to incorporate it in our thinking. MR. KINNIKIN: As far as the instructor and train-the-training, I would like to see that involve the actual aspects of how do you put together your lesson plans; how do you actually train; how do you actually teach; what are some of the teaching fundamentals, as opposed to some of the courses that I have been to. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. And that's really more along the lines of implementation. I mean, I think that that's one thing that we've been hearing as we move across the country is developing the rule is one part of it, but probably as important, if not more important, is what the Agency and state grantees and other people who are involved do to facilitate implementation of requirements that are going to be in any final rule. So -- MR. KINNIKIN: Probably the contractors or the employers that I represent would have fewer than ten employees at the site. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. KINNIKIN: And they would probably have equipment operators, probably front-end loader operators, bulldozer operators, and then laborers, you know, people working at the crusher. One of the big problems that has been brought up is truck drivers. How do we handle our truck drivers who are coming in? All they're doing is loading up with crushed material, and then hauling it off the site. How do we treat those people? You know, they're there, and as long as they stay in the truck, what's their exposure? CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Do you have any recommendations for how those individuals should be treated, I mean, because that's an issue that does come up, is there's different categories of people on the mine site. Not necessarily all of them are to be considered to be miners and therefore required to have 24 hours of initial training or 8 hours of annual refresher. Who gets, you know, site-specific hazard training, but maybe not comprehensive training? And are there categories of employees who may not need -- who come on -- any kind of training at all? I mean, those are the kind of suggestions that we're looking for, and if you've got specific recommendations, we would certainly like to hear them. MR. KINNIKIN: I would think that the truck drivers coming onto the site should be, as far as site- specific hazards that they might encounter, and that should be probably the extent of the training that they would be required. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Now, are these truck drivers employed by your -- MR. KINNIKIN: By the contractor. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: By the contractors. MR. KINNIKIN: Or they may be an independent contractor, somebody that's been hired or leased to the contractor to haul materials. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: I mean, what's their presence on the mine site, I mean, as far as duration? You're saying they typically wouldn't even get out of their truck. MR. KINNIKIN: They wouldn't get out of their truck. They'd probably come in; they'd be loaded, say, five minutes, and they'd drive off the site. They have a way in and a way out but they might make 15, 20 trips a day to the site, hauling materials to the roadway. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: And you think for those categories of employees, site-specific hazard training would be sufficient. MR. KINNIKIN: Yes, ma'am. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: They don't need the eight hours of annual refresher or -- MR. KINNIKIN: No. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: -- the 24 hours of initial new miner training. MR. KINNIKIN: Not at all. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. KINNIKIN: I'll stand for questions. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. One of the questions that I had, one of the issues that has come up, is, you know, the responsibility for training, comprehensive training or site-specific hazard training between the production operator and contractors who come on to the mine site. A number of people have -- a number of operators have indicated that they think it is appropriate for contractors to ensure that their employees, the contractor employees, receive the 24 hours of initial new miner training and the 8 hours of annual refresher training, and that the production operator should be responsible for site- specific hazard training for those employees when they come onto the mine site. Do you have any opinions as far as whether that division of responsibility is appropriate? Or do you have other suggestions for how that ought to be handled? MR. KINNIKIN: The way it's being handled now, if a contractor goes onto a mine site -- and you have to keep in mind, I'm talking about a contractor who might be a mine- site operator, as opposed to a contractor going to a big mine. And what the big mines are requiring the contractor to do now is to have his 24 hours of training before his people ever goes on site. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. KINNIKIN: But where my contractor has his own portable plant -- CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. KINNIKIN: -- he is the operator; he is the production operator. He's responsible for the employees going there. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. So there really isn't a production operator per se. MR. KINNIKIN: Not unless that would be an independent contractor at a big mine site. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. I have one other question. Do you experience a situation where your operations are regulated by OSHA, depending on the kind of activity that you're engaged in? I mean, do you flip in and out of regulation by MSHA and by OSHA? MR. KINNIKIN: The highway-heavy contractor would be regulated by both, and a lot of times, what might separate OSHA from MSHA would be nothing more than a barbed- wire fence or an imaginary line drawn through the pit, and he'd have a hot plant sitting here and a crusher sitting over here. On one side would be OSHA; on the other side of this imaginary line would be MSHA. But the highway-heavy contractor would be regulated by both. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Do you have situations where employees kind of cross over that imaginary line? MR. KINNIKIN: They do it all the time. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Uh-huh. Do you have any suggestions for -- I mean, as far as, you know, OSHA training versus MSHA training? MR. KINNIKIN: That training -- as far as I'm concerned, if an employee has had OSHA training, say, task training or training, safety training related to the task he's doing, it should be allowed, both by OSHA or MSHA. There's no difference in the operation of the piece of equipment. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Uh-huh. Do you have any opinion as far as how long the Agency should allow after the publication of a final rule for compliance? MR. KINNIKIN: I would think a year would be plenty. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. Do you have any opinion as to whether we ought to phase in the requirements, or should everything go into effect at the same time? MR. KINNIKIN: Well, you will allow a year for the person to get into compliance, full compliance -- CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. KINNIKIN: -- I think you could go ahead and set the initial requirements, and then let the people start working into it. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. Do you have any questions? MR. BRELAND: The portable plants you talked about, I would assume that generally they have a core group of people that travel with that portable plant. What percentage of that group would be regular, year-round employees, if you will? MR. KINNIKIN: Probably would be your equipment operators, probably the plant operator. Everybody else would probably be hired at the new location, laborers. MR. BRELAND: Mostly laborers, so you typically would have four or five laborers maybe. MR. KINNIKIN: Probably three, four at the most. MR. BRELAND: Okay. And then you talked about some phased-in training for them, do an initial eight hours, but, you know, flexibility, whether it be at the site or CD- ROM interactive type training, or in town. And you were proposing up to 90 days -- MR. KINNIKIN: Yes, sir. MR. BRELAND: -- to complete that. Do you try to hire -- I mean, are a lot of these portable plants coming back in the same area, and if you had a good employee, try to rehire that person, or is it basically going to be a brand new person? MR. KINNIKIN: That depends. You can have a mine -- call it a mine site that has been opened and closed down, no longer active. It might be three, four years before the contractor will get back to the same pit. MR. BRELAND: Uh-huh. MR. KINNIKIN: As far as trying to -- what you're trying to say is that as we build these individuals and we leave, but the individual doesn't leave with us, then that individual, when we come back, would come back to work for the contractor. I'm not sure that's the case. MR. BRELAND: Okay. MR. KINNIKIN: One of the things that we find that with the highway-heavy and the portable plants is that the laborer's job is not a very glamorous job. Most of the times, these individuals, once they start working there and they find out how hard the work is, how dirty it is, you know, they tend to leave on their own, fairly quickly. MR. BRELAND: Well, if you had 90 days and most of those plants are only there for two to three months, most of these would not get any additional training. Are you -- MR. KINNIKIN: They would get the initial eight. MR. BRELAND: They'd get the eight. Would you propose some like weekly training to be working on it, because it looks like you could have nothing but eight hours of training. MR. KINNIKIN: We get the eight hours, and then what we're doing now is an OJT, the walk-around, the hazard recognition. And we do a weekly, every Monday, have a weekly meeting where they get together and do the safety meetings. MR. BRELAND: And then you mentioned about the records and the problems with making them available at the mine site. Do you have some reasonable time in mind to make them available upon request or -- MR. KINNIKIN: I would think that you ought to be able -- like the previous speaker, you ought to be able to get those the next day or within two days, I would think you ought to be able to get those records. MR. BRELAND: Okay. That -- on the OSHA training, do you keep records of that now? MR. KINNIKIN: Yes, we do. MR. BRELAND: Okay. That's all I have. MR. STONE: Do you have a sense -- I think we probably need to take a step back. About how many operations do you cover in your association? Do you have a rough idea about the size of the operations, how large? MR. KINNIKIN: I have -- currently in New Mexico, I have 59 contractors. Each one of those contractors probably have anywhere from two to four portable plants, and some of them may have some permanent sand and gravel operations, say, 150 or so. MR. STONE: Okay. MR. KINNIKIN: Bald figure guess. MR. STONE: Do you have any rough idea about how many of these operations would currently be in compliance with Part 48? MR. KINNIKIN: I'm going to -- my larger contractors are now currently in compliance with Part 48. I have -- I'm not going to try to tell you falsely here, because it's like anything else. I've always said that, with an employer, when push comes to shove, it'll get done. So we have some individuals out there that are not doing it. I know that. MR. STONE: And do you have a sense of what the costs might be for miner, per worker, that's being spent today for training? And just give me an idea if the cost is basically just the eight hours of initial training or what it averages to. MR. KINNIKIN: Well, like the previous speaker, you just plug in the costs, and then if you go into town, you know, you have to rent a room. And if you have one person, maybe, as safety director, his salary, plus individuals working under him who might be trainers. So, you know, these are costs that you plug into it. But I don't have an overall cost figure for you. MR. STONE: Okay. Do you envision changes through Part 46 that would make it less expensive? I think you may have alluded to a couple just now. One might be to allow some training, using CDs or other technologies that wouldn't require travel to specific sites, things like that. MR. KINNIKIN: That would help. The other thing that would help was with the flexibility. Any flexibility that you can give us. Say, on the remaining 16 hours, if we can go 90 days, the individuals that we're going to be training, if they're there 90 days, they're going to stay with us. MR. STONE: Okay. And for recordkeeping, do you think that currently, that records are being maintained at some expense to the operators, or -- MR. KINNIKIN: Yes. And I'm sure that most of the MSHA inspectors would tell you whatever records they find on site, they can hardly read because of the grease and the dirt and the grime. MR. STONE: Okay. MR. KINNIKIN: But records are being kept. MR. STONE: Okay. Thank you. MR. BURNS: I just had a question on the crossover of employees from OSHA to MSHA sites. As far as the OSHA training, I don't think there's any real specific requirement that you keep records of the training. Is that a -- would that be a problem for some of the operators? MR. KINNIKIN: You're saying -- MR. BURNS: Under OSHA, are they required to keep records of training? MR. KINNIKIN: Yes, we are. We have to -- just like with MSHA, we have to prove that they've been trained. So, you know, if you train them, then you have to have documentation of the fact that they have been in training. MR. BURNS: Okay. So most people are already doing that on the OSHA side. MR. KINNIKIN: Yes. Or at least we are. MR. BURNS: Okay. That's really all I had. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much, Mr. Kinnikin. MR. BURNS: I guess David wanted to clarify something. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: I think you need to come up to the mike, if you could, just so the court reporter can get everything on the record. MR. PFILE: Briefly, when the construction outreach that the heavy and highway contractors do, when an instructor does that class, the OSHA class, those records are sent to the OSHA Institute in Des Plains, and they keep the records. They have the records. Cards are issued; individual wallet cards are issued for the attendees, so those records are maintained someplace. OSHA has them. MR. BURNS: That's when they complete the eight hours or ten hours. MR. PFILE: It's ten hour, ten hour and thirty hour. When you complete, the instructor sends the course agenda, the attendees, all the information that's required to the OSHA Institute, and they, in turn, issue the cards back to the instructor for distribution to the attendees. So they have a record of it, of anybody that's been through that course. MR. KINNIKIN: There are also some specific regulations within OSHA that requires task training and hazard association with the task being performed, and those have to be documented as well. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. We've reached the end of our speakers who have signed up, but what we're going to do is have about a 15-minute break and come back. I encourage any of you who have not spoken to consider speaking after the break. But in any case, what I will do when we come back is if there are no further speakers, is give you a summary of some of the comments that we've gotten at some of the other meetings up until now, just to give you some idea of what's been going on. And the speakers list is up here, if you'd like to come and sign up, and I encourage you to do so. And also there's an attendance list in the back that I would ask everyone who is here to sign up on. (Whereupon, a short recess was taken.) CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: The next speaker that we have signed up is Ralph Richards. MR. RICHARDS: Good morning. My name is Ralph Richards. I'm with Jobe Concrete out of El Paso, Texas. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Could you spell -- get your last name, the spelling. MR. RICHARDS: R-I-C-H-A-R-D-S. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: And you company is -- MR. RICHARDS: Jobe, J-O-B-E, Concrete Products, Inc. of El Paso, Texas. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you. MR. RICHARDS: I'd like to support what the first two speakers stated. I think they did a good job. I have just a couple of things that we see in our business that we would like for you to consider in addition. One of the things is in developing the training materials and your criteria and requirements, to take into account employers who have workforces whose primary language is not English. We have a substantial amount of our mine workforce that does not speak English. Some of them are bilingual; some of them speak only Spanish. And what we're interested in is what is going to be the requirements in that regard, with regard to our materials, our plants, this type of thing. If we're going to be using them in Spanish, do we need to submit also the Spanish version as well as the English version, and take into account how we deal with those issues. We've had instances before in which there were questions as to whether or not we should receive citations, because warning signs, for example, were not in Spanish; they were only in English; and this type of thing, such as seatbelt signs. And so in developing a training program, the plan, the materials that must be submitted for approval, we would like you to take into account and give us some direction as to what a reasonable method of dealing with a labor force who does not have their primary language being English and may not speak English at all. A couple of other points -- that's the main new point that we have that we have not heard addressed here this morning, that issue. A couple other points: Where to keep the records? We strongly agree with the prior speakers. There should be some central site and a time for presenting them. Within a 30-mile radius of our headquarters, we operate nine or ten sites, I believe. Some of those, as one of the prior speakers indicated, are not going to have offices; they're not going to have facilities. You're going to have a tool box on a foreman's truck. Also our employee force is mobile. We may have employees go to one specific site because we're operating there, producing materials, and this is, I think, fairly common in the sand and gravel business, for a specific job from that site, and once those materials to meet those qualifications are produced, we may go to another site. So the employees are not at the same site every day. Some of ours are, but many of ours go to different sites on different days, depending upon which facilities are operating, what materials we're trying to produce that day. So having a central source for the records, we think, makes sense. We don't think there'd be any problem producing them within 24 hours. Another issue: We have -- and we think there are other people in the industry who have a lot of side-by-side operations, as you've discussed this morning, regulated some by OSHA, some by MSHA. We would like to see clear provisions where there is OSHA training required. For example, a loader operator is the easiest example. A loader operator at a concrete batch plant is going to be under OSHA rather than MSHA. That same loader operator may be moved elsewhere on the facility, and in the afternoon be working under MSHA, working piles, coming out of a crusher. We would like to see some consideration of that in the rules. We would also, to the extent that there is training required for OSHA, like to see reciprocal credit for MSHA for that training and vice versa. I can give you an example. We have a site that is -- has a hardrock quarry, has several crushers, two asphalt plants, two concrete batch plants, all operating within one large site or facility. You can imagine from that the crossover that we have back and forth. Another item that came up this morning, the gentleman from the New Mexico Associated Contractors was talking about your truck drivers. In a quarry such as ours, for example, base material -- we're making base material at a quarry. We may have numerous independent truckers. These are individuals or companies that may own two or three dump trucks, who are coming into the site, regularly hauling out base. They are going into a quarry, an MSHA-regulated facility. What is going to be imposed upon us as far as training obligations or assurance from those people? We're not talking about an independent contractor who goes into a large facility and sets up a crusher and takes in a crew of 50, 60 people. We're talking like the gentleman who spoke before, truckers who may never get out of their truck. They're given a ticket when they go through the scale, as to what they're going to load. They go -- the loader operator loads them. They go back and weigh out on the scale. They never got out of their truck until they get ready to leave the quarry and have to cover their load. So we're not even sure whether those people should be defined as miners, and we'd like some consideration of that. And those -- to keep those brief, those are the principal issues that I have. I would try to answer any questions, but those were points that we hear addressed this morning that affect our industry that we would like you to consider. Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you, Mr. Richards. I do have a couple of questions, and others on the panel may as well. You indicated that in developing a rule, we need to address the issue of the bilingual workforce and requirements associated with that. Do you have any specific suggestions for what we might include in a rule or specific issues that you believe that we need to consider? MR. RICHARDS: Well, first, we have to find instructors who are bilingual and can speak Spanish. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. RICHARDS: It is not -- when you're looking at the certification program, that imposes another level that we have to meet, and we would like you to take that into account. We think that we have people that we're developing within our company. Our own safety director's bilingual, and we're working at it from that standpoint ourselves. If you require us to have specifically trained, certified instructors who've been to some school, et cetera, we may not -- we may have great difficulty finding the people who can actually deliver the issue. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Who are bilingual. MR. RICHARDS: Bilingual. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. RICHARDS: So we lean more toward being able to train our own, to, as you discussed this morning, have credit for the supervised training in which you have a certified trainer who supervises someone who provides the training, this type of thing. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. RICHARDS: And I don't have an answer for it, other than I can envision regulations that could be written that would not take that into account, that would create real hurdles for us to get over. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. I have one other question. You raised the issue of individuals coming on site such as truck drivers and whether or not they should even be considered miners. Do you have a recommendation for how truck drivers like that should be handled in the training regulation? MR. RICHARDS: I can tell you what some of our experience is. We require the truck drivers to have hard hats; we require, you know, the basic obvious hazards, that if they're going to get out of their truck, they have to have hard hats, this type of thing. I don't have a true answer for it, other than those personnel need to be aware of the obvious hazards around them, but don't create a recordkeeping nightmare for us, trying to certify that each driver for the independent truckers has had certain amounts of safety training with regard to mining operations that may not be applicable to their task. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: But you're saying site- specific hazard training would -- MR. RICHARDS: Site-specific hazard training, I don't think would be a problem. Our safety director's here. I could ask him how he addresses it. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Yes. If he could come up to the microphone and -- if you could, state your name. MR. PAQUIAN: My name's Hector. First name is H-E-C-T-O-R; last name is Paquian, P-A-Q-U-I-A-N. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you. MR. PAQUIAN: You asked a question? CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Yes. I think the question was as far as truck drivers, whether site-specific hazard training would be appropriate for truck drivers who come onto the property but don't actually get out of the truck and are exposed to limited hazards on the mine site. MR. RICHARDS: That's our general approach at this time. MR. PAQUIAN: Our approach, as Mr. Richards indicated, is it is site-specific, and we would actually have the hazard recognition for that site in itself, and have the general contractors know about the premises itself, but solely to that extent only. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. Do you give that kind of training to the individual truck drivers or just to the contractor who employs them? MR. PAQUIAN: No. This is to both. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. And how much time does that generally involve, to give them that? MR. RICHARDS: On independent truckers -- let's say we order 15 trucks. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. RICHARDS: We may get those from six different sources. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. RICHARDS: We have no way at this time -- and I don't think should have the burden imposed upon us -- that each one of those 15 drivers that's going to show up that morning is going to have site-specific training. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. RICHARDS: If we're going to do that, that's going to have to be a qualification that we would have to know and have defined, so that we can impose it when we qualify the truckers, because we qualify truckers before they're allowed to enter our quarry. Otherwise, if a trucker has four trucks and they want to haul for us, before they are allowed to start hauling for us or go on our call list, they have to meet certain qualifications. That would be the point at which we have to deal with that. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. You're not currently doing that now, I take it. MR. RICHARDS: No. We deal with certain qualifications when they come on. They are told, for example, they must have insurance; they must have various thing. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. RICHARDS: The drivers must have hard hats. But as far as getting any certification from the owner of the trucks that the driver that he's going to send that day has had site-specific training for our quarry, we're not doing that, that I'm aware of. MR. PAQUIAN: That's correct. At this point, we're not, but we need to further get some recommendations on that. MR. RICHARDS: And in our industry, that would be difficult, because when they send that truck, it's not always clear whether that truck is going to go into the area regulated by MSHA or the area regulated by OSHA. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Well, then, how do you propose that that be handled then? I mean, as far as, I mean, truck drivers who come onto a mine site, do they need site-specific hazard training? And if so, at what point should that be required to be given? MR. RICHARDS: My personal view is -- and I don't know that the industry would agree. My personal view is that if they are not going to get out of their truck, other than to cover their load, that they shouldn't even have to have the site-specific. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Should they have anything? MR. RICHARDS: As far as MSHA? CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Right. I mean, I guess that's what I'm asking is: Should this rule require that truck drivers who never get out of their trucks have anything in the way of training? MR. RICHARDS: I don't think so. Now, let me state: We have employee truck drivers who drive mine trucks, who haul within our quarries, et cetera. We expect that we are going to train those, and we would like the rules to distinguish between your independent outside hauler who are just picking up and leaving the site, and the truck drivers who are working within the quarry, the people who haul out of our pit to the crushers and this type of thing. We're not asking for exemption for those. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: And those people get out of their trucks and -- MR. RICHARDS: Yes. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: -- are on the mine site for some period of time. MR. RICHARDS: Yes. Their job is within the mine site all day or all shift. What we're wanting a distinction on is the independent truckers who, like the gentleman from the New Mexico Associated Contractors was talking about, who come in to pick up, and what they're coming in to pick up is just what I was describing. More than likely, they're coming in to pick up base. They may haul three loads of base, and they may haul three loads of asphalt. They're not going to be required to get out of their truck, other than to cover their truck, their load, if they don't have the automatic covers, before they leave, go onto the highway. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. If, in fact, we were to decide to require some kind of site-specific hazard training for those truckers who don't get out of their trucks, do you have any recommendations or suggestions -- I mean, you indicated that that would be very difficult to -- you know, that kind of a requirement would be difficult. But assume for the moment that we are going to require something along those lines. Do you have any suggestions for how we might go about requiring something like that, that would impose the least burden on you? MR. RICHARDS: Well, I think first you could do it two ways. One, you would have regulations which would define the criteria in which they maintained their exempt status, if they're going to have an exempt status or their status as an independent, which is they stay on specific marked roadways; they go to specific designated loading areas; and this type of thing. Someone whispered in the back, They stay on the yellow brick road, but it's not really that ridiculous. You know, if they had specific loading areas, specific routes, cross the scale to the specific loading area, et cetera, those type of things, definitions put upon the operator of how they keep these people separate and distinct. If you're going to impose something on the drivers, then it would be site-specifically that in order for them to qualify to come in, they have to know that the driver has to have a hard hat and know that if they do get out for some reason, even if it's just to bump the tires on their truck, they have to have their hard hat on, this type of thing, rules that they are not to leave the immediate vicinity of their truck, rules that they're not to get off of their truck. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Uh-huh. MR. RICHARDS: This type of thing. But well- defined rules, so that we know where our responsibility ends and we know what we have to do to qualify drivers and independents to come in, that doesn't create a burden in which they can't meet, and then a recordkeeping requirement to go with it that is reasonable to track; for example, that if we qualify to put on our call list an independent with six trucks, that they're told that their drivers must have -- you know, be informed of this, and we can rely upon the owner of the trucks to train their people. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Do you have -- MR. BRELAND: Just to follow up on that a little bit, I guess about the yellow brick road, we've had a lot of truck driver fatalities, customers and what have you, and a lot of times that could be tied to lack of information, like traffic patterns, where they may mix with other mine site haul trucks and what have you. So I think what we were trying to get at is that there's some minimum type of information that would need to be relayed to those types of customer truck drivers, if you will, that come on. Do you see that as something that you do now typically at your sites, that you inform drivers where to go and where to pick up their loads and stay in their trucks? Do you do some of that already? MR. RICHARDS: Yes. Absolutely. MR. BRELAND: So you really -- maybe we're not talking about anything different much than what you're doing. And if that's the case, if you have some process that you require your sites to do, it might be worthwhile if you submitted that as a suggestion of how you handle these truck drivers and the qualification beforehand, as well as when they come to sites. Also, if you have some sort of clear definition of the different type of contractor you're talking about, this visitor type that would come in and pick up loads, that would be good to offer up your suggestions for that. On the bilingual issue, do you presently have or use some bilingual posters, safety stickers, et cetera? MR. PAQUIAN: If I may interject, we mostly translate the English posters into Spanish. That's one way that they can actually tell exactly, you know, what occurred in each situation. And I do appreciate also the fact that some of the videotapes that you all provide through the catalog, at the prices that you all provide them for, are extremely attractive, and I wish we could find a vendor or anybody that, you know, could translate those into Spanish. That would be extremely helpful. MR. BRELAND: We are looking -- MR. RICHARDS: To answer your question, yes, we do have. For example, at the entrance to our quarries, our seatbelt signs are bilingual. You have bilingual safety stickers posted in our loaders, trucks, some of our vehicles. MR. PAQUIAN: Their hard hats, they've got stickers -- we use the universal sign, and we use the English and the Spanish. We just try to cover every single base. MR. BRELAND: Okay. And then just on the crossover training issue a little bit, where you talk about some of these sites, where you may have a couple of batch plants, asphalt plants, and crushers, in general, are you using some of the same people to run like the plant operations themselves, or mostly is it the heavy equipment? MR. RICHARDS: It's mostly going to be heavy equipment. MR. BRELAND: Okay. That really is all I had. Thank you. MR. STONE: Let me ask you just a couple of questions. First of all, about how large is your operation? About how many employees? MR. RICHARDS: Total we have between 550 and 600 employees, but keep in mind that we are a concrete supplier, an asphalt supplier, as well as an aggregate producer. And we do some of our own trucking, as far as the aggregate. As far as our mine operators, 150 -- MR. PAQUIAN: About 150, 180 tops. MR. STONE: Okay. And in terms of the training you currently provide, to what extent are you training your workers, your miners, in Spanish, and are you doing it -- do you have group training now that is in Spanish? MR. PAQUIAN: We actually -- our trainings take a little longer than usual, because we start first in English, and then after that, we flipflop back and forth in English and in Spanish. MR. STONE: Okay. MR. RICHARDS: We have some sites in which they're predominantly Spanish, also taking into account to make up the workforce. I mean, if we have a group of workers who all speak Spanish, some of which speak Spanish and English, and some who speak only Spanish, the training will generally be done only in Spanish. MR. STONE: Correct. Okay. And your recordkeeping now, is it -- do you find it to be fairly cumbersome under Part 48 requirements? Or is it really not so bad, because you're already providing those records for OSHA? MR. PAQUIAN: I don't I see a problem with that. MR. STONE: It's not currently a major issue. MR. PAQUIAN: It's not a major issue. MR. STONE: That's it. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Anything else? (No response.) CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much. MR. RICHARDS: Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: The next speaker is Ed Elliott from the Rogers Group. MR. ELLIOTT: Hello. My name is Ed Elliott. That's spelled E-D, E-L-L-I-O-T-T. I'm a safety manager for Rogers Group, Incorporated. Our headquarters is in Nashville, Tennessee, but we do have operations which would fall within this district in Arkansas. I just wanted to -- I gave a presentation at the Northbrook meeting, so I'm not going to go back and answer those questions again, but I would like to make some comment concerning some points that were raised this morning. The first, I would like to talk a little bit about enforcement. Obviously this will be an important factor that you must consider. I think the basics of enforcement can be covered by inspectors, verifying that training has taken place and that a plan has been approved. This could be done by the employee carrying some form or card with the necessary information, and it doesn't necessarily have to be a government-approved form. This would help. And then the operator should be able to provide the information that that training has been done and that they have a training plan. But I think the most important part of making training a significant -- making it significant in the fight against accidents is MSHA's help. And to some, this is a contradiction in terms, by some of the comments we've had this morning, which I agree with. But in particular, the Government can and must help the small operator to comply with the new rule. This cannot be done by the inspector and enforcement. MSHA must support training and education as much as enforcement. Second, I would like to speak to instructor certification. This should be done, I believe, by the operator certifying that training according to their plan has been completed, and the plan itself would identify how instructors would be selected. Another point was raised about how much training should be required before being assigned or assigning a new miner to work. I think this would depend upon the experience and demonstrated knowledge of the individual, but through my years of training that I have been an instructor as well as taking different classes, that the most effective training is where the employee is actively involved in the training process, not just sitting in a classroom and listening to someone give information to them, but actually having them involved. And I think they could accomplish -- of course, to accomplish this, the best way would be one-on-one training, both in the classroom and on the work site, and I think that flexibility needs to be there, where the operator can do some one-on-one training and maybe, according to their plan, there may be some done in the classroom; there may be some done actively as they are standing, watching an operation take place. But the training plan should explain how the operator will train, which must include where the training would be conducted. As far as the cost, I've heard -- I think, Mr. Stone, you've mentioned several times talking about that, and I do not at this time have anything that I can give you our costs as such, but I will commit that either at the meeting -- I plan on attending the meeting in Atlanta. I will either have some cost numbers for you in Atlanta, or I will submit them in writing for the cost of our current compliance with Part 48. MR. STONE: Thank you. MR. ELLIOTT: Which I would say, if followed in its most restricted form, is very costly, and I could -- and I'll go into a little bit more of that at a later time, but I will get you that information. I think I heard something mentioned this morning about post -- or an assessment of some form or instructor evaluation. I think this is a very novel idea that could certainly be something that a company would include in their training plan, some form of assessment that can be used to determine if the instructor was getting the information across to the individual and how effective it was. And we've had circumstances -- and I use the words very carefully about assessment. I think a test, a lot of people freeze up with a test. I venture to guess most of us in here, if somebody put down and gave us a test on what we heard this morning, we might be in trouble. But there are a number of ways that you can assess the effectiveness of training, and that should be, I think, an element that would be looked for in the training plan. About truckers and hazard training: Within the Rogers Group, we try to do this as much as possible with signage. We, too, will have periodically a driver come in, and there are clearly marked roads and directions that they're given to follow. And to me, that would be sufficient. If they're not involved with mining or extraction process or the milling process, I think the necessary safety hazard training could be given by signage. And it still puts the operators -- you mentioned customers and fatalities. I think there was one, a Fatalgram, that I saw when a customer backed under a pile that had basically been left with an open face, and it fell and covered the person. I think this is not something that has to be covered by hazard training, as much as it is the operator's responsibility to see that there is a safe workplace. And I don't believe, even though they may have taken some form of training, it wouldn't really have covered that circumstance, I don't believe. I want to mention about bilingualism and the bilingual training, and I respect the problem that some operators would have with this. But I think you would also run into the problem that if you started developing Spanish versions, where would it stop. I think you would, therefore, have to consider other versions of training, when it would be requested. And I think that would be something that we would try to -- I think the state grants programs should be in a position to work in that direction, where they could help in dealing with the bilingualism issue. But I want to say again about the training that the state grants program does a great job. In some states, it is more effective than others, and I believe coordination of the state grants program, with active MSHA oversight, could be the most effective at implementing any new rule you come up with. But it would take that oversight and seeing that that money was efficiently being used. And as I say, there are so many excellent examples of that, that I don't need to go into that. The last thing I want to say is that I think it will be a mistake to believe that promulgating new rules or allowing enforcement alone will have a dramatic effect on safety in the mining industry. People are going to get out of this directly in proportion to what they put into it, and there's going to be a burden upon the industry itself to make a difference when this new rule comes about. And we are within the Rogers Group supportive of training. We've done it for years. We more than comply with Part 48, and most of this is done because our superintendents have found that it's good business. We may have an employee come in -- haulage is a very serious issue. We may have an employee come in, and we will give them the basic training, both in the classroom, on the work site, but then again, before that superintendent would release that person to do independent work, they may have someone ride with them in that truck as many as three days, before they will release that person to begin doing some independent work within a haulage truck. So the people that are doing the training now are, I think, doing a good job with it. They see the benefits from it, but if the rules are seen as being too restrictive, voluminous, more descriptive of exactly how the training would be done, I think there will be a great deal of resistance. So the flexibility of that training and the simplicity of it, I believe, will be very important. And I want to say again: I thank you for having these public meetings and allowing people to give input. And that's all I have. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you, Mr. Elliott. I just have one follow-up question. I just want to clarify. As far as instructor qualifications and instructor assessment, your recommendation is that the rule provide that the plan address how those issues would be handled without specifying how they should be handled, that they need to be addressed in the plan, but not to set any parameters or criteria for -- MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. That is correct. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. ELLIOTT: I would see MSHA as giving classes similar to what they do now and saying, We have a program that we can put your employees through, that will give them the fundamentals necessary to go out and develop an instructor certification, if you want to call it, or whatever. But I wouldn't say to eliminate those things, but just give them as options. I think there's some people that come in -- I was very fortunate. When I went to school, I came out with a bachelor's in education, and I had a teaching certificate in two states. I felt I understood the techniques and fundamentals of instruction, but I didn't have the rules and regulations as far as guards and so forth. I didn't feel I needed to go through a class to prepare me to be an instructor, so being restrictive and saying it has to be that certification, I think doesn't always -- it still is not going to make a difference. There are people that have degrees in education, and they're still not good instructors. So there's not going to be the magic bullet to say, If you have this, you're going to do a good job out there. So the less restrictive -- I think the more you put on the performance of the operator to demonstrate that the training is going to be effective, and that's what we need to do. There are a lot of ways to do it and a lot of great ideas out there that we may not even consider here. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. BRELAND: Well, just to follow up on that same idea, an assessment by the operator of the effectiveness of the training, if you have some ideas, it would be good to put those suggestions down and submit them on the effectiveness of that. Would you be -- by monitoring their training or interviewing the employees some or -- MR. ELLIOTT: I think what I do in the training that I'll use an assessment, particularly if I'm in an area where I know there are some people that have a problem with literacy, I may put them in small groups and have a game. I'll ask questions, based on what I've covered. And then I'll give a little prize to the winning team. And I'll direct verbal -- I'll make a verbal assessment. Then as far as first aid is concerned, we will do it in writing. I will give a test in that case. So there are many ways that you could do it, and I would say the most important thing is to find a method that the operator can assure that the knowledge is being imparted to the employee, and how they do that would be up to them, but they should be able to show that in their training plan, to assure that the training is effective. MR. BRELAND: Okay. And then also you said like the hazard training for truck drivers, you try to do primarily with signage. Do you have some examples of that? MR. ELLIOTT: I think you could -- speed limits, truckers staying in their vehicles. You would have traffic patterns; you would have signs on where they would go to, the different piles. What we do at some of our operations, we'll actually have a sign that says it's number 8 or 57, and we have communication with the -- most of the truckers -- well, today, I guess, forever have had -- seemed like the CB was invented by truck drivers. But we communicate with the truckers through the CB, and some method to make sure that they are restricted to an area which limits their exposure. Anything, any traffic signage that would do that or give them specific directions, I think, would be sufficient. MR. BRELAND: And what do you do as far as like follow-up? Do you monitor that some? I mean, are your regular employees instructed to take some sort of action if they see them not following signs or getting out of trucks or -- MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. If we have a problem with a customer that comes in, then our loader operators, who are actually loading the customer vehicles, are given, are empowered to talk with that customer. If we find it's a problem -- Just in the last couple of months, we had a problem at one of our facilities where the drivers were coming through; they were driving too fast. The loader operator had mentioned it to them, couldn't do anything about it. The loader operator then instructed or told the superintendent of the problem, and the superintendent contacted the supervisor, and told them, Either you obey the speed limits or we're not going to load you. We have to be careful about customers. If you put things that are too restrictive, then they're going to find somewhere that's not as restrictive. So it's an area that we need to limit their exposure as much as possible as the operator. I think that's our responsibility. MR. BRELAND: Okay. That's all I have. Thanks, Ed. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Kevin? MR. BURNS: Your experience with the state grants, do you think that they're sufficiently staffed at this time to handle the bilingual needs of the industry? MR. ELLIOTT: No. I don't believe they will be sufficiently staffed once the new rule comes about. And I think from an efficiency perspective, I wonder how -- you all would know more about the process of how one goes about receiving state grant. But I think the Educational Field Services, the new unit that's being developed and if training rule is going to be enforced, I think it vitally important that that area, they be more active in what goes on in those state grants. I'm sure they will be. But that is critical. MR. BURNS: That's all I have right now. Thanks, Ed. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much, Mr. Elliott. MR. ELLIOTT: Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: The next speaker on the list is Bill Scarbrough. MR. SCARBROUGH: My name is Bill Scarbrough, S-C-A-R-B-R-O-U-G-H. And I want to thank you guys for the -- being able to sign up late, come up here and talk, because I didn't really want to talk, but I thought, well, you know, if you don't say anything now, you know, forever hold your peace. I'm the safety director and also the H&S director for Arkhola, which is a subsidiary of APAC-Arkansas, which is a subsidiary of APAC, Incorporated, and we have various companies throughout the South and the Southeast. Our particular operation is located in Fort Smith. We have two sand operations and three rock quarries in the area, in Arkansas and Oklahoma. And thanks to MSHA, I have my job. In 1978, I was hired strictly to do the training part. When the regulations came on board, why, they hired me as the training person, and I was going to do all this, develop the plan and the training. So in that regard, I have MSHA, you know, to thank for that, because from there on, I moved on up in the company. But a couple of the comments that I'd like to make: First of all, the gentleman, the first gentleman, I think pretty well mirrors the way we think on it, as APAC as a whole. The last gentleman made a couple of good comments. But I'll just go down this little list here that I made a couple of comments on. The newly employed, experienced miner, I do think those are going to have be well defined. Bringing a guy in -- I can remember back when I first developed plans, as trying to figure out, you know, who's going to be the newly employed, experienced miner; some guy from a construction outfit with two years' experience. Well, if you do that, you're going to have to go back and make sure he's had that. If he puts it on his application and you don't verify it, you're not going to know. And this is the hardest thing you have when you hire DOT truck drivers, is going back and checking the recordkeeping on them, if anybody's ever done that, so you're going to have to verify his experience. So I feel like if a guy comes in and he's got a certificate, that he should be a miner. But also you're going to have to look at, Well, what kind of training did he get? Was it good or bad? So you don't know what kind of training that man had. So, you know, that puts you in another position. But I believe that coming on board, he should have some sort of acclimation to your operation, which we do that now. But also, you know, what do you call these guys? I mean, how many years does it take to be a newly employed, experienced miner, if you allow someone to cross over, so I think that's going to have to be well identified, and there also has to be some way of checking up, to make sure that that's verified that that guy, in fact, had that. The second thing I had on task training: I think task training should be performance-oriented. You may get a guy that he can operate a front-end loader. Well, how much time do you spend on him? As soon as you determine that he meets the qualifications, you can certify him. To what extent do you go in task training? I know one of the biggest problems I had was figuring out who gets task-trained for what. Does a guy that runs an electric drill get task training? Obviously equipment operators, plant operators, do have to have specific training. Where do you end it? I mean, do you go down to a pencil? I've had an MSHA inspector recently that probably, if he was enforcing these, if you had a hand screwdriver, he would have wrote you a citation if you didn't have task training on it. So I think we need to have some well-defined limits. You guys laugh about that; now, this is true. I'm going to have to mirror the first man's deal there. We do have some over-zealous inspectors, and I've had -- I've been there 20 years, and I've had a lot of good ones and a lot of bad ones, but to me, when you're running a really good, clean mine site and the guy comes in there just to write citations, in order to keep up with another inspector, and he tells your men this, that's a big problem, you know. So I think we're going to have to address this thing, and I'll get on down to enforcement here in a minute, in a little different manner. Refresher training, I believe that 15 minutes ought to be the minimum. We have some things that can be covered in 15 minutes, and you have some that may be two to four hours, such as first aid training. So you could cover rights of the miners in 15 minutes easily on refresher basis. Most of the men know that. You don't need to sit there 30 minutes and go over it, because anybody that's ever done any training knows you can cover a lot of ground in 15 minutes. You know, I talked to my preacher one time and I says, You know, when they teach you when you're going to seminary how long to make a sermon, what do they tell you. And he says, Well, five to six minutes, and then they're asleep. Well, how many in here has ever been to a five- or six-minute sermon? My guy now is about 20 minutes to 30 minutes, and the Assembly of God up the street is an hour, hour and a half. And I know for a fact that once you get over that six or eight minutes, you're gone, because then I get my little book out, and I'm checking my appointments for this week. And you guys know that, too. So you can cover more ground in 15 minutes, unless you have a good video or something, than you can with anything else. So I think you need to have at least a 15- minute minimum, and it may take a little keeping up with, but you're going to get more out of your training. I think the first gentleman's deal there about the more you can stretch this out and the more you can repeat your training to that guy, the better off it's going to be, because back years ago, I used to sit in here, and I was teaching this stuff, just like you guys had in there, and I would look over in the corner. Joe Blow's asleep; you know, this guy over here, you can tell his eyes are glazed over. You're not getting there. You can't sit there eight hours with these kind of people and get what you want. What you want is as much hands-on training. You've got to get in there with that guy, get him out there on it, because you're going to lose them, you know. And if you guys remember back -- and I can remember, because we were active in MSHA and the National Stone Association when you guys got pulled out of that training. Had you guys implemented this right in the first place, we wouldn't be sitting here, and you guys know it. I mean, obviously -- and if it's not done right the second time, we're going to be sitting here 20 years from now again, you know. And I am for the training. We are doing most of the training, although it may not be perfectly documented, you know, and I think that the training is fantastic, but it's got to be put out in a logical manner, where the supervisors can understand it and can document this thing with ease, because once you get it complicated, you're going to have a nightmare, and this is what the current standard is in my opinion, a paperwork nightmare. Going down to the training certifications, the 5023s, that was my biggest problem, keeping up with those. We do still keep up with them. We don't do it by the book like you guys say. But I still make those guys sign them. We still use those 5023s. I'm negligent on the task training. I don't keep up with that, not like I should, and I've got to admit it. But we are doing it. I mean, I make sure we're doing it at our places. We do not put people on pieces of equipment unless they're trained. Qualifications of instructors: I went through the school in Oklahoma, in Krebs, back in December of 1978. A guy by the name of Ron Avner was the instructor, now deceased, and it was a real good school. The problem is: Who went to the school? Well, you had guys in there that didn't give a care about what was going on. They were up there killing three days. You had guys like me. I'd just been hired, and I was really anxious, and I really enjoyed it, and I got a lot out of the class, but yet you turned out people that weren't very good instructors. There was no way of saying, You're disqualified. You can't put somebody out there teaching unless you have somebody evaluating that person before you certify them, and I think I can certify the people at my mine site, because I have an assistant working for me, and I monitor him. Not everybody else can do that. But I think that you should put some minimums in there, like if you've got two years of college; you've taken speech; you've also taken some other things; if you've got a four-year degree, you should almost be an automatic teacher. But what you need is a follow-up, to make sure you're a good teacher. You need some kind of follow-up. I've got guys -- back when this first came out, we all had to have certified instructors, and MSHA came out and said, Well, if you'll send in that they've got these qualifications and this and that, then we'll make them an instructor. So I still have a whole bunch of guys, old employees, that are instructors. Well, how many of those guys are good instructors? Well, none of them probably today. You know, they're good for equipment instruction, to take a guy on a piece of equipment, but to get up here and do this, they'd be worthless. So, you know, back then, there was a lot of guys certified to be an instructor that probably shouldn't be today, and I know this for a fact. I do think, though, that there ought to be something in place to make sure that the quality of instruction is good, and you're going to have to have somebody going out and checking on it. The enforcement, I think -- I think an MSHA instructor can do the basics. He can determine whether your man has had the training or he's got his certificates, but I think you're going to get down to the little details of it; you're going to have problems if he's allowed to go in there and write a citation for each little paperwork thing, because just like the first gentleman said, it's going to be a field there for him to write you 20, 30 citations on little minor things; that's going to get you back in these meetings again. You can't make these operators mad by doing stuff like that. They're all going to get together and put you back in that same position. I think if it's done right, maybe if you had -- if MSHA had an education enforcer that goes out to the quarries or wherever, and he checks the records, and he says, Okay, you've got these errors here. He says, I'm going to help you correct them; you guys get them all corrected; I'm going to come back again in two or three months. He checks you, and if you're not doing it right, then he takes some kind of enforcement action, and then that takes off these little bitty citation deals -- okay? -- because that's what going to make everybody mad. Nobody's going to say anything if you come in and say, Okay, you know, you're deficient here and there; you need to correct this. Give them a chance; you know, don't come in there and start writing those things. You know, have some way of working with these operators, and then if they don't comply, you come back and it's a blatant disregard, write them up. I have no sympathy for somebody that doesn't take your advice the first time. They need to learn. But I think if you open it up where these MSHA inspectors come in here writing, you're going to have a whole lot of stuff in the courts to take, because you're probably going to find that your MSHA inspector made some mistakes, and you're going to have to eat them, you know, because they do make mistakes, too, just like I do and most of the people in this room. The hazard training for customers, you know, that's one of our biggest problems. Back when I first did my plan, Bart Benedetti [phonetic] -- I don't know if anybody in the room remembers him, and he had a lady working with him called Billie, and I can't remember her last name. But then he said, Okay, for the hazard training on customers, you have the sheet, and you have the hazards inherent to your mine, and you have the truck drivers come in and sign these. Okay. Your truck drivers come in, and as I was sitting there, I was thinking, Well, why couldn't we have the sign-in sheet, with a carbon copy. The guy comes in; you sit them there; they sign the sheet. He keeps a copy, and you keep a copy for yours. You need this for your one-time customers, because you can't make your customers mad. When you do, you're not going to be in business, and those miners out there working are not going to be there. We have people coming in for a pickup load of sand, a pickup load of gravel, you know. For the most part, our mines are well marked. We have the signage up. You know, If you get out of your truck, you're not loaded. You must stay in your vehicle at all times. However, if you're loading a pickup, you may make that man get out and stand in front of that pickup, because you don't want to accidentally knock something on top of his cab. I'm not familiar with how those guys do that, but our loaders, our loader operators have instructions not to load anybody that's not in their truck. I mean, that's a standard deal, and they don't do it. But you have a problem with the occasional guy, which is the one-time guy. You have a problem with the occasional customers that come in, and we have contract truckers that work for us. That's not a problem. We can handle those. They sign the subcontract with us every year that they'll abide by the safety laws. Most of them are stable enough, where we can have them sign the sheets and everything, and that's not a problem. It's your one-time customers, and you can't afford to make those people mad. You know, they're also a big part of your business. Contract welders and those kind of guys, I think there needs to be a well-defined limit of how long does that guy stay on your mine property in order have complete training. If he's coming in for a day or two, maybe hazard training is sufficient, if he stays in one place. However, I have contract welders that literally work with us at all five locations, and I probably feel like they probably should have maybe the 24-hour training, which I would be glad to comply and probably pay them. That's me, because I know I have some. However, I have other guys, like an electrician, that in a certain area, if you required him to do that, he's going to thumb his nose, and you're not going to get your work done. So we have big problems with that, and I don't think most of those electricians would mind hazard training with site-specific stuff. You stay in this area, and that's it. You've got to wear your hard hat; you've got to do this and that. I don't think they would mind that. Now, if they get out into the plant area, you know, I think that they should have more. I think that's something that should be required. And I think that's pretty much it. And I think the main thing I see is trying to eliminate a paperwork nightmare like we had before, and I think this is one of the items that -- the reason why we're here today, is that everybody looked at that and they saw it. I know from my dealings with it, it was -- I spent hours and hours and hours, putting stuff together and working with it, going out to the plants and working, trying to get task training oriented, you know, and it's a big job. And to have someone come in and write you a citation on each little bitty thing is not going to cut it. I mean, it's going to get you right back there. And thank you. That's all I have. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Mr. Scarbrough, I've got a couple of questions. I wasn't clear on what your point was on the newly employed, experienced miner. You indicated that somebody had to verify the experience that the individual had. I didn't know whether you were talking about the operator verifying that employment or MSHA verifying that employment or the rule providing that that employment be verified. If you could, you know, maybe address that -- MR. SCARBROUGH: Well, as I understand it and back when I was dealing with this, if a guy came from a construction industry -- say, he was a hauling unit operator for a construction outfit and he had been that for seven years, you could bring this guy in as a newly employed, experienced miner, and then give him X amount of hours of training, and then certify him. So if we're allowed to do that, if you don't verify that guy's training or verify where you worked somehow, then you're going to have a problem there, because then you'll have guys coming in and saying, well, they got two or three years here, and they really didn't. And then maybe they can operate it, but they don't have the experience and background they really need. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: So you're talking about somehow the rule provided that experience, alleged experience, be verified. MR. SCARBROUGH: Right. If I remember right -- and somebody in this room can correct me -- back then you could do that. It was allowed, to call that person a newly employed, experienced miner, if he came from another industry, doing almost the same thing. All you had to do was like an eight-hour task training or whatever. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Refresher training. MR. SCARBROUGH: Refresher-type thing and get him oriented, and I did that. I'm not saying it was right, but I was told at the time it was okay, and we did that. And I don't know if any other gentlemen in this room have also -- or ladies have done that, but at the time it was allowed. I think that, you know, you need to have some real black and white definitions on this, because if you don't, the inspector's going to come in and he's going to -- you know, he's going to say, well, They're not this or that, and you're going to get a citation. The more black and white you can have these requirements, the easier it will be, you know, to implement. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. One of your recommendations was that refresher training be allowed in as little as 15-minute increments, and I was just curious as to why 15 minutes was what you selected as a minimum. MR. SCARBROUGH: Well, I think you could do some in ten, but I think to make it legitimate, you're going to have to go 15 minutes. I don't think you can do anything less. I like 30 minutes, too, but I think with 15, you could do a session every week and hit an hour a month. Basically we do that now with five-minute safety talks every week, and we're covering more than five minutes. We use the Fatalgrams religiously. Every five-minute talk that I send out to my quarries and sand plants has a Fatalgram with it, which I think is one of the best tools that you have to give these guys. So I think it can be done that way. I think you get better results with a little bit all along, rather than, you know, one eight hours in a year and they forgot it. I can give a guy training for a lock-out, and next month go back out there and he may not remember everything. But if you went over it a little at a time and you had 15 minutes of lock-out here, after you've had initial training -- you can't do initial lock-out training in 15 minutes. But you could do some follow-up. You could do -- in 15 minutes, you could do lock-out of certain things; next week cover a lock-out of something else; and by the end of the month, you've reinforced this over and over, because I know the attention span of those guys, and it is not sometimes 30 minutes or an hour. And these guys in here know it, too. If you've got a good lock-out video, which we do, 30, 45 minutes, they'll pay attention to that pretty good, you know, but it's hard to sit there for an hour or 30 minutes and me talk and get it by them. You know, you've got to have some tools, and you guys have good tools. Those MSHA films and stuff you put out, we use those. Every plant that I have has a TV video deal, and we have all of those -- we took the liberty of copying all those MSHA tapes like on one or two tapes, so they've got everything right there, and every one of my plants has those tapes on site, so they can use those for their refresher training. So -- But you can't do first aid, maybe, in 15, 20 minutes. You might could that in hour increments. You cover shock, breathing -- I mean, however you want to do it. Some of the stuff can be covered that way, and I think that would be an effective way of doing it. And also the same way with the 24-hour deal. I agreed with the first gentleman that up to six months allowed, you know. You might even could say, Well, okay, they get eight hours the first month before hire; they get eight hours again; and then so many hours scattered out. But the more you can scatter that training out during that newly employed's training phase there, the better he's going to be, because most of these guys get hurt, at least in my company, in the first year. So the more you can enforce that as you go along, the better. If you give it to him all in the first week, he won't even know where he's at. I mean, you know, a month from now, he won't know that. But if you start him out good, give him some basics, and then later on, keep reinforcing it, you're going to do better. And I think anybody in here that's done training or teaches knows that. My wife's a school teacher, and that's what she does. She doesn't teach them WordPerfect all in one day. You know, she teaches it to them every day for so long, and at the end of six months, they know it, you know. And that's true with most things, you know. So that's my opinion on that. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. I just have one other question. You were talking about, as far as enforcement, that the best thing for MSHA to do is to come in and point out, you know, areas where maybe the operator's falling short in the training and give them an opportunity to do what he needs to do, and then issue citations at some later point. Are you talking about the initial stages of this rule going into effect, or as a general -- MR. SCARBROUGH: I think as a general rule, that every so often you should have one of your people come in that's real experienced with training, that knows what's being done and kind of go through the books and look. And it won't take them long to tell. But he can get into the intricate parts, whoever does this, and tell whether you're doing it right. And just because they find a few little paperwork errors, they don't feel like they've got to write you up. They say, Okay, I found these paperwork errors; you're going to have to correct this stuff, because under the current standard now, every violation that an inspector sees, he has to write. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Well, that's actually in the Mine Act. MR. SCARBROUGH: I know it is. I've been there for 20 years. But, anyway, if you have those and they find an error here on that -- the guy didn't mark a past training -- that's a citation. Correct? Is that correct? If he sees that, that is a citation. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Well, the Act says that if an inspector finds a violation, he has to write a citation. MR. SCARBROUGH: That's correct. So if he finds ten of these things that your supervisors made, that's ten citations right there. Okay. If he comes in, he's probably going to find more than ten, because my supervisors don't keep perfect records. And, you know, I can't be everywhere with them, and I have a system, and I can't be there with them. Also, you know, it's going to happen. If you have a good general way of checking people's book and making sure they're in compliance and they're doing what they're supposed to be doing, I think that's what you need to do. I think you're going to really make people mad. If you open it up for an inspector to come in there and write 20, 30 citations at a time on this training deal, you're going to be right back here -- I can guarantee it -- in 20 years, because they're not going to get -- they're going to take away your funding again, because you're going to make everybody mad, you know. If you're going to do it, do it right. Go in that thing and get something that works, and that way, you know, you're not going to have this trouble, because everybody wants the training and they need it. But if you make it like this, it ain't going to work. I've seen it. I've seen what happens. The biggest problem that most of the operators have are these inspectors coming in and writing little bitty nitpicky things, because they can't find any big stuff. And I've been there, and I've seen it. Not all of them are that way, but you have a few, you know. And I know you can't help who works for you. Sometimes you can't change those people. I have guys that work for me that aren't the greatest, too. You're going to have that in any big organization. But you've got limit maybe the ability on some things, and if you want to make this training thing work, that's what you need to do. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. Thank you. Rod? MR. BRELAND: Well, just to follow up on that a little bit, the flexibility thing, I think everybody's got a lot of interest in. We've heard that at every meeting and certainly MSHA has interest in that. But one of the troubling things about the short increment blocks is the tracking. You said you do -- if you were going to track that and demonstrate you'd done the training or even keep track of who's gotten the training for your own purposes, you're talking about these 15-minute blocks, and you have problems with the 5023, and I can understand that. But have you got some ideas of how you would monitor that for yourself, for your own plant? MR. SCARBROUGH: I think it's fairly easy. You have a blotter there, and you have your training here, and the meetings that those guys are at, they X, and they also sign for them. Then you go back and you're keeping track of the times of the meeting. I don't think that's too hard. I'm not going to be able to computerize that, but for me, it's not going to involve that much more on that part. I think it's pretty easy. You could have a chart here, have all your training for the year lined out practically, and have those Xs. And if a guy at the end of the year falls short, you make it up, you know. MR. BRELAND: Okay. So it would be simple for you to do a manual tracking system, and -- MR. SCARBROUGH: I'm not saying it's simple. I mean, if I'm going to have to do it that way, I will do it that -- I mean, there's nothing about this thing that's going to be simple, I can tell you. MR. BRELAND: Well, I mean, for your own purposes, wouldn't you want -- I would think, even outside of a requirement, you'd want to know what training people had had, so you'd have sort of tracking. MR. SCARBROUGH: That's correct. MR. BRELAND: I assume you have some in place now, so it really wouldn't be an additional requirement if you were allowed flexibility to use whatever it is you're doing now. MR. SCARBROUGH: I think if we had the flexibility, the paperwork would fall in place. I think our guys would rather have the flexibility. And I'm not saying we would do 15 minutes. We might only do that with two of those. MR. BRELAND: Right. MR. SCARBROUGH: The rest of them might be an hour or two, but we still have to keep up with it, you know, and I think we're better suited, by those incremental training, rather than coming in in the wintertime and eight hours. You know, everybody shuts down on a bad-weather day and you give the eight-hour training. Well, is that any way to train, you know? Most of them would rather be home that day. So you've got a couple of guys in the back that are mad. They want to be deer hunting or something, you know. So those incremental deals are the way, and the 15- minute deal, allowing people to do that, is just another tool, not saying we have to do that, but at least having the ability to do it. That's their problem if they don't want the paperwork. If they don't want it, they can do eight hours in a year. I personally like that idea. I think I can really sell this to my supervisors better if every Monday -- because we're doing it anyway. We're giving those five- minute safety talks, and they're not lasting just five minutes. They're probably 15 minutes in the morning, and so that would make it. At the end of the year, they're getting more than eight hours' training. Figure it up, you know. MR. BRELAND: I think we're all on the same page, agreeing that the quality of training what's important to everybody. MR. SCARBROUGH: Absolutely. MR. BRELAND: The -- you had a couple of sand plants and a couple of quarries. Do you have a different, like, training plan for each, or do you have like a company standard process -- MR. SCARBROUGH: No. I still use my plans that were approved back in 1979 and probably would go in and look at those, and depending on what you guys come out with, make some alterations to them. We pretty much use the standard same thing. At the sand plants, we use the same thing, and at the quarries, we use the same, because obviously you don't have explosives at the sand plants, you know. So pretty much, you know, those plants are all almost identical in what they do, with the exception of the Arkansas River. There we have a dredging operation which the Coast Guard is over the tow boats, and so you guys have no jurisdiction over them or the barges at the time. But basically what they do is essentially the same. And you just have various small things at each location that may be different, you know, such emergency numbers or location of some first aid equipment or something like that, but essentially they're the same. MR. BRELAND: That's all I had. Thank you. MR. STONE: I just had a couple of questions. First of all, about how large is your operation? MR. SCARBROUGH: Our operation is 350 people with about 125 miners, maybe 130. MR. STONE: And you currently provide a great deal of 15-minute increments and training. Is that accurate? MR. SCARBROUGH: Correct. MR. STONE: And do you maintain records of that now on the Form 5023, or are you not doing that -- MR. SCARBROUGH: I do that for refresher training, and our refresher training is conducted different from the 15-minute or five-minute safety talks. And every month, I put out -- or timely, I put out, like, This is time for first aid training, and the supervisors conduct that. And at the end of the year, I send out the final training, along with the 5023s. All of my supervisors are certified instructors, so they can do that. I'm not required by law to do this, but I do this. And that's been done ever since time began, because I realized the value of that back then. I did not like the extensive paperwork you guys had, is what I didn't like, and I don't think that's what most of these gentlemen really like. MR. STONE: Right. Well, that's certainly something that we're trying to consider alleviating and do some more flexible -- MR. SCARBROUGH: I think that's what cost you your deal was your paperwork. MR. STONE: Do you have any sense of what the paperwork time is currently per miner, that this Form 5023 is costing you? MR. SCARBROUGH: I don't think it's very much for me. I mean, I'd have to say the way I'm doing my training now, it's training that I would want them to have anyway. MR. STONE: Right. MR. SCARBROUGH: I'm not sure that you could say that it's costing. I would say if this goes in effect, I'll probably have to hire somebody to go and monitor my mines and do a whole of this, somebody like myself in 1978, because I see it's going to take a lot more work that I don't have time to do. And right now, I just monitor it, and I'm not as careful as I should be, to be perfect in it. Like I see today, if there's no change in it, where he can come in and write 20, 30 citations on it, I'm going to have to hire somebody, and the cost will be substantially more. MR. STONE: Okay. Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much, Mr. Scarbrough. The next speaker on our list is Peter Ward from Hanson Aggregates. MR. WARD: Good morning. My name is Peter Ward, P-E-T-E-R, W-A-R-D. I am on record from the Ontario meeting point by point. I did want to address something that came up twice this morning, and that's the cost of training. If you have minimum compliance, I don't believe -- you should be proud, but if you have minimum compliance, I don't believe the cost would exceed 5 cents an hour. And what I don't want this process to be hung up on is the cost of training. Education and training is a cost of doing business, and we just have to accept that. If we have people talking about the burden of training at 5 cents an hour, or if we have a Cadillac program at 10 cents an hour, what is that compared with the operating cost, say, of a 988 that guy operates at $80 an hour? I think we get sidetracked on the cost. The cost is minimal. And whether you have a huge organization like ours with over 100 million tons, when you -- if we look at our total cost and give you a lump sum, for argument's sake, three-quarters of a million dollars, whatever it may be, that would frighten the small operators. If you're looking for a cost of training -- and my friend and competitor, Ed Elliott, has offered to put in costs -- I would request that Ed do it in a cost-per-ton basis or cost-per-hour, not lump sum, because it's the small operator that's going to say, It cost them half a million dollars; we can't afford that. If you get it down to the 5 or 10 cents an hour, as a labor burden, they should be able to absorb that. If they cannot absorb that, then they are under-capitalized and shouldn't be in business. I mean, it's as simple as that. I just didn't want this meeting to get hung up on cost. It is minimal, and we don't want to load the gun for you, the payback side is so huge. At a very minimum, effective training will give you a ten-to-one payback. But I didn't want to go too far into that. We know it to be a case; we have it documented. We are submitting that. We have permission now to let you have those five-year records, and we will submit those. But nobody should be allowed to say they can't afford to train. If they can't afford to train, they can't afford to be in business. That's my five minutes. MR. STONE: No. I'm sure I would agree with you. Are you going to be submitting any other materials in writing related to costs? MR. WARD: Yes. I needed -- I was asked this at Ontario, and I needed to get authority to release numbers. But we have a four-year history that we will be submitting. MR. STONE: Okay. Because one thing that we would welcome would be any documentation you provide, not only on what the costs are, but if you had any evidence to support the paybacks. We certainly believe that they exist, but quantifying them would be a tremendous asset for us. MR. WARD: We can do the payback more than the costs, because so often people like myself have multiple responsibilities, and depending what spin I'm trying to put on it, I can either add the secretary and add the company cars, but you have these other responsibilities. That would be -- I can make the number wherever you want it to be. On the other -- it's the truth. I can make it high; I can make it low, just by padding it and putting overhead in there, part of the president's salary. But if you get it down to the costs that we were incurring through unplanned events and the costs we are now incurring through unplanned events, and all we have done is had an aggressive training program, which was as simple as teaching the people the laws that govern their trade and holding them accountable, we can show you the reduction there. If you want to get into costs, I can just say that if you get eight hours at 10 bucks an hour, allow $10 documentation for documentation, you can come up with about 5 cents an hour to be in minimal compliance. And I go back to my first statement: If they can't afford that, they really shouldn't be in business. MR. STONE: Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much, Mr. Ward. The next speaker on the list, or speakers, is Elsa Roman and Jim Murray from University of Texas at Austin. MS. ROMAN: Yes. My name's Elsa Roman, R-O-M-A-N. MR. MURRAY: James Murray, M-U-R-R-A-Y. MS. ROMAN: We represent The University of Texas at Austin. We are part of the state grants program here in the state of Texas, and the reason we decided to attend this meeting is because we want to be prepared to effectively assist the operators here in the state to comply with whatever requirements are effected in the future. There are three basic points that I would like to address, the first one being with whatever the requirements end up -- or result to be. We would like to suggest that they be as similar to Part 48 as possible. We have received quite a bit of feedback from operators on this issue, the Part 56 issue, and much of the feedback we have received is how much of a change is it going to be; how much of a change am I going to have to make, in order to stay in compliance with the requirements that are going to be effected. So we would really like to see them remain as similar to Part 48 as possible. We have worked throughout the years with many of the operators who are here in the room, and most of them are in -- most of them, of not all of them, are in compliance already, because they have been providing the training as required by Part 48. So whatever changes are made, if they can be as little as possible, that would mean having to make as few changes as possible. Would you like to add anything? MR. MURRAY: I was making note of some of the comments, and I would like to raise more questions that I would like not only you but all of the people to think about. Certainly this issue of, for instance, the truck drivers coming on the property or other visitors, short-term contractors that don't come on a regular and frequent basis, how to handle that has always been one of the biggest problems that we've seen when addressing training plans, when addressing training. A lot of plants handle it with signage. I think in some cases, when you look at smaller sites where there is no gate guard, there is no gate, and it's two or three miles into the office, they're already exposed to the hazards before, you know, they've had an opportunity to get any training, so maybe signage might be the way we want to go on those rather minimal requirements. But it's not clear in the regulations exactly what that requirement is. You can read in Part 48 what hazard training must consist of, but, of course, there's no way to test the effectiveness or if a person even sees a sign driving in. So I think that has to be amplified in the regulations, to make sure everybody is meeting the spirit as well as the letter of the law on that particular issue. The training plan issue that was raised early this morning, I think it would be a good idea for MSHA to give -- if not a form type program with a cafeteria style, like was mentioned this morning, some better guidance. I know in Part 48, it names the issues of information that must be provided, but these guys aren't in the business of putting together long federal required documents. We came up with one that we've used here in Texas, and with minor modifications, it's been generally accepted by MSHA as being a good basis. Well, if we can do it here in Texas, then I think it might be something that certainly could be done on a federal level, where you could have them kind of fill in the blanks. You're not asking for lesson plans. I don't know whether you want to do that or not, but for a training plan addressing the issue or the courses to be taught, how they're going to be taught, the course objectives or subject objectives, and the evaluation methods and the training methods, fine. That could be done on a federal basis. When it gets down to individual lesson plans for teaching those courses, that would be, you know, something I don't think anybody wants to get into right now, as far as having any regulation over that. But a general training plan on how they should approach it, with options that they could pick from, I think might be a good idea. The issue always comes up, especially from those of us in the federal grants program: How can you effectively and cost efficiently train people when you're hiring one or two at a time and doing this 24-hour training? That has always been a problem for us. Even going to a small mine site in Amarillo when we're based out of Austin, to do two or three people, would not be very cost-effective to the state grants program. The issue wa raised this morning about a form of criteria-referenced instruction through interactive CD-ROM- based computers. That, I think, might be something that has to be considered in lieu of the mandatory minimum hours of instruction. Under that, you set the criteria in the program that the men must be tested on, and they don't even realize that they are being tested on it, the way some of these programs are designed. OSHA's been using a lot of those programs. And if the person can get through and has the knowledge, minimum knowledge required by the regulations, then if he can do it in four hours rather than eight hours, so be it. Make it responsive to the subjects he must know, the knowledge he must have, rather than some arbitrary eight-hour thing. We've already eliminated the requirement that each subject have an hour assessment to it, and say, Well, the training in total for all those 12 or 10 subjects must be 24 hours for new miners and 8 hours for annual refresher, but we don't say that you have to spend 30 minutes on explosives, two hours on this or that, even within the training plan anymore. So why do we carry that further into the entire minimum requirement for annual refreshers, if we set up some criteria to judge whether they have the knowledge, which could be for those companies that have the technology, the ability to apply this interactive criteria-based training. MS. ROMAN: On the instructors' training course, that issue has also been raised. We would strongly like to emphasize consistency. We would very much appreciate guidance dealing with consistency. What the instructors' training course should be, what it should include, the subject matter, the curriculum has been addressed several times. There are many programs out there. They are all different, so what each person gets in terms of preparation is not consistent, and we have experienced how that consistency -- how that lack of consistency has affected via training. And other people have already commented on how ineffective some of the training has been, either training they have received or training they have done, where people are falling asleep, where people don't care. Because of these comments that have already been made, we strongly believe a curricula developed by MSHA is strongly needed, so that people out there doing the training are not just out there to fulfill a requirement. They are -- the whole purpose of training is effectiveness in terms of keeping people safe. And popping a video in a TV for 15 minutes or 45 minutes is not going to cut it. It's just not going to cut it, if we're talking about effectiveness. And several people have raised the issue of effectiveness. So because of that issue, we strongly feel the ITC course has to be something which gives the industry guidance on how to be an effective trainer for the purpose of reducing safety and health problems. MR. MURRAY: There is another issue I'd like to bring up, and that is we get calls virtually weekly, two or three calls a week. The contractor -- and it was mentioned this morning -- calls an operator who's asking for bids from contractors to come on their property and do some sort of work. And he says, the operator says, We've got to have this 24 hours of training or this 8 hours of training. They're not really sure. And they say, They gave us your name, and they want us to do the training for them. We have to go back and say, Well, are your people experienced in heavy industry and so forth? Well, yes; they've been doing whatever they do for a number of years. Well, under the criteria, as I understand it, in the CFR, it is basically up to the operator to decide whether they are newly hired, experienced miners, or must go through the 24- hour training as new miners. And the criteria is not clear to the mine operators how to make that decision. And basically if they call us and ask us, from what I've gathered over the years, we have to say it's based on an individual basis, but that's not a very satisfactory answer, when they might be sending different crews out during different periods of their contract. And that makes for an extreme burden on the contractor. They tell them that, You've got to do the training. Well, obviously if it's site-specific training, they have to get involved with the mine operator, if they're a contractor, to get that site-specific training. How do they do that? Well, we tell them, either they have to have their people sit in on training being done by the mine operator, or they have to get a certified trainer, which means they have to come to us and get one of their contractor people certified as an MSHA trainer, and, again, they don't have true mining experience, only in their contractor field. Then they have to go back, file their own training plan, and do training under that training plan, but then it's an aborted or a truncated form of training plan, because they still cannot do the site-specific for the mine operator that they've contracted with. Now, they can send their certified trainer to that miner operator and get that person trained under their plan and then go back and do it, but that gets pretty complex, too. So this whole issue for contractors becomes rather confusing. I've got contractors out there. Every one of their employees has a pocketful of 5023s. They have one 5023 from the contractor himself, who's filed a plan with MSHA and got it approved and they do generic training, the new miner, you know, up to the point of site-specific and the annual refresher up to the point of site-specific. But then every time that contractor sends one of his people to one of several mines that they might be working with, they have to go through site-specific training. Well, if you look carefully at the regulation, that word "site-specific" is not clarified at all. So what is site-specific? You can give training on fire and evacuation in generic terms, or you want to get into it very specific on certain mine sites. And I know deep in my heart it's not being done. Basically what's happening, I think, in a lot of cases is when they show up, they're given what is essentially hazard training, to implement the contractor's plan in order to give them the full coverage. But I think it is necessary that the issues for contractors be clarified. That is one of the areas where we're having a lot of accidents, where people are getting hurt, and I think there's things falling through the regulatory cracks on how that training must be conducted and what falls into that training. MS. ROMAN: One other issue I'd like to bring up is the training in Spanish, which has been -- or bilingual training. We at the State of Texas, our program, we have been providing training in Spanish since we have been part of the program. We translate the Fatalgrams into Spanish. We translate our material that we develop or the material that we receive from the Mine Academy into Spanish. So in preparation to meet or to help operators meet this requirement, because many of the operators that we deal with have primarily Spanish-speaking employees. We would like to see more material, primarily videos, because the video in Spanish really does assist in the training. We would like to see more material, primarily videos, being offered by the Academy or by MSHA, in the language -- in Spanish language. We do a lot of translation ourselves. We do all of the training or most of the training in the state of Texas in Spanish, but we do need more assistance, especially with these new requirements, because the mom-and-pops out there who are not fulfilling the requirement currently and who are the ones who have the Spanish-speaking employees are going to be the ones who need the most help. MR. MURRAY: The Academy role as far as providing training materials, I think, is very important and should be much more publicized and incorporated into the regulations than it is now, so that they know where to get certain material. I would also like to say with regard to the training certification for MSHA instructors, MSHA does provide a basic lesson plan for doing the instructor training course, which involves basically teaching people how to teach. It does not address specific issues of what is going to be taught. But even there, it does not dictate how quickly that course can be done. We do it on a three-day basis, and as a method of evaluation, we videotape a presentation that is required for them to become certified. But that's certainly not in any form of regulation, and it's given to the individual student at the end, to do with as he or she desires. So it's not evaluated by anyone else. There is no set regulatory criteria to say what's pass or fail in this course, so everybody makes mistakes when they're taking a how-to-train-the-trainer course, when they get up, especially some of the people that are sent that are not used to public speaking at all. And so we can't say that they're not going to do better when they're among their own people, so we're not looking for perfection. But there is no minimum standard addressed. Right now the criteria is primarily based on whether we feel they met certain basic criteria from the lesson plan, as far as coming up with performance objectives, giving overviews and doing an evaluation, and addressing the points generally that they have given in their overview and lesson plan. But there is no criteria there, and as to whether the course could be one day or a week -- I heard somebody say that they have one course that's a 40-hour course on how to do, you know, the training course. That's not established yet either, so that might want to be addressed. That's all I have. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. I've got a couple of questions. It wasn't clear to me in your earlier statement, Ms. Roman, what percentage of operators you think are in compliance right now with Part 48. I thought I heard you say that you thought that most of them were, but -- MS. ROMAN: Most of the operators in this room, if not all of them in this room. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Oh, okay. I guess that's what I'm looking for, is to get some sense for what the breakdown is of operators who are in compliance, you know, for the most part with Part 48 requirements, and what percentage of operators may not be anywhere near to being in compliance. MS. ROMAN: Well, in the state of Texas, 80 percent, more than 80 percent of the mine sites are less than ten employees. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Right. MS. ROMAN: So if I had to just pick a figure out of the air, I'm going to say at least 60 percent of the operators in the state of Texas are not in compliance. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. Not even close to being in compliance; I mean, are not providing any training at all or providing minimal training? MS. ROMAN: Right. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. You also mentioned, I guess, a generic training plan, to provide assistance to particularly small operators in developing their program. Now, did you say that you have got something along those lines, because if you do -- MR. MURRAY: Yes, ma'am. We developed a plan that we use in the instructor training course, to give them a clue -- CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: As to what -- MR. MURRAY: -- as to what they have to do -- CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: -- a plan should look like -- MR. MURRAY: -- and it's cross-referenced to the regulations, so they know why they're doing it. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Could we get a copy of that? MR. MURRAY: Sure. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. I mean, you can either give it to us today or send it in by mail later on, whatever is most convenient for you. Yes. We would appreciate having a copy of that. Let's see. MS. ROMAN: If I can make another comment regarding the instructors' training course, some of the feedback we have received from operators is the need or the desire for a refresher. We have explored the possibility of offering a refresher ITC, like a one-day or something along those lines, because people do recognize that it's been five years or ten years or fifteen years since they have gone through the course, and things have changed. So maybe addressing or thinking about the possibility of, within the ITC requirements or standards or whatever it is you decide upon, to have some type of requirement for a refresher. MR. MURRAY: That might go along with what was raised earlier, where you've got dead people on the rolls as certified trainers, that would check out -- I don't know how MSHA would say that a trainer is qualified or not qualified today, because inspectors don't have time to sit in on classes, as you know. They're shorthanded enough, so to send them out on a special mission to watch one trainer at one mine site do training is a little unrealistic. But maybe some follow- up -- and most of them are asking for it -- I will say this -- and they would like a more content-based refresher than so much going over the fundamentals of teaching. They want to say, Well, what's a better way to teach accident prevention. They want to get more specific sometimes in a follow-up type training. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. I just have one other question. You indicated that some guidance or some specificity on what site-specific hazard training might be. MR. MURRAY: Exactly. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Do you have any suggestions for how we might define that or what we might require? MR. MURRAY: I would prefer to defer to the mine operators themselves on that issue. I could come up with some, but I don't think I'm prepared at this point to give any details. Obviously there are some generic portions, most of the topics that are addressed under annual refresher, but I think I could very easily, based on the questions I've heard over the years, determine what type of site-specific questions. I'd be glad to provide that. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Rod? MR. BRELAND: I want to follow up on a couple of things. One, Ms. Roman, you talked about in general people want us to stay as much like Part 48 or similar as possible. I assume that's in the training requirement, not in the recordkeeping area. MS. ROMAN: Both. MR. BRELAND: Both? MS. ROMAN: Uh-huh. MR. BRELAND: Okay. In using the same kind of format, the 5023s and stuff? That's the feedback you have? MS. ROMAN: I didn't get too much specific feedback, specifically on 5023s, but the comments we've received are, I want to make as little change as possible to what I'm doing already. MR. BRELAND: Okay. MR. MURRAY: One thing I would add: Back in 1985, '86, the Mining Academy came up with a computer-based 5023 form, and it was not Windows-based. It doesn't work on most computers today, and the man that designed it has been transferred somewhere else, so they don't claim to know anything about it now. I still have one copy left, and I would loan that, up until a few years ago, and I never heard back from people, saying it wasn't working on some of the newer computers. But that should be a basis. Like the man said, MSDSs now can be put on computers; why not the 5023. And that would certainly, especially for the larger operations, where it really becomes a burden, keeping all those individual booklets, would be a read godsend. MR. BRELAND: You talked about the time related for training not being hours but the subject. MR. MURRAY: Competency rather than minimum hours, if you will. MR. BRELAND: You know, some of the comments earlier, you're talking about that have to relate to tasks and maybe the person's capability or their prior knowledge to some of it, or are you talking about in all subjects, even the general -- MS. ROMAN: Well, for instance, any subject that you're going to teach, you've got to come up with certain performance objective that you're trying to get across to the student. Those can be built into some form of assessment in a computer-based training, to see if that person is being trained through that, knows that information, and that meets question that most people are asking: How do we test the effectiveness? I'm not proposing that we get into pre- and post- testing, you know, after we do platform training. But most students I've heard from that have taken tests on these interactive computers, they don't really feel like they're being tested, because if they miss the question, it runs them back through the program again, until they get the answer right. And that's why sometimes they can get through it, especially on annual refresher. Some of those guys, it's not a question of the information that they have. They've been trained; they know it. When there's a noncompliance, in many cases, you and I both know what the reason is. It's non-enforcement by the operator themselves. And so if they've got the knowledge, why waste the money having them sit in a classroom for eight hours, if it's not a training problem? And that's why I say criterion-based training would be much more effective, where the minimum criteria of information that they have could be assessed. MR. BRELAND: Okay. MR. MURRAY: If they meet that assessment, then they can go back to work. MR. BRELAND: Do you have some suggestions on development of that minimum criterion? Is that something you're doing? MR. MURRAY: Yes. It would take almost something like this, where the professionals in the field that are doing a lot of the training could sit down very easily -- and the Academy people -- and develop criteria on each one of those subjects that we're talking about. MR. BRELAND: If you had some ideas or examples, that would probably be good to submit. MR. MURRAY: Okay. MR. BRELAND: If you have ideas also for the requirement for -- you mentioned the refresher training, I think, Elsa, of the trainers themselves. There's a two-part issue or question on that. One, you say there's this multiple of types of instructor training courses that are going on. If you have a more favored one, you should make that known, what it is. And if you have a means that you think is effective for assuring that trainers are staying current or doing effective training, those suggestions would be of interest to us as well. The other thing, on the bilingual training, you said that you do most of the bilingual training in Texas. You mean, most of the training you provide is bilingual, or you do most of the bilingual training that is done in the state of Texas? MS. ROMAN: I would say that we do most of the bilingual training that is done in the state of Texas. MR. BRELAND: Okay. So you spend a great deal of your time doing that, your work group themselves. MS. ROMAN: Yes. MR. BRELAND: Okay. MS. ROMAN: And we have noticed over the years, as people have become more familiar with who we are and with what the requirements are, the percent of training we are doing in Spanish has steadily increased. MR. BRELAND: Okay. How about the materials? You say you do some translation, and I was aware of that, with Fatalgrams and some other things. MS. ROMAN: Uh-huh. MR. BRELAND: But are you sharing that back with the Academy now? MR. MURRAY: In fact, in the Academy's products catalog, they have listed some of the videos that we've translated into Spanish. They're basically the same video with just voice-over in Spanish. MR. BRELAND: That's all I had. Thank you. MS. ROMAN: And we do provide Fatalgrams free of charge to anyone in the state of Texas, and we also provide them to other state grants programs, so that they can share them as they wish. MR. BURNS: Have you had discussions with the Academy about producing the videos in Spanish and English, you know, when they start, because it's not the same -- I mean, I've done that myself, gone from English to Spanish, and it's not the same thing as developing it originally in Spanish. MR. MURRAY: We certainly are not in -- MR. BURNS: Sometimes you have to stop the video -- MR. MURRAY: -- the, you know, production of videos. What we did was offer a while back to do the voice- over for that, and that's as far as we've gone on that issue. But it would be something that the Academy certainly has the facilities to do. Whether they have the personnel to do it, I'm not sure. MS. ROMAN: The latest videos in Spanish from the Academy really have impressed me in the quality of both the video and the translation, because we take a look at hundreds of videos in Spanish, and I'll tell you that the vast majority of them are really not that great. So obviously the Academy has found a resource to do that for the industry, and if they would continue to do that, it would be really great. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: That's been recently, that the quality has improved? MS. ROMAN: The last year or so. Yes. MR. BURNS: Okay. I guess the only other question I had for you was the issue of the contractors. Is that an issue that is brought to your attention pretty regularly? MR. MURRAY: Very regularly. I would say there's hardly a week goes by that I don't receive at least one call from a contractor who has just applied to work on a mine site, and he wants to know what he has to do to comply, and the regulations are very confusing. MR. BURNS: Yes. Okay. That's what I wanted to find out, how big of an issue that really is. MR. MURRAY: And, of course, we don't know how many contractors are out there, because of the way the system works. If you ever apply and get a number, then you're on the list forever. MR. STONE: I just have a couple of questions really of clarifications of previous questions. One has to do with your statement concerning Part 48 and the requests of operators that the new regulation be as similar to Part 48 as possible. At the same time, we are hearing requests for more flexibility in the rules, and you also expressed a desire to have the regulations themselves clarified, so that the language is clear, so that, for example, for contractor training, it becomes easier for them to understand what they must do to be effectively trained. It seems to me that these are not necessarily in conflict. The greater flexibility is not necessarily in conflict with being as close to Part 48. The fact that someone might be able to comply with Part 46, the same way they comply with 48, doesn't mean that they couldn't comply through some other means that might be more flexible or easier. MR. MURRAY: I think we are saying that they'd like it easier, not harder, so they'd like less subjects rather than more, at least the same subjects. MR. STONE: Right. Okay. MR. MURRAY: That's what, I think, we're saying. MR. STONE: Okay. But the point was that the fact that you're requesting it be similar to 48 doesn't mean that you want the language to be identical. You want it to be clearer or more flexible, but still effective. The other question -- maybe I just didn't understand what you said earlier. You said that you believe about 60 percent of the small mines in -- aggregate operations in Texas currently provide -- don't comply or provide no training at all. I didn't understand which one -- MS. ROMAN: Don't comply with the Part 48 training parts. MR. STONE: Don't comply. Okay. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Substantially don't comply? MS. ROMAN: Substantially don't -- MR. MURRAY: I would have to say so. I've made calls to a lot of them -- and they're mom-and-pop operations -- and a lot of the families are the employees, and they just don't see the need. It's -- CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: They're really not doing any kind of training at all. MR. MURRAY: Basically they say they know how to -- they've been working around here, haven't been hurt since '73, so -- that's when he lost his leg. MR. STONE: And a related question: One of the first things that you said, I thought, was that most are already in compliance with Part 48. Is the "most" -- I didn't understand -- MS. ROMAN: Most of the people in this room. MR. STONE: That was your response. I'm sorry. Okay. That's it. That was my only other question. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Anything else? (No response.) CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much. We have reached the end of the individuals who have signed up to speak, and I would like to ask now if there is anyone in the room who has not spoken, who would like an opportunity to come up here and make some -- yes. MR. SUMMERS: My name's Don Summers, on-site safety and safety consultant. I've had the privilege of being on both sides of the fence with MSHA, as well as the independent contractor. I guess my first question: Are we going to change the Mine Act to comply with Part 46 and Part 48? We was talking about the inspectors coming out and advising. I don't think the Mine Act allows the inspector to do this. As working with contractors, I think the training plans should be submitted, should be individually for that particular contractor. We go on Part 48, and we talk about explosives and the eight subjects or nine subjects that's required by law to be covered under Part 48 training. For instance, an Anthony Crane or a small operator might not have the explosives; they might not have the high walls to contend with. We have a certain amount of subjects that's required by law to cover, and it doesn't apply. It's not a rubber stamp. It doesn't apply to everyone. So we need flexibility for each contractor. We can't have just a stamped plan and everybody falls into the die. That doesn't happen. I've had the fortune of going to about 22 states, all the way from Washington State to Florida, from Minnesota down in Texas. Each district we go through, whether it be metal/nonmetal or coal is a different interpretation. That's a problem with people throughout the United States. How are we going to correct that? I don't have any idea. But it's something that you guys ought to be aware of. That's all I have. MR. BRELAND: I don't have any questions, just a comment. You know, the Educational Field Service group is going to be working with trying to make that more consistent, as far as the differences across district lines, on how we've applied training the past. When you talk about plans that exist, that's something different than the Part 46, but it's all being kept in mind as this is going forward. MR. BURNS: I guess your first statement, you know, we don't have the authority to change the Mine Act, and we're not going to be doing that. But certainly working within the Mine Act, I think there may be some ability to deal with some of the people we're talking about here, to evaluate plans and evaluate what's going on and not necessarily write citations. That could either be done by the Educational Field Service group, who will not be conducting inspections or investigations, and those are the cases where the authorized representative is required to write a citation. So there may be some flexibility within the Mine Act. This is really the first meeting where this has really been raised as an issue, so we haven't had a real chance to evaluate it, according to the Mine Act, but I think there may be some flexibility there, to do that sort of thing, to help the smaller operators or even a larger operator that may not have a complete plan, but is still effectively training people, but there are areas that they are somewhat deficient, to make corrections and improve their plan and not have to be faced with heavy enforcement. So I think certainly Rod's group can do that, and there may be some other opportunities similar to the CAV program, where maybe that can be done, too. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much, Mr. Summers. MR. SUMMERS: Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: I'd like to ask again: Is there anyone else in the room who would like an opportunity to speak? (No response.) CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Is there anyone in the room who's already spoken who would like to come up and address some of the issues that have been raised today? (No response.) CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. What I'm going to do now is just give you a real short summary of some of the comments we've gotten at some of the other meetings, and also give you an idea of what comes after this, as far as the rule-making process is concerned. As far as MSHA approval of training plans, we have gotten some comments that plans should be submitted to MSHA for approval as they are currently under Part 48, whereas other commenters have suggested, as was suggested here today, that minimum criteria be set in the rule or in some other fashion, and that if operators meet these minimum criteria, that the plans would be considered to be approved. As far as minimum training increments for -- particularly for refresher training, we got a lot of comments, suggesting that the 30-minute or more restriction that's currently in Part 48 not be adopted in Part 46, and that short periods of training should be allowed to be put towards compliance with the eight-hour annual refresher training. As far as independent contractors, I mean, we got a lot of comments today, as we have at some of the other meetings, talking about responsibilities of contractors versus production operators for training for employees of contractors. And we have had a lot of production operators or operators state that independent contractors should be responsible for the comprehensive training for contractor employees while the production operator would be responsible for site-specific hazard training for those employees. And, again, the whole issue of categories of various types of employee: Who is a miner, for purposes of training, and who must receive the 24 hours of new miner training or the 8 hours of annual refresher training? Who should get site-specific hazard training? We've gotten a lot of comments indicating that those categories of employees should be specifically set out in any rule that we develop, and that it is clear who needs to get what kind of training. We've gotten a lot of comments, saying that the 8 hours of initial training of the 24 hours of new miner training, which is required in Part 48, should not be adopted into the Part 46 training requirements. A lot of people have pointed out that some of the mine sites that will be affected by this rule are very small, and that it is really not necessary to require 8 hours of the comprehensive, initial new miner training before a miner is allowed to begin work, and that it should either be a lesser period of time, such as 4 hours or 2 hours, or cast in terms of specific areas that need to be covered before a miner can begin work. I would say we've had pretty unanimous agreement that supervisors should receive the similar training to what miners are currently required to receive under Part 48, and as many of you probably know, I mean, there has been a change to Part 48 recently, which brings supervisors under the same requirements as miners. As far as training instructor qualifications, we've gotten a broad spectrum of comments all across the board on this issue. Some commenters have advocated that the rule establish no specific requirements for instructors, that mine operators should have the discretion to determine who is qualified to give miner training, whereas other individuals have advocated that the Part 48 type instructor qualification system be adopted in Part 46. There have been a number of individuals who have indicated that they believe people with the hands-on experience at mine sites can provide very good training, although they may not really satisfy, you know, the Part 48 type instructor requirements that are in effect currently under Part 48. We still are taking a look at how we distinguish between new miners and experienced miners. We've gotten some comments today and at some of the other meetings that whatever we put into Part 46, whoever is currently in compliance with Part 48, should not have to alter significantly what they're doing under Part 48 to comply with anything under Part 46. And I think that that consideration will probably have a lot of bearing on how we determine what definitions we develop for new miners versus experienced miners. And we have also gotten a lot of comments that whatever we put together in Part 46 should recognize OSHA training, because you have a lot of crossover of employees and a lot of individuals, miners as well as others, receive training under OSHA, and that we should accept that in some fashion if it's appropriate, as compliance with MSHA miner training requirements. As far as effective date and compliance deadlines, some people have advocated that we give six months after the publication date for compliance with new Part 46 requirements. I would say we have probably gotten more suggestions that the deadline, the compliance deadline, looked more like a year, to allow the industry and affected individuals to come up to speed with what we may require. I think that that probably pretty much summarizes the main areas, the main issues that we've gotten comments. As far as what happens next, as I indicated in my opening statement, we're intending to develop a proposed rule that will be published in the Federal Register sometime in the early spring of this year. We've got a very short time deadline, so the sooner the better, but obviously it's going to take some time to develop the rule and the preamble that goes with it, and to get the necessary clearances, bureaucratic clearances, within the Department and also within -- you know, from the Office of Management and Budget, which also has got to review the rule. After the rule is published, there is what's called a comment period after that, during which we will hold, I would expect, at least two public hearings, which would be similar in format to the meetings that we're holding now. Written comments will be received during the comment period. Everyone here is encouraged to participate at that time, and after the comment period closes, which will be several months after the publication of the proposed rule, we will then go into the development of the final rule, which, as I indicated, we are expected to develop and publish on or before September 30 of 1999. So that will give you some idea of what our schedule is going to be. You know, keep your eye on the Federal Register, on whatever other means you have of getting information about what is going on in MSHA, for, you know, times and dates and deadlines and things like that. Again, I encourage you, if you've got anything else that you would like us to consider, to submit it to us on or before February 1 in writing, additional comments, suggestions. If you need to know what address to send that to, you can come up to the front. But basically it's the Office of Standards, Regulations, and Variances in MSHA, at the Arlington address, which is 4015 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, Virginia 22203. If there's anything else, speak now or forever hold your peace. If you have any questions, you know, any additional things that you'd like to discuss with us, please feel free to come to the front at the end of the meeting, which is right now. So thank you very much. (Whereupon, at 12:00 noon, the meeting in the above-entitled matter was concluded.) // // // // // // // // // // // REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE IN RE: Public Meeting on Mine Safety and Health DATE: January 5, 1999 LOCATION: Dallas, Texas I hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence are contained fully and accurately on the tapes and notes reported by me at the hearing in the above case before the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Date: January 7, 1999 Barbara Wall Official Reporter Heritage Reporting Corporation 1220 L Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20005