BEFORE THE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION MEETING FOR PUBLIC COMMENT ) 30 CFR PART 46, TRAINING AND RETRAINING OF MINERS ENGAGED IN SHELL DREDGING OR EMPLOYED AT SAND, GRAVEL, SURFACE STONE, SURFACE CLAY, COLLOIDAL PHOSPHATE, OR SURFACE LIMESTONE MINES Pages: 1 through 166 Place: Northbrook, Illinois Date: December 7, 1998 BEFORE THE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION ) MEETING FOR PUBLIC COMMENT ) ) 30 CFR PART 46 ) TRAINING AND RETRAINING OF ) MINERS ENGAGED IN SHELL ) DREDGING OR EMPLOYED AT ) SAND, GRAVEL, SURFACE STONE,) SURFACE CLAY, COLLOIDAL ) PHOSPHATE, OR SURFACE ) LIMESTONE MINES ) Pine Room Hilton Northbrook 2855 North Milwaukee Avenue Northbrook, Illinois Monday, December 7, 1998 The above-entitled matter came on for hearing, pursuant to notice, at 8:00 a.m. PANEL MEMBERS: KATHY ALEJANDRO, Chair Metal and Nonmetal Mine Safety and Health Arlington, Virginia KEVIN BURNS Metal and Nonmetal Mine Safety and Health Arlington, Virginia ROSLYN FONTAINE Office of Standards Regulations and Variances ROD BRELAND Western Operations Manager Educational Field Services RON FORD Office of Standards Regulations and Variances ROBERT ALDRICH USDOL Office of the Solicitor I N D E X SPEAKER PAGE Chairperson Alejandro 3 John C. Henriksen 8 Illinois Association of Aggregate Producers Randy Logsdon 23 Vulcan Materials Company Raymond R. Peterson 49 Video Information Systems Training Associates, Inc. William Pautler 63 Kincaid Stone Company Ed Elliott 68 Rogers Group, Inc. Daniel P. Foltyniewicz 83 Risk Management Network Mark William Withey 88 Evenson Explosives, LLC Robert Stalder 101 U.S. Silica Raymond Peterson 106 Mark William Withey 111 John C. Henriksen 113 Scott Maxey 121 Badger Mining Corporation Ed Elliott 134 Mark W. Withey 135 Randy Logsdon 138 John Howard 140 Illinois Eastern Community Colleges Pat Campbell 156 Department of Natural Resources Office of Mines and Minerals P R O C E E D I N G S MS. ALEJANDRO: Good morning. My name is Kathy Alejandro. I am with Metal and Nonmetal Mine Safety and Health, Mine Safety and Health Administration, and I'd like to welcome you here today for our first of seven public meetings on the Part 46 rule-making. On behalf of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, I would like to welcome you. 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'd like to take this opportunity to introduce the members of the MSHA panel who are with me this morning. From this end, on over this direction, we have Rod Breland, who is Western Operations Manager for Educational Field Services; Kevin Burns to my immediate right, who is also with the Mine Safety and Health Administration, Metal and Nonmetal Mine Safety and Health; Ron Ford and Roslyn Fontaine are with the Office of Standards, Regulations, and Variances; and Robert Aldrich, on the end, 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,l 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 1999. The regulations that we will be developing must include minimum requirements in Section 115 of the Mine Act. I'd like to summarize those requirements briefly. It 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. It 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 pay. It requires that miners be reimbursed for additional costs they incur incidental to training and provides that mine operators must maintain miners' training certificates and furnish such records to the miners. In addition to these minimum requirements, we are 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 I would emphasize why. I mean, we are looking for suggestions, but we are also looking for rationales for why certain requirements should or should not be included. We have scheduled public meetings at six other locations in the coming weeks, including Denver; Albany, New York; Portland, Oregon; Ontario, California; Dallas; and Atlanta. And this is to give as many individuals and organizations as possible an opportunity to present their views. We intend to conduct this meeting in an informal manner, and as you can see, a court reporter is making a verbatim transcript of the proceedings. As I've already told you, if you wish to sign up to speak, there is a sign- up sheet right here, which I think everyone who's here right now has probably already signed up, and I've asked you to sign the list of attendees in the back of the room. You may also, if you choose, submit written statements and information, either during the course of this hearing or after the hearing, which we will consider while the proposed rule is being developed. Although we don't have any specific deadline for when written comments should be submitted, I would strongly encourage you to submit anything in writing that you wish to submit no later than February 1 of 1999, and this will ensure that it will get the full consideration that it deserves. Although we are most interested in what you all have to say to us, if you do have any questions as the meeting proceeds, we will attempt as best we can to address those questions. We're specifically interested in comments addressing certain areas, although we strongly encourage you to comment on any issue that's related to miner safety and health training at the currently exempt mines. The issues that we're interested in were outlined in the November 3 Federal Register notice that announced this schedule of public meetings, but I will summarize those questions, those issues for you here, so you understand what context we're talking about. One of the issues that we're interested in: Should we define certain terms in the regulation, including terms such as "new miner" and "experienced miner"? What subjects, if any, 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 qualifications are appropriate? I would now like to introduce the first speaker this morning. I wold ask that all speakers, who as they sit down to make their presentation, state and spell their names for the court reporter before beginning their presentation. And I would like to thank you very much for attending, and I look forward to a productive meeting. The first name that I have on the list is John Henriksen of the Illinois Association of Aggregate Producers. Mr. Henriksen? MR. HENRIKSEN: Yes. Thank you. I gave the court reporter my card, so she can get my name spelled correctly. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. Thank you. MR. HENRIKSEN: You're welcome. Good morning. My name is John Henriksen. I serve as the Executive Director of the Illinois Association of Aggregate Producers. The IAAP is the trade association representing Illinois's non-coal mining industry. The IAAP represents the companies mining 95 percent of this state's construction aggregates, 100 percent of this state's silica sand, and 100 percent of the stone this state mines to manufacture cement. Our over 105 member companies range in size from mom-and-pop operations that mine less than 50,000 tons a year, all the way to companies that produce well over 10 million tons of our products a year. Our members currently operate in 80 out of 102 Illinois counties, and we are a mainstay of this state's economy. I appreciate the opportunity to come regarding the mine safety training rules being proposed for our industry, to replace Part 48. Our association and our industry is committed to worker safety. Many of our member companies have their own in-house safety personnel who conduct periodic safety training. Other members ensure that their personnel attend safety seminars put on by the Illinois Aggregate Producers Risk Management Association or put on through our State's grant program. Our association has a Safety Committee that encourages a proactive safety culture and works to keep our members up to speed on safety issues. Our bottom line and our industry bottom line is this: Effective safety training is critical to our industry. But let me stress what I just said. Effective safety training is critical to our industry. To be truly effective, the safety training rules that MSHA will put in place for our industry must be designed with two key objectives in mind. First, these rules should minimize nonessential administrative requirements that may be counterproductive or detract from the essential functions of safety and health training. Second, these rules should permit as much flexibility as possible to allow operators to provide safety and health training that will be effective in helping to prevent injury and illness to miners at their operations. In a nutshell, MSHA's new rules should minimize paperwork and maximize flexibility for our operators. Now, you asked for our rationale, why our rules should be different than Part 48, and I understand that. And in order to understand why our rules must minimize paperwork and maximize flexibility, MSHA must keep in mind the key differences between the coal and non-coal mining industries. As an example, let me contrast the coal and non-coal mining industries in this state. In Illinois, we currently have 15 active surface coal mines in operation and four active underground coal mines, a total of 19 active mines. I mean actively mining coal. These coal mines employ, according, to your statistics, approximately 4,366 employees. That's surface, prep, and underground miners in this state. Now, I want you to contrast these numbers to our state's non-coal mining industry. In Illinois, we currently have 419 active surface aggregate mines -- stone, sand, gravel, silica sand, clay -- 419 active surface aggregate mines, and also six active underground aggregate mines. According to MSHA statistics, the Illinois non-coal mining industry employs approximately 3,519 employees. That's your statistics. So you need to consider what these statistics mean. We have 20 sand, gravel, and stone mines in Illinois for every one coal mine roughly. Yet there are more coal miners than aggregate miners in our state right now. Given these statistics, it stands to reason that MSHA's Part 48 mine safety training rules, regulations designed primarily for underground coal mines with large work forces, are not appropriate for us. The majority of our companies have small work forces. The majority of our companies hire one miner at a time. The majority of our companies do not have central office staffs, dedicated to compiling and filing government paperwork. Finally, underground coal mines and surface aggregate mines don't have the same safety challenges. Again, given the structure of our industry, MSHA's new rules must minimize paperwork and maximize flexibility, to be truly effective. And that's what we're here for today. That's what I'm talking about, and that's what I know that you're working on. You want rules that are effective for us, that work for us and protect our workers. And to do so, it can't be a mirror image of Part 48; it can't track the mistakes of the past. The Coalition for Effective Mine Training, the CEMT, has put together a draft set of rules as an alternative to MSHA's Part 48. These rules comply with Section 115 of the Mine Safety and Health Act, and these rules will minimize paperwork and maximize flexibility. Our association supports the CEMT proposal and submits that the following concepts developed by this group should be included in MSHA's new rules. MSHA's new rules should provide for the automatic approval of training plans that comply with the subjects and hours required by the Mine Act. Thus, if an operator's plan contains what Section 115 requires, that plan is in compliance. Automatic approval would eliminate the paperwork and time required by having MSHA centrally approving our plans. Secondly, the new rules keep the primary responsibility for training contractor employees on the contractor. The contractor, not the mine operator, is in the best position to train his or her employees in the health and safety aspects of their particular tasks. MSHA's new rules should also make it clear that miners need comprehensive training. Contractor employees need only be provided hazard training by the mine operator. It doesn't make sense to require comprehensive miner training for people who need construction safety training. The new rules also must provide flexibility in deciding who is qualified to train. Our industry must have the option of using employer-approved competent persons to train our work force. Somebody who has task know-how and knowledge about how to do the task safely is as effective as an MSHA-certified instructor. Certification alone does not equal competence. The new rules that you all will be developing with the input from our industry should promote flexibility in the delivery of training. The rules should allow the operator to choose classroom training, structured on-the-job training, the use of modern technology, or a combination of all three. the mine operator should choose the training mode that is best suited for his or her operation and work force. The new rules should be flexible enough to allow us to spread out the 24 hours of inexperienced miner training requirement over 60 days. Spreading out such training not only is a flexible approach to this legal requirement, but it does improve and encourages retention of material. There's nothing magical about having that training stacked together. You have it broken up and given to the new miner over that 60-day period. I believe and we believe it will encourage the retention of the important things you're trying to impart. The new rules should increase the operator's flexibility in the selection of refresher topics. Annual refresher training should address the most significant risks that a group of employees are likely to encounter and refresh employees on safety and health standards that are critical but rarely used. The operator must be able to choose the refresher topics that are of most benefit to his or her company, site, and work group. The new rules should allow our operators to count attendance at safety meetings against the 8-hour refresher training requirement. In addition, these rules should also eliminate the requirement that each session last 30 minute.s There's nothing magical about 30 minutes. This change would allow for effective training via short tailgate talks. That can be an effective way of imparting important information to people. And, finally, the new rules should allow the operator to choose whether to keep training records at the mine site or at another, more central, location. I would point out -- I know most of the members of the audience, and there are people here from all over Illinois. Some of the folks here have one operation that they own or are responsible for. Some of the people in this room are responsible for training, safety training, in 25 locations. It doesn't make sense to have only one way to store and keep records. If it's convenient for the operator to keep the records at his or her scale house because they have one operation, that's fine. If they have three, four, five pits, with a central office, it makes sense to let them keep the safety records at a central location. With modern technology, it's quite easy to transfer data from one point to the other. So the operators should be able to choose the record storage option that best suits his or her operation. All of these CEMT concepts comply with the letter and spirit of Section 115 of the Act while addressing some of the patent weaknesses of Part 48 in relation to our industry. Moreover, such rules would be effective for our industry, because again they minimize paperwork and maximize flexibility. And that's really what our goal is: to come up with rules that promote safety. Let me conclude my presentation by touching on the need for a strong state grants program. MSHA needs to carefully review the level of funding allocated to state grants programs during the next fiscal year. Given that MSHA's rules are to go into effect on January 1, 2000, it is incumbent upon your agency to ensure that adequate funding is in place to handle the upsurge in required safety training. Absent an increase in such funding, our industry may not have sufficient assets available to adequately train our work force. Bear in mind the State of Illinois put in place a blasting program. There was a one-year, for lack of a better word, wrap-up. There was a one-year time where these rules were in place, where we could train all our people, where we could get our people certified, and get our programs on line. Then the next year, after that one-year phase-in period, the rules became effective and were enforceable against our operators. As I understand what is intended of this rule package, they'll be effective or they'll be final, rather, in September of 1999 and enforceable January 1, year 2000. That's a pretty short period of time to get everybody in compliance. Given that fact, it will be very important for MSHA to adequately support their state grants program, to make sure the state people can jump in and help us get our people up to 100 percent compliance. We have an historic opportunity to put together a mine safety training program for our industry that works, a chance to correct past mistakes. I urge you all to carefully consider our comments when you craft your program. And, again, thank you for the opportunity to be bale to discuss this group. Thank you. MS. ALEJANDRO: I actually just have a couple of questions. MR. HENRIKSEN: Yes. MS. ALEJANDRO: I don't want to put you on the spot, and if, you know, you want to submit something in writing or address it at some later time, that's fine. You indicated that you believe the contractor employees should be provided hazard training only, and they don't need comprehensive training. MR. HENRIKSEN: Not in the same regard as a person who is working at one of our operations. Correct. MS. ALEJANDRO: And I guess what you're essentially saying is the assumption is that a contractor employee would not be directly involved in the extraction of -- MR. HENRIKSEN: Correct. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. I'm probably less familiar with the nonmetal industry than I am with the coal industry. I mean, in coal, there's an increasing use of contractor employees in the production process. Is that typical of your operations? MR. HENRIKSEN: No. That term of art is usually -- for metal/nonmetal is for folks who come on, contract haulers, people that might be involved in erecting machinery. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. So they don't get involved, typically, in the extraction process. MR. HENRIKSEN: Usually not. Again, I would -- there -- we'll have some other safety professionals speaking that you might want to direct those particular questions to. But as a whole, we're not the same as -- again, we're not like the coal mining industry, that may employ contract, like contract mining people. We have some contract drilling people, but, again, that's another thing as well. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. And then I just have one other comment and, again, a question, which you don't need to answer now if you choose not to. But at the end of your comments, you were talking about the anticipated short compliance deadline after these rules, these final rules are published. We are under a deadline of publishing these rules by September 30, 1999, and that raises a question, once they are published, how much time does the industry and everyone associated with the industry need to get up to speed, to comply with the rules that are put into place. And I would say we are looking for some input from you all now or, you know, as this thing wends on, as far as what period of time would be appropriate for compliance. MR. HENRIKSEN: I think a minimum of a year, because -- MS. ALEJANDRO: After the date of publication? MR. HENRIKSEN: Yes, because I look at our association role is to work with our industry in this state and work with our sister associations, to try to make sure our people are up to speed, to help our folks. Again, it's a very disparate industry. MS. ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. HENRIKSEN: We have people in this room who work for companies that are leaders in this continent on safety training, and you have people here also from small mines that also have excellent safety programs. I'm sure they'll speak today. But we have -- there are some very small operations in this state, people with three, four people. I visit operations that have two people working. And it's going to take a long time to get these folks up to speed. And what is counterproductive is January 1, 2000, rolls around and have these guys be banged for not having a safety plan in place. That's not productive, because all that does is they get a violation with this, but it doesn't encourage safety. I think at least a year. I think it would be good for MSHA -- MSHA now has a safety component that's different than the enforcement component. In fact, that person who operates out of Kentucky in this region is on our safety committee. I'd like to be able to -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Are you talking about the training? MR. HENRIKSEN: Yes. MS. ALEJANDRO: Jesse Cole [phonetic]? MR. HENRIKSEN: Well, there's Leland from Kentucky is on -- Leland Payne is on our safety committee. We'd like to be able to work with these people and partner on some safety training that will work, some plans that will work on some processes that work. We'd like to be on the same page with you all, so when these rules become effective, we can -- you know, our people can truly say they've had a chance to come into compliance; they've had a chance to figure out what their training program should be. So I don't think a year is inappropriate at all, and I consider -- I see us do training, and I see hopefully partnering with you all, through your regional training people, not your enforcement people, but your training people, to get our folks up to speed on what needs to be done, because our industry is not -- We are a very disparate industry, very disparate industry. Again, you have operations like Vulcan, and you have operations that literally have two, three people, working a little dredge somewhere, and they may or may not have been -- they, I'm sure, have been visited by MSHA, because that's your obligation to do so, but they don't have a clue a lot of this is coming, and we want to make sure that they get up to speed as well, so that they are protected. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. Does anybody else have any questions? Ron has a question. MR. FORD: Could you talk about a little bit the kind of training that's given right now by your members. MR. HENRIKSEN: I would like to defer to individual members. We have some of our folks who are going to be speaking. Again, I run our association, and I'm an attorney. And my strong suit is not safety training. I just have -- I understand the general aspects of it, the weaknesses of Part 48 and what needs to be put in these rules, but we have some extremely qualified safety people who will be speaking today, that can talk about what they do and give you some ideas about what these new rules should contain. So I would, if I may, defer to their presentation. MS. ALEJANDRO: Anyone else? (No response.) MS. ALEJANDRO: All right. Thank you very much, Mr. Henriksen. MR. HENRIKSEN: You're welcome. Thank you. MS. ALEJANDRO: The next speaker on the list is Raymond Peterson from Video Information Systems Training Associates, Incorporated. (No response.) MS. ALEJANDRO: All right. Mr. Peterson isn't here yet. Randy Logsdon, Midwest Division, Vulcan Materials. MR. LOGSDON: Good morning. MS. ALEJANDRO: Good morning. If you haven't given the court reporter a card, I'd ask you to spell your name for the record. MR. LOGSDON: I can do that, and I have a written copy of my comments for her. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. Yes. If you've got a copy to give to us and to the court reporter, that would be great. MR. LOGSDON: My name is Randy Logsdon, L-O-G-S-D-O-N. I'm manager for safety and health for Vulcan Materials Company in the Midwest Division. I'm here primarily on behalf of Vulcan Materials Company. The Indiana Mineral Aggregates Association has asked me to speak for their members who represent 92 percent of the reported aggregate mining man hours in Indiana. I'd first like to qualify myself by describing my experience and background. I hold a B.S. in education and an M.S. in occupational safety, both from Illinois State University. I have 15 years of experience in underground coal mining with three companies from 1975 through 1989. I've been certified as an instructor under Part 48 by MSHA since 1979. After nearly two years on staff with the National Safety Council, I re-entered the mining industry in my current position in late 1991. I'm responsible for overseeing the safety and health programs and processes, including safety and health training, for 25 active MSHA sites, including limestone quarries, sand and gravel operations, two lime plants in Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, and for several facilities regulated under OSHA and DOT. This is a diverse group of operations, ranging from production of less than a half-million tons to over 7 million tons a year. We operate in both urban and rural settings. We boast an ethnic mix of employees and operate in both nonunion and union-represented sites. MSHA, industry and labor have a unique opportunity to take some giant strides in rule-making over the next few months. Even under the mandates imposed by Section 115 of the Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977, new rules can be drafted that are flexible, effective, enforceable and based on sound research. I urge you to avoid styling this new regulation after Part 48. The certification of instructions and certification of written training plans does not guarantee quality instruction or comprehension. Arbitrary training times do not guarantee learning. Neither assures us that what we teach will be applied. We can best be assured that our training is effective by evaluating our training based n performance- based standards. Even the MSHA instructor training course that I took back in 1979 advocated performance-based evaluation of training. That course, we spent a lot of time writing objectives and talking about evaluation. It's important for these new regulations to be founded on good research that will help direct us to use effective training and evaluation techniques. It is unfortunate that Congress has imposed a strict deadline on this effort. We need to exercise caution in our haste to produce a regulation by the end of this fiscal year, to ensure that the quality of the finished product will achieve our objective: effective training. You raised some interesting questions in your opening statement, and I'd like to address those next. Regarding the definition of terms, it's not as important to define the target of safety training as it is to define the level of competency necessary to prevent accidental injury or occupational illness. Even new and inexperienced miners come to us with an understanding of safety and occupational health concepts, as well as appropriate risk controls. The mining industry is not the only source of safety and health training. Many of the unions provide very good safety and health training for their members. Almost everyone has some qualifying skill or knowledge. Prospective employees don't fit into just two categories. We should define within a training program or process the performance standards that reflect acceptable competency, assess the competency level of new employees, and train to bring those employees' level of competency up to or beyond that level. Regarding the issue of conducting training in one sitting or over an extended period, this is a decision that should be made based on the training needs for the employees at a given operation or a group of operations. The option of conducting training in short segments, followed by hands- on experience, may be the most effective in many workplaces, perhaps not in other workplaces. But offer the flexibility to conduct the most effective training we can. Regarding supervisor training, one of the primary functions of a supervisor is accident prevention. I can't imagine a supervisor who is not intimately aware of the safety and health risks inhere in the work area for which he's responsible. A new or transferred supervisor immediately familiarizes himself or herself with the conditions that are peculiar to his new responsibility. Regarding the training for new work assignment, employees do need to be aware of the hazards and risks expected with the jobs or asks they are asked to perform. They also need to be familiar with the systems, tools, equipment, and procedures required to control those risks. Let us evaluate the employees' competency before forcing any redundant training. Some skills are transferrable, and an employee's knowledge does not magically disappear after 12 months. Depending on the nature of the ask, an employee may need only a brief instruction and/or the opportunity to demonstrate his competency. Regarding annual refresher topics, annual refresher training should address the most significant risks that a group of employees are likely to encounter, based on a risk assessment, and should refresh the employees on safety and health issues that are critical but are rarely needed. The most important topics will vary by organization, site, and by work group. Frequent contacts, safety meetings or tailgate meetings, may be the most effective method to accomplish this refresher training. Now, suppose a pretest were administered at the beginning of a refresher session and then the selection of the session topic was based on the information revealed by that test, those questions that were answered incorrectly on a pretest. This could be very effective, but it's real difficult to document that in a training plan that requires specific time frames and topics, instructors and instructional materials be identified in advance. Regarding training segments of less than 30 minutes: Almost any safety training has the potential of being valuable. I've witnessed some very effective, what I call, off-the-wall training styles. Consider a 60-second television commercial that's designed both to educate and to motivate, sometimes very effectively. Now, I don't advocate converting a training system into a public service announcement format, but small group discussions, one-on-one contacts, can be very effective as a part of a master refresher training plan, especially if they're reinforced frequently. Regarding the maintenance of records: Within some organizations, the option of maintaining training records at a central location makes sense. With the availability of the high-speed fax and e-mail capabilities, copies of records can be transmitted quickly to each site or even accessed directly via networked computer system. In the spirit of flexibility, it makes sense to provide the option to maintain a central training record system. Regarding the qualification of trainers, I'd like to repeat a statement I made earlier. Certification does not guarantee quality instruction. I prefer the term "competent." "Competent" describes what we want: knowledge and experience that qualify him or her to train. I borrowed some of that language from the definitions at the beginning of Part 56. A trainer should be able to produce a resume that describes his competency. Some interactive training systems may be quite effective with only a facilitator. Some very effective trainers can be supplied by safety equipment vendors, probably not certified but very good. The key is not who is doing the training, but if the employee learns and uses that knowledge. Certification may provide only a false sense of competence. You may argue that by certifying trainers, MSHA can exercise control and monitor the quality of instruction. I respectfully suggest that MSHA doesn't have the necessary manpower to accomplish that level of control. I would suggest that MSHA apply a part of its training resources to the publication of a regular newsletter designed to convey effective training and evaluation techniques, not necessarily content but those techniques, to the industry; help maintain that level of competence with instructors. Now, we're also concerned about some other training issues. As you formulate the final rules, please make every possible effort to minimize administrative requirements. Let us concentrate on the actual training. We don't oppose documenting training. In fact, we find that documenting is valuable. Permit the use of documents that are meaningful to us, to our systems and to our employees. The Act requires approved training programs, but it does not detail the approval process. If the mine's training plan, program or process meets or exceeds reasonable standards, consider it approved. MSHA inspectors can review the plan, program, or process during regular inspections and confirm that it is compliant. A group of sites within a company or region should be permitted to train under a single comprehensive training plan, program, or process. Apply to Congress for increased state grants funding. This new regulation is likely to increase the demand for state grants instruction , even where good training is already in place. Encourage the state grants institutions to provide more on-site small group training sessions, safety meetings and special training. Bring the training to the workplace where it can be applied immediately. In 1997, Vulcan was able to use the state grants personnel to conduct special training in construction safety prior to beginning work on four major plant construction projects. We experienced no serious incidents at any of the four construction sites. State grants institutions are a valuable resource. Many of the MSHA-regulated operations are also associated with an OSHA-regulated facilities -- recycling, rail yard, trucking, readymix, asphalt, and so forth -- and share employees. Some employees are also shared across several mining operations under the same general management, but different ID numbers. New training rules should consider an employee trained at one operation within a system as trained at the other operations, too. The rules should also recognize outside training courses as valuable safety learning experiences. Why should a certified EMT be required to take first aid? Also consider reciprocity with certain OSHA and other regulatory agency approved training. It is important to recognize that safety and health training is only a part, although a very important part of a comprehensive accident prevention program or process. Such a process provides vital risk and compliance information to mine management. The purpose for collecting such information is to identify deficiencies and to design appropriate interventions, problem-solving. Education, training, communication, either as a remedial effort or as a part of a process change, is a natural part of this process. Vulcan managers and supervisors participate in this process on a daily basis, observing, learning, modifying, and training, sometimes formally and sometimes informally. Rigid regulation is not necessary for activity that will be done independently. We understand that rules often are written to exercise control over a few uncooperative operators. The rest of the industry must then live with that burden. Can accommodations or incentives be included in these rules for operators who demonstrate excellence in effective training? The Act mandates certain safety and health topics that we are obligated to include in our curriculum for training. Offer a liberal interpretation of the content on these topics. Allow the remainder of the orientation and refresher training topics included in the training program or process to be site- or group-specific, based on the assessment of risk. Because many of our operations are very small, we rely on independent contractor services for a host of nonproduction needs. Jobs involving construction, demolition, vehicle maintenance, electrical distribution involve hazards that are identical to hazards at any OSHA site. A primary reason for hiring an independent contractor is because we don't have the expertise or possibly the equipment to do the job safely ourselves. Operators should not be compelled to provide training for competent independent contractors beyond what is necessary to address mining hazards to which they are expected to be exposed. Certainly if crushing, blasting and other mine- specific jobs are contracted, it's important for the contractor's employees to have comprehensive mine safety and health training, refresher and task training as required by the Act. However, if under contract, it must be the responsibility of the independent contractor, not the mine operator, to provide that training. That's why they're independent and they're contractors. The aggregates industry is closely associated with the construction industry as a supplier. In northern climates, in particular, such construction work is seasonal, and at many of our operations, we have seasonal layoffs. Refresher training is often scheduled in the spring, when employees return to active employment. In some cases, employees are brought back to work in stages over a period of several weeks. Depending on the weather, primarily, the last employees may return in the thirteenth month following the last refresher class. It seems to make sense to provide an exception in the new rules that would allow refresher training completion to be delayed for seasonal lay-off, provided that upon returning to work, each employee would be re-oriented to the workplace. I might add -- it's not in my written comments, but if we are doing annual refresher training in segments, a good portion of that training could be complete before the individual is even laid off. As I said earlier, industry and labor have a unique opportunity to take some giant strides in rule-making over the next few months. We have the opportunity to create rules that are practical, flexible, enforceable, and effective. If done well, this approach could be a model segments of the mining industry and general industry as well. I'd like to close with one rhetorical question, something just to think about. Is MSHA's aim to produce rules that will be easy to enforce or to keep tabs on the industry? Or is the aim to create an environment that will lead to truly effective safety and health training in this industry? Thank you. MS. ALEJANDRO: Mr. Logsdon, I just have one question. At the beginning of your remarks, you indicated that definitions were not important as far as, you know, newly employed, inexperienced, or newly employed, experienced, but that it's necessary, I guess, to assess the skills, experience, and education of the miner, to determine where he or she is and then determine where he or she needs to be in order to work safely at whatever mine site we're talking about. I guess I've got sort of two questions here. How should an operator go about doing that, making that assessment? And for our purposes, how should a concept like that be reflected in a rule on training? MR. LOGSDON: Well, I think we're kind of stuck with the terms, because of the language in the Act. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. LOGSDON: So it would be necessary to kind of maneuver around those, as it were. MS. ALEJANDRO: Actually, come to think of it, I don't know how specific or rigid the Mine Act is with regard to -- MR. LOGSDON: I know it uses the term "new miner." MS. ALEJANDRO: New miner, right. MR. LOGSDON: And perhaps at some level of competency, we consider someone as an inexperienced or as a new miner. MS. ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. LOGSDON: And if an individual can demonstrate another level of competence, then they're considered -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Something other than a new miner. MR. LOGSDON: -- experienced. Yes. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. LOGSDON: Which means that a person coming in may have some of those experiences and, for lack of a better term, may proficiency out of some of these requirements. MS. ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. LOGSDON: And then you concentrate on those areas that need improvement. MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. I guess where I'm coming from is if, in fact -- I mean, we've obviously got to determine who's going to be a new miner and what factors do we look at to decide that someone is not a new miner and actually is in another category, so that the minimum requirements of 115 wouldn't necessary come into play. I mean, is it a combination of years of experience or months of experience, classroom training, or on-the-job training or -- you know, I don't want to put you on the spot and expect you to answer this. But it's just something maybe to think about. MR. LOGSDON: If we determine what those risks are and what the knowledge or information that a prospective employee has to have in order to be able to operate safely, then let's train toward that. You know, another example is we have two lime plants that, you know, the employees never get involved in blasting; they're not around high walls. It's -- in reality, it's more of an OSHA setting than it is a MSHA setting. Yet we're still kind of stuck with these same topics. On the other hand, if we have someone who transfers from a job at a lime plant to a quarry and he's been through the training, he's considered experienced because he's been through all this training, but he doesn't have that experience. So we need to look at what those experiences are, what those competencies are, and train around them. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. Thank you. Does anybody else have any questions? Ron? MR. FORD: So, I guess, like are you suggesting like if a miner receives training at one plant and then he switches employment to another plant, that he doesn't have to go to that -- go through that training again, just that he has received a training during a certain time period, that it doesn't matter at which mine? MR. LOGSDON: Well, at each operation, obviously, you have slightly different risks, different hazards, and those need to be covered, either formally or informally. And I think, you know, traditionally Part 48 has covered that on that topic. But, for instance, if we have an electrician who covers five or six operations, you know, is he going to have to attend annual refresher for each one of those individual sites that has a separate ID number? And what do we do where you have portable plants, where you have three different ID numbers coming together at the same site? And there is a lot of -- even within our company, you know, a lot of moving people around within a region, sharing employees. MR. FORD: You talked a little bit about the training, I guess, at your company which is Midwest Vulcan. MR. LOGSDON: Midwest Division of Vulcan Materials. MR. FORD: Okay. Are they -- help me out here. Are they -- would they be considered a large type -- MR. LOGSDON: I think so. Yes. Vulcan Materials Company is the largest producer of aggregates in the United States. MR. FORD: Okay. MR. LOGSDON: Midwest Division -- I'm not sure what our production in the Midwest Division is, but our McCook Quarry produces 7 million tons a year, and I think last year it was number seven nationally. MR. FORD: Okay. So what's the employment at your sites? MR. LOGSDON: At our mining sites, our smallest operation probably has five or six employees. McCook, our largest, at one time we had around 130. We've done some automation. I think we're less than 100 employees there now. MR. FORD: So you have sites that are both small and large. MR. LOGSDON: Yes. MR. FORD: Could you talk about -- one thing I think you didn't talk about much was what sort of recordkeeping for the training that you give currently now do you have. MR. LOGSDON: We have -- I'm not sure how far this dates back, but we have an alternate Form 5023 that we use for our orientation, annual refresher training. Our task training is kept on a separate record. It's a company record. Our safety meetings -- we have a system of monthly safety meetings that are supposed to be at least 30 minutes long, as well as weekly and within other periods, depending on the need, tailgate-type meetings, that are supposed to be 10 to 15 minutes long. Sometimes they last longer. Those are kept on separate form as well, the safety meeting report form, the individuals' names, signatures, topics that were discussed, the time frame, that type of information. It's all kept on file. MR. FORD: So basically it's a sheet saying what was covered and who received the training and who gave the training. MR. LOGSDON: Yes. Questions that came up, discussions, things like that, that are entered on there. MS. ALEJANDRO: Is that tailored to things that may be happening at the operation, or is it, you know, something that's dictated from some central location, as far as when those occur and what the topic happens to be. MR. LOGSDON: Generally it's determined on site, by the plant superintendent, supervisors, with some input from my office, too. Obviously we get fatal-grams, fatal accident reports, things like that. We'll send a memo out to the superintendents, This needs to be covered at your next safety meeting. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. But it's stuff that comes from MSHA in the form of fatal-grams, but are -- MR. LOGSDON: From MSHA and from our own experience. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. FORD: Okay. And, again, this sheet is signed by each of the miners that received the training? MR. LOGSDON: Yes. MR. FORD: And this, what we're talking about here, is applicable to whether or not you have a site that has 130 employees or a site that has just five or six. MR. LOGSDON: Yes. MR. FORD: Thank you. MR. BURNS: Randy, you asked about the new miners' training. Part of the definition just says, New miners having no surface mining experience shall receive no less than 24 hours of training if they are to work on the surface. And then it lays out the seven things of training. Now, I guess what you were talking about is every new miner's not the same. I mean, some -- I mean, you could have a new miner coming from the construction area, who's worked on bulldozers, who may have driven -- may have operated every piece of equipment you have. MR. LOGSDON: Loader operators, graders; a crane person is a good example, too. MR. BURNS: And then they might have some of these things that are listed: first aid, electrical hazard training, emergency procedures. So you're talking about some way to separate that person out from this 24-hour requirement versus somebody right out of high school that doesn't know anything, except that he's afraid of electricity. MR. LOGSDON: Absolutely, yes. And assess each individual. I mean, this can be done at a job interview to a certain extent. Even, you know, as the training begins, start to feel out what the individual miner's experiences and knowledge is. I can recall one person that we hired as a welder, and after a couple of weeks at work, he didn't really know welding at all. MR. BURNS: He was a salesman, I guess. He sold somebody that he could weld. MR. LOGSDON: Good guess. Yes. MR. BURNS: Okay. So basically you're really -- what you're proposing is that the rule has to be flexible enough to be able to make those cuts. MR. LOGSDON: That's what we're looking for. Yes. MR. BURNS: And the goal is performance-based. MR. LOGSDON: That's where it is. MR. BURNS: So that each individual ends up as safe as possible for that individual. You can't guarantee that everybody's going to have the same knowledge and experience. MR. LOGSDON: People learn at different rates. People retain differently. I can remember stuff from way back in 1975 when I took an orientation session at the first coal mine I worked at. I don't remember all of it, but what I remember might be a little bit different than what someone else remembered. So we need to assess with each individual what their knowledge and skills are and correct the deficiencies that we find. MR. BURNS: And the other question I had was on shared employees. I would imagine -- you didn't say it, but I imagine you would be doing this anyway. Would you -- certainly someone that goes from one mine to another, that someone different or even more or less exactly the same, you're still going to be doing some sort of hazard training. MR. LOGSDON: Oh, absolutely. MR. BURNS: Just to let them know what they're getting into that's different, just the underlying -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Comprehensive training. MR. BURNS: -- comprehensive type training that should be required. MR. LOGSDON: Yes. You know, the individual comes in. In the wintertime, if we're doing a construction project, we'll borrow people from one mine to come in and assist. As a group, they'll come in, and they'll talk to the superintendent, have a -- maybe an extended safety meeting. You know, this is the rules we have here. These are some of the things that we have to watch out for. Here's who you report to. If there's an emergency, you contact this person; you know, some very site-specific training. On the other hand, you have an electrician who maybe is -- makes a circuit every week to five or six different places. The update training, for lack of a better term, maybe doesn't have to be quite so comprehensive. Just check in with the superintendent when you get in; he tells you, Look, there's going to be a blast today at three o'clock. Now he knows now to be in the pit during -- from about 2:30 on, that type of thing. MR. BURNS: I just wanted to clarify one other issue. On the refresher training procedure workers -- MR. LOGSDON: Yes, sir. MR. BURNS: I mean, I completely understand what you're talking about, but the Act is very specific on this. It says, "All miners shall receive no less than eight hours of refresher training, no less frequently than once each 12 months." So it really doesn't allow much flexibility. At least, I'm throwing that out there, if you can think of any way to interpret that differently. Sometimes, you know, statutes say "annually" or something, where there's a little bit more flexibility. But I'm not sure we have much wiggle room in that area, to be quite honest. MR. LOGSDON: I will have to admit, I don't have solution for that. MR. BURNS: I mean, I understand -- MR. LOGSDON: But it's worth consideration, please. MR. BURNS: I think that's it. MS. ALEJANDRO: Actually a gentleman has raised his hand in the back. Have you signed up to speak, sir? MR. HOWARD: No. MS. ALEJANDRO: Actually, I mean, I don't want to take you out of order, but do you have just a comment on -- MR. HOWARD: Just a comment on -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Could you just identify yourself. MR. HOWARD: Yes. John Howard. I'm a trainer, work at Illinois Eastern Community Colleges, in the state grants program. I know one way to eliminate the 12-month time frame limitation and the problems it creates. We deal with this all the time in the coal business. Somebody's supposed to be retraining in December, and they're off on an injury and you have the Christmas holidays and New Year's, and they can't go back to work because they missed their refresher date, and so we end up sending an instructor out on a midnight shift to train one person. It's really pretty counterproductive in a lot of ways. One way that we used to be able to do this, until it was kabashed somewhere, was we had a training plan. Many coal operators have this, and it's said that the plan permitted that in December of each year, the final hour of refresher training would be completed, so people trained in November or October, the training was marked incomplete, and in December of that year, a one-hour session was held, doing a wrap-up or end-of-the-year safety performance or specific needs. If somebody had a heart attack, they might need a CPA refresher. And in December, then, they would mark the training was completed in December, even though it may have been -- eight hours may have been done in October or July, but not completed. They actually did nine hours, and it was marked in December. Everybody was in the same training cycle that way. You could train with some flexibility, with seasonal lay-offs, which we don't experience in coal, but other little quirks that might develop could all be accommodated with completion of training in December of that year. That would leave 12 months from December to go ahead and complete. And it was not used to circumvent the law. Most people tried to stay within the January, February, the month-to-month training cycle, but had that flexibility at the end of the month to mark it as finally completed, and everybody's on the same cycle. Again, it's really a very good idea, but obviously we couldn't do that, so that was kabashed. I'm not sure why; it worked very well. MS. ALEJANDRO: You said it was kabashed. MR. HOWARD: Yes. Suddenly we couldn't do it anymore. MSHA refused to approve the plans that had that provision in it. MS. ALEJANDRO: I see. But they had been allowing it for -- MR. HOWARD: Had been allowing it. MS. ALEJANDRO: -- several -- MR. HOWARD: Several coal companies did it. MS. ALEJANDRO: Mr. -- Ron? MR. FORD: Yes. I've just got one follow-up question. MS. ALEJANDRO: Thank you, sir. MR. FORD: Just a couple. Again, these training sheets that after training is received people sign, where are they kept then? Are they kept at each site, or are they kept at some central location? MR. LOGSDON: Currently we keep a copy on site, and we keep one at our division offices. Are you speaking of the safety meeting record now, or the -- MR. FORD: Well, I don't know exactly what type of training, but you suggested that when training is given, that a sheet is produced afterwards -- MR. LOGSDON: Yes. MR. FORD: -- that talks about the training, who performed the training, and it's signed also by all the miners that have been trained. MR. LOGSDON: Yes. MR. FORD: Okay. That's the sheet I'm talking about. MR. LOGSDON: Those are kept on site, and a copy is kept -- MR. FORD: One -- MR. LOGSDON: -- at the division office. MR. FORD: One last question: Is that done for every type of training that's given? Or another way to ask this question: Is there any types of training that you give by which you don't keep any sort of record or signature list, like you're talking about? And if so, what is that? MR. LOGSDON: Perhaps some maintenance training, perhaps someone from one of the manufacturers, Caterpillar or one of those. We'll do a special maintenance training. Some of the crusher manufacturers do some training. That's outside of my area, and I really can't address how records are kept of those, but I want to say that there's some record of who attended those and what the dates were. We're pretty careful about how we expend funds for that type thing. But, you know, any safety and health training, we keep a record of. If we have the Crane Institute of America comes in and does a crane operator training, they provide a certificate and list all of the employees that attended that and were either certified or passed their test at the end of the course. And that's kept on file, probably more at the main office than it would be at each of the site locations. MR. FORD: Okay. Thank you. MS. ALEJANDRO: Thank you, Mr. Logsdon. MR. LOGSDON: Thank you. MS. ALEJANDRO: I'd like to ask now: Is Mr. Raymond Peterson here? Mr. Peterson is from Video Information Systems Training Association, Incorporated. If you could come up and spell your name for the court reporter, if you haven't given her a card. MR. PETERSON: No, I have not. The name is P-E-T-E-R-S-O-N, first name Raymond. I'm Raymond Peterson, and I represent VISTA, or Video Information Systems Training Associates, and we are a developer and distributor of training programs, focusing primarily on use of mobile construction equipment and as used in excavating in the mining industry. We have some concerns about training in general that I would like to address to the members of MSHA today, and beginning with my concern with the development of the new rules, as far as flexibility is concerned to meet local needs. There is a considerable amount of difference, as I'm sure you're aware, between seasonal and year-round situations, and also the type of things such as limestone that I believe Randy was just addressing, where they're doing blasting as opposed to bank-run type aggregates. And to have some flexibility to be able to meet those situations is extremely important. The other thing that we run into -- and we deal with mines of all types and all sizes all over the country and actually outside the country as well -- is the disparity in the size of the operations and the need for some flexibility there. The small mine -- and there are several of them around, the mom-and-pop type operations; it may be a little aggregate operation that have three seasonal employees, as opposed to the Vulcans of the world, that have several thousand employees scattered around the country -- have a great deal of difficulty in conforming to a single standard. The smaller mines lack of the expertise in-house. You just were addressed by a gentleman named Randy Logsdon who has a field of specialty within a region. The small mine that is run with four employees doesn't have that luxury. So, consequently, they have a great deal of difficulty in, number one, understanding some of the rules; number two, finding resources to be able to fulfill their training needs; and, number three, finding the time and having the internal expertise to be able to conduct the training that is required of them. Simply knowing the job does not necessarily make a person a trainer or give them the capability to be able to transfer that knowledge that they have gained to other people. So you run into a vast disparity in the quality of training that is done, as well as the ability to meet some of the requirements that are on them. So I believe that in any new training, there needs to be some flexibility to accommodate not only the mine owners, the size of the mines, but also some of the technology and training advances that come along. And the technology extends to the equipment that is available at these mines, as well as the technology for training. A case in point is high interest at the present time in CD-ROM type training. The vast majority of the small mines do not have the CD-ROM capability at the present time. The smaller operations, some of them, may not even have a computer yet. And yet they're held to the same standard as any other mines. So it's difficult for them to be able to accommodate or meet the needs that are being placed, the burden of training, that is being placed on them. They need to be able to have some kind of an outside resource or some other resource where they can get these things, and I believe it is incumbent on MSHA to be able to provide the information that is available for some of these resources. You have to understand that I'm a provider of these resources, so I speak with a bias. I certainly don't expect that we're the only provider of this type of thing, and to have some kind of a resource list available through printed material or some mailer or something would help these people a lot. I think there also needs to be, in the development of any new rules, some concerns for some standards. There's standards being developed in the construction industry at the present time for operators of mobile construction equipment. There are standards being developed for instructors that will eventually wind up as an ANSI standard that hopefully will become an ISO standard. As you know, those things take a long time, but it's in process. We have a member of our company that sits in one of the committees that is developing the standard for instructors. I think that needs to be a consideration. There has to be an acceptance of some different training methods, such as CD-ROM, CVT, videos, simulator- type training, things of that nature, and even hands-on type training with what I have to refer to as a qualified instructor. I'm going to revert to a remark that I had made earlier where I said not everybody is a qualified instructor, and that's where it becomes difficult. Frequently in the mines that we have worked in -- and we've worked in large coal mines, the open-pit type operations in the far west, as well as the small aggregate operations throughout the country -- we find that a typical mistake is that they will take what they consider to be their best operator and put their new people on a piece of equipment with them, and say, Here, show them how to safely run this. There is no standard for that to be done. The fact that this person may be a good operator does not necessarily make them a good instructor, and there doesn't seem to be any written format for them to follow in most situations. So it becomes a very difficult situation to evaluate the effectiveness of the training, simply because nothing has been established as far as the standards. I also believe that there needs to be an evaluation of any training materials by qualified instructional design people. Instructional design is a highly specialized field, because you are attempting to influence human behavior, and the way materials are developed will have, can have, an impact on that. Whether it be positive or negative is highly dependent on the individuals that are creating and providing the materials. There has to be concern for the subject matter, for the content, the effectiveness of the training, and for the testing. The testing is really one of the major concerns when it comes to development of training materials. The only way that you can tell if a person has absorbed and understood and can respond to what they have been trained on is through some type of testing procedure. The test may be a physical test, where they have to do something, follow some particular procedure. It may be a written test. A lot of people clutch when it comes to a written test, so that's not a real evaluator, but there nonetheless has to be some form of testing. There has to be some records kept of that testing, as to how effective it was, and there really needs to be some type of a centralized record system. You have a system within the company at the present time that has been used effectively with the construction industry, where we have people go through courses, and we then maintain a computer record of those courses. We have had a number of situations where people have called in for copies of their own personal records, because they may be applying for a job at a different employer and want to be able to take that with them. They have also been used effectively in defending themselves mostly in OSHA litigation situations, to have those records available from a central source, and it's become more popular as a result of the use of this type of thing. I think that needs to be considered in the development of mining, because of some of the testimony that you may have already heard here, that miners do not always work for the same employer, and they may move from one location to another, and they need to be able to take that training data that reflects their background with them. That concludes my remarks. I'm available for questions. MS. ALEJANDRO: Mr. Peterson, you indicated that you believe that any training materials that are used need to be evaluated. Are you speaking primarily to MSHA in its capacity as being the facilitator of compliance with this role, particularly helping small operations? Or are you saying that you believe a rule that MSHA promulgates should include something or some kind of evaluation to ensure that the materials are going to be adequate and effective? MR. PETERSON: When it comes to training that is mandated by MSHA, whether it's a particular topic, then I believe that it is incumbent on MSHA to evaluate the training materials that are developed to be able to do that type of training. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. And also you indicated that some kind of testing or, I guess, assurance needs to be had, that the person who's been trained has actually learned something and retained something. Again, are you suggesting that the rules should provide for some kind of follow-up testing to make that determination? Or is that just in the way of, you know, just a recommendation? MR. PETERSON: I believe it would be beneficial if it were used in the right way. One of the problems that we encounter with some of the testing is the fact that if a person takes a test and let's say they get a score of 75 or 80 on the test; there are certain things that they have missed. Now you have a printed record of that. When it comes to a litigation situation, if an accident has occurred, that information conceivably could be used against them, that the employer was aware of the fact that this person did not comprehend the information that was presented to them in this specific category, and consequently, it was incumbent on the employer, then, to go back and make sure that they were trained. So it's a double-edged sword. You do need the record that the person has been trained and that they understood certainly a portion of that material. But if that is used against them, you're going to find employers that will be reluctant to use it at all. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. FORD: Mr. Peterson, does your company go to a mine or site and provide a full training program? Or do you provide just specific types of training? MR. PETERSON: We provide specific types of training. MR. FORD: So what's your experience out there? Do people come to you, especially with the small mines; do they come to you and say, We don't -- we want you to set up a training program for us, because we don't have one? Or do they have one already in place, and you just have to tune it up a little bit? What have you found? MR. PETERSON: You rarely have one in place for the smaller mines, and I'm going to limit the smaller mines in this remark to mines employing ten or less people. They rarely have any kind of a system in place and are looking to an outside resource like ourselves to be able to come in and help them out. MR. FORD: In that type of situation, where you have to set up a program for a mine that doesn't have one, especially a smaller mine, can you give us a range of what the price might be to do that? MR. PETERSON: It'll run, depending on the number of employees, anywhere from 500 to $1,000. MR. FORD: Thank you. MS. ALEJANDRO: I think -- thank you, Mr. Peterson. We're going to have a short break now -- I'm sorry, Rod. MR. BRELAND: I'm sorry. I just had one question. MR. PETERSON: Sure. MR. BRELAND: You brought up about the instructors, on the best equipment operator's not necessarily the best instructor. I was a little curious how you would think or propose that a competent instructor be defined. MR. PETERSON: Those are some of the regulations that we're working on right now with the ASSE, the American Society of Safety Engineers, the committee that we're seated on. And there is a definition being written that will be used as an ANSI definition for qualified instructor, and much of it has to do with personal experience, but a lot of it has to do with their ability to effectively transfer information, deal with questions, recognize shortcomings on the part of the person being trained, and recommend methods to overcome that. MR. BRELAND: Okay. Thank you. MS. ALEJANDRO: You said that's going to eventually be an ANSI standard. Is there a draft of that standard, or has it not yet gotten to that point? MR. PETERSON: I think at the next meeting, which is scheduled in the spring, they will have the draft completed. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. But there's nothing that's been published. MR. PETERSON: No. MS. ALEJANDRO: It's still in the committee, being worked on? MR. PETERSON: Yes. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. PETERSON: The committee had met in September last time, and the new draft, proposed draft, which is now out for comment by the committee members, just arrived last week. MS. ALEJANDRO: And ISO is not any -- I mean, is less far along than ANSI. MR. PETERSON: It's my understanding that ISO does not have a standard in this regard yet, and they're looking to ANSI -- MS. ALEJANDRO: As a point of departure? MR. PETERSON: Right. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. To develop something for ISO at some point in the future. MR. PETERSON: So we're looking a few years down the road before we've got an ISO standard, I'm afraid. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. All right. Thank you very much. And I would say 15 minutes. I've got about 26 after 9:00, so maybe come back about 20 till 10:00. And, again, if you would like to speak and have not signed up, I'll put the speakers list in the back, and I also ask that anyone who has not signed up on the attendance list, also sign up. It's also in the back. (Whereupon, a short recess was taken.) MS. ALEJANDRO: Actually, we're going to ask if Mr. Peterson could speak back up to the speaker's chair, and the reason is Ron Ford, who works in the Office of Standards for MSHA, is trying to gather information for the cost that various provisions of the rule may add up to, and the reason is that, as many of you probably already know, when MSHA does propose and issue final rules, along with the rule, in the preamble is a statement of the estimated costs of compliance with the rule, and Ron has a few additional questions that he would like to ask Mr. Peterson on that topic. MR. FORD: Thanks, Mr. Peterson. You quoted a 500 to $1,000 price to set up an entire program for a small-type site. That's ten or less people. First of all, can you tell me what "entire training program" means. What does the person get for that, the miner operator? MR. PETERSON: For something like that, they would get basically one day of training, and the training would cover the basic requirements as stated by MSHA at the present time, and it would be an instructor or possibly two instructors, putting on eight-hour training course. It would include instruction, some handout materials, some exercises and also some testing and evaluation. MR. FORD: Okay. So the aspects of how to set a training program and how to keep records, the mine operator would do that on his own. MR. PETERSON: Right. MR. FORD: Could you give me the idea of the price range -- it doesn't have to be for your particular company, but for entities that do what you do -- to go to like a mid-size site and what you would determine a mid-size site, and also what you would -- a price range for a large site. How many employees would you consider? MR. PETERSON: Okay. We generally would put mine operations with anywhere from 10 to 25 employees in the mid- size range. Because of the efficiencies that exist in mining at the present time, there's -- mining is done without an awful lot of employees. When you get into the larger employers, we haven't had the opportunity to work with them, because they are primarily self-sufficient. The Vulcans of the world, the Martin Mariettas, the people like that are -- have their own internal operations, and we have not been asked in to do some of that training for them. We supply training materials that they will use, but we do not do the training for them, so I can't directly address that. However, for the mid-size mines, costs would vary with the amount of training that they wanted to do and the number of employees that they wanted to put through at any given time, but I will give you a range; that's all it is. It will run anywhere from, oh, generally a low of around $3,000 to a high of 7- or 8,000. MR. FORD: Okay. And the training we're talking about here is you're coming in and giving basic training to people that don't have any training at all, more or less. MR. PETERSON: Generally. MR. FORD: Okay. What about -- do you come back also and give like refresher-type training? MR. PETERSON: Yes. We also do evaluations of equipment operators, and then we will do training of the equipment operators themselves. And you run in to a wide range. In evaluation -- For example, we just did an evaluation for four operators on a operation in Wisconsin, and it took -- it was a one-day operation, and there were three people, three instructors from VISTA involved, and it cost them $1,500. So about $750 per instructor, per day, is a rule of thumb. MR. FORD: Okay. And these were at four different sites? MR. PETERSON: No. These were all at the same site. MR. FORD: Same site? MR. PETERSON: They had four operators they wanted to have -- they were applying for jobs as equipment operators in this application, and they wanted to know if they had the talents and capabilities to be able to fulfill that function. MR. FORD: Okay. Thank you. MS. ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much. The next speaker on the list is William Pautler, from Kincaid Stone Company. MR. PAUTLER: My name is William Pautler, spelled P, as in Paul, A-U-T, as in Tom, L-E-R. My brother and I are owners of a small quarry in extreme southern Illinois, called Kincaid Stone Company. We also are majority owners of a mid-size operation in a western state. First, I want to thank you, the panel, and I'd like to thank Carol Jones, Mr. McAteer, and Congress for permitting this dialogue to take place. I'm here as a small miner or small quarry operator, as you choose. My background is this. This year, Kincaid Stone Company won the NSA Sterling Award for Safety with an incident rate of 0.00. As of this morning at 6:30, we had completed 17 years, 11 months, and 6 days without a lost-time accident. I'm going to change the pace a bit. For one thing, I want to tell you, if you look at the speakers sheet and expect to sit here 30 minutes, you're going to be greatly disappointed. I want to talk to you about how the smaller quarries feel. I'll be specific how we feel, but I think it is generally the same feelings that other quarries have. With that safety record, I want you to know that we are completely, fully interested in safety and have accomplished that interest. We believe that a structured training program in emergency procedures, first aid, hearing and sight protection, has commonality with all places of business, and that those things can be taught on a very structured basis. We have been very privileged at our operation to have an instructor from Logan College who was involved with his father and brother in a small gravel pit in Wisconsin before he finished his college and had become an instructor, and he does a marvelous job of cutting through the chaff, and he knows where the problems are. And the men are impressed by this. I believe in the area of hazard training, task training, that these need to be site-specific. I do not believe that there are enough words to write regulations to enforce all of the various conditions that exist on the differing sites. No two of us here in this room today have a site that is exactly like the other person's. The other thing I would like to address is that we would like to keep paperwork to the minimum. We believe that the supervisors are the first line of safety. If the supervisor is going to spend most of his time doing paperwork or recording what has happened, he's not going to have extra time to take a look at the operation and see if it's safe. I would tell you that few accidents happen in the office. I believe and our company believes that the first- line supervisors are the people who need to go around and be observant of what is going on and to correct or improve the safety aspects that they see. The other thing I believe is that all safety starts at the top and works down. If we the people who own the operations or are managers of the operations are truly interested in safety, and as we go about our business in the quarry and we review what is happening and we stop Joe over there, and say, Joe, you know, I think that maybe you're driving a little too fast on the haul road, or I didn't hear you blow the horn this morning when you started to back up, I believe that that gets more attention by the individual operator out there, than sitting and watching a movie that he considers bored. I would also say that my people, which I feel is a very good crew, some of which would take great offense after this time at our place, being forced to write a written test. They feel that they know their business. Now, if we can present a proactive type of program with them, where we involve them in dialogue about how this can be done better or not, it's very, very effective. But I know that they are somewhat hesitant. I know this last week -- tomorrow, I am going to travel to the Cincinnati area to attend your underground safety program. I'm only going for one reason. I don't intend to be underground very much, but I know that if I go, my people will think and consider that I'm interested in that safety. And I certainly have things that I would rather do tomorrow, but I don't believe that I can afford to do that. I think I have to go and give the opinion that this is an important function for me. I know that one of the people -- I asked who would like to join us, and actually we're taking our whole company, excluding of the old loader operator, and there was one man that declined. And I know why he declined, because he has trouble with the reading and the language. Now, that's it. And we're not by ourselves, people. There are other people out here. It was referred to earlier. So I'm saying, from our viewpoint, let's try to -- I think that the record here that I bring to the table is a good record, and let's try to design this thing so that we get some really meaningful things. I can tell you I personally, when I'm in the field and see something that is -- that shouldn't be, like I see somebody start to grind without any glasses, I just plain old raise Billy-be-damned with him, and I think this is necessary. I mean, you can't legislate it, any more than we could legislate prohibition, but you can get people proactive on it, and they can operate safely. And that's all I have to say. Thank you for the opportunity. MS. ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much, Mr. Pautler. The next speaker on the list is Ed Elliott from Rogers Group. MR. ELLIOTT: Good morning. I'll first give you a little bit about my background. I am a safety manager with Rogers Group, Incorporated, and we are headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. I have 20 years of mining experience personally, and five years of that has been in surface coal mining; two years of those five was dedicated primarily to safety in the surface coal mining, and then the remaining 15 years has been in the surface stone business. We do have some underground operations also, but I've been with the Rogers Group the majority of that time. And, first, if I could, I would like to just read a few brief remarks. First, thank you for the opportunity to give input into this process. First let me say that Rogers Group, Incorporated, is committed to providing a safe workplace for all employees, and we welcome the chance to work with MSHA to that end. The intent of the Mine Act is to promote a safe workplace and give guidance to industry in how to accomplish this. The Rogers Group places a high value on education and training, including that which impacts safety and health directly. The Act which was passed by Congress provides guidelines for industry to follow in making the workplace as safe as possible. The Act, although obviously written with underground coal mining as its primary focus, gave guidance to the government regulators in their promulgation of rules to cover all of mining, and even today, that remains. As regulatory guidance was established through the rule-making process for industry, the training regulations were the state of the art in what would be required in the underground coal mining industry. There had been very little in the way of educational principles employed by the mine industry in safety training and education. These regulations today are in need of serious review in that they no longer take into account the revolution in training and education techniques which have occurred in the last 20 years. I will not go into detail concerning this revolution at this meeting, but at this point, I'd like to directly address some of the questions that you indicated in your request. First, about should certain terms dealing with "new miner" and "experienced miner" be defined, and I think it is important to have a definition. And I would say with respect to a new miner, just simply put, you're talking about someone who does not have mining experience and has not had appropriate training to that job which he's about to take. Experienced miner would be that person who has experience in mining or who has the training, has taken the training. The second: Which of these subjects should be taught, speaking of those subjects listed in the Mine Act, should be taught before a new miner's assigned work? And I would suggest there are several of those. One, instruction in the rights of a miner; the second, use of self-rescue devices or respiratory devices where those are appropriate; hazard recognition; and emergency procedures. The other subjects I could believe would work best if covered during the work experience. Now, I might mention first aid. This is something that, I think, of the requirements in the Act, this probably was more directed toward underground mining. Years in the past, there have been circumstances where an employee might be even miles from the opening, where they could get assistance, and it was very important that they have people that were adequately trained, have tremendous amounts of materials underground. And many of us here have lived through the time period where the idea was just to, you know, do what you could, throw them in the back of the station wagon and haul them in, you know, and let the hospital take care of them. But that has changed pretty dramatically. And I think at almost every operation that we have, there is emergency help just minutes away, people that are highly trained. And we talk about first aid training, in that I encourage the employees to do no further harm. I don't know if something happened to me right here, if I fell and injured my leg in this room, I would want to make sure that, unless someone here had a lot of experience taking care of me, I would want to make sure that they did no further harm, until someone highly trained could get there to handle the situation. Should training for inexperienced miners be given all at once or spread out over a period of time? I think definitely it needs to be spread out over a period of time. The problem with many new employees today, at least in our company -- you're overwhelmed with a tremendous number of things when you first come to work. You're trying to find out -- to sign up for your taxes, to sign up for your benefits, to look at the different policies and procedures. And through educational principles, which I didn't mention earlier on -- I do have a bachelor of science in education from -- I guess, here in the state it would be appropriate to mention -- Eastern Illinois University, that I'm quite proud of. But in those -- some of those principles, you recognize there is a time period for a new employee to change behaviors, to learn a lot of new ideas, so the time period that that training should cover should be somewhat, I think, restricted to a period of time less than a year that they would have all the required training. Should supervisors be subject to the same training requirements as miners? Yes. I think that's clear. They are exposed to many of or all of the same hazards that any miner would. Task training: Should training be required whenever a miner receives a work assignment that involves new and unfamiliar tasks? Answer simply to that is yes. That's just common sense, that anyone going to a new task should learn some of the fundamentals of that task, which would include safety. Annual refresher training: Should specific subject areas be covered? Yes, they should. And those subjects should be -- they should pertain the fundamentals that are listed in the Act, with interpretations based on whatever is applicable to that work environment and not something that is set out in a regulation that would be inconsistent with what might be at that operation. Can eight hours of refresher training be completed in segments of training lasting less than 30 minutes? I think certainly so. As has been mentioned a couple of times in here, there are opportunities where training can be just as short a time as 30 seconds to a minute. If an experienced employee were to see an inexperienced employee doing something improperly, stop that inexperienced employee and explain to them the proper way to do that. That could be the most important training that they receive. And also about the testing: I want to mention, in our company, we have a policy that requires, after any training, an assessment. And I thin the word "assessment" is important in that the assessment can take many forms. It could take the form of a written test; it could take the form of an observation of an employee doing a task. It could be something as simple as asking an oral question; it could be any number of things. But to assess the understanding of the training is the most important thing. Should records of training be kept by the mine operator at the mine site? This isn't really a problem for us. We require that at each of our operations. But I do think technologically we're reaching the point today that the information that can be retained at a central location could be easily duplicated and forwarded to any site, fax machines. I think e-mail is one of the greatest things that's ever come around, but unfortunately, I think, sooner or later, the telephone company or somebody's going to get into that, because they're not making enough money off of it, so that may change in the future. But it's just a lot easier to get that information, so just making sure that we have documentation, I think, is the important thing. Qualification of instructors: Should there be a minimum qualification for people who conduct this training? I think that we need to be careful when we talk about standards for instructors, and I mean no disrespect to many of the agencies out there that are professional organizations, such as the ASSE. I've been a member of that. There are a number of other excellent organizations. But when you start applying some minimum qualifications, I think it's as important that we should focus on the subject matter, not who does the training. Now, it's important that there -- whatever technique that that person is using should be effective in achieving the objectives of the training. If I want to teach someone the proper way to put on their seat belt, I may be able to do a great job, may put on a video, may put on a song and dance; I may have a degree -- you know, degrees that would fill up a page of paper, but the real key element is making sure that whatever technique is used, whatever that instructor, methods they're using, is effective. And I think that's what the focus on those minimum requirements should be, not on having someone to say, They must have a two-year degree in training, or something along those very specific guidelines. That covers the elements that you mentioned in the -- in your handout earlier, but I want to mention about the state grants program. The state grants program in some states is outstanding. I have to say that we have had quite a bit of experience in Indiana in the state grants program, and I think they put, in the areas that I work in, in the states that I specifically work in, which is Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, and parts of Virginia, that Indiana has one of the best programs that I've ever seen. And I have to say Kentucky has one of the worst I have ever seen with respect to helping in the aggregates industry. They provide little or no training to the metal/nonmetal mining industry. And that's an important aspect that you discussed earlier, about how long should it be before this takes effect. If there is a strong state grants program that is given a charge to go out and work with the metal/nonmetal mining industry, that will have a great impact on how quickly it can occur. Certainly the industry has been able to mobilize a number of times in the past to address issues, and they'll continue to do that, whatever the timetable. But I think that's -- that would be an important part of it. Something you mentioned earlier about subcontractors at stone mines, metal/nonmetal mines -- in this industry, there are almost -- at least in our operations, there are no subcontractors that do extraction. I know in the coal business, as a matter of fact, the Rogers Group has worked with other coal companies who would be owners, and we have worked as a subcontractor in the extraction process in coal, so I understand the significant difference. But in the metal/nonmetal mining industry, it is more the person that is going to come in and maybe work on your office trailer, or they're going to come in and change a tire, or they're going to come in and repair a piece of equipment. They're not actually doing the crushing of the mineral. I think I mentioned about being proactive within the MSHA organization, and I think MSHA is moving in that direction with the educational field services. And this will be another very important factor in any change in the rules, that the educational field service can go out and really give an impact to the operator and can see them not as adversarial, not as someone coming to write them a ticket and fine them, but someone that's coming out there to help their operations to be safer. And I think that will be very important, and I think MSHA is moving in that direction as we speak. And, last, I would just like to say, in closing that the industry does not need more regulation with restricts our ability to develop training and educational programs. Performance-based requirements must be geared to provide the necessary flexibility so the large, small, and all in between can tailor training and education to meet the needs of their employees. We can have flexible rules and still meet the intent of Congress through the Act. Again, thank you for providing a forum for all here to voice their ideas, and I am confident that by working together, we can achieve what we all seek, and that is a safe workplace, without overly burdensome regulation. Thank you. MS. ALEJANDRO: I have a couple of questions for Mr. Elliott, and some of the other panel members may as well. Do you have -- and, again, I don't want to put anyone on the spot. But you did mention the importance of the state grants program in making sure that implementation of a final rule is effective. Do you have any opinion as far as what an appropriate compliance deadline might be for a final rule? MR. ELLIOTT: I think giving a time period of approximately a year from the date of -- I don't know what actual -- what date would you call it? MS. ALEJANDRO: It would probably be from the publication date in the Federal Register typically. MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. MR. ELLIOTT: Because that would give some -- enough -- in the metal/nonmetal industry, a lot of it is seasonal, so you're going to have a situation to where you're going to have a group of people during that first year. They're not going to know -- and there are a lot of operators, quite honestly, that don't stay up on the rules, and so it's going to take a while to get that information out in the field. So I think if you consider -- it should be a consideration of a year or more, not -- certainly, by no means, less than a year, because of that difficulty in getting the word out to everybody. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. And I have one other question, and you may or may not be able to answer this, but as far as contractors or subcontractors, typically is the issue of who's responsible for safety and health training for contractor employees addressed in the contract between the operator and the contractor? Is that ever a subject? MR. ELLIOTT: That definitely is a subject. One of the issues that comes up -- I am not an attorney, but I have talked to numerous attorneys over the years, and you run into that problem with third-party liability and the contractual separation of the liability responsibility. And so we are very cautious in any contract that we develop with a subcontractor, that we make sure that they understand fully that they must comply with all applicable regulations, whether they be OSHA, MSHA, whatever is applicable. It may be environmental regulations. There are a number of things which might be covered on the site. And we are presently looking at how involved we are going to be as a company with the day-to-day activities with that contractor, because what you -- the problem in our litigious society, the way it is today, that you go up to a subcontractor and you start talking about the method with which they are doing the job that they're hired to do. Then potentially that employee has the -- may come back, if there's an accident, and sue you for being involved improperly in that process. So that's a -- but we do make sure that it is in all subcontracts. It is also on any purchase order agreement that we make with a supplier. The items that they might provide for us would have to meet any guidelines. MS. ALEJANDRO: So when you have a subcontractor, then the expectation is they would be providing the comprehensive safety and health training and the refresher training that would be required. MR. ELLIOTT: That is correct. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. BRELAND: I had one question on the -- you talked about the less than 30-minutes time frame for training, and that's been talked about a lot. But one of the concerns that also comes up related to that has to do with the recordkeeping and minimizing that. Do you have any suggestions on how you would note an individual had eight hours of annual refresher in a given year? MR. ELLIOTT: I think that's important in the performance-based training. If I am using a format that is less than one class outline and so forth, I would need to be able to demonstrate to you how that was done, and if you came and said, Well, what did you do in that 15-minute training three months ago; Well, I don't remember, that doesn't count. You didn't do the job. So there needs to be appropriate documentation to demonstrate that it's been done. And we do that. We have forms, safety meeting forms, where each employee will sign. The supervisor will put the primary subject, and then if any questions arose and how they were addressed during the meeting. MR. BRELAND: Thank you. MS. ALEJANDRO: Ron? MR. FORD: Yes. Mr. Elliott, I've got a question about a comment. You said that crafting a rule in one area should be focused on subject matter and not the person who does the training. Do you have any ideas on how a standard could be crafted in the sense that it doesn't require perhaps certification of the person providing the training, but at the same time also, provides security that the best subject matter or the best method is being taught by someone who doesn't know anything about the subject or the method? MR. ELLIOTT: That's an excellent question, and I have to admit I couldn't give you any detailed answer at this point with respect to that question. But when you talk about methods, what is so hard to determine is a standard method. You can -- and we work -- and I do a lot of the training within our company, and there are employees who are very articulate, very educated, and quite knowledgeable. And then there are those that have been in this business, maybe, for a number of years, who did not have an in-depth education. They have a great deal of difficulty reading and writing, and finding a person that can be supposedly certified and then give that instruction to where the person can understand it, it's not easy. And I don't know there is an easy answer. But one of the things that I believe Mr. Pautler gave earlier about the situation where he had one of the state grants provider came in and gave the training, and could kind of cut to the chase, so to speak, and talk to the people on their level, and that's the -- I think the person has to be flexible, has to be knowledgeable about the subject matter. But I just don't have a real good answer for you at this point, but I think it's important that whatever is used by the operator, that they be able to demonstrate to a representative of the agency how this is going to function and accomplish what needs to be done. If I am bringing someone in with a Ph.D., I should be able to explain to you and demonstrate to you how that is going to be effective with the subject matter. If I'm going to us a loader operator, I need to be able to demonstrate that, too. So, again, it's performance-based, and the operator has the flexibility, but they need to follow up and explain how they're going to use those people. MR. FORD: Thank you. MS. ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much, Mr. Elliott. MR. ELLIOTT: Thank you. MS. ALEJANDRO: The next speaker is -- and I'm afraid I'm not going to do very well on pronunciation -- Daniel P. Foltyniewicz from Risk Management Network. MR. FOLTYNIEWICZ: Say that again. MS. ALEJANDRO: Why don't you say it, but I'll say it after you. MR. FOLTYNIEWICZ: Foltyniewicz. MS. ALEJANDRO: Foltyniewicz. MR. FOLTYNIEWICZ: Very good. MS. ALEJANDRO: Did you give the court reporter a card or -- MR. FOLTYNIEWICZ: I believe I gave her an 8-1/2- by-11 sheet with the correct spelling. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. Great. Thank you very much. MR. FOLTYNIEWICZ: History teaches us to be prepared, and December 7, 1941, we were attacked at Pearl Harbor, 57 years ago to the day. Let's honor those that have provided us this opportunity by sharing their lives with us, so a second or two to honor the grateful dead. (Pause.) MR. FOLTYNIEWICZ: Training has prepared us to likewise to go forward. To give you an idea of some of my background, because I've listened to some of the others here mention their state schools that they attended, so I'd like to give equal time to the state school that I attended. My background: In 1971, a bachelor's in communication from Northern Illinois University; in 1975, received my M.S. degree in communication, also from Northern Illinois; in 1979, received my C.A.S. in safety. I'm currently 13 hours away from my doctorate. Taught seven years in the public school system, two years in the United States Marine Corps, and one year at Kubisaki [phonetic] High School in Sukiran, Japan, adult education. Since 1975, I've been involved as an instructor or supervisor in the education and training of mining industry personnel. I'm here today as a concerned person/educator. Even though some of the statements and comments presented by state associations and larger companies have been addressed, I felt it was a duty as a person to be in this room, likewise to make my voice be counted. Sometimes you don't see eye to eye with large companies, smaller companies, or medium-size companies. Some of the concerns raised here today, I think, represent a larger segment of the mining industry, and either eliminate or omit some of the smaller interests, so therefore some of the observations that I've made since sitting here, and I'll try and be brief to the five minutes that I requested. MS. ALEJANDRO: Take as much time as you need. MR. FOLTYNIEWICZ: That may not have been the best thing to say. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. Well, forget that. MR. FOLTYNIEWICZ: I believe that effective employee training is an important part of the safety program, but it also includes other areas, but aren't limited to some of the subjects or the subject matter that was presented with the Mine Act. Management concerns should be involved. Employee participation should be considered. Certainly hazard identification, evaluation, and control should likewise be a part of that program. However, part of any program should be its annual program evaluation. I believe and support the development of MSHA's enforceable effective training for employees. Part of my training as a United States Marine, that I did follow the rules and regulations that were promulgated to us, such as in the M-16 rifle, we had certain guidelines that we had to know, had to be followed to make a minimum standard. Yet when we look at it, it should be goal- oriented and not restrictive nor constraining. Lesson plans: Many teachers, over the years that I had taught in school, in the public school system, many of the teachers, even though highly qualified -- The Rogers Group, Mr. Elliott addressed the fact that there are good instructors out there that don't have the credentials, and they are well knowledgeable people in their field, that could present excellent material. yet I also know highly qualified professional instructors that I happened to share with for seven years, that I wouldn't want as an instructor. So let us not let the credentials be the criteria for the speaker. Current Part 48 addresses training requirements for coal and underground and other segments of the mining industry. Training should be specific for those being affected, such as let's compare apples for apples. The unions provide excellent training likewise. Yet at the same time, currently we do not recognize some of the training offered by unions or other organizations that provide work force personnel to our industry. I have yet to hear anything address that as far as being a viable source of training. Requirements should be able to be met by all. We cannot be half-pregnant in our approach. If large companies can meet the need, we've got to make sure that the smaller interests likewise can meet the need. The 17 years, 11 months, and 6 days brought by Kincaid Stone is a valid reason and lesson for us to say that, yes, smaller companies can meet that goal, too. I feel the need to meet both the letter and the spirit of the training requirements set forth in Section 115 of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977. MSHA should have minimum guidelines for the aggregate industry to follow, as a guiding format, not as a dictatorial presentation. To be effective, training must be performance-oriented, not set in stone, pun intended. Training should be recognizing current and changing conditions in the instructional techniques. People brought up today about some of the high tech ways of instruction. Let us not forget the basic approach: hands on, one on one, face to face. It is good to have CD-ROM, and it's good to have some of these changing areas, but nothing can meet the hands on, one on one. I believe the primary responsibility for training of an operator employee should be the operator. Subcontractors or contractors are responsible for training of their own employees. However, the operator should provide site-specific information and appropriate training for those outsiders. For example, if you have a tire vendor who comes in and is going to be changing a tire hear a high wall, they should be aware of those hazards around that high wall. Don't want to change and have that person listen to me about changing the tire, but to be aware and cognizant of some of the other hazards that that person may be involved with. In conclusion, MSHA would best provide offering the aggregate industry training by flexibility in that training that meets the needs of those being affected. With the flexibility, the training goal of MSHA and industry can be achieved. I think by working together it can be. Let's not be restrictive; let's be goal-oriented. Thank you. MS. ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much. That comes to the end of our list of speakers. I'd like to ask if there's anyone here who has not spoken who would like to speak, or if someone who has spoken has additional remarks that they would like to make before we close this. MR. WITHEY: May I make a few comments? MS. ALEJANDRO: Sure. MR. WITHEY: I think I'm perhaps the only contractor here. My name is Mark Withey, W-I-T-H-E-Y. I'm with Evenson Explosives. MS. ALEJANDRO: Could you spell the name of Evenson? MR. WITHEY: E-V-E-N-S-O-N. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. WITHEY: -- Explosives, LLC. And I'm in agreement certainly with training for our people. We have more of a limited focus on exposure to danger. Basically we deal with explosives, and we contract bore-hole loading for various producers in the state. Part 48 doesn't deal very well with contractors, and I would like to see that addressed in future rule- making. I would like to see, perhaps, the Subpart C, that deals with training for specific contractors, not just explosive contractors, but there's drill contractors that are there, providing service to a producer. And I think that if you narrowly focus on the areas that you're liable to find hazard and teach your people on that narrow focus and then have site-specific training as Dan had indicated, site-specific hazard training, because every location is different. We need to know direction of travel on haul roads, whether it's left-hand drive, right-hand drive, things along those lines, that you encounter on a daily basis. The individual mine site is best suited to give site-specific hazard training, whether it be a presentation by a safety department individual or simply a piece of paper. A lot of the mine sites out west will give you one or two pages to read for your mine site, specifying the specific hazards that you should look for out there. Some mine sites require that you have specific gear when you enter the mine site. There's a large coal mine that you have to have a magnetic flag on top of your vehicle that extends six, eight foot above the roof of your vehicle, so you can be seen by big equipment. Things like that are important. I'm not going to belabor the training that is specified in Part 48, but to have underground segments when you don't do underground work is really wasting time. When you have specifically the need to have that training, then it should be part of an overall training program. But when you have no personnel that ever go to an underground mine site, they shouldn't have to worry about respirators or if I don't have personnel that are anywhere near electrical hazards, then I would rather spend time teaching my people about dealing with hazards that they would routinely expect to encounter on a daily basis. So if we could, as I suggest, perhaps do a subpart C, that would cover not mine sites but contractors to mine sites, I think that would be most productive and generally specify the type of training necessary for those particular contractors. Again, everyone in the room has indicated flexibility, and flexibility is -- I believe we've always had good flexibility from MSHA, and the personnel that I've dealt with over 30 years with the mining industry, I don't think really have had much problem with flexibility. And I would think that that flexibility will continue. I certainly would offer my hope that it would, and I think that's about it. I'll start rambling momentarily. MS. ALEJANDRO: I'd like to actually ask you a question. You indicate that as far as you're concerned, it makes sense for the contractor to deal with the hazards that are peculiar to the service, I guess, that they're going to be providing. MR. WITHEY: Sure. MS. ALEJANDRO: And then the operator will follow that up with site-specific training. Is that the way that you approach training now at your operation? MR. WITHEY: Generally, every operation that our people attend, I've been to, and I give kind of site- specific training, not -- most of the producers locally don't have or we've never been invited to attend site- specific training. That's something that's more unique to the larger mine sites out west, that have lots of visitors all the time. It's something that probably -- the fact is I've written a paper and presented it to the academy a couple of years ago, about professional steps in blasting. One of the items of interest, I guess, is that I suggested the contractors make their own site-specific checklist, and what we typically do to prepare our personnel for mine sites is do that site-specific checklist ourselves, for people to see conditions that are unique to that mine site. And that's part of our ongoing training, and we've talked about tailgate training. And tailgate training is a wonderful thing. We've had comments about stopping somebody doing something on site, correcting it immediately. And you can't document that; you can't write a report about it. I suppose you could, but you wouldn't catch all of them if you were in the office writing reports. But that's important, and I guess it opens up one last thought. I'm on the task force for blasting here in Illinois. I deal with DNR, Illinois DNR, our regulatory agency, and the IAAP, Mr. Henriksen. And one of the things that we've brought up with DNR is when you set time, time is so arbitrary. You could have an eight-hour lecture and not get ten minutes of value from an eight-hour lecture. You could have somebody that is animated and get more value and more use out of somebody that can interact with people and point to somebody and get him to say something, and all of our training is done that way, interacting between trainee and trainer. So you're constantly getting feedback on how effective your training is. I guess to specify eight hours, I don't know how else you could do it for annual refresher, but the length of time is such an arbitrary thing. The subject material is so variable, that you can't specify subject material. You shouldn't specify time. I don't know what other criteria there is that you could legislate. But, I guess, last statement: It's awfully hard to legislate common sense, and that's what we're trying to do here. MS. ALEJANDRO: Actually, I have a couple more questions. A lot of people who've spoken today have indicated that it's appropriate for contractors to be responsible for the comprehensive training of the contractors' employees, which would include the 24 hours of initial training and then the eight hours of annual refresher training. MR. WITHEY: Sure. MS. ALEJANDRO: Do you agree with that? MR. WITHEY: Yes. Absolutely. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. And, also, do you contract at sites where OSHA is the regulating agency as well as MSHA? MR. WITHEY: No. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. So you're not in a situation, then, where you've got -- you know, you're on sites with two different sets of safety regulations that come under training. MR. WITHEY: No. Right now, it's just strictly MSHA. MS. ALEJANDRO: All right. MR. BURNS: I was going to ask you about the OSHA training aspect, but do I understand that you don't do drilling? You just -- MR. WITHEY: Strictly explosives. MR. BURNS: Okay. Someone else does the drilling -- MR. WITHEY: Yes. MR. BURNS: -- before you get there. MR. WITHEY: Some of the larger producers have their own drills and have their own blast crews, and occasionally you'll be called in to do bore-hole loading or a specialty type shot. Some of the smaller producers don't have either, and they have to contract drilling to be done, and they have to contract for an explosive company to come in and provide shot rock. So that's generally the area that we're in. We'll come in and provide shot rock, once the holes are drilled. MR. BURNS: Just to address the -- you indicated that some places you go, some of the mines you go to, they'll give you a couple of pages to read for hazard training. MR. WITHEY: Yes. MR. BURNS: Have you run into a situation where you have perhaps an employee that would have difficulty in reading some of these materials and understanding, getting the information that they need to get? MR. WITHEY: I haven't encountered that, but I could see where it could happen, because our industry -- it's a changing industry. When I started back in the '50s, there was lots and lots of laborers out there, with probably fourth and fifth-grade educations, and that was probably -- if you were a high school graduate, you were top dog in the field. That's changed to some extent. And illiteracy, particularly in the states that I service, Illinois and Indiana and Ohio, I just don't see that many functionally illiterate people. But we do have other folks that -- Spanish Americans, that don't read English very well, and I don't know if they provide something for Hispanics to read. I'm sure that if it comes up, that they would. But we have a couple of Hispanic employees now that stay in the manufacturing aspect of our business, and we have to get first aid video in Spanish, because I can play it for them in English and they can see what's going on, but they don't really understand the words. So, yes. We have to be able to address -- again, this would be site-specific. Because a person doesn't understand shouldn't single him out to be injured, so there has to be some way to communicate, whether you have to have somebody read it to them or interpret it for them. Just don't go through the motions of signing something you don't even know what you're reading. So I think that has to be addressed certainly. MR. BURNS: I guess this is more of a general comment, as this issue continues to come up, as far as everybody here wants effective training, and I think really that's what these public meetings are about, this rule- making's about. The last thing that we want -- and I think anybody here wants -- is for you to end up where you have people doing compliance training and doing their safety health training in a different way, where they're really doing it on separate tracks. And I think everybody here really feels that there really should only be one type of training that they want to do, and that's effective training. We need to develop a rule that allows that, so the required training is effective training, so I think that is what everybody here wants. It's figuring out how to get there. MR. WITHEY: Well, your district manager should be -- when they approve a training program, you should have the flexibility in that approval; if training programs are going to have to be approved in advance, you should have the approval to eliminate those areas that are specified in Part 48 now, that you can't approve if you don't include them in the training plan, even though you really don't ever intend to talk about it, but you're just covering your documentation. Again, talking about self-rescuers, for people don't even know what a self-rescuer is and don't need one because they're on the surface, I think -- I would like to see the flexibility given to the district supervisors to approve training programs that don't completely cover all of Part 48, just the areas that are specific to the hazards. MR. BRELAND: A couple of things to kind of follow up on what Kevin Burns talked to you about. Do you think the operator providing a checklist that you are able to read would be sufficient to cover hazard mine site training? MR. WITHEY: Oh, I think it would be. If you have something particularly dangerous or particularly unique to the industry, maybe you'd want to take it a step further and have somebody go out and escort you the first time on the mine site, and many mine sites do that anyway. They will take you to the area that you need to be in and ask that you not drive around on your own. But each site is so unique to itself that I think the hazard training for that site has to be evaluated for the site. And if you do have fast-moving haul trucks that haul 250 tons or a thousand ton, there's some huge pieces of equipment out there. There's pieces of equipment you have to radio before you approach their circle of influence, because they can't see you. And you might be within 300 feet and they're so high and have so many dead spots, that they just don't even know you're there. You have to communicate by radio. And if you don't know that as a vendor or as a contractor, you could drive up and have a shovel swing and crush you, and he's not even aware that you're there. And after you're dead, you didn't even know he hit you. That's the worst part. So I guess you have to evaluate each site individually, as to what method of hazard training site- specifically you need to provide. MR. BRELAND: Okay. One other thing on the training: When you go to a mine site or contract with a mining site, do you offer them some sort of evidence that you have done your training of your employees? You said you agree that contractors should do their own comprehensive training. MR. WITHEY: If we're asked to provide that, yes. But we don't offer it just offhand, but if the producer wants to see training records or training certificates, we can provide those. MR. BRELAND: Okay. And then one other thing you brought up that I thought was interesting was the contractor site-specific evaluation, if you will, or checklist. Do you do that every time you go to a new operation? MR. WITHEY: Absolutely. MR. BRELAND: Prior to your start? MR. WITHEY: Absolutely, and write up the site- specific checklist. We've got that at our -- you need a route book for delivery of explosives, and we have site- specific checklist for each site that we deliver to or operate in, and that's included in the route book, so it's all in there. MS. ALEJANDRO: Typically when you're at a site, how long a period of time are your employees at a site, or does it vary quite a bit? MR. WITHEY: Oh, it varies tremendously. We've spent as little time as two hours to knock down 10,000 ton of rock, or a full day on a large shot. So, yes. You could spend as much time as probably eleven hours in one day or as little as one or two hours. MS. ALEJANDRO: Is that usually the way that it is, though? I mean, it's either a couple of hours or the most that you'll be at a site is for a very long day? You don't keep coming back, you know, one day after or another? MR. WITHEY: No. Out west, they do, certainly. MS. ALEJANDRO: But your operation does not? MR. WITHEY: But here in the Midwest, and Illinois specifically, we're not allowed to let explosives sleep overnight, unless there's a prior approval by DNR, I suppose. But you don't design anything that would extend beyond a normal work day, that can't be detonated that day. So it gets less in the wintertime. MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes, I'll bet. MR. WITHEY: Thank you. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. If there's no further questions, thank you very much, Mr. Withey. MR. WITHEY: You bet. MS. ALEJANDRO: And, again, I will reiterate what I said earlier. Does anyone have any additional remarks that they'd like to make? We've got a couple of people -- this gentleman here, you haven't spoken before, have you? MR. STALDER: No, I haven't. MS. ALEJANDRO: Would you like to make a -- all right. Well, just come up and introduce yourself. If you want, you can give a card to the court reporter. MR. STALDER: Thank you. My name's Robert Stalder, S-T-A-L-D-E-R. I'm a regional manager of environmental health and safety for U.S. Silica. And I hadn't requested to speak, because I've only been in the sand side of the business for about eight months, but I have seen some things here that I have insight to. Maybe a little bit of my background: I've had 18 years of mining experience, underground coal, gold mining, surface and underground. Fifteen of those have been in safety and instruction. And I'm a CMSP, a certified mine safety professional, have a B.A. in education from the University of Wyoming, an MBA from University of Phoenix; been appointed to the boards of both Wyoming and Colorado by the governors for certification of coal mines. And we built the tests and certified people. First of all, I think you folks have a very difficult task ahead of you, and I recognize that. A lot of things have been brought up today that are general things that are problems and maybe not the solutions. I found from some of the things I've done in the past -- I was a coach for seven years, and I probably learned more there than I did anywhere else. And I found that if the coach tried to make the players fit the plays, they always failed. And right know, you're set into a situation that you're setting down a set of plays here that's supposed to work for a mine that has 500 people in it and a mine that only has three in it. It's very difficult. So with that, I found the successful way of doing it is to make the plays fit the players. Okay? You find out who your players are and then make the plays to fit them. I think the only way that that may come about from your perspective is regulations as being guidelines only and not specific, and the more specific you make these guidelines or these rules, regulations, the more difficult it's going to be for the operators to handle it. And I've heard comments today that some of them don't want to produce training plans. Personally I think that's the only way that the mine sites are going to be able to handle something that's specific enough for their site, and I believe that it should be specific for their site, because each operation is different; it's unique. And I don't care if it's exactly the same processes; it's still unique, due to the people that are involved in it. Therefore, I believe that the training should be geared towards the operation itself and specifically their needs. I feel that supervisors are probably the best, most knowledgeable trainers in that particular area, and yet if we look for certifications, as certified or instructors or something, they're not going to have it. And they may not have all the educational techniques and everything else, but they probably know the safety that's involved in that task. They know the dangers in that area and everything else, and they're probably one of the better communicators. I'd like to see them be able to do training. In my situation, I'd like to see them do the training, with me being able to oversee it, but some of the operations don't have that luxury, I guess. I'd also -- something that would be beneficial, I think -- I found this in all mining, from coal mining, gold mining, whatever, is an alternate way of recordkeeping, the 5023 method of filling it out and signing it and four copies and go here and there, and it becomes a paper nightmare at times. I'm not sure that I have a solution for it. I'd like to see us use sign-in sheets or databases, where we can track it much easier, but that's my personal feeling on it. I also realize that we need to ensure that there's not, for lack of a better word, lying about the whole process, that the instruction's actually being done. And those are the only comments that I had. Thank you. MS. ALEJANDRO: Thank you. MR. BRELAND: Just on the training plan issue that you're talking about, that you're opposed to submission of training plans for approval, you're saying you wanted -- would expect to develop a training plan at your mine site to be specific for the mine -- MR. STALDER: I'm not sure I'm opposed to submitting a training plan for approval personally. I know that there's some other mines here, and I don't want to step on their toes. Like I say, I haven't been here that long. I don't see it get bogged down in, You need to have this, you need to have whatever. I would like to see us be able to make a training plan, set up for our mines, and in my case, I have three different ones, and each one of them would be different, because they're unique. but I would like to see that, where we could do it, and it would be specific to that mine site, and it would be usable. MR. BRELAND: So then you're saying that maybe if there was any evaluation, really, of the plan, of its shortcomings or whatever, but if you had a mine site, then consultation with the mine operator if there was some need. MR. STALDER: Yes. I'd like to see some of that. I think it could be worked out that way. MS. ALEJANDRO: You say you're not opposed necessarily to the concept of submitting a training plan to MSHA for approval. Do you think that that process can add value? I mean, is it just that you don't have any objection to it, or do you think that that process adds value to the training? MR. STALDER: I've got to be careful how I answer this, because, like any organization, there are people who are qualified, and there are people who are knowledgeable, and then there are people who are in positions that are neither. It can very much add to the process. MS. ALEJANDRO: But it depends on who. MR. STALDER: Yes, it does. It certainly does. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. STALDER: I would look forward to critiquing from another person that's knowledgeable and sees things that I missed. I don't have a bit of problem with that. MR. BRELAND: The only other thing you mentioned, some alternative methods of tracking, I believe, than 5023, did you have some specific suggestions? You mentioned a database, sign-in sheets? MR. STALDER: Well, I believe there were some regulations in the West, anyway, where we were able to start using the 5023s off the computer, but it's still a 5023. I'd like to see -- I don't know if each mine wants to put it up or whatever, but if you have a database where you can put all your employees in there and track their training that way, that's nice. And, yes. I understand that it's a lot easier to sit at your desk and type in names and say they've been trained than it is to get out and train them, so I'm not sure it's a solution in and of itself. I like the sign-in sheet, and I don't have an objection to someone going out and asking an employee, Did you get trained on this date. I believe we need to be accountable. MS. ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much. MR. STALDER: Thank you. MS. ALEJANDRO: And I will ask again -- Mr. Peterson? MR. PETERSON: Thank you. I had alluded earlier in my remarks to the need to accept existing and growing technologies, and there's been a number of comments since I spoke, as far as use of technology in the training process. To clarify a couple of points, technology is not a replacement for human or hands-on type training. That is a given. One of the things that bothers us the most as a producer of video-based safety training type programs is the fact that we know very well that people will take a video, sit a class in front of it, show it, and think that those people are trained. And one of the things that we try to emphasize in all the support materials that we send with our videos is, This is an instructor's device; it is not a replacement for an instructor. We thoroughly believe that, and we have never been able to replace the human element. There are also technologies that do exist at the present time that cannot replace human beings. However, they can support their efforts. One of the great mistakes that is being made at the present time, I believe, is an over-reliance on things like CVT and CD-ROM. Sitting a person in front of a monitor and providing information to them has a certain value. However, it cannot answer their questions on a spontaneous basis, and consequently, the value from a training point of view is suspect. It can't interact with the individual. That's really a major concern. One technology that I alluded to in my earlier remarks that we're involved in at the present time has to do with the training of people for the actual operation of motorized construction equipment or powered construction equipment, and that is simulators. There is a company that we're involved with who had developed a number of simulators for the military for training tank drivers and helicopter pilots and for gunnery practice and things of that nature, that is now making a transition to the civilian industries, and we have been working with them to redesign the simulator or at least adapt it to use for the heavy-haul mine trucks. That technology is available, and we have exposed some of the manufacturers of the heavy-haul mine trucks to this technology, and they, I can tell you, have a great interest in it. I think this is something that, what I was trying to say earlier, needs to be considered when it comes to flexibility for training in the future. These are things that are going to happen, and if we have a closed-end regulation, it precludes the possibility of some of this taking place. So I would urge whatever regulations come out of these hearings that are going on around the country, that they keep an open mind and try to build a regulation that has an open end and can accept some of the newer technologies that come along. One of the other things that needs to be addressed is the employment situation in the United States is extremely high. The availability of trained employees is difficult to come by in many parts of the country right now, so consequently they seem to be getting an influx of employees with little or no training, and frequently with a language barrier. Where English is used as a second language, there are some technologies that are available that can help, and I believe that needs to be considered in the development of any regulations that are provided. Standardized-type training, not site-specific, but those basic elements that need to be addressed for all employees in the mining industry, can be provided in some technology formats that can handle new languages. As far as testing is concerned, for those with English as a second language or functional illiterates or, I guess to be politically correct, we'd have to call them learning-deprived, can also be done with some of this technology. There is a concept that exists that has not been developed yet that would allow a literate, totally literate and an illiterate person to sit side by side and neither one would know if the other could read or write, and they could still be tested. It's an interesting concept that we've worked with the University of Wisconsin on to try to develop. These are some of the things that I think need to be considered in the development of any regulations, so that there are some open-end methods or open-ended regulations that will allow people to use new technology, some flexibility, some systems that are different from those that are standard prescriptions. MS. ALEJANDRO: I just have one question. You indicated that such things as videos and CD-ROMs optimally are used to support a human being, and I guess you could call it the human element that's so important in training. For a regulation, such as the one that we're going to be developing, do you think that that is so important that the regulation should somehow specify that videos or CD-ROMs are support mechanisms, and that a human element is primary or essential? Or, again, is this something that philosophically you're recommending, but not necessarily recommending that it be addressed in a proposed regulation? MR. PETERSON: No. I'm recommending that it be addressed in a proposed regulation. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. And how would you go about doing that? MR. PETERSON: Short of sitting down and working out the language as to how it could be done, I believe that it has to be stated in the regulation that these methods which are available -- the problem that you encounter with a video quite often is the fact that the instructor will plug it in and leave the room. MS. ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. PETERSON: That has to be addressed. A human has to be available, whether it's video training, CD-ROM, CVT, you name it; there should be a human available to respond to questions that arise at the time that the training is being done. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. PETERSON: A qualified human. MS. ALEJANDRO: Right. Thank you very much. Yes? MR. WITHEY: Just one last comment. We talked about the value of a good instructor. MS. ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. WITHEY: And if a MSHA-approved instructor was on the premises, if there was somebody more qualified to teach first aid that wasn't an approved instructor, as long as the approved instructor is overseeing the procedures, anyone that is qualified in the subject matter should be able to provide that information to the students, as long as the MSHA instructor is in agreement with its content. MS. ALEJANDRO: Well, that raises another question. I mean, the minimum requirements in Section 115 of the Act, I don't believe, require that an instructor who provides training needs to go through any kind of certification or approval process. Do you think that -- I mean, you're talking about having an approved instructor on site to ensure that whatever persons who may not be certified or approved, be certain whatever instruction they're giving is adequate. I mean, do you think the approval process for instructors is a valuable one? Or do you think that that is a requirement that doesn't add value ultimately to training? MR. WITHEY: Well, you could approve with somebody 30 years' field experience -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. WITHEY: -- that's really got one year of experience for 30 years or 30 times. You could have somebody else that's had much more diverse background, that is more knowledgeable in the entire field in ten years than somebody that's been at one site for 30 years. MS. ALEJANDRO: So are you saying, then, that approving of instructors does not necessarily ensure that they're going to be good and effective training providers? MR. WITHEY: I am. Or they may not be good communicators. MS. ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. WITHEY: You may have the best training program and experience history in the world, but if you can't convey that to somebody, there's no value there. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. WITHEY: Or if you don't allow for interaction, it misses that human element. Somewhere in the rules, the word "interaction" has to be, because it's the only way you're going to find out if your training is effective. I don't care if you do a test or an on-site review, watch them do the test; you've trained them to do or interact with them as this whole process is being taught. It's been my experience that if you interact during the teaching process, that it really is so much more valuable than just sitting there and talking. If you don't get them to respond to you, you've lost them. Once you can't make eye contact with them, you might as well go out and let the video run, because that's all they're doing. MR. HENRIKSEN: Just to follow up on Mark's point, certifications are not magic. You've got to give flexibility. If what the operators want to see the MSHA- certified person do training, great. If an operator has someone who's been doing a job for years, that person may not be certified by MSHA; that person may not have a high- level education. But that person has know-how to explain the job, explain how to do the safety. You can use that person as a trainer, because that person is knowledgeable and would be respected by the people that works under him or her. That person, I think, would be paid attention to, and that person can give some valuable training. MS. ALEJANDRO: But from a regulatory standpoint, if I hear you correctly, what you're saying is that an approval process and an instructor certification or approval process is not going to ensure that that person has those skills and abilities. MR. HENRIKSEN: I'm saying we were -- if we're talking about certification of the instructor -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. HENRIKSEN: I don't think it's necessary -- MS. ALEJANDRO: It's not going to get you where you need to go. MR. HENRIKSEN: I think it's an option. You might have a company that prefers you use an MSHA-certified trainer for whatever reason to either do the training or maybe supervise the series of on-line supervisors. You may have somebody that may not have an MSHA certification but is a person that could do the job, the person who knows what they're doing, knows their business. They don't need a piece of paper; they don't need perhaps even much education. They know to impart information. MS. ALEJANDRO: So -- but who should decide whether that person does have the skills that's necessary -- MR. HENRIKSEN: The operator. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. HENRIKSEN: The operator. And bear in mind, I worked as an attorney for 17 years as a regulator in the state of Illinois and state of Kentucky, primarily in coal- mining enforcement and also aggregate mining and things like that. So I understand this. But truly I think our people are able to determine whether that person knows what they're doing. And I don't think it's impossible for an MSHA inspector to come on the site and talk to the operator, and say, Who's doing your training. Well, our superintendent. What does he or she do? Well, they do this, that, and the other. I don't think it would take an MSHA inspector very long to figure out whether or not the person is doing the job. He might have an MSHA certificate, or he or she might have a lot of experience doing what they're doing. I think it wouldn't be that difficult. In the same way, it doesn't make sense for us to have to send our plan away to be approved. You come on site. There's a plan to follow. Yes, here's what we do. Here's how we do our refresher; here's how we do our 24 hours. And we're a six-person sand and gravel dredge operation, so we talk about electrical hazards a lot because of that and we talk about drowning. You know, we talk about all these kinds of -- you know, this is what we do. There's no need to send that thing in to a regional office in Duluth or something like that. If it's in black and white, and we have it, we comply with the statute. And I think that anything that makes people do something that promotes safety, as simple as that, that would work. Having to send it off and having somebody nitpick it and all that kind of stuff -- again, I've been at a coal site. That's not going to work, or precisely that's not the best way to do what we all want to do which is to encourage a safe environment. THE REPORTER: I cannot hear them. MS. ALEJANDRO: If you want to speak, you probably need to come up to the microphone. Did you get -- THE REPORTER: Most of it. MR. BRELAND: I did have a question for Mr. Henriksen. You were saying the operator doing their own certification, if you will, of instructors and selection of, would you -- are you proposing any kind of criteria, other than -- I know there's a mixture of whether they might be skilled equipment operator. You mentioned the mine superintendent might be the best. But are you proposing some sort of criteria that the operator would use for guidelines to select these people? MR. HENRIKSEN: The criteria I would propose would be very -- well, I don't think -- it would be very loose. I think know-how, basic competence. I think Randy Logsdon with Vulcan had some language that i think he had culled from MSHA Part 56, and that kind of -- there is some basic kind of guidance in existing MSHA rules that could be, you know, used to craft this, for those people who want to, as an option, have their own people do the training. There has to be some level of competence, and I don't know if it's a matter of years. I'm not sure, but I think there is some guidance at least. I think there is some language in existing MSHA rules that can be used as a starting point for what you all are trying to do here, and that's what I'm suggesting. MS. ALEJANDRO: I have a question on that, though. I mean, if, in fact, we're not going to have some kind of, you know, central approval system of instructors, are we then going to be in a situation where an individual inspector will come on property and perhaps make a determination that an individual is or is not -- you know, whatever the words are in the rule -- a competent instructor? I mean, does that create problems min and of itself, that you may have a number of different individuals making an essentially subjective determination? I mean, is that a problem? Does that create a problem? MR. HENRIKSEN: the question posed is well taken. It is a double-edged sword. I think that if the rule's crafted to get -- the idea being, you know, MSHA-certified person, that makes sense versus someone with the level of competence. I think if we communicate enough, our industry communicates enough, what that means and then that communication is not only reflected in your regs, your rules, but it's reflected in policy guidances that you all generate, then I think if we are even part of that policy generation, discussion process, we can agree not only with what the rule says, but what the policy ought to be, and I think we can probably do that. That would cut through a lot of it. We don't want somebody who doesn't know what they're doing, telling someone how to do something that could hurt them. That's a given. So I think we could work together to arrive upon something that would work. I think it would really be good, and along those lines, it really is going to be good for you all to get your safety and in forcing people together to talk about all this, because compliance -- you could have the safest site in the world, but you might have some violations. You might have a place with no violations that's a dangerous place to work. We all know this, so I think it's real important to get your safety and you're forcing people together, working here, and letting your inspection, your enforcement staff know, yes, if they have somebody who has -- that can do this and demonstrate this, that works; you shouldn't write them -- You do have -- I think you all, in your safety training arm people, that have the competence to kind of help your enforcement people out, to make them know that it wouldn't be appropriate to write somebody up if -- I think we can work together. I understand the problem you're talking about, but it should be an option. It should be an option to have us decide who is competent. We don't want to have an MSHA-certified person. And they may -- because what they may do, they'd have an MSHA-certified person on staff. They may choose to get somebody that they think can do the job, do the work, or they may go out to a third party, at which nine out of ten of those people would be MSHA-certified, so there shouldn't be any kind of problem. These should just be options, a range of options, an array of options, to promote good safety and good safety culture, to make it easy for us to come into compliance. I mean, I understand that. MR. BRELAND: The one concern about -- and, again, Kathy Alejandro discussed it -- was what if an inspector or somebody on site in their subjective determination felt that your choice wasn't qualified or doing the right job. There would have to be a mechanism to deal with that. MR. HENRIKSEN: There would have to be, and I think so. I think one thing to perhaps think about: As I understand the MSHA enforcement system, even if it's a minor infraction, you all are duty-bound to write a violation. Perhaps these rules could be designed, that to follow it -- Well, for instance, the State of Illinois has systems to write you up if you run an oil and gas company, if you have a minor problem. What you can be given is, for lack of a better word, a warning, an inspection report, saying, Hey, you know, this is not -- you're not quite up to snuff; why don't you get this place squared away, get this corrected. If I come back again, I'll have it. But it wouldn't be -- perhaps in your mine safety training rules, there could be some kind of system where the inspector comes and sees something. Maybe the recourse shouldn't be just blasting that person and giving that person a violation; maybe the recourse should be having a dialogue, you know, having a discussion, trying to maybe get the regional manager involved or whatever, or maybe getting the people involved from your safety end. That would be a lot -- if this program starts off in a situation where you all are -- you all come in and are seen to be helpers, trying to -- come in with the idea of, We're not going to be writing you up for this stuff; we'll be trying to get you up to speed, trying to work with you, I think that would be great. So anything that avoids any kind of enforcement and litigation, can get away from that, but with a way to fix it, great. There are alternatives that exist in other systems, other states or federal systems. MS. ALEJANDRO: Thank you. MR. MAXEY: My name is Scott Maxey from Badger Mining Company. MS. ALEJANDRO: Excuse me. From -- MR. MAXEY: Badger Mining Corporation. I'm the -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Could you spell your last name. MR. MAXEY: M-A-X-E-Y. MS. ALEJANDRO: Thank you. MR. MAXEY: I'm the corporate health and safety director for the organization. I'm new to the industry. I've got a master's in science and health physics. I spent the last 12 years in the chemical industry, so I'm new to the mining industry, and that's why I didn't ask to speak today, but I wanted to reflect a little bit about some of our organization's perspectives on some of these issues that have come up. I'm a certified safety professional and a certified industrial hygienist. As a safety professional, we support performance-based types of training. There's no question about it. We feel that that's the best mechanism to get effective training to our associates. A little bit about our organization: We're a little bit different than most mining companies. We fully embrace the team concept. We have self-directed work teams in our mines that operate themselves. I mean, they do have an operations team or a leader that attends their meetings, but they know their job responsibilities; they're given a lot of autonomy to do their jobs; they're given directions. But ultimately they have the say in their day-to-day activities and how their job -- if it gets done as a team, everything from shift, who's going to work what shift, to how long they're going to work and what are they going to do first, that type of thing. So I think the linchpin in this whole thing is the training plan itself. We put a lot of time and effort in our training plans, but we don't regiment specifically all the different, I guess, elements that are in that training plan. We will indicate what needs to be trained, but because of the autonomy at badger mining that we give our associates, how they execute that is up to them, so there's a lot of variability between the different mine sites and the work teams themselves, so we put a lot of time and effort into a training plan that's geared and regimented for that particular work team, the culture for their particular jobs. So -- and, you know, I don't have a problem with submitting our training plans to MSHA, and we have done that in the past, just to show good faith, but the only thing that I think from our organization's perspective that would not be viewed as being reasonable is when we made small changes to those training plans, to have to resubmit every time. I'd much rather -- I like this gentleman's perspective of having that training plan potentially looked at when the inspector comes on site, and if there's deficiencies, to work on that training plan, to identify ways to improve that training plan, as opposed to beating them over the head. I understand the challenges that you as an organization are under. I mean, it's difficult to have flexibility without a lot of subjectivity, to make it enforceable, so I understand that. But I think the objective to any good safety training program is the health and safety of the associates, the employees. And, you know, if there could be a period where MSHA would work with the smaller companies to work on training plans, I think that there would be a lot of value to that, to identify deficiencies. One thing that we do with this issue on competent person, we don't like the idea of certification, but we do like -- our organization does identify specifically the qualifications an individual will need to do particular types of training, and we do identify those people, certain people, as having those qualifications and, in turn, we identify that -- I hate to use the word "certify" but identify it as being capable of conducting that particular training. We do have some qualifications of our associates that will be conducting that training, and one of those qualifications is they do attend like a train-the-trainer course. We have an internal course that our associate development team or equivalent to our HR department puts on, for those associates who want to take on these particular types of training rules, that they will need to attend this. The train-the-trainer program, as probably most of you are aware of, is designed to make people better trainers, not specifically work on the content of the particular type of training. Those are some of the requirements that we endorse, but, again, I think the training plan is what should be focused on here. And our training plans do not include timetables. They don't include specific issues that need to be discussed in there. There's an objective and a purpose, and also the qualifications of the individual that would be conducting those training plans, to allow the flexibility for people conducting these trainings to make it different every time, if there's retraining on these issues. Also, there's different training styles that our associates have. Now, we do have a program to assess our training that I think is very important, where we go out and we have physical observations and verifications that our training was effective, based on what they were told to do. In some cases, depending on what the training plan called for, there might be a test; there might be a CD-ROM executed internal test on a program, depending on how they wanted to execute that particular type of training. With respect to contractors, we do a lot of contractor training, because our contractors don't come in with the training. We feel that that isn't our responsibility. We endorse having site-specific training for our contractors, specific to our sites, the hazards associated with our sites, and not only just contractors, visitors, whoever may enter our mine site, so that site- specific training is very -- we feel is very important, and it, again, is specific to our mine site. For lack of a better term to use, I mean, we don't have any imbedded employees, where they are doing extraction process, but I believe from our history, that from a third-party liability, that we would take every effort to embrace associates that were involved in those types of activities. If they didn't have a line of -- a hierarchy, a supervision or if they were expected to do the same types of tasks at our site, we would probably consider them to be subject to our training requirements for the site. Those are all the comments that I have. MS. ALEJANDRO: Mr. Maxey, what kind of mining, what kind of operations does Badger have? MR. MAXEY: We're primarily an industrial sand producer. We do have three sites in Wisconsin. We have a new zeolite mine actually out in Nevada and California, and then we've got a smaller operation in Paloma. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. How many employees typically do you -- MR. MAXEY: Globally, I think we have about 350 mine-site employees, probably about 450 total corporate employees. We're a pretty small organization. MS. ALEJANDRO: And on an average per site, how many employees? MR. MAXEY: Our sites range. We have at one site less than ten miners, and at another site, we have as many as 90 miners. MS. ALEJANDRO: And you indicate that you provide comprehensive training to the contractor employees, but you would prefer -- MR. MAXEY: Well, we're forced to. MS. ALEJANDRO: Because they don't provide it? MR. MAXEY: When -- yes. They show up; they don't have that training. We need them on site. We're subject to those rules or our management has endorsed -- even though we have the rider, our management has indicated that we will conduct that type of training, so we've been in the position to do that. MS. ALEJANDRO: But you haven't had any success, then, in contractually getting your contractors to provide that kind of training to their employees before they show up? MR. MAXEY: I think that has been somewhat of a challenge in our organization, based on -- you know, things would come up, and we would need someone to get in there and get to work, something that was unexpected, something that was unplanned. Therefore, we didn't have the luxury of carving out -- they needed the training to do the particular type of work. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. FORD: Mr. Maxey, you have training plans at every one of your sites, even the ones that are less than ten people? Or is it that there's one training plan, and every site has to decide how to use it? MR. MAXEY: There's guidelines that we developed in terms of the training plan for all -- for the corporation, the types of things that we require, and then there's -- each training plan for each site is specific for that particular site, depending on how they want to conduct or what they feel is important for that particular site. And that training plan can change every year, depending on the needs of that work group, or there might be just a normal rotation of types of topics that we would like to cycle through. We do job family analysis for each of our job families at a mine site and determine, based on exposure and the hazard associated with those particular types of jobs; we determine the training requirements that maybe it would be -- we would want them to have, this training once a year. We might want them to have heat stress training every three years, so that would be specified, in terms of what the team determines from that assessment, of what the training requirements will be for each job family. MR. FORD: Does your -- are there union workers at your mines, your sites? MR. MAXEY: We're nonunion. MR. FORD: So all your workers are nonunion? MR. MAXEY: That's correct. MR. FORD: Do any of those workers cooperate in looking at your training plans? MR. MAXEY: They take an active role in the development of the training plans. Now, there are corporate guidelines for the types of things that we would like to see in there, but the associates are ultimately responsible for the training plans themselves. Now, we have an administrator at each mine that makes sure that it's executed and keeps all the documentation on that, but the training plan itself is site- specific. MR. FORD: And just one other area. You would not be opposed to sending any type of training plans like into a district office or anything like that, but you're just opposed to just updating them. MR. MAXEY: You know, I want to be clear here. The idea of a training plan is important, but we do not build a lot of specificity in our training plan that's going to be available for you to -- from an enforcement perspective, to evaluate it. So we don't have a problem with submitting training plans, but it just seems kind of a -- I'm trying to get the value of submitting that, when you should have an inspector on site that looks at the entire operation, looks at the hazards associated with the site, and then can develop -- can look at the training plan to see if that's appropriate for that particular site, as opposed to being in an office and not looking at the activities of the mine site and judging whether that training plan is appropriate. MR. FORD: When you say you have a training plan, a written training plan, that's the broad type plan. Right? And then you send it out to your different sites, and they develop a more specific plan, that's oriented just to their particular needs. Do they have a written plan then? MR. MAXEY: Yes, they do. MR. FORD: So that plan, though, would be specific to that site. That would be more or less what MSHA would be looking for, even if you send it in to them. Right? MR. MAXEY: Yes. It would be that site-specific plan that would be enforceable. What I submit to our sites is that these are the types of training requirements that we need to do. For ne miners, these are the -- you know, if you're going to issue respiratory protection, they need this training; they need to be -- so those guidelines come from myself. But the actual training plan, in terms of what each area may need -- I might they need hearing conservation training, proper use -- very site-specific. MR. FORD: Right. But when your general, broad- based rules goes out to a site, they develop their own written plan. MR. MAXEY: That is correct. MR. FORD: And have it on file. MR. MAXEY: And have it on file and available for inspection. MR. FORD: Okay. MR. BURNS: I have a question. MR. MAXEY: Yes, sure. MR. BURNS: You had mentioned that all your trainers go through train-the-trainer type program. Would you just explain -- can you explain how you came about instituting that? Is there -- the reasoning behind it, I guess. MR. MAXEY: Well, I'll try. The team concept that we've endorsed and fully implemented at Badger Mining required that we allow a lot more responsibilities to go to our associates, to take on budgeting, scheduling, production, a lot of things, and one of those elements was training; not only safety training, but job-specific training, training on how to -- you know, what have you; it might be administrative type of training, in terms of filling out time cards or something like that. We felt that we were going to flatten the organization out and allow a lot more responsibility to be given to specific associates that would have to be identified. We'd have qualifications. They're paid -- their wages are dependent on how much responsibility they do take on. We've implement a skilled wage program. I don't mean to get sidetracked here, but, I mean, there's the motivation for associates to take on more responsibilities. I've got an expert for confined space. I've got an expert that we provide them resources. Those are our competent trainers. We thought that we needed our associates not only to be comfortable with the content of the training, but we felt that they needed more knowledge on better ways to deliver training, so we designed our own train-the-trainer program internally. I think it's modeled right after the MSHA train-the-trainer program. But I know as an industry, probably most organizations probably wouldn't be supportive of having a train-the-trainer program. We, internally, have experienced a lot of value from that. But, again, I don't assign people to come in and do training. We have qualified individuals doing it, and they are identified by the operator, so we have a list of people and the qualifications for those people to do those particular types of training. And I think that that can be the enforcement branch of what MSHA might be trying to do with this new standard is being able to look at the training plan and make sure it's being executed appropriately, make sure that there are identified people by the operator, as being competent to do those jobs and have some type of qualifications identified for those people doing that type of training, whether -- I don't know what's appropriate. In some cases, it might be years of experience. In other cases, it might be just general job knowledge. It might be that you send them to a seminar, but I think that it's important that there be some type of documentation for having someone identified as a competent person. MR. BURNS: I was just curious that perhaps the people that were doing the training, you know, have some people. I mean, if you just tell somebody they're going to do training, and most people have not done that before; probably their first reaction is fright, because they're not sure what they're going to have to do. I was thinking that perhaps that was the thinking behind the train-the-trainer. MR. MAXEY: And it still exists. There's no question about that, but a lot of our training is with the new associates that are joining the organization, the actual population of people that are -- I mean, it's usually one person training two people or three at a time. They're not in front of a large classroom. I think that's where that fear factor comes in, and I still think that that exists. So we look at alternative ways to put our less comfortable associates in those positions. MS. ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much, Mr. Maxey. Mr. Elliott, did you have additional remarks? We'll get back to you, Mr. Withey. MR. ELLIOTT: Ed Elliott with the Rogers Group again. I want to speak just for a moment on the comment about the inspector having the ability to have a mechanism to verify training if they come on site, and everything at the operation, when you turn in your legal ID, there is a person at the site responsible for all the health and safety at the site. And when you look at the superintendent or whoever that might be -- for the sake of this discussion, I'll say superintendent. Let's say the superintendent. The inspector comes to the superintendent and says, Are you able to verify that every employee has received the training, according to your training plan. And I believe it is the ultimate responsibility of that supervisor to be able to verify that. Now, when you talk about the competent person, I think it's the same thing. It goes back to the supervisor/superintendent, saying that our employees have received the instruction according to the training plan, and then the inspector could, if he wanted to take it to the next step, look at that training plan, and then verify that by individual questioning of employees on the site. I know from time to time MSHA has had some difficulty with instructors who have fraudulently signed training certificates, and I think you can -- you know, you can find that in any situation, but there is that system of accountability within MSHA for everything at that site, for that particular individual. So that's all. I just wanted to speak to that mechanism that may be able to take care of that, versus saying, This person has to be certified, and if they're not certified -- you know, that still doesn't verify that the training's been done. But if the person in charge verifies it, then they are responsible and can be held accountable for it. Thank you. MS. ALEJANDRO: Thank you. MR. WITHEY: Mark Withey. One comment about the training plan. It seems to have generated a lot of interest. When you submit a training plan, perhaps with the new rules, we could specify that when a training plan has been submitted, I guess there's an implied approval if you don't hear back. That would really make it less cumbersome. It would also put the training plan in the hands of the district office or regional office. They would have the plan on hand. If there were deficiencies, then they could get back to you, and you could modify your plan. If there were no deficiencies, that's the implied approval, I think, that would really make it more expeditious. As far as the instructors, I still feel that you could have, as one of my producers, one of the larger producers in Illinois, has instructors for loaders, front- end loaders, that teach only about operating a front-end loader, and instructors that teach about the plant maintenance, belt safety, roller safety, things along those lines. But you have the best of the mine site, teaching the less experienced people. You still have to have one person ultimately responsible for it, though it's varied instructors, but because a man has been certified or approved by MSHA to teach a class doesn't mean he's the most expert person on that mine site. So if you have got the ability, as many of our producers do, to incorporate their senior people in whatever area of expertise they are expert in, to teach those folk that are doing that same job skill, and then have one man coordinating the whole training effort, I think everybody would be better served, particularly the people being trained. MS. ALEJANDRO: So you're basically saying, I mean, a variety of people have a variety of different expertises on different subjects, and to get the best possible training, it makes a great deal of sense to allow the people with the expertise to train in their areas of expertise. MR. WITHEY: Having someone who is overseeing coordinating, I guess, you know, to make sure that the training is given -- MR. WITHEY: Yes. MS. ALEJANDRO: -- and that it covers the necessary areas, do you think that that person, I mean, the so-called coordinator, needs to have some kind of approval or certification by MSHA? MR. WITHEY: I don't have any problem with MSHA -- I think it's a good idea for MSHA to look at the history of the individual that is overseeing this thing, to have some type of resume, that would indicate that he's got the skills to be an instructor. And I think that's probably a pretty good idea. And it's not that hard to get approval from MSHA. I mean, it's not rocket science. If you submit a case study of your work experience and it covers the areas that MSHA wants covered, then you get almost an automatic approval, so it's just taking it one step, but having an instructor on file, just like a training program, to have that on file. Most of these training programs are so general that they're really not a whole lot of value on file anyway, because there's no real specific information given. It's just general. But those are the two comments that I wanted to make, about the instructors and about the training program. MS. ALEJANDRO: Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Logsdon? MR. LOGSDON: Thank you. I'd just like to add a couple of more comments and maybe clarify a few points from our perspective of the Vulcan Materials Company. With regard to submitting and approving training plans, training programs, I think Mr. Henriksen mentioned there are 419 surface aggregate producers in the state of Illinois. Multiply that over the states, you're talking about submitting a lot of plans for review. I think it's to MSHA's benefit, as well as to ours, to have a training program, a training plan process written and in force on site, within a group of operations under the same company or same area, that can be reviewed by competent MSHA inspectors. An inspector can -- there are a couple of easy tests an inspector can use to determine whether that training is competent and the individual miners have learned from that during their inspection, by interviewing the miners by observing what they do. And if some deficiencies are noted, then those should be brought to the attention of the mine management and a determination in the judgment of the inspector, which the inspectors use their judgment every day in determining whether something is in violation or not, whether just need to make some improvements or whether something justifies citation. Certainly if something is grossly inept, it deserves to be cited, and the force of the Government as a motivator to improve. The issue of flexibility: Maybe I can relate one instance that helps describe that, and I think we've heard from a lot of people here this morning, and it's clear to me -- I've learned just how diverse the group this is and how important flexibility is to this issue. We had a foreman at one of our operations that -- I believe he was sent to our corporate office for a couple of weeks and missed the last segment of the annual refresher. The plant superintendent called me and said, How can we deal with this. I stewed about it for a little bit, and I called him back and I said, Look, I'm going to inspect another operation. It was about 100 miles from there. Send him with me for the day. I put together a checklist of the topics that we needed to cover. While we were driving, we talked about those, a lot of good interaction back and forth. We got to the other operation, we did an inspection, asked a lot of questions, learned a lot. And I think that was probably the most effective annual refresher that individual ever attended. It was a very expensive annual refresher, and we certainly wouldn't want to do that for every individual, but it identifies some of the flexibility that we need to be able to respond to. Thank you. MS. ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much. MR. HOWARD: I have no business card. I intended to come here and say nothing, and I'm not going to say much, for those of you who are waiting for a restroom break or for lunch. This will be short. John Howard, H-O-W-A-R-D. I work with Illinois Eastern Community Colleges. We -- I'm the associate dean of work force education. We train 8-, 10-, 12,000 miners a year, coal, metal/nonmetal, EMT, hydraulics, welding, not just Part 48 type training, and have done so for -- I've been doing it for 23 years, and I'm not the senior person on our staff. We do lots of mine safety training. I think training, both good and bad, is much like pornography. It may be hard to define on paper, but when we see it, we know what it is. It's wonderful to say that if we have a qualified instructor or if we have an approved training plan or we pull somebody off the job because they've done this, that you're going to have good training, and the bottom line is it just isn't that simple. I have some frustrations that I hope the metal/nonmetal people can learn from what, in my opinion, are some of the errors that have been around Part 48 since '77 that the coal people have had to live with, and I'll just run through them as comments and not elaborate on this. First of all, the issue of an experienced or newly employed experienced miner is an issue that must be defined than it is now. In Part 48, it will be redefined in February of this year, but one of the last new-miner classes I did, underground coal, was for a fellow who started mining in 1959, and he had been laid off. The definition says to be experienced, you had to have worked 12 months within the last three years, contiguously or randomly scattered out over the three years, or you had to work October 13 of 1978. If you worked that day and it was the only day you worked, you're experienced forever. This guy had worked in the mines twice as long as I ever thought about it, and he had to go through a 40-hour new miner course for the third time because of that goofy definition. That needs to be corrected. Secondly, the coal folks are -- we had a conference October 29 at Rend Lake College in southern Illinois in which we were struggling with the issue of vendors and contractors and mine training. One of the things that I urge you to do is to consider the fact that if you have a miner -- a miner is anybody who makes regular or frequent visits to the mine or is there for five or more continuous days. If he's laying asphalt in the parking lot, by technical -- if it takes him a week to do it, he's a miner. And if he's a miner, that means he needs comprehensive training, by some definition, so we've been struggling with this since 1987. Whether he's exposed to mine hazards or not is an issue that has been difficult to define. Painters -- I did a class of contractors who just painted the Eads Bridge across the Mississippi River. That's the oldest bridge crossing the Mississippi at St. Louis, a magnificent structure. They were going to come and paint the administrative building inside at the mine, and they had to have contractor training, because they were not -- they weren't experienced miners. And what miners? They were painters, and they were damned experienced painters. They were very good, but they had to go through training anyway, because now they were painting building on a mine property. Let's define this. If I'm a contractor and I'm going to be mining, producing, processing, loading, or doing what in the coal industry we unfortunately call dead work, being the lifesaving work that keeps everybody else safe, dead work, then that's comprehensive training. If I'm coming out to put a windshield in a pickup truck on the ground or if I'm going to replace a tire on a loader out in the yard, I'm not a miner. I agree with the comment that you made earlier, Mr. Withey, that if I'm going to be changing a tire in an area of a high wall and there are hazards around, I need to know about that. But if I'm going to be putting a new windshield in an Isuzu pickup truck, for crying out loud, I'm not a miner. Let's acknowledge that fact. I think the definition -- one of the things that troubles me is there's some -- I made an inference, perhaps, that Part 48 is compliance training and good training is anything else. I'm not sure that's true. I wish Mr. Pautler was still here, talking about the high quality of training that he's had for years, from a gentleman who he didn't name but I will, Scott Hanson. Scott's one of our 13 instructors who does this every day of the year. Scott's done Part 48 training for metal and nonmetal. Many of the people here know Scott Hanson. We have a competitor institution, and we have an excellent instructor called D.J. Johnson, who many people know Scott and D.J. They do wonderful compliance training. It doesn't have to be bad. A comment about training plans: Training plan is not a lesson plan. Training plan is a broad, generic form. It can be in many shapes or sizes. It just says that we're going to spend about eight hours doing this, or we're going to spend 24, or we're going to spend 40; we're going to cover these topics; we're going to cover them in a variety of ways. We've been very fortunate with the coal people in Vincennes to be able to say that our times are going to be flexible. We may spend 15 minutes on this topic; we may spend an hour on this topic. We don't submit a new training plan every year. We have a generic training plan. We then from that, and complying with that training plan, develop a lesson plan. The lesson plan varies from location to location, from date to date, to group to group, depending on the problems that we encounter with those people. We talk to management; we talk to the miners. If we determine that somebody does not know how to effectively put on a self-contained self-rescuer, then we may spend an extra 30 minutes on that, because that is, as the name implies, a self-contained, self-rescue device, implies that it's pretty important, and if they can't do it, we'll spend time doing it. I think to get locked into the concept that a training plan is something that says, I'm going to spend ten minutes on this and two hours on this, three hours on that and 35 minutes on this, is to lock yourself in to something that can be very counterproductive. The idea of an unfiled and unapproved training plan is not new. MSHA now is doing this with the new diesel regulations, in which a plan is written; it is kept on file. If somebody wants to see it, they can look at it. It is not approved; it is not submitted; it's just there. Some of the plans train people for one hour. One company in southern Illinois trained people for three days. Neither plan was approved. The thing that makes me uncomfortable with that concept is that if they find problems in the areas that has been trained, then MSHA can come back and hold the trainer responsible for inadequate training, failure to train. I'm not sure that's fair, when we're given a one- hour plan to do something another company is spending eight or perhaps 24 hours on. And we are in some ways servants of the industry. We train for every coal mine in the state of Illinois, surface and underground, except one underground mine, and we do much metal/nonmetal training throughout the state of Illinois. I think the idea that annual refresher training is just boring, routine repetitions of the same topics every year is a dangerous one, and I cite a study done by the Bureau of Mines in 19- -- I'm going to say -- '91, '92, '93, is a short study called, Donning Problems, SCSR. I know for surface people, this has nothing to do with anything, but take the example. SCSR, Self-Contained Self-Rescuer Donning Problems in Eight Eastern Mines, I believe was the correct name of the study, which they found that at one of the mines, even though this was done routinely in annual refresher training, that 80 percent of the people could not successfully or adequately, even, to the ability to save their lives; 80 percent could not effectively put on a self- contained, self-rescuer. The Bureau of Mines thought that the mine trainers were doing a lousy job, of course, and went out and trained them themselves, and came back in 90 days and found that 66 percent of the people couldn't effectively put on a self-contained, self-rescuer either. People forget even important things that are non-routine. Lifesaving, critical skills that are non-routine need to be refreshed, because we forget. The learning curve, as you all know, goes down relatively quickly. First aid training -- just the last, final comment that I have to make here. First aid training: At the Illinois Mining Institute in September of this year, the Office of Mines and Minerals and the Illinois Coal Association gave six miners, six underground coal miners, lifesaver awards, first time in history, three from Turis [phonetic] Coal Company's Elkhart mine, underground mine. Had a fellow who left the classroom session, went out to the prep plant because he was feeling poorly; dropped dead. Even though Illinois law requires EMTs to be present, there was none with him at that time, but there was a person who saw him who was trained in annual refresher training. We did that training as well, by the way, just for a little plug. We do the EMTs and the first aid training. That person went and started CPR. Randy is familiar with -- how far is the mine from the town of Elkhart? MR. LOGSDON: Oh, isn't it about three or four miles, at the most? MR. HOWARD: Yes. The ambulance crew was there with a defibrillator in a matter of ten minutes, maybe less, very, very quick; very small town, 650 people. The EMTs arrived; the guy is back at work today, not because the ambulance service was five minutes away, but because there was somebody there that knew CPR to prevent the bleeding. The other incident was at Peabody's Mercer [phonetic] Mine where a roof-bolting accident, a drill steel came and literally clobbered the guy in the head so badly that he may never be normal again, but they provided instant, immediate first aid, and got him -- kept him alive, treated for shock, and got him to a hospital. And as a result of that, these six individuals were awarded -- and these were not EMTs; these were first aid folks -- lifesaver awards for saving those two people's lives. There are other examples, many, many, many examples. But I think there is some benefit to the topics specified in Part 48, including first aid, including some of the things that may seem redundant. One benefit is first aid -- we had three -- When I was working for Monterey Coal Company, we had three first aid people, three first aid experiences in which lives were saved. Not one of them was mine-related. One of them was a highway accident; one was a heart attack in a basketball tournament. An older fan got excited and had a heart attack. And one was a little girl who was around a car, and the jack fell off and crushed the two-year-old girl, and one of the EMTs -- one of the first aid people trained at the mine saved the little girl's life. We teach CPR for infants. We teach CPR for kids, parents, grandparents. It's very important to have these skills, as well, and it builds respect for the fact that the training -- the company or the trainer cares enough to give them skills that they can take with them home and off the job and maybe save a grandchild's life. I think it's an important thing -- I'm sorry. Just one other thing. A critical problem that we run into in coal is that somebody misses a refresher training class and comes back to work. They've been off ill; they've been injured; they chose not to come to work the day they missed refresher training class, and it creates a problem. We have to go do a refresher class for one person, maybe on an afternoon shift, maybe on a midnight shift, maybe on a day shift. One thing that would make a lot of sense to me would be a provision in training plans, if you're writing them, to say that the person who's been off and misses a refresher training class will be hazard trained when he comes to work of any changes that may have taken place in and around the work site, and he will be scheduled into the first available refresher training class. It may be several weeks away, but again we're not talking about a new miner here. People remember the core fundamental things, but if there's been a change in procedure, a change in machinery, a change in hazards, new equipment, inform them of those things, but don't require them to go to a one-on-one training class for eight hours that first day back on the job because of an arbitrary deadline. I think that would make some sense. Those are the only comments I have. I appreciate the opportunity to make those. Thank you. MS. ALEJANDRO: I just have one question, Mr. Howard. You drew a distinction between a training plan and a lesson plan, which would have the specifics of what subjects and how long, et cetera. MR. HOWARD: Sure. MS. ALEJANDRO: As you probably know, Section 115 says that a training program shall be approved by the Secretary. What involvement -- I mean, how do you see that working under a Part 46 rule as far as what role MSHA should appropriately play in passing, you know, judgment or approving a program or plan? MR. HOWARD: I'm biased perhaps, because I've been working with coal for 23 years. We have a plan on file that's approved. It's in Vincennes. Occasionally the district training specialist will call and say, or the educational field services personnel will call and say, The training plan's been on file for several years; why don't you revise it. Or I think we have a problem; we want now to include some silicosis training and it's not in our plan. We take the old plan; we look at it; talk it over; go to Vincennes if necessary, but basically submit a plan over the fax machine. They'll say, I think this is good; I'd like you to add something else here. We may need some changes. We put a cover letter on it, and we send it and we get it approved, and it comes up for review again in a few years. But it's nothing more than just a guideline, saying, We're going to spend the time; we're going to cover these topics. And then the lesson plan varies from day to day. It's not something that is approved; it's not necessarily something that I think needs to be approved. Of course, we're not contract workers. We provide lots of training free of charge through the Office of Mines and Minerals State Grants Program. And if Scott Hanson went to William Pautler's operation at Kincaid Stone and did a lousy refresher class instead of the commendable job that he referred to, he would just call me or my boss and says, Don't send Scott Hanson back there. That's the end of that; send another inspector. Or they go to our competitors and get an inspector. So we're bound to do as good a job as we can do. And the lesson plan is something that can change in the middle of a topic. Holy cow, I didn't know you didn't know that; let's stop for a second; let's go back. Did you all know -- and you may end up taking 15 or 20 minutes longer for things that aren't written on the paper with this particular group, because they're not aware or they forgot. It's surprising how much people forget, shocking sometimes how much people forget. MS. ALEJANDRO: But as far as the generic, I guess, for lack of a better word, training plan, I mean, you get MSHA approval on that. MR. HOWARD: Absolutely. MS. ALEJANDRO: And is it your experience that that is a valuable process -- MR. HOWARD: Sure, sure. MS. ALEJANDRO: -- to go through? MR. HOWARD: I look at it this way. We've said what we're going to do. They know -- MSHA knows what we're going to do. We've all agreed to this. It's approved, and we also have a list of instructors. It doesn't say that we can't use a good first aid instructor, if we have one. We have an EMT instructor who offers first aid training all the time, even though he's not an MSHA instructor. But the person responsible who signs off is -- I'm responsible. If I have some idiot out there doing first aid, I'm not going to let that happen, so if I'm going to sign off on the form, I want to make sure that whoever I pick is -- I wouldn't pick them if they weren't good. But I don't think it hurts anything. And it's not terribly cumbersome to do either, at least, not -- we've been very fortunate in the Midwest, in Illinois and West Kentucky. Our MSHA people are very reasonable and very helpful. And I'm not saying this to suck up; I'm not. They are; they're good. I had a problem this week. We have a mine that's on strike, and we have electrical people who need to have electrical retraining now. Our plan says we can only have 30 people. I called Leland Payne. I said, Leland, we're going to try and help everybody we can, and we've scheduled extra classes. But on the last day of December, December 19, Saturday, if we have a class and we have 31 people, I'm not going to kick somebody out; we're going to get them requalified for electrical. He said, I don't have a problem with that. He said, Don't abuse it. I'm not going to abuse it. It's just very good with us. I have no problems. We work closely with Mines and Minerals, and it's a wonderful relationship, I think. That's all I have. Thank you. MR. BURNS: I have one question for you. There's been a lot of comments or suggestions made about the ability to really do -- review all the plans that MSHA would get, and basically there's about 10,200 exempt mines out there, so that's a lot of plans. MR. HOWARD: A lot of plans. MR. BURNS: Based upon what you've described as the broad outline, do you see where there could be some sort of a general type of broad outline or plan that would be across-the-board industry recognized as something that would be appropriate and, I guess, would be -- meet approval, be a guideline that this is the type of plan that would be approved? MR. HOWARD: Perhaps if it was meaningless. MR. BURNS: Okay. MR. HOWARD: I know it's tough to get four or five trainers together, to agree on something, to try to get 10,000 operators to say -- unless it was a very vague, very open document that said basically nothing other than, We're going to do this, either in one block, in short blocks, and we're going to cover all of these topics in any way, shape, or form, that makes sense in our operation and meet the needs of our people and our production needs and safety needs and accident records and citation histories and all these things. I don't know that it would be particularly valuable. If it were loose enough, I suppose everybody would agree to something like that. I don't know. Others, perhaps, should comment, more so than me. We basically take a look at the plan that's in existence, and we go and provide training based on fitting into the plan that the operation where it would work. MR. BURNS: How often are those broad-based plans really almost identical from mine to mine? MR. HOWARD: Some people -- there's a different philosophy here. Some people think that the plan needs to be relatively specific and actually will put down some time frames, and that we will do -- we're going to spend 30 minutes on this particular topic, and then we are going to have a written quiz at the end of this topic, or that we will use a video tape as part of this topic. The problem is that that's fine for one year, if you want to submit a new plan every year, but you can't use necessarily a videotape for CPR each year. You better have some hands-on management practice. And you can't use a quiz on self-contained self-rescuers every year, because people get bored with that. They remember very well what was done in the past. They want some new stuff. So that, in my opinion, is where the lesson plan comes in, and we keep a running list of what we did last year, and then scratch out. We're not going to do that. And this year, if it's been four or five years since we've used a particular test on a topic, we may come back and do a test that way. So I don't think I answered your question. I think others' opinions might be more valuable than mine on that. MR. BURNS: Thank you. MS. ALEJANDRO: Is there anyone else who would like to -- MR. CAMPBELL: My name's Pat Campbell. I work for the Department of Natural Resources, Office of Mines and Minerals, out of Benton, Illinois. The only thing that I'm here to state today is that we have been training or had the colleges do the training for coal for many years. Some of the best training I've ever seen first started in -- I went to the first class in 1979. I wasn't very impressed then. I was an active miner at the time, and as it went on, it's got very well; it's got very good. John, of course, with Illinois Eastern Community College, like he said, they provide the free training, but what we as a department are going to try to do is set up county by county training sessions, so that means -- we figure there's going to be a problem with small operators. I might be wrong on that, where we've got two or three or four people working at a site, and they're going to have a hard time finding somebody to train them. So what we're going to try to set up is a county- by-county training session that will be throughout the state, if that's at all possible, so we're working on that at this time, so that these operators can -- there will be -- I'm sure they'll be getting in contact with Mr. Don McBride [phonetic]. He is over training for our department, for the refresher training and whatever. He will contact colleges and get the appropriate instructors there. These instructors are all MSHA certified. They are all certified instructors and have been doing the training for a long time. I personally do some training, but I usually am in accident prevention, and I want to just put in a punt in for our department and for the state of Illinois. The state of Illinois has almost went a complete year without a fatality in coal. And somebody said there was only four underground coal mines in the state this morning. That is not correct. There is approximately 27 mines operating in the state at this time. There's probably more than that. I'm sorry. Maybe I'm wrong. I have been several times. But I think that we as a department are pleased with the training that has been going on in this state in metal and nonmetal and in coal specifically, because that's what I deal with, that's what I see. And you were talking earlier about the training plan. I think that there has to be some variables and has to be a lot of flexibility there. I think you'd have to realize what you're dealing with. I don't think John brought it up. These are -- I shouldn't say a different breed of people, but they are people that are very close to one another in a different world, in underground especially. And not taking anything away from strip mining or metal/nonmetal surface mining, but these are all good people basically, and they do need the best training we can give them. And I think that these colleges and all the trainers that I have been around this state have done that. And I'd like to put a punt in for more state grants money, though, since I said that training is cheap, and basically we'll have to have that to continue to do this type of training for the price that we are getting for it. So I thank you. Is there any questions for me? MS. ALEJANDRO: I just wanted to ask you. You're talking about doing this county-by-county system. MR. CAMPBELL: Yes. MS. ALEJANDRO: Is that in anticipation of the Part 46 rule, or is that something that you were intending to do -- MR. CAMPBELL: I think that's in anticipation of the Part 46 rule. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. Good. MR. CAMPBELL: We want to make sure that everybody gets that proper training, gets good training, and we feel that the small operators, it might be kind of a burden to them, to go out there and try to get that training on their own. So we'd like to be able to help them out. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. Ron? MR. FORD: Yes. Pat, you talked about set up county-by-county training session. You talked about coal -- for both coal and -- MR. CAMPBELL: No. I'm just talking basically for metal/nonmetal. MR. FORD: Just for metal/nonmetal. MR. CAMPBELL: Metal/nonmetal. MR. FORD: Okay. Does the State have requirements now that metal/nonmetal mines have to send in plans to the State? MR. CAMPBELL: I am not familiar with that. I haven't dealt with metal/nonmetal other than basically going in and doing some training for them myself. And as far as their plans, I have no idea. You'd have to ask somebody else in this room. They probably know more about it than I do. MR. FORD: I'm not sure I was clear on what you're doing on charging. Are you saying you are charging people now, or are you contemplating it? MR. CAMPBELL: Well, John -- they don't charge for any training, like their refresher training. MR. HOWARD: Our metal/nonmetal training is delivered at no cost. We waive all fees personally, and the Department of -- Office of Mines and Minerals, through state grants, funds our travel expenses incurred, and it is essentially -- Mr. Pautler's high praise of our instructor, Scott Hanson, that's all free. MR. BRELAND: The county-to-county plan, though, you're talking about, that would still be no charge. MR. HOWARD: My understanding. MR. CAMPBELL: That's the way we understand it right now, unless something changes between now and -- I don't know when all this -- you said February of '99. Am I under the impression that's when it's supposed to take effect? MS. ALEJANDRO: Well, actually we have to publish -- I think we're looking at publishing a final rule before September 30, 1999, and then obviously there is going to have to be some period of time allowed after publication for people to get into compliance. And so then the question is -- that I was asking earlier was, you know, How long after the date of publication of September 30, '99, does the industry need to get up to speed with the requirements. So, I mean, at this point, we have not come to any final determination obviously about how long it's going to be, but that's one of the things we're looking for comments on is, you know, what is your best guess as far as what is adequate time for that. Do you have -- I mean, assuming on date X we publish a final rule; everyone is on notice of what the requirements are going to be. I mean, do you have any reasonable guess as far as how long it might take for the industry to come into compliance with requirements? MR. CAMPBELL: Do I have a guess of how long? MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. I mean, just any sense. I mean, several people have said a year sounds like a good period of time after date of publication. I mean, if you don't have any sense -- MR. CAMPBELL: I don't really, because I don't know what all it entails as far as you people -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Well, I mean, obviously it would depend on what the requirements are. MR. CAMPBELL: Yes. I'm sure it is. I think a lot of this -- you know, I don't know a lot about metal/nonmetal. I may be sticking my neck out here, but I think a lot of this training has been done in the state for a long period of time anyway, basically. Basically now it's just going to be looked at more. Am I right or wrong? Can anybody answer that? MS. ALEJANDRO: I can't answer that. MR. CAMPBELL: You can't answer that? MS. ALEJANDRO: No. MR. CAMPBELL: But I went with Mr. Foltyniewicz -- I've done some training classes with him, and some of the best training I've ever seen. I mean, there's no doubt in my mind, but I think the training is already being done. I don't think it's going to take a long process in Illinois; I really don't. I might be wrong, but I couldn't actually answer that. You need to ask somebody else. I'm like John: You need to ask somebody else, as far as that's concerned. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. MR. WITHEY: One las comment about the training plan, and I'll be brief. You had asked if you could develop a broad-based training plan for approval, and we talked about flexibility until I'm really sick of the word. But if you take up the items that everyone should be aware of, regardless of what area mining that they're working in and then half of that is your basic training program and the other half will be -- I'm just about as sick of this, too -- site-specific training. So you allow half of that training plan for site- specific hazard training. The first half would include the health and first aid, and things that everyone should be aware of. The second half should be site-specific, and that's the flexibility, I think, that we've all been looking for. So if you could develop a training plan with the important areas that everyone should be aware of covered and the site-specific, the other half of the training plan, it might be enough to do everything we need to do. MS. ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much. Is there anyone else who would like to make new or additional remarks? (No response.) MS. ALEJANDRO: If not, I would like to thank you all very much for coming and participating on behalf of the Mine Safety and Health Administration. We really appreciate the effort that you've put in to letting us know your views on this important assignment that we've been given. I'd like to reiterate: If any of you have got comments or suggestions that you have not made or would like to submit your remarks in writing, feel free to do so. And, again, I would recommend that you do this before February 1. If you need an address, there was an address in the Federal Register notice, but if you need an address of where to send those written comments, you can come up to us after the hearing, and we will give you that information. On behalf of the panel, I would again like to sincerely thank you, and if there's nothing else, I'd just like to close. Maybe actually one of the things that I might do is just give you a short summary of what our schedule is going to be. We're going to have six additional public meetings in the next couple of weeks and also one week in January. We are going to be getting the draft proposed rule from the Coalition for Effective Mining Training on or before February 1 of '99. We're looking to publish a proposed rule sometime early in the spring of 1999 and also have some public hearings and a comment period after that publication, probably in the early to mid-summer, and looking for a publication date by September 30. So we're going to try to keep to that schedule very tightly if we can, and again, I would like to thank you all for your participation, and I look forward to hearing from you as this process goes on. That's all there is. I'd just like to close this meeting and again say thank you. (Whereupon, at 12:30, the public hearing in the above-entitled matter was concluded.) // // // // // // // // // // // // // // // REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE DOCKET NO.: CASE TITLE: Meeting for Public Comment, re: 30 CFR Part 46 HEARING DATE: December 7, 1998 LOCATION: Northbrook, Illinois 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 Department of Labor, Mine Safety And Health Administration. Date: December 7, 1998 Carolyn Dowley Official Reporter Heritage Reporting Corporation Suite 600 1220 L Street, N. W. Washington, D. C. 20005