UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION Public Meeting: Mine Safety and Health Administration Pages: 1 through 160 Place: Portland, Oregon Date: December 15, 1998 UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION Public Meeting: Mine Safety and Health Administration Tuesday, December 15, 1998 Embassy Suites Oak Room 7900 N.E. 2nd Ave. Portland, Oregon The above-entitled matter began at 8:05 p.m. pursuant to notice. MEMBERS OF THE MSHA PANEL: KATHY ALEJANDRO, Chairperson ROSLYN FONTAINE KEVIN BURNS ROD BRELAND I N D E X PRESENTERS: PAGE: RICH ANGSTROM 8 STEVE MOATS 20 BOB POTTS 63 PETE ZAGAR 85 DAVID GRIFFIN 88 ED SINNER 112 MIKE FALLON 121 JOCK DALTON 135 DAVID CHAVEZ 142 P R O C E E D I N G S 8:05 a.m. MS. ALEJANDRO: My name is Kathy Alejandro, and I am with metal and nonmetal mine safety and health with the Mine Safety and Health Administration of the U.S. Department of Labor, and on behalf of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, I would like to welcome you to the fourth of seven public meetings on regulations for miner safety and health training. These meetings are intended to give individuals and organizations, including miners and their representatives and mine operators, both large and small, an opportunity to present their views on the types of requirements that will result in the most effective miner safety and health training. These regulations would apply at those nonmetal surface mines where MSHA currently cannot enforce existing training requirements. I would like to take this opportunity to introduce the members of the MSHA panel who are here with me this morning. To my left is Rosalyn Fontaine of the office of standards, regulation and variances with MSHA. To my immediate right is Kevin Burns, who is also with metal and nonmetal mine safety and health. To my far right is Rod Breland who is the western operations manager of the newly formed educational field services with MSHA. Since 1979 MSHA has been guided by a rider to its appropriations. The restriction currently states: "none of the funds appropriate shall be obligated or expended to carry out section 115 of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977 or to carry out that portion of section 104(g)(1) of such Act relating to the enforcement of any training requirements, with respect to shell dredging, or with respect to any sand, gravel, surface stone, surface, clay, colloidal phosphate, or surface limestone mine." In the Omnibus Budget passed by Congress on October 21, 1998, MSHA was directed to: "work with the affected industries, mine operators, workers, labor organizations, and other affected and interested parties to promulgate final training regulations for the affected industries by September 30, 1999. It is understood that these regulations are to be based on a draft submitted to MSHA by the Coalition for Effective Miner Training no later than February 1, 1999." MSHA expects to publish a proposed regulation in the Federal Register sometime in the early spring of 1999. The regulations that MSHA will be developing must include the minimum requirements in section 115 of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977. To summarize those requirements: Section 115 provides that every mine operator shall have a health and safety training program that is approved by the Secretary of Labor and that complies with certain requirements. Section 115 specifies that surface miners are to receive no less than 24 hours of new miner training, no less than eight hours of refresher training annually, and task training for new work assignments. Section 115 also requires that the training cover specific subject areas; provides the training is to be conducted during normal work hours at normal rates of pay; requires that miners be reimbursed for additional costs they incur incidental to this training; and provides that mine operators must maintain miners' training certificates and furnish such records to the miners. In addition, MSHA is looking for suggestions and comments as to how best to achieve effective miner safety and health training consistent with the Mine Act, including any additional requirements that should be included in the proposed rule, and most importantly, why. Three public meetings were held last week on this subject in Northbrook, Illinois; Denver, Colorado; and Albany, New York. Other public meetings have been scheduled in three other locations in the coming weeks, including Ontario, California, later this week; and Dallas, Texas, and Atlanta, Georgia, after Christmas. These meetings are intended to give as many individuals as possible and organizations an opportunity to present their views. This meeting will be conducted in an informal manner, and a court reporter is making a verbatim transcript of the proceedings. Anyone who has not signed up in advance to speak at the meeting and who wishes to do so should sign up on the speakers' list, which is currently located on this table, but I'll be asking if there's anyone here who wishes to speak who has not signed up. We also ask that everyone who is here today, whether or not you wish to speak, to sign the attendance sheet which I believe is now back on the little table in the back of the room. Anyone who wishes may also submit written statements and information to us during the course of this meeting, and we will include this as part of the record when a proposed rule is developed. You may also send us written comments after the meeting has concluded if you wish. Although there is no formal deadline for these written submissions, I would encourage you to submit anything that you wish to be considered on or before February 1st of 1999 to insure that your opinions are taken into account as we develop the proposed rule. Although we are most interested in what you have to say to us, we will also attempt to answer any questions you may have to clarify the process and the purpose of this meeting. We are specifically interested in comments on certain issues and certain areas, although we certainly encourage you to comment on any issue related to miner safety and health training at currently exempt mines. These issues were outlined in the November 3rd Federal Register notice that announced the schedule of public meetings, and I'm going to summarize these issues briefly for you now. Should certain terms, including "new miner" and "experienced miner" be defined? Which subjects should be taught before a new miner is assigned work, even if the work is done under close supervision? Should training for inexperienced miners be given all at once or over a period of time, such as several weeks or months? Should supervisors be subject to the same training requirements as miners? Should task training be required whenever a miner receives a work assignment that involves new and unfamiliar tasks? Should specific subject areas be covered during annual refresher training? If so, what subject areas should be included? Can the eight hours of annual refresher training required by the Mine Act be completed in segments of training lasting less than 30 minutes? Should the records of training be kept by the mine operator at the mine site, or can they be kept at other locations? Finally, should there be minimum qualifications for persons who conduct miner training? If so, what minimum qualifications are appropriate? I would now like to introduce the first speaker this morning. We ask that all speakers state and spell their names for the court reporter before beginning their presentation. Thank you very much. We have one speaker signed up this morning, although I certainly hope that others of you in the audience will choose to participate. Mr. Rick Angstrom from OCAPA has signed up to speak. Mr. Angstrom, could you -- I mean, you can either work at the podium or if you'd prefer to sit down and -- okay, great. RICH ANGSTROM MR. ANGSTROM: Good morning. My name is Rich Angstrom. I'm the managing director for the Oregon Concrete Aggregate Producers Association, and with me is Steve Moats. He works for Morris Brothers, and he'll be here helping out in answering any questions that you might have during the course of the discussion. MS. ALEJANDRO: Great. MR. ANGSTROM: OCAPA is the local trade association that deals with the sand and gravel industries. We work with the legislature and the different government agencies in promoting our industry and working with them on regulations, et cetera, as they come down, and obviously, we're also an association that does an awful lot of training for the membership. Safety, obviously, is one of the most important aspects of life in general but certainly for the miners and mining industry. Nobody -- as I've gone around and talked to folks and have attended various meetings with MSHA, education or, excuse me, safety has always been a primary focus for our membership here. Unfortunately, we've had a few deaths within Oregon over a period of years, one not too long ago that happened to one of our members, and these are things that we want to avoid happening and have appreciated working with MSHA and some of the training activities that we have to effectuate that. One of the things I did want to say to this group, Oregon, we've kind of done -- we've been working with MSHA in providing an annual training course for the members. Last year we did one that had about 250 attendees in it, and it covered a range of topics that MSHA and OCAPA and our membership put together and thought was important. One of the things that we want to make sure that happens, as you folks look at the rule -- and I've read through the rule, and I think it allows for this, as you define operator, and it would include associations for training -- is to allow the Oregon model to continue to happen. For the annual refresher course, it's actually been a pretty good tool. We work with the MSHA folks, and we set up training seminars around the state, so the operators don't have to travel very far, and it's more accommodating to them. We don't do it as a profit or as a profit center for the association. We do it to basically cover costs, and it's a service to our members, and that's because of our commitment to the safety of the mine workers out there. So to recap that point, it's important that as you guys develop the rule that you leave it open enough for different associations and different folks to be able to do training. I understand that there's no question that the initial training for the employee really needs to be at the site. He really needs to be out there and have the walk around and have the hands on at the particular location. The benefit for the different state associations or, for that matter, maybe even some states may choose to hire -- you know, have a private -- one of the educational services out there do the training, but in the initial phase, we all agree that the miner needs to be out there walking around the site and see what the hazards are and have the pointed out to him and have those kinds of orientations done. I think it would be very helpful, as I've thought about this topic, to have -- and one of the things that hopefully you can get some funding for as you develop this is have a videotape or something like that put together for the miners out there to go through certain hazards that they need to look for. You know, it doesn't need to be an eight- hour videotape, but certainly a videotape that the different employers can show their new miners to help in the orientation process. I think one of the difficult challenges that you folks have is you have mines of all different sizes, and you have the really small ones, and I mean literally we have some folks here that are one or two or three mine operators that are members of ours. They're sitting right here. And then we have operators that are the biggest in the state and growing, and it creates a particular challenge for you guys in devising a set of rules that's fair. When you think about the small folks that are out there, when you require an eight-hour annual training, you essentially shut down that operation for a day, and that's pretty expensive, and we're a margin business obviously. It's something that you folks need to balance out when you come up with these rules and be sensitive to the fact that some folks can absorb that a lot easier. Others it's a little more challenging and be patient in working with folks. I wanted to say one thing is I've been a prosecutor for the last eight years, and I have a very rich experience in enforcement, and when you start talking about enforcement, there's many ways of approaching enforcement, and I can tell you as a young DA, boy, I went by the book. I actually have the experience of being a forest practices officer, so I actually was kind of in the police officer's role for a while, also, but, you know, I just went by the book, and I hammered everybody as they came in, and it was pretty blind to where people were at and their condition. I think as I matured and moved up the ladder -- I ended up being a senior prosecutor, and I've handled everything from aggravated murder cases all the way on down -- is you get a little different sense for people's perspectives of where they're at in life, and not every enforcement -- it doesn't always have to be -- it can be tailor made for the individual. When we're talking about training and especially when you start talking about enforcement of training, which is what this is going to ultimately lead to, we only have some general comments on the actual proposals, but obviously if our folks don't comply with those rules, there's going to be enforcement aspects of it that come from it. My concern is what I've been seeing in this particular state is a less desire to work with the membership or the miners and help improve mine conditions and more just slap down any citation no matter how trivial it is. You know, in a sense, I'm worried that we're going to see that with the training end of it, too, and I would hope that there would be some direction or guidance from Washington down to the local folks that you really do need to decide when there is a really significant violation. I know substantial and -- significant and substantial is the criteria, but it appears to me that one of the things, if you're really trying to promote safety and trying to work with folks to promote safety -- and what we're talking about here is saving lives -- that if there are small violations out there that folks have a period of time to correct them before they come back and are rechecked, and if they haven't fixed those minor violations, then they get the citation. Obviously if somebody has a significant and substantial safety violation that they should know, there should be no excuse, but I've seen citations coming in and members talking about that for things that have been overlooked in the past for years, and all of a sudden we're having folks getting cited with 144 citations for not having covers on light bulbs that are, you know, 40 feet in the air in the shops and things like that. What it's doing is it's creating a very harsh atmosphere. It's starting to become -- instead of a cooperative effort in promoting safety, it's becoming us versus them a little bit, and we want to move away from that and back to the more partnership type of issue or type of relationship. I know when you wear all hats, when you're the enforcement agency and you're the regulator, it's very, very difficult to do that. As a matter of fact, in this state we tend to have separated out some of that. We have examples where that's not the case. Like DEQ, they wear both those hats, but, for instance, in the fish and wildlife area, we have the enforcement provision, and then we have the regulatory provision, and they keep them separate, because it's hard for a regulator to wear that hat and develop the relationships and to help improve safety out there when they come in and they wear that OSP or that cop hat at the same time, and our folks know that. So I know that this again is coming back -- at some point it's going to come back to enforcement, lifting that and making sure people do the training, and I think that's appropriate, but I think that you need to engage common sense and understand you have big operators, you have small operators, you have new miners, you have people that hold hats, and that the enforcement person needs to have a little bit of perspective and discretion out there in looking at where things are at. There are some things that you have to be very consistent on, and obviously, significant and substantial violations are things that need consistency. As far as the rules themselves, I've had a chance to read through them, and I think they actually are very good. It sounds like you guys have done a lot of work talking with folks in the mining industry to make sure that the proposed rules for training are well thought out and many sides taken into account, and I can tell some of that appears to have already been done. MS. ALEJANDRO: Are you talking about the draft? MR. ANGSTROM: The draft rules. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. That's the earlier draft from the Coalition. MR. ANGSTROM: I'm talking -- oh, is that -- okay. MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. We haven't actually -- MSHA has not developed anything, but there have been a couple of drafts from the Coalition, which is the organization that is going to be submitting their final draft proposed rule to us before February 1st. So I mean, we're, you know, charged by Congress to use that as a basis for the proposed rule that we come up with, but we did not actually -- MSHA did not develop what you've got. MR. ANGSTROM: Right. I had -- was it a resolution from Congress that's in the back here? MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. MR. ANGSTROM: Okay. Yes. I read that, and I thought that this was something put together. As a matter of fact, I thought it had some language in there that it was supposed to be done -- the second sentence, "The conferees are pleased that the industry, the Coalition for Effective Minor Training, MSHA, both acknowledge that the current training regulations do not address" -- I'm not sure exactly where it's at. I thought this was a more of a joint -- some kind of joint -- MS. ALEJANDRO: No, no. MR. ANGSTROM: Joint document. Well, it's a good starting place. Let me just say that. Thank you for that clarification. One of the things, as I've talked to our membership, that we want to make sure happens, and that is the paperwork issue. We spend a lot of time filling out paperwork for all sorts of agencies, and what we don't need is a whole bunch more paperwork to fill out, but what we do need is we need some consistency in the paperwork. So when Dalton Sand & Gravel that's right over here fills out the form, it's the same form that Morris Brothers fills out that's sitting next to me, and that's going from your small to your big, and I think that's going to be -- one, it's fair to all the folks. One of the things from the business side that's very important is we like to know what's expected of us and to have all the rules kind of laid out, so there's no ambiguity in those kinds of things. So the comment that I've been hearing is at least that the paperwork needs to be consistent among the operators and that it would be best -- and I don't know if this is something -- how you guys would do this, but we think it would be something that you folks would put together since you're going to be developing the rules. The paperwork to report at the same time should be developed at the same -- along at the same time. MS. ALEJANDRO: Are you talking about the actual forms? MR. ANGSTROM: Yeah, that the folks would be filing and putting in the employee file. As I read through this at least -- and I'm going from this -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. ANGSTROM: -- is where my comments were based. There's lot of requirements that paperwork be filled out for this activity or this training or that training, and frankly, if you think about it, if you're going to come in and you're going to enforce some kind of training rule, there's got to be some way to be able to do that, right? And what needs to be done there is consistency, and hopefully you guys would do that, so you don't have a bunch of forms. What you'll find is you'll have some folks that will have real elaborate forms and some folks that will just fill something out handwritten on a scrap piece of paper and throw it in the file some place, and I think that would be -- I think that would lead to some enforcement problems as well as some consistency problems in making sure training is done uniformly around the state. The one thing is on the -- referring to this again, that there be compliance within 60 days -- let's see, the 24 hours would be -- 24-hour training would be done within 60 days, and the first eight hours would be done before the person is put out on the site, and the remaining 16 would be done sometime in that 60-day period. The comments I've heard on that issue -- and you think kind of wearing your employer hat, and I came out kind on the government side, and we had our probation period for six -- you know, it was kind of that six-month period. You didn't know if you were going to be on or be off, and people during that probation period tend to -- when the probation period is up, usually you have a good sense of who is going to stay and who is not, and that tends to be the time where people are let go. Sometimes, you know, it's not going to work out earlier than that. It would be an expense, and it seems to me that the best approach to that would be within the reasonable probation period. I know some people have a year. I don't know if that's reasonable, but I certainly think six months to get that other 24 hours or 16 hours of training in so the employer knows that he's going to actually keep that person on board. Now, he can do it sooner than that if he knows this is a good employee. What you do, do by doing that, you may have kind of a collateral effect of having an employer making a determination, well, you know, I'm going to waste two more days and pay this guy for nothing, and instead of working with the guy, you know, the new employee and trying to, you know, see if it's just kind of a new -- you know, he's new to the mining industry and it's taking him a while to get on, they may make some decisions earlier. They may not be as fair to the new employee himself. So it appears to me that a probation period, it needs to kind of match that probation period, and 60 days, that seems kind of arbitrary and odd. I don't know what your guys' thoughts were on that. That might be useful for the folks here to know what the thought process was on that. The other thing on that is that the timing of this rule is fairly important, and to take someone out for two days during June when the construction season is booming is one thing to finish off the training. It's another thing to do it in January and February when the rains come and we're all kind of sitting a little bit idle, and frankly, that's how we try to do our programs here at OCAPA is during that idle time, so we're not disruptive in the mining process. When this rule comes into effect in September, all of a sudden you're going to find that folks are going to have to start complying within 60 days getting those 24 hours in right in the -- that really is the heat. I mean, you know, usually you got all of those construction projects getting backed right up into September, October, November. You know, everything gets kind of mad in the construction industry right around that period of time, and then to pull somebody, you know, basically -- and I got to say this, too. When you pull someone out, give them training, you know, it may six people to run a crew for a mining operation. You pull a person out to do that, you shut that operation down, or you're going to have to do, you know, some other -- find some other alternative to that, but there is that kind of collateral consequence, and folks just don't have extra people hanging around to come in for someone, you know, for the training period. Let's see, I think I covered my points. I wanted for just a second just to ask Steve Moats sitting next to me if I've left out anything or if he's had any comments. STEVE MOATS MR. MOATS: The only -- speak down here? My comment would be in that new miner training would task training be in addition to the 24 hours of new miner training? MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. I mean, I think that that's generally the way that we've looked at it traditionally, I mean in part 48, is that there's specific requirements for initial training, 24 hours, eight hours of annual refresher and then task training on top of that for new tasks. So I think that, you know -- I mean, we can talk about it, but I mean, I certainly have been thinking this task training is something that's separate and apart from annual refresher retraining. MR. MOATS: Okay. Are you going to get the rest of these, certification of trainer? MR. ANGSTROM: Go ahead. MR. MOATS: The other question that comes to mind is certifying our trainees. If we truly go site specific -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. MOATS: -- obviously we have to have what you bring up, competent trainers -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. MOATS: -- and would that be training sessions through your people through your training education that you're going to bring into Oregon? MS. ALEJANDRO: Well, I mean, that's wide open, I mean, because the Act itself does not have minimum requirements for qualifications for people who provide training. MR. MOATS: Yes. MS. ALEJANDRO: So as far as, you know, when we're talking about this rule, I mean, we've got a lot of flexibility, and I can tell you -- I mean, in the three meetings that we've had up till now, I mean, we've had a pretty wide range of comments. Some people believe that the model ought to be what's done under part 48 right now, which is, you know, formal approval, instructor approval process. I mean, other people have been very strong in saying that they think that the best training is going to be given by those people who are on site who are familiar with the operation, and then if you impose too many requirements on people, you know, in those categories, then you're going to make it very hard for them to give effective training. And I mean essentially -- I mean, you're saying -- you know, you could say that it's a competent person, and there's no formal approval process. MR. MOATS: Right. MS. ALEJANDRO: So I mean, it's really been all over the map. So I mean, you know, we would appreciate you addressing that issue. MR. MOATS: One of the things that we've done -- and I can't speak for everybody in here, but we went through supervisor training with your people in early nineties, and we have been putting on this function since '90, and your people have signed -- we have two basically qualified trainers in our company that have been signed off by your people, and our question is obviously if we go to each site and we got to incremental training, that's a full-time job for one or two trainers for as many sites as we have. So, you know, if you compound that in 30-minute increments over a course of the year for refresher training course, you know, times that by 16, like I said, that is going to be very difficult. So I would encourage MSHA to put on a certificate of training course for the supervisors so that we can do -- so we are qualified and competent in task training and documentation and be more site specific if that's the way that we choose to do this. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. All right. Do you have anything else? I've got a couple questions actually if you have nothing further. MS. ANGSTROM: I'm done with my list. MR. MOATS: Go ahead with -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Excuse me? MR. ANGSTROM: You had a question? MS. ALEJANDRO: Oh, okay. Mr. Angstrom, you said that your organization provides annual training for your members? MR. ANGSTROM: Right. MS. ALEJANDRO: Is it annual refresher training for miners? Is that what you're talking about? MR. ANGSTROM: What we did last year, because of a couple of deaths that happened and I think a request from our members, is we put on a training course in combination with MSHA that lasted a day throughout various parts of the state, and total there was 250 miners that attended it, and it was a good way of dealing with -- from our perspective, a good way of dealing with the annual requirement that MSHA or under -- that's in the rules themselves. I know they're not being enforced, but it's within the rule, and my point was that what we didn't want is for you to adopt a rule that would prevent that kind of thing. It's easy for the state association, who represents a broad spectrum -- and we have like 95 percent of the folks within our association -- to hit a broad -- you know, hit a broad number, a broad -- we could have a broad coverage working with MSHA and the state association, and we bring in speakers and do all of those kinds of things to cover certain topics that are worked out, whether it's through a committee or with MSHA themselves. We sit down and talk with the different operators what seems to be of issue. For instance, I think I brought a copy of it. It's probably sitting back there, but I actually brought a copy of the agenda from our last -- let me just, if I might, hand you guys a copy of this. MS. ALEJANDRO: Sure, yes. We'll put it in the record. MR. ANGSTROM: I only have four copies. MS. ALEJANDRO: That's all right. MR. ANGSTROM: And, you know, these topics would change obviously from year to year, you know, whatever seems to be the hot issues around the country. MS. ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. ANGSTROM: But it's a good way of just covering -- you know, getting to a whole bunch of folks, and this was the first year we did it, and we had 250. I'm sure -- and we're going to continue. As a matter of fact, we've got other programs scheduled that start, I think, in February, either in January or February. You know, we're starting do other mine safety programs, the next year series, and what we do is we tour around the state, so we don't just do it in one isolated location, and we go to different places so it's convenient for the folks to come in, and, you know, they're close to home. They don't have a lot of travel time and expenses renting hotel rooms and things of that nature. It's working out very well. What we don't want is something -- for some rule to prevent that. MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. I guess that was my next question. Just out of curiosity, I mean, what kind of requirement were you thinking might preclude that? I mean -- MR. ANGSTROM: Well, I noticed in here that it doesn't seem -- it seems like when you talk about parties eligible to conduct training, you've included associations of mine operations within that. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. ANGSTROM: And I think we're covered, but, you know, that's draft. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. So you're basically saying -- I mean, to the extent that the rule lists out who is eligible to provide training that you don't want it to be so restrictive to make it impossible for you to do the kinds of things that you've already done? MR. ANGSTROM: You know, there's lots of collateral benefits when the state associations work with MSHA. That's kind of that partnering, you know -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. ANGSTROM: -- and just kind of pulling in the same direction, and it's a lot better than head butting, and it just creates a better atmosphere for the miners in general. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. I had a couple of other questions, and I'm sure that other people on the panel have a couple questions. You indicated that you believe that the initial training -- and I guess you're talking about the 24 hours of initial new miner -- MR. ANGSTROM: Right. MS. ALEJANDRO: -- training -- was best provided at the mine site. I mean, are you saying all of it should be provided at the mine site, I mean some component of it should be, or I mean, are you saying the classroom training is not an important part of the initial miner training? I guess I'm just looking for you to -- MR. ANGSTROM: No, no. MS. ALEJANDRO: Can you expand on that? MR. ANGSTROM: We're not -- this is just -- I'm speaking from my perspective and after visiting with folks, and I'm sure there's lots of different perspectives out there. What I'm saying is that a large component of that initial 24-month or 24-hour training component needs to be at the site. The person really needs to be out there walking around looking at stuff, having the hazards pointed out to them, sitting down meeting, you know, who the staff are and who folks are and what's, you know, the command system for that particular company. Some things like if it's the first aid training and those kinds of things could be done elsewhere -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. ANGSTROM: -- within that 24 months, but, you know, we're all sensitive to the fact that if you're going to -- if you're really talking about saving lives and preventing injury, it needs to be out there where the person can kind of see what's up and have that kind of hands on with the staff at the mine itself. On that question, do you have any --? MR. MOATS: I'd just like to add one thing for the small miners is for our staffing, we have a training education department corporately, and it's easy for us to go through the orientation and documentation process for the initial eight hours, and after that, it's more of a supervised, hands-on training at the site. MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. MR. MOATS: You know, pertains to their job, and, you know, talking with some of the smaller operators, they don't have anything. So, you know, this is why Rich is asking on behalf of all of us miners here in Oregon that we have consistent, formal documentation that we can all fill out that your inspectors, when they come on site and they want to see our paperwork, we're all on the same page. So I would hope that we would do that. MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. Actually, my next question is on that issue. I mean, you seem to be saying, you know, you want a standard form so everybody knows what the requirements are and there's no uncertainty and its consistent. I mean, there are others who would argue that they want the flexibility, you know, to come up with their own method of keeping records, and just so long as it's got the minimum information that the rule might require, it doesn't really matter. They like to have, you know, the ability to keep their records the way they choose. I mean, do you have any comments on that? MR. ANGSTROM: It can be both. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. ANGSTROM: You know, obviously somebody -- if you guys devise a form to have folks fill out that covers all of those particular criteria -- MS. ALEJANDRO: So you're looking for us maybe to give you all a form that you can choose to use if you want to but you don't have to? MR. ANGSTROM: If the operator chooses not to, he still has to comply with the requirements. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. ANGSTROM: And that doesn't mean that forms aren't evolutionary, and you wouldn't take comments and maybe see a way of reducing paperwork that the operators over time would come up with. I mean, that's good government from our perspective, but, you know, so if the company is large enough and doesn't like the type of bond that you put your form on that they could choose to do it differently as long as they cover all of the criteria that are listed in the rule, but I think where I'm really getting at is I don't think you're going to -- the big operators like maybe Morris Brothers, who has a training person, may do that, but I can't tell you Dalton Rock would use your form. MS. ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. ANGSTROM: I can tell you a lot of the smaller folks would use your form because they know it's safe. They know if they fill it out, they're going to be protected. MS. ALEJANDRO: Right, right. MR. ANGSTROM: You know, they're digging rock. You know, the smaller guys are out -- they're the miners. They're the owner, operator and miner all at the same time. It's a little different in the bigger companies. MS. ALEJANDRO: I have one more question, and there may be others from the panel. You touched on the issue of, you know, once the rule is published and our deadline is September 30, 1999, then, you know, there's going to be some time for the industry to come into compliance, and that is one of the issues that has come up at some of our earlier meetings, how long beyond the date of the publication in the Federal Register of a final rule should we allow for the industry to come into compliance with whatever rules we come up with. Now, obviously, that's going to depend to a certain extent on what these final rules look like, but I mean, just as a general matter, I mean, do you have any sense for what an appropriate time period compliance deadline would be for these training rules? (Pause.) MR. ANGSTROM: Yes. We kibitzed on that issue. It seems to me -- because the discussion I talked about earlier about the timing of September 1st or 30th or whatever it was -- MS. ALEJANDRO: The 30th, yes. MR. ANGSTROM: -- is not great timing from the industry's perspective -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. ANGSTROM: -- but the 1st of March would be an appropriate time. It would give the folks at least the winter, and really it should be done, you know, the end of December, January, February time frame. MS. ALEJANDRO: So you're talking at least six months past or about six months past the date of publication? MR. ANGSTROM: Yes. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay, all right. I don't have any. Do you? MR. BURNS: Yes, a couple. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay, Kevin. MR. BURNS: I guess a couple things. I looked through your seminar format, and I think it looks pretty good, and I certainly think we don't want to discourage this sort of training. As a matter of fact, I think we want -- most people would want to encourage this sort of training. Now, Rod can probably address this better because he's going to be in charge of the education field service group for MSHA. UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: We're having an awful hard time hearing. MR. BURNS: Okay. Real tough? Okay. And I'm sure Rod would -- like I said, he can address that, but I would envision this as the sort of thing that Rod's group wants to do. Is that correct? MR. BRELAND: Yes, that's right. MR. BURNS: So we're certainly not going to preclude that, because this is really something that I think -- if this went on everywhere, I think we would be very happy, so I like that format, and whoever participated in putting that together, you know, I commend them, because I think it looks very good. The issue of the new miner training and occurring at the mine site, I think we would certainly encourage that, and that was pretty much envisioned in the Mine Act, also, if you look at the discussion. They talked about the importance of training the miners in the environment in which they're going to work, and I agree with you there are certain things that can be done in the classroom and maybe better in the classroom like first aid or things like that. Certainly miners' rights can be done in the classroom, but in reality, almost everything can be done at the mine site and done effectively. So we're not going to discourage that, and I think in a lot of cases that's the most appropriate place to do it. MR. ANGSTROM: Well, I want to -- can I make a comment on that? MR. BURNS: Sure. MR. ANGSTROM: I'll probably get in trouble from some folks over this comment, but there's a difference in learning abstract and hands on, concrete, concrete learning. UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: Very quiet. MR. ANGSTROM: Okay. I'm sorry. I'll yell. I'm trying not to get myself in trouble, so I tone down. MR. BURNS: Yes, there you go. MS. ALEJANDRO: You won't get yourself in trouble. MR. BURNS: I worked for an association, too, so I understand where you're coming from. MR. ANGSTROM: Many of the miners are -- you know, they're not -- how do I want to say it? They're not the most sophisticated folks in the world, and they're not abstract thinkers from my hands-on dealing with a lot of them, and I'm not talking about necessarily the owners, but the guys that are actually out there, and that hands-on learning is going to be the most effective way of teaching them that, teaching them the material that they need to know to protect themselves. It's one thing to learn in a classroom, but as we all know -- I don't know if this is on. This is as loud as I can talk. As we all know, you know, the problem with classroom learning is folks' attention span and how long you can put them in a room, in a closed room and show them things where they're going to really learn the material and be able to apply it. That's one way of learning, you know, and I'm not very good that way, frankly. The best way for me to learn is to see someone do it and get out there with my hands and do it, and, you know, the classroom thing, you know, you got to cover that stuff, but I can tell you the retention of that is the first ten minutes, and people really wane after that. MR. BURNS: I agree. I mean, you can talk about blind spots as much as you want in a classroom, but it seems to me if you take someone and put them in a haul truck or in some sort of loader and let them actually see what that person can see, even if that takes five minutes, that's much more effective than talking about it for an hour for most people. It would be for me. So I agree with that. I guess -- and I think Kathy covered most of what I wanted to talk about. I guess one of the things I'm hearing is that you would recommend that the proposed rule include the records -- the format for the records that will be required so that people can comment on that. MR. ANGSTROM: Yes. MR. BURNS: Okay. And naturally, I personally don't see anything why we couldn't put a form in there that someone can fill out if they wish, you know, with a pen or a format that someone can put in some sort of data base system on their computer, and it would spit out the same information. So I think that's also what you were suggesting, and that would also allow one operator to know what -- you know, if they're hiring somebody that works somewhere else, they have a better idea of what that person actually had versus right now they really don't know. I imagine some people retrain miners just because they're not really confident what that person had in the first place. As far as the effective date, I guess there's a number of effective dates that I would envision through this final rule. One would be, you know, when would you have to have a plan and instructors and something put together, and then there would be an effective date to have the eight hours completed, and it seems to me that we couldn't say you don't have to train new miners for a year. I mean, I just don't imagine that we could say that. I don't think -- I don't necessarily think that's what people were suggesting. Is that accurate? MR. ANGSTROM: Yes, that's accurate. It would be -- you couldn't -- when somebody comes on as a new miner, they need that initial training right up-front. MR. BURNS: Okay. I just wanted to clear that up. It is a -- I mean, it is a broader issue than just saying six months, because there's all kinds of other elements involved at least the way I see it. MR. ANGSTROM: One of the things that -- I'm glad you said that, because, you know, I hadn't quite separated out in my mind that there's all the different effective dates, too, and there are. MR. BURNS: Yes. MR. ANGSTROM: And one of them that Steve was telling me about on the way down here is well, when this goes into effect, when do you have to get that annual renewal in. Do you got until next September 1 before you -- or September 30th before you have to get that done, or do you have to get it done within, you know, that short time period after the law goes into effect? That annual refresher course, you know, when is the time for folks to get that done? Do they have a year from that point to get that in for the experienced miner? I don't know. I mean, we would think it would be a year. MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. I mean, obviously, that would be something that would have to be specified, you know, made pretty clear in the rule as far as, you know, what point do these requirements kick in and what, you know, time frame are you talking about, so that needs to be addressed. MR. BURNS: Yes, and we've asked that at some of the other hearings. I think, you know, we want to try to share what we heard at the other hearings, too, or at the other meetings. Sorry. But we asked the question of some of the state grants people, and they indicated that they really could not do -- some of the states grants people indicated that they could not do the annual refresher training in 90 days for everybody in the state, so we're not looking to overburden the system, and I don't want to -- I wouldn't envision having an effective date for the various things that would make it more difficult to do the new miner training for the new miners, because I think that's the most important. So I think based upon what we hear, we're going to have come up with a good logical reasoning, you know, behind these effective dates. MR. ANGSTROM: One of the things I think that will help -- one of the things that I think will help facilitate that is while you're in the development phase of this that the field folks at MSHA are out there working with folks and looking at the training programs that they have -- some of the folks have in place, and, you know, you can start that transition. It doesn't have to be September 30th. It could be in the interim here from February 1 on, and I think the folks at MSHA, the field folks out there or their supervisors, should be open to looking at different training programs that some of the members do have and see if that would be -- if they would comply with the rules that are being proposed, because that certainly gives those operators that are already having training programs in place a chance to change those and get them into compliance with what the rule will be way beforehand. MR. BURNS: Okay. I think that's a good comment, and I think we ought to do that, and I think Rod is probably going to be doing that. I hate to speak for Rod, and I don't want to plan out his next year's work. I just wanted to answer one of your questions. As far as, you know, where did the 60 days come from, you know, for the final 16, when part 48 was proposed, it was proposed to require 24 hours before they started work, and the 60 days -- the best -- I could not find any real, you know, rational reason why that 60 days came up, but it was suggested in the comments or in that rule making that perhaps 60 days should be allowed to finish the following 16. I'm reasonably certain that it's not based upon any sort of research or anything like that. It was a number that some group came up with, and it was agreed upon in part 48, but originally part 48 as proposed did not allow any -- it required the 24 right up-front. I don't know if that helps you out. That is where it came from. It came from the part 48 rule making. MR. ANGSTROM: I kind of suspected it might have been some kind of compromise discussion, because I would envision that folks would want the 24 hours, you know, right up-front, and it just appeared that 60 days was arbitrary and probably was a compromise from what would have made sense. I mean, what makes sense to me is you either do it up-front or you do it within the probation period. Both of those have rational explanations for them. MR. BURNS: Yes. MR. ANGSTROM: Sixty days doesn't. MR. BURNS: If I remember correctly, the probationary period and turnover was part of the rationale for that 60 days. I can pull out the record and send that to you if you want, but I'm pretty sure that that was what was discussed in the rule making, that that 60 days was needed because, you know, the person may not even work for more than a week, and you shouldn't be training somebody for three days when they might not make it through the week, and that was part of the record I'm fairly certain. I guess your suggestion is that 60 days doesn't -- maybe that was true 20 years ago, but today it's more -- the probationary periods are more like six months. MR. ANGSTROM: Yes. I mean, you know, labor law is such that people have a reasonable period of time, and the employer should have a reasonable time to work with the individual to see if he's going to be somebody he's going to keep before he makes a bigger step and investment. You know, some folks say -- I think it's interesting to listen to the discussion. Some folks thing 24 hours is not a lot of hours, and then there's other folks -- and I tend to fall in that camp -- that aren't so far from college who remember having three-hour courses through the whole semester where I didn't put 24 hours into them, and they were pretty intensive, and actually 24 hours of course work is hard. The hard part of making it all up- front, I think, from the learning perspective is if you make it all up-front and you crowd it in too much, you reduce the person's ability to learn it, and sometimes hour blocks are a lot more effective training, and that's why we -- you know, that's why we train people on hour blocks than having 24 hours, three days -- you know, the first three days kind of thing. In this kind of scenario, if you stretch it out, you could -- the person could do it in -- or the company could do those 24 hours over that six-month block and put them into those hour kinds of segments where they can work it into their schedule a little bit better and actually have a lot more effective training. I mean, nothing is worse than sitting at a three-day seminar and hoping that the coffee pot is full, and I noticed you guys didn't have any back there. MS. ALEJANDRO: No. We don't have the budget for it. MR. BURNS: We weren't planning on this lasting 24 hours. MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes, that's right. MR. BURNS: If it does, we'll have to get some coffee. MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. MR. BURNS: I guess on that matter, if Morris Brothers or someone through your association -- if you have some sort of outline on new miners' training, how it could be spread out over that period of time, I think that would help if you submitted that to the record rather than just, you know, discussing this in the abstract. I think that would be very helpful, and it should help us in formatting the proposed rule. MR. MOATS: Kevin, we have always encouraged MSHA to participate in helping us put together these annual refresher training courses. We have a full-fledged video department. You know, I recommended to John Widows the other day that if it -- we were talking about this documentation, and if they needed assistance that we would help provide that if needed, because we do clearly want everybody to be on the same level of enforcement as us folks but on the same -- like I said before with the small miners, it's very difficult. A lot of the small miners are owner- operators, so it is tough for them. MR. ANGSTROM: I think I said 24 month again, and I meant hour. MR. BURNS: Yes. MS. ALEJANDRO: We understand. Yes, we understand. MR. ANGSTROM: I said it a couple times. MR. BURNS: That's all right. I've done that myself. Once you start making a mistake like that, it just keeps coming back up. MR. ANGSTROM: It keeps coming. MR. BURNS: I'll turn it over to Rod. MR. BRELAND: Okay. Yes, I have a few things I'd like to follow up on. One, you mentioned, Mr. Angstrom, early that you were suggesting we might follow the Oregon model. Is that a -- do you have a formal model that you're talking about, or is that -- MR. ANGSTROM: Well, it's not a -- I don't know if I would call it a formal model, but I think it's a good recipe of how MSHA and industry can work in a cooperative fashion, and I think that's a model. MR. BRELAND: Okay. MR. ANGSTROM: I think anytime you have a public- private partnership that's effective and it's training 250 people its first time out in a cooperative effort, you have a recipe for a good model. MR. BRELAND: Okay, thank you. Was this the February session was the first time that you had a joint effort between MSHA and industry? MR. MOATS: No. We've done it for three years. MR. ANGSTROM: First time I'm aware of it. MR. BRELAND: I'm sorry. MR. ANGSTROM: You have that history. MR. MOATS: We've been actually doing joint ventures with MSHA for, I'm going to recollect, clear back five, six years ago. At first we did it in-house with our own people and you folks, and then we opened it up the last two years to all the miners. We were somewhat criticized even in-house from our people for allowing other operators being that we were the ones putting on the training session with MSHA. So actually the history behind this is we've always asked MSHA to participate in our training seminars but not be the trainers. In the last three years we have asked them to put on a portion of the training, and I'd like to clear that up, but last year was the first year that we partnered with OCAPA and MSHA only that put on four different seminars last year throughout the state. MR. BRELAND: Okay. You did four of them last year. I see this list. I agree with Kevin Burns that this, you know, looks like a good agenda, and it looks -- I recognize some names, and some I don't, so does that mean there was a mixture of industry and MSHA personnel instructing here at the presentation? MR. ANGSTROM: Yes, there was. MR. BRELAND: Okay, that's good. Also, I remember from a visit out here a few years back that Morris Sand & Gravel did have some training programs that were pretty advanced, I thought, for what I'd seen around the country in some areas, but you also had a mentoring program if I recall. Is that how you foresee tying in the spreading out of some of this training, the 24-hour training? MR. MOATS: As a mater of fact, we just had a discussion last week at our managers' meeting that we have a mentor driver, top drum program that is through our ready- mix department. We are truly going to expand that into our crushing facilities, our mine properties. It's just a start. It's not that we have been lax in our training at our company, but we want to take it to the next step. We want to get videos, do more site specific and more emergency response type actions that we haven't really done a lot in the past. MR. BRELAND: Okay. Do you presently do tracking or documentation of the training that people receive and keep a record of it? MR. MOATS: Yes, we do. MR. BRELAND: Okay. I'm just kind of following my notes along as this discussion came out. One of the things that came up some was on the enforcement issue, and, of course, my particular group would not be in enforcement, this educational field service group, but the issue you brought up about some discretion and some guidance, do you have some suggestions that you're talking about from an enforcement perspective that you're proposing to make? MR. ANGSTROM: Enforcement tends to be -- how it's applied tends to be an individual -- tends to be tied more to the individual than one might think. There's no question that the laws are such -- and they're probably shades of gray within them and interpretations within them, but really from my experience in enforcement, what I've seen is that every officer that's out there doing enforcement handles situations differently. Some are very command and control, and some are very compassionate in how they deal with things, and I'm not saying one way is right or one way is wrong. I will say that if you take a posture that you're going to make an us-versus-them kind of situation, you're going to -- it's going to be a lot tougher to achieve your goal, and hopefully the goal is to improve safety and protect lives out in the mine, and, you know, there's the old analogy, it's easier to draw a bee to honey than it is to vinegar, and I can tell you that this is a group of folks that perceive those kinds of -- that kind of mentality and enforcement as a challenge, and they get very defensive and loggerheads, you know, with the agency, and those things spill over into all the other activities. That relationship spills over everywhere. It will spill over into education. It spills over to the regulatory folks, and it's not a very good way of partnering with an agency that should -- it's chief role should be regulatory and achieving the results, you know, the result of getting folks trained and help with -- improve safety out there. Let me say this, because I think this will be a little clearer if I say it this direction. There are probably about 80 percent of the people will do what's right because it's the right thing to do. There's going to be always 10 or 15 percent are going to do what's right because there's a law that says you have to do it. There's always -- no matter what you do, there's always going to be 5 percent of the folks that you're going to have take enforcement. Enforcement is a very important component of any regulatory scheme. It's just the way human nature is. I spent the last eight years dealing with the 5 percent, so, you know, it seems like -- at that point it seemed like that was the majority of it from my perspective, but I know in reality that's not the case. If the agency takes a perspective that 100 percent of the population out there requires enforcement, they're going to create a problem for themselves as well as really not achieving the message and achieving the goals that should be priority to them, and so the enforcement person that's out there in the field needs to understand that and needs to understand when it's time to come down on somebody that needs to be come down on and when it's time to say, hey, listen, we've got two weeks, get this fixed, I'm going to be back, and if it's not fixed, you're going to get a citation, you know, something of that nature. Still you're doing your job but achieving the safety perspective that you need, and then everybody walks away from that feeling good. We've achieved the goal of putting that cover over that light bulb, and we did it without having to do an enforcement action with whatever -- I know it's not court time, but court time, you know, with all of those collateral expenses that go along with it, and the partnering that you do with the operator is tremendous. You'll get a lot more from him in the long term as far as cooperation and help than if you take that necessarily strict enforcement perspective. MR. BRELAND: Okay. Well, just to follow up on it a little bit. I wasn't really addressing some of the safety issues that you might have been issued citations on. You think maybe we're a little too restrictive. We're looking at this rule as trying to make it as performance oriented as possible allowing flexibility. That makes a lot of areas subjective, and that if we get into an issue of compliance, if you have thoughts on that like certain subjects may be not acceptable not to have been done, certain subjects we could allow more time that would carry a lesser kind of violation or there's a difference in say issuing an order for somebody on training for an issue that's not maybe safety related but part of the required subject, if you have thoughts on that, you should put that in, you know, and submit that. That's what I was talking about. MR. ANGSTROM: I would, and I'll do that, but I think I'm going to wait till you guys actually have your draft rule -- MR. BRELAND: Okay. MR. ANGSTROM: -- and then I'll make those comments, because then I can actually sit down and say, you know, here's going to be your gray area where people are going to get into a rub, and you need to think of how you're going to handle that from an enforcement perspective. Since this is not your draft rule, it would be premature to comment. MR. BRELAND: Okay. Another issue that you didn't bring up was on training plans and any submissions or not you had about the paperwork issue on being consistent. Do you have thoughts on training plans being at the mine sites submitted, not submitted or what? MR. ANGSTROM: I'm going to turn it -- do you have thoughts on that, Steve? MR. MOATS: Rod, could you clarify that? I don't quite understand what you're -- MR. BRELAND: Well, presently under part 48 there is a requirement to submit training plans for approval and that you train in accordance to those. Any training program would have to have some sort of outline. I assume you have an outline. You have subjects that you cover that go even beyond the requirements of the Act or present part 48. So I guess the issue I'm asking is that do you have an idea what you would do about submitting your training outline, plan, whatever you would want to call it? MR. MOATS: You know, once, again, we're working with the MSHA folks. We at least at Morris Brothers have always asked for their assistance, because who makes better trainers than the people that are enforcing the regulations, so that helps us. It also brings the awareness up of what's out there, what are some of the hot topics that are happening not only in Oregon but through the nation. So I think we have been the front runners asking for approval, is this good enough, is this good enough, and the response that we get back is that we don't have any formal training outlines, guidelines, you read the book as well as I read the book, but surely we definitely would like to help develop a training program that would satisfy your needs and our needs. MR. BRELAND: Okay. MR. ANGSTROM: There's an opportunity there again for you folks to -- as you put together all of this stuff, to kind of come up with what maybe you think might be the model training plan, something fairly simple to give the smaller operator something to go from. MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. I mean, there is a -- I think Rod is trying -- well, I may be mistaken, but I mean, there is the issue of MSHA approval. I mean, the Act provides that the program, the training plan shall be approved by the Secretary of Labor, and so there's an issue there, well, what exactly should that look like. I mean, we've heard people say they have no problem with submitting a plan for approval to MSHA, to the district manager up- front. Other people seem comfortable with the idea of, you know, putting in what you need to put in, in your program, and then when the mine inspector comes to the mine site, I mean, he could take a look at the plan at that point and make a determination as to whether it looks like it fits the bill or not. I mean, obviously, other people are uncomfortable with the idea of, you know, different inspectors at different times coming in and making a subjective determination. So I don't know whether that was -- MR. BRELAND: Yes, that's where I was head. MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. MR. BRELAND: And one thing and some suggestions have been that we might provide say a generic outline or guide -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. BRELAND: -- for you to follow where you augment that with more site specific needs whether it be the task training or some other site specific kind of issues. So you should be considering that when you're looking at trying to reduce paperwork or make things consistent and avoid too much objectivity with somebody else that comes along, so that's why I was bringing it up. MR. MOATS: I'd like to add one more suggestion is definitely from our standpoint at Morris Brothers we would not like to have it be Oregon MSHA/Morris Brothers' plan. We would like to incorporate all the miners that wanted to participate in a formal training program that would -- I mean, I don't know these folks out here, but there's a lot of other people that are doing training, too, so it's not just to exclusively have us help MSHA in any program. MR. BRELAND: Okay. And then another issue on the paperwork where you talked about the guidelines -- and I think Kathy addressed it pretty well on the flexibility. We've had some people suggest that they could E-mail or fax. The fact is we are in the process of developing an electronic training plan that will be available on the Internet, available with inspectors probably, certainly with our educational field people, where they could help a small operator, you know, fill in a plan that could be submitted and copied for them and that type of thing, but that whole issue needs to be thought about what goes back and forth and whether it should be deemed approved if you're following generally the guidelines, you know, so that's an issue you have to consider. One other thing on the delay or what we call the 8-16 split that we presently have now for the 60 days to complete the 24 hour. I did hear you say that eight hours up-front would seem reasonable. Are you talking about if that's at the site actually assigning? Typically an individual would be under close supervision the first eight hours. Some minimum things that they had to be covered? I'm not sure I understood what you meant. MR. ANGSTROM: Go ahead. MR. MOATS: I can only speak for our company, but the first eight hours of training is basically a supervised -- I mean, this individual doesn't even lift a finger that day, so it is solely eight hours of training to fulfill all the requirements under part 48, which they are now. Also, my understanding is that part 48 is going to be altered -- the alteration is going to be under part 46 now. Is that -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. The intention is -- I mean, we're not taking part 48 and amending it. I mean, we're starting a whole new part, separate part for the exempt industries, I mean, and it's going to be separate and apart from part 48. I mean, we have been getting some suggestions from some people saying there are certain things in part 48 that they like and they want us to carry over, but, you know, aside from the minimum requirements in section 115, I mean, we're pretty much starting from scratch as far as what goes in there. MR. MOATS: The only other comment I'd like to make, Rod, is eight hours in even one setting in a new miner, it goes right over the top of his head. It's more -- even though you have initial eight hours of training, the next 16 hours is refreshing his memory of what you just trained him in eight hours, plus the individual job duty and responsibility that that individual is going to have. MR. BRELAND: Well, yes. I want to make it clear that we're up here being objective about it. We're not saying it should be eight hours. We're asking what you think because you had talked about an initial eight hours seemed reasonable, but I wasn't sure what you meant. Is half of that going to be site specific? Is there going to be some formal subjects covered like classroom type and then some field or at the mine? You know, that would be something that the industry as a whole would need some flexibility on, but it would have to be addressed. I mean, the small two-man sand and gravel that's hiring a seasonal employee may have to treat that different than a large company with a fairly formal program. MR. MOATS: Yes. MR. BRELAND: So that's what I was getting at. MR. MOATS: I personally like the flexibility of the incremental training. I would hate to cut that out and the remaining 16 hours, but if it was for the full 24 hours in a given period of time, we're definitely open for that. We probably -- the only way we would change our policy is if it was mandated by law. MR. BRELAND: Okay. I'll try to pin you down one more time. Are you saying that you don't propose any set hours prior to actually going to the mine site for training? MR. MOATS: I say -- I personally would speak for our company. I would say, yes, you have to have a certain amount of set hours, especially for a new miner. In our opinion, it's -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Well, how much would that be? I mean, and just to put this in context, I mean, at some of the other meetings, I mean, we have people coming up and saying there isn't that much to our operation. I mean, you know, eight hours before you get started working, I mean, that's, you know, too much for our particular operation. MR. MOATS: For the things that we cover outside of -- I would say we need a minimum of four hours for our group to go through our orientation, and then the rest of that is -- you know, it's location, you know, site specific, just hop in the pickup, these are the boundaries, but, yeah, as far as our classroom, it's a four hour. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. BURNS: I guess I didn't want to -- if other people here, you know, have an opinion on this, because I think this has been an issue that's been discussed quite a bit at the other meetings, and just following what's under part 48 now, it says provided eight hours of training, shall in all cases be given the new miners before they are assigned work duties, and then it states, the following portion shall be included in the eight hours of training, introduction to work environment, hazard recognition, safety and health aspects of the tasks to be assigned. Okay. Now, what was suggested at some of the other meetings was that -- you know, particularly a real small sand and gravel operation that what's stated in here for eight hours in their particular operation may only take two hours to do it effectively, and so we really haven't heard enough, I believe, from the really small operations. So I would really like to hear from some of the small operators here how -- you know, what they feel is appropriate to do effective training versus -- because what we would like in the end is that the compliance training is the same as the effective miner training, and in order to do that, I think we really do need to hear from the smaller operators. I can only try to envision what it's like working with my three brothers and figuring out how I'm going to train them, but it would be helpful if we hear from those people with that in mind, that if you're going to have someone sit in the classroom for eight hours -- I mean, if that's the way rule came out and they're just all glassy-eyed after two hours, I don't think we've achieved anything except for compliance training. MR. MOATS: Yes. Kevin, I might add one more thing to the draft that I seen, and I would agree with that, that first aid, I think, should be pulled out of that, because it is a lengthy training class, and for new miners, you know, we have people on board. I think we all have people on board that are first aid trained, CPR trained. I agree with that. MR. BURNS: Okay. MS. ALEJANDRO: You mean as part of the initial training that's given before they can start work or just as part of the initial miner training at all? MR. MOATS: Yes. I'd like to pull it from the initial training -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes, because I'm thinking that that's one of the -- that's in the Act. I mean that first aid -- MR. MOATS: Okay. MS. ALEJANDRO: -- is one of the subjects that's in the Act, and I don't -- you know, I mean, if it's in there, I'm pretty sure it's -- MR. BURNS: Yes, it is. MR. MOATS: Yes, it is. MS. ALEJANDRO: You know, we are in a position where we would need to include it, because I mean, it's in the statute. MR. ANGSTROM: In the -- I got the statute in front of me, and it talks about the 24 hours of training and includes the first aid. MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. MR. ANGSTROM: I don't know if folks actually -- how many folks have gone through the first aid training. I've done it several times. It's a big course. UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: It's eight hours. MR. ANGSTROM: Yes. It takes a day. UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: But that's a third of the component if you're going to do it right. MR. MOATS: For the first go around. UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: That's right. MR. MOATS: Yes. MR. BURNS: Yes. And I guess along what you suggested, it was suggested at some of the other meetings that that first aid not be required before they start work, but it could be better if they wait till there's a scheduled class where there's a lot of miners from various mines that can attend that and get that first aid training from someone that's really qualified to do the first aid training rather than just get it from whoever is the best person at the mine who may not be that good as a trainer on that particular subject. MR. MOATS: Right. MR. BURNS: Is that what you're suggesting, too? MR. MOATS: Yes, and first aid training is required under part 56 but not for every miner. So maybe a company chooses not to train everybody that works on the mine property. MR. BRELAND: One of the things you might consider in the comment period is -- as Kathy's pointed out, that's in the Act, and we would be obligated to pay attention to what's in the Act, but you could say what you would think would be an appropriate amount of the kind -- even if it's an introduction into first aid, as a part of that initial session, and it might be an overview of what they ought to be planning to take, and these are just things you've got to consider, because we can't choose to ignore requirements in the Act when we're developing the rule, but that would be helpful if you have some ideas on it. There are some short versions. I mean, Red Cross does a two-hour course, I think. There are some shorter versions, and it might be something to consider and just think about that. One other thing on the issue of the 8-16 split is the turnover issue with a lot of seasonal operations, and I think you've hit on that a little bit where you have your down period of time in the winter months. Do you have a feel for your industry or at least your company? What kind of turnover do you have? Do these people work year round, most of your employees, or do you have some that typically come every season, or do you have a kind of regular turnover percentage that are new to the company ever year? MR. MOATS: At least speaking for Morris Brothers, we have only a few operations that shut down seasonally six to eight weeks, but outside of that, I can't speak for these people. MR. BRELAND: So you're pretty steady. That's fine. You only can just what you know. And then one other thing on the competent person. You talked about you have presently two within your own company that are certified or approved MSHA instructors, I assume. Were you proposing that based on somebody's job as say a site foreman or superintendent or whatever you call your person-in-charge at the mine that they be designated competent or defined to do instruction? MR. MOATS: I'm going to let Rich here define "competent," but if you tag the responsibility to a supervisor, that supervisor may have only been with you a short period of time, and that's difficult for him to be specific to our operation. So we -- well, I mean, we don't have a whole lot of turnover, but I can see that if we just tag a foreman, supervisor, superintendent or location manager -- but "competent" has been a very loose term even from your enforcement people. MR. BRELAND: Well, what have you -- I mean, when I say "competent," have you got an idea how you would want to select or qualifications you would expect for somebody to be able to do the instruction? I might have been misleading you when I said a superintendent. That's kind of what a lot of people tend to go to, but if you are to select somebody at a site as a person that the operator would consider competent to teach these subjects or maybe they have some portions they can do and others, would you have some way of expecting that they demonstrate that they can teach? A lot of times a very experienced equipment operator is not a good instructor. On the other hand, lesser experienced might be a very good instructor, so that's what I'm getting at. MR. MOATS: For the industry, "competent" works well for us, because -- but if it's -- but from a practical standpoint, MSHA used to put on a supervisors' training course that -- there are probably people in here that have attended that, and it wasn't a certification training, but they actually put on a supervisors' training course that helped describe some of the areas and responsibilities of the supervisor, and that's becoming more of a fear in our people. MR. BRELAND: Okay. And then just one other thing. You said that you thought we should help with a supervisory type course, and I guess that follows up on that, but just to clarify, you know, we think that we should be helpful, and especially this educational field service group will be out there, but we're going to be a small group, and there's no way that we're going to be able to provide all the training. We would hope to provide a lot of guidance, but we wouldn't be able to replace and do the training that everybody is going to need, but providing guidance is something we'd like to do. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay, thank you very much. Is there anyone here who would like to speak? Okay. I think what we're going to do is take a 15-minute break before we -- and when we come back, you know, think about maybe things that you would like to comment on. We'll give you a short summary of the other issues that have come up at the other meetings, and also, if you have not signed the attendance sheet in the back, I would ask you to do so, and I will also bring the speaker sheet back if you decide you want to sign up and speak. (Short recess.) MS. ALEJANDRO: Back on the record. The next speaker who is signed up is Bob Potts of Welson Construction. Mr. Potts, when you come up, could you spell your name for the court reporter? (Pause.) I guess there has been at least one person who has asked for the address where to send in written comments, and we can give -- if you need the address -- if you've got a copy of the Notice of Hearing or Notice of Meeting -- and I believe there were a couple copies back there, but maybe they're gone. The Office of Standards, Regulations and Variances at MSHA in Arlington, the address is given there, and that is the address to send it to, but if you don't have a copy of that notice or you don't know the address, I mean, just feel free to come up to the -- you know, whatever this is, this table, at a break or at the end of the meeting and we'll give that information to you. Mr. Potts? BOB POTTS MR. POTTS: Yes. My name is Bob Potts, B-o-b P-o-t-t-s. I just had a couple of short questions about the training rider. One is I'm not a very eloquent speaker. I'm a crusher hand. I don't -- MS. ALEJANDRO: That's okay. MR. POTTS: I don't talk very well in front of people, but, for instance, we're a highway contractor running two portable rock crushers. Be doing, for instance, a seven-mile highway job, the rock crushing would be the mining, actual mining of the aggregates, the production of the aggregate makes up 30 percent of the job. The way I understand the rider, for instance, a theoretical situation, a loader operator, my stockpile operator doesn't show up that day, I could not go over to another part of the operation and pull an untrained loader operator and mine trained loader operator off that operation and bring him into the crusher without having at least a prior eight-hour training course with him, mining training course. Is that correct? MS. ALEJANDRO: I would say no. I mean, at this point no, because the question that we're going to need to answer as we develop the rule that would apply to that operation is we've got -- I mean, 24 hours of initial miner training has got to be given to your miners. I mean, that's something that has got to be in the rule because that's something that's in the Mine Act, but how many -- one of the issues that we need to address is how much training -- you know, I mean, whether it's an hour's or subject area, if any, needs to be given to a miner before he actually starts working an operation. So I mean, the Mine Act doesn't set any minimums for that, but part 48 currently requires eight hours of training before a miner can start work, and one of the questions we have to answer here is, do we, you know, go along with that eight hours that's in part 48, or is there, you know, a lesser number of hours that we're going to require, or maybe we just, you know, forget about hours altogether and, you know, talk about, you know, covering certain subject areas. So I guess -- you know, I don't know whether that answers your question, but that's sort of where we are right now. MR. POTTS: I feel those are questions that need to be addressed, and -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Do you have any -- I mean, do you have any particular opinions on that? MR. POTTS: Yes, I do. Most reputable highway contracting companies that I worked with -- I've been in the industry for approximately 20 years now -- will not take an incompetent person and trust them with a half a million dollar machine such as a loader, dozer. So normally those people have training on the equipment before they ever step on a mine site, or maybe they got the training at a mine site. I know our company is very -- we're very safety orientated, a safety program already in place with half hour toolbox safety meetings roughly given by a competent person. Would that act as part of the 24-hour training if it could be given in a year's period? We have the problem with turnover, as you guys were stating earlier, where one of our next jobs will be on the Utah border from Idaho to Utah. The nearest cities are Salt Lake and Portland, basically, Salt Lake and Twin Falls. To go onto -- for instance, we're on a portable plant. We don't always know for sure what each operation, mining operation is going to entail until we are there. For one instance -- for one source and instance, we may use one loader operator. For the next source, it may be six truck drivers, so a company such as ours, I foresee you have to have trained a large amount of people for the versatility to go to different areas and different sources. We'll move a plant nine times, ten times a year. I can understand the eight hours training. Personally, I'd like to see it approximately two to three hours of a classroom type setting and then close supervised work for the next five hours with some record taking of that to where -- that's more task specific, and then the next 16 hours being covered in a safety meeting type situation where you are covering the broad band of topics, the miners' rights, and it could be an ongoing thing. One person that may be on the site may not get his full 24 hours in a year because he may only be on site two months; for instance, a truck driver that going to stockpile, we may use him for two months in that operation. Then he may be on a highway crew for nine months hauling dirt to a fill site. Short of training everybody in the company with 24 hours of MSHA training, shutting down and giving them 24 hours up-front, I don't see the feasibility of being able to not have an ongoing training program such as a half hour safety meeting given by a competent person. I know in our operation now I'm the supervisor for them. I have to have eight hours OSHA competency course, 16-hour crane certification, about 16 hours a year first aid. So basically in a year's time I have about a week and a half of training through different organizations, so I can work, and a confined spaces course given by OSHA. I feel personally that MSHA -- maybe the competent person should have an eight-hour course or something to say these are the topics that need to be discussed, so that us being as a competent person knows what the topics are. As somebody brought up earlier, I see a lot of enforcement personnel from MSHA. There's a large varying degree of what is and isn't right. So if something is mandated, it needs to be black and white, this is what you need to do. I've looked up on your Internet site your first aid, for example. If you look at that on the Internet site, it says you'll learn how to bandage and access your emergency response systems and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and this is what you'll be taught in your first aid course to be certifiable for first aid. If this is mandated, this is what I feel we need. We need to know what needs to be there for us. There's safety, and for what I see, safety in a mine situation varies greatly from one mine could be water problems. You'd have to address water. There's maybe high walls. Portable plant, we get to see a lot of different things in different areas, and each side is site specific, and it's usually up to the competent person during a safety meeting or during the time you're there, as they see problems arise that have to be addressed, they should be pulling the crew in on their weekly safety meeting and saying, hey, you know, these high walls have to keep it berm or the life vests are by the ponds, wear them. Whatever needs to be addressed at a certain mine, I think that training is more important than pulling a miner in or an operator into a meeting and saying, here's your 24 hours training, now go to it. To me, it's far more important to be on the site and say, you know, there's a high wall, if you don't keep a berm up, you're going to fall asleep and back off of it and die. That, to me, is more important than being able to show somebody videos, and they're going to sleep through half of it and say I got 24 hours and good- bye. That's about all I had. MS. ALEJANDRO: Mr. Potts, I've got a couple questions. You didn't raise this issue when you were talking about your site, but it's an issue that's been raised by other people in some of the other meetings. Do the people who are -- some or all of the people who work for you, do they get training required by OSHA regulations? MR. POTTS: The OSHA regulation, as far as I know, is that there shall be a competent person, OSHA-competent person on site. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. POTTS: On all job sites. MS. ALEJANDRO: All right. MR. POTTS: Yes, our company has an OSHA competent person on all job sites. I'm one of them. I probably go on an OSHA -- take care of an OSHA job site once a year, but, yes, I am card carrying, and yeah, that's the way our company feels. MS. ALEJANDRO: But the employees don't get OSHA required training? MR. POTTS: They get safety meetings weekly. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. POTTS: Yes. MS. ALEJANDRO: How long are those usually? MR. POTTS: Usually last a half hour. Some show videos. We tried to put together in our job site books a 52-week program, basically 52 topics, because I know as a supervisor in the field, sometimes you can only talk about fire extinguishers so long, and so we have some tools that have been put out -- I don't even know where we got them -- that help give these half-hour meetings. MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. I mean, do your employees typically, I mean, you know, spend time on mine sites and also spend time on, you know, construction sites, OSHA regulated construction sites? Do you have a lot of intermixing? MR. POTTS: Yes, we do. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. POTTS: And that's where I see our biggest problem coming in. For instance, as I came off a job and we moved to a new site, instead of using one loader to stockpile off a crusher, I'm now using six truck drivers. Well, truck drivers are a pretty round and round bunch anyway. They don't -- they move around a lot, and so it would put a certain group of people out of work basically because they do not have their mine training. I would have to go down the list and say, yes, you can work here, no, you can't. It would be a very big managerial headache as far as -- for instance, like I say, you're out in a remote area. You've got your crew trained, and they have their 24-hour training. Well, I need another loader operator for a day to help out here. I can't move you on site even though you've run loader for 25 years, a very competent loader operator, but you're not MSHA -- you have not had your mine safety training. To me, that's a big managerial headache. It's just one more check you have to have against the name to go to a site to work, and yet that person could have attended safety meetings that covers a lot of the same things MSHA covers. MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. Those would be the OSHA safety talks? MR. POTTS: Just safety talks, safety glasses, fire extinguishers, seat belts. I mean, these are things that you will cover in an OSHA meeting, too. They're required by both of us, but I guess the labeling of the meeting would have to maybe company-wide cover -- I don't know how to address all that totally, but I think it does need addressed. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. I have one other question, and some of the other people on the panel may have a question, and I just want to clarify something that you said. You said that the individuals who provide training should have like an eight-hour course. I mean, is what you're saying, I mean, people who are going to be giving this training to miners that you think it's appropriate to have them have some kind of training in how to give training? I'm not quite sure what you meant by that. MR. POTTS: I guess to me the person giving the training should know what they -- an agenda that they need to know what they are training. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. You mean as far as as the subject? MR. POTTS: As far as a subject matter. They need some training, and myself included. I've read most of the rules that pertain to me, I hope. Usually the inspectors can tell me which ones I missed. MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. MR. POTTS: But there are a lot of rules there that the person on site addressing the safety meeting should be a competent person, and I feel that there's probably some training or some type of -- and eight hours to me seems like a lot, but some type of training for that person, and I really feel personally that it should be given by MSHA to where -- and made at the local offices to where it's available without a lot of cost. If you're going to do the -- I don't know. There's a lot of different ways to look at it -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. MR. POTTS: -- but the person doing the training should be competent in the field well enough to train. MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. I mean, we've had some people say that the rule should be flexible enough to let people who are good or, you know, knowledgeable and have experience in certain areas give training on that particular subject, you know, period. Other people have said, you know, you need to use that experience, but in order to make sure that people know how to give training, they need to get, you know, some kind of a short course on how to make a presentation and, you know, how to get a point across, I guess, to an audience. And then there are other people, you know, on the other end who think that, you know, there needs to be a formal MSHA approval for instructors like there is under part 48, so it's all over the map right now. Okay. Do you have any questions? MR. BRELAND: Just a couple things. I assume when you said that you might get another loader operator that would be like out of a batch plant or hot mix plant or something? MR. POTTS: Yes. MR. BRELAND: That also works for you? MR. POTTS: Yes. MR. BRELAND: Okay. And then you've already made a determination on the qualification of this equipment operator, I assume, when you hired them, and that's what you're talking about now. You just want to cross lines, basically still doing the same work, just in a different location. MR. POTTS: That's correct. That's where I see a big problem. MR. BRELAND: Also, you talked about the truck drivers, when you use them, that they might only be there a couple of months, and I guess the question would be -- a significant number of our (Indiscernible) fatalities are contract truck drivers that come on mine sites and one thing or another happens to them. How would you propose that we would try to get training to those people? Assume they don't work for you. You hire them as a subcontractor. MR. POTTS: No, that's not true. MR. BRELAND: They do work for you? MR. POTTS: No. We have -- for instance, we have 26 trucks, 20, 30 trucks in the fleet. One job may not require any haulage to pile other than a loader going to stockpile. The next job may require I take five trucks out of the fleet, and I'll use those five trucks to haul to a pile. MR. BRELAND: Well, was your understanding then that maybe they'd have to have 24 hours of each mine site they go to? MR. POTTS: No. It would be my understanding to work for the company at my mine site, at any mine site, they would have to have 24 hours training. That truck driver may not work -- truck drivers are seasonal in Idaho. I'm from Idaho. We work seasonally. It seems like the older truck drivers are out doing other things, hauling to a roadway if you're building a highway, for instance, a fill, whatever, on a highway job, hauling from stockpile to a job site, but I'll take five of these truck drivers and haul to a stockpile site. Now, I can't do that -- even though they're competent truck drivers, they may have worked for us the previous seven months hauling to different sites, but then I have to have MSHA training on these five truck drivers, whether it be a three hour plus the five hours of supervised watching them, which I wouldn't have a problem doing that site specific, but --. MR. BRELAND: You're saying that they actually work permanently for the company -- MR. POTTS: Yes. MR. BRELAND: -- but you only use them as you need to based on weather or whatever seasonal -- MR. POTTS: For the crusher part of it. MR. BRELAND: For the crushing part. MR. POTTS: The crushing, mining operations you only need the truck drivers -- use them as you need them. MR. BRELAND: If they had their 24 hours of training, if they went to a mine site, you would only see them needing a site specific. You talked about the different kinds of hazard, whether it be water or high walls and what have you. So I guess that would be -- you know, we'd have some concerns if we had people that essentially never got trained. That's what you said. You might have them two months, and they may never have a reason to get the 24 hours. You mean in the year or in -- MR. POTTS: That's what I'm asking. MR. BRELAND: Okay. MR. POTTS: You know, do we take every -- basically 80 percent of our employees, even though 50 percent of them -- out of 150 to 200 people, I may use 40 people a year. How many of the employees we hire every year do I need to give 24-hour training to? I may -- you know, I understand the core group will get it, you know, your operators on the job site that would stay with the plants all the time, but the support personnel that come in and out a lot -- MR. BRELAND: Did you say you had about 25 truck drivers all the time? MR. POTTS: Yes. MR. BRELAND: And is there a percentage of those that turnover that changes every year? MR. POTTS: Oh, I'm sure in our business we have probably a 30 percent turnover a year. MR. BRELAND: So it would be the 30 percent that you'd be needing to deal with to get the 24 hours every year. MR. POTTS: Every year. MR. BRELAND: There would be some new group of people that would need it if -- MR. POTTS: Every year. MR. BRELAND: Okay. I'm just trying -- MR. POTTS: I mean, there again, I'm wondering is if our OSHA safety meetings, MSHA safety meetings -- if our safety meetings that we have throughout the company every week would suffice to cover part of this 24-hour training. MR. BRELAND: That's been brought up at least one other time -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. MR. BRELAND: -- that I'm aware of where they want some -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Kind of, you know -- MR. BRELAND: --reprocipocal type of agreement -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. BRELAND: -- where we would accept their training and they accept our MSHA required training and OSHA, and that's what, I guess, you're proposing. MR. POTTS: Yes. MR. BRELAND: If you're doing OSHA's required subject training or meetings, could that be part of that. MR. POTTS: Yes. MR. BRELAND: Okay. MR. POTTS: And I don't know if it's a true OSHA requirement. I know our company just does it, and I'm just wondering if that would suffice to cover a large part of this MSHA training. MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. Well, I mean, that's something that has been brought up a couple of times, and, you know, people are training to satisfy OSHA requirements and, you know, whether it would be possible for the rule to be flexible enough to, you know, have that training, OSHA training counted to satisfy the MSHA requirements, so we'll, you know -- MR. BURNS: I think we'll have to look at that. The OSHA rule is set up -- I mean, OSHA is set up somewhat differently than MSHA. They don't have a part 48. The individual OSHA standards require training, you know, on say guarding and things like that, and it doesn't specify time, but OSHA also has another requirement that the supervisor, you know, go through -- you know, have a ten-hour part, so it's more geared towards having a supervisor that's trained under the OSHA requirements, and then also that they train the individuals as they come into contact with hazards or before they come into certain hazards. But my experience with the OSHA training is there an awful lot of crossover between hazards. So what you're suggesting, I don't see any reason why it couldn't be done that way, because you're going to give your people at the OSHA plant the fall protection just like you will the miners, so there's certain types of training that I would certainly see there should be some crossover, so I can't give you an answer to the question you're raising, because it is somewhat of a tight issue, but we will try to figure that out, because I think it's important. It's obvious to me that you want to train these people properly, but you don't want to be put in a position where you're do an awful lot of training that's not -- that you don't feel is necessary and won't have any end result except the fact that you had to train people. MR. POTTS: Well, that and I don't want to be in a position if an inspector showed up and said who do you have working here and who is trained not be able to make the two lists match, and I just -- I've been through haz training courses, first aid training courses, and all these courses take a certain amount of time, and personally, as a person in these training courses, you spend about 80 percent of it sleeping because you just sit there and drug on and drug on and drug on. Forty-hour haz training course could be done in about 15 hours if it was just done, and I've been in that position, and it's just -- I have nothing against training people, but I feel that they have to be on site part of the time at least to see what the hazards are. Some sites -- a high wall to a lot of sites may not have any meaning at all to some people. To where on other sites a high wall is a very, very big part of their job they have to worry about. MR. BRELAND: Just one other follow up on the loader operator. Again, because you move so much, that nine or ten times a year, which is pretty often, would it be just about every time that you move that there would be some occasion you need to crossover somebody for fill in, for help? MR. POTTS: Virtually every time I move, I will probably crossover on each plant three people if I were to take an average, yes. MR. BRELAND: Like what kind of three besides a loader operator? MR. POTTS: For instance, one source you may use one D-9 end dozer. Another source you may use two. When I bring in the second one, whoever is running it on the job, they'll come with their dozer. Well, in this instance, if they don't have the MSHA training, obviously their dozer can't go with them or they can't come with it. MR. BRELAND: It's almost always a mobile equipment operator of some sort? MR. POTTS: Mobile equipment operator. Normally speaking, my plant operator, my plant personnel are with the plant, and they would through safety meetings -- and I would hope we could grandfather in some of these people a little bit. I don't know how you take a guy that's been through 20 years of running a rock crusher and then all of a sudden say you need eight hours training to -- I think they need -- you know, the eight hours training doesn't hurt anybody, but they've heard most of it before. MR. BURNS: I think the training plan that has been put together by the industry group that was mentioned before, that does talk about grandfathering, you know, current mine employees, and then they require, you know, the eight hours annual refresher within a certain period of time. I'm still trying to figure out what to do about this crossover, and you're always -- because of the turnover issue, you're always going to have a certain number of people that don't have that 24 hours of training, and what you're proposing is that they get some sort of new amount of training up-front, they get supervised work, and then the rest is filled in through the safety talks. MR. POTTS: That would be my proposal. MR. BURNS: And certainly the task training would fill in for any new tasks or new hazards they'd be exposed to? MR. POTTS: Yes. MR. BURNS: Okay. MR. POTTS: I think that's very important on any mine site, especially a new one. You have new hazards and new tasks on a lot of sites, and I mean, if you go from an alluvial gravel pit, for instance, to a quarry source, you're put in a job that you haven't run, a jaw operator, there's a lot of task training involved with that that a person may not have been around before, but there's -- that's my biggest concern is moving from site to site on a portable plant is keeping people there trained without having to have a full-time trainer somewhere to train them. We're a small company. I mean, that's hard to justify a full-time trainer on staff. MR. BRELAND: Thank you, Mr. Potts. MR. BURNS: You know, like I said, we will try to address this, and the proposed rule will probably be put out in the spring, and I hope -- you know, we'll try to make sure we send you a copy. Did your company receive a letter concerning these public meetings? MR. POTTS: Yes, I did. That's why I'm here. Yes, I get one or two of them. We have two portable plants. MR. BURNS: Okay. Because I'm curious about that, because you know how mailing lists are. They're constant work to keep them updated, but I would be interested in your input on this issue once the proposal comes out or if you have any thoughts on it before the proposal comes out, if you would like to either submit them directly to us or through an association also. MR. POTTS: Well, and then real quickly on the same token -- I realize MSHA's budget restrictions. You're always short handed like all of us, and I know in our field office, for instance, they didn't even know anything about the meeting. I was asking some guys, some of our field office people if they were going and don't even know nothing about it, but for training, I hear some of these guys talking about training in conjunction with their MSHA people. As far as I know, that's never been offered in our area, and I've talked to them about it on more than one occasion. We've had, as mandated, I think, the last two years due to fatalities, a short 15-minute talk by an inspector at different times, twice in the last two years, show up just one day and give a short lunch break talk about the fatalities and things, but as far as any formal training given by MSHA, we've not had any. I would be interested in that. MR. BURNS: Is there a period in the year when that would be most effective from the standpoint that people would be more available? MR. POTTS: January, February, just like the rest of the world here, I imagine. MR. BRELAND: I was just going to add. You said you're from Idaho, and a little bit of background on what my role will be as western operations manager, we are in the process of -- we've done a lot of selections, and we are going to place a training specialist in Boise, in the Boise field office. I don't know if that's close to where you're at. MR. POTTS: Yes. MR. BRELAND: That person will be assigned to try to assist as much -- we want to get to mine sites as much as we can. We're going to put one in Bellevue, Washington, as well, one in Arizona, one in Southern California. So we are trying to spread these people out some to help provide some assistance and on-site assistance and not just the walk-and- talk type stuff. We'll be not in an enforcement mode but in a training and safety program assistance kind of mode. MR. POTTS: Well, I think as far as fatalities and the work in the mine, I feel that training and the -- good training would save more fatalities than enforcement ever does, because I know me as a -- myself as a mine operator, I try to practice good safety practices, and you get an enforcer out there that can be very, very petty and give you two citations -- just as I heard earlier, a light bulb 40 feet in the air that's unguarded or something. You know, I would lot rather see somebody coming in willing to work with us and say, here's your problems, site-specific problems, and, you know, obviously you've not addressed them at all, have some enforcement, but if you've tried to address all your problems, maybe educate us a little more on what needs to be addressed. We can all read the rule book, and we try to cover all the rules, but there's a lot of them there. For myself anyway, that's the way I feel. MR. BURNS: Any other? MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. Are there any other questions? Thank you very much, Mr. Potts. The next speakers that we have signed up -- I believe they're coming up together -- Pete -- and I apologize for the pronunciation. Pete Zagar and Dave Griffin from Eugene Sand & Gravel. (Pause.) If you could, spell your name for the court reporter. PETE ZAGAR MR. ZAGAR: My name is Pete Zagar, Z-a-g-a-r, and this is David Griffin, spelled G-r-i-f-f-i-n, and I'm the production superintendent at Eugene Sand & Gravel in Eugene, Oregon, and David is our safety director, and we'd like to kind of present what we're doing right now, and I'm also the environmental chair for OCAPA. So what I'd like to describe briefly -- and then I'll turn it over to Dave -- is what we're doing, and I'd like to say a couple of things. One of the things that I've recognized out there in Oregon -- and I can only speak for Oregon, but we have several -- more than several companies that already have very good training modules in place that follow 48, and we believe ours is one of them. One of the things that I'm going to propose that I would like to see done -- and I don't know if it's feasible or not -- is for the larger companies to make these boilerplate plans, if you will, available to the smaller operators. We're perfectly willing to loan a copy of ours out to anybody who wants to review it as a boilerplate, assuming that what we have is acceptable MSHA. Actually, what we have here is acceptable to MSHA. Back in 1996 we submitted a copy of our plan to the Albany field office, and in turn, that copy was submitted to Vacaville and although at that time they don't have the funding to officially approve it, they did review it, and they gave it their blessing. So it has been endorsed, and actually, the gentleman who endorsed that was Leo Hayden down there in Vacaville. So he has reviewed our plan, and he says our components that we've listed complies with part 48. So I just wanted to make that available to anybody in here who would like to review that through OCAPA and through Eugene Sand & Gravel. Additionally, a couple of things that we have -- a couple of resources that we have used is OSHA, Oregon OSHA specifically, and Oregon OSHA has a real wonderful consultation division where they will come in free of charge if you have a specific issue. In our plant we have kind of an overlapping OSHA/MSHA jurisdiction. We have an asphalt plant that is adjacent to our crushing operation, and actually, there's some conveyors that, kind of depending upon who wants to inspect them, could be inspected by both, and OSHA has come in on several occasions and done free consultive services for confined space issues, for respiratory issues. So there's a little overlap there that may be something -- and we already talked about that earlier about maybe looking at the OSHA training that some people do and maybe seeing if there's something that can be done there. The other thing that we do that's unique, we do a lot of team building with our crew. I have about 26 individuals that would fall under MSHA that work for us, and one of the things we do is whenever we have a safety issue -- and I'll give a specific example. We had a double overtime for a couple years trying to get these guys to understand what proper lockout/tagout procedures were, and our philosophy is that we go to them, and we present the problem, and we let them brainstorm on what would be the most effective way in-house to comply and make it easier for them to understand how to comply with the lockout/tagout or fall protection or whatever it might be. We get our employees involved in the decision making process, and it's proved to be invaluable, because they really become part of the decision making process, and they feel by doing that that they've endorsed the solution, and they become more infinitely aware of what the particular standard is addressing. In this case, in terms of lockout/tagout, they finally came up with what we feel is a pretty darn good solution. So those are just some of the issues that I'd like to -- some of the things I'd like to bring to your attention, and I'll turn it over to Dave. DAVID GRIFFIN MR. GRIFFIN: Thank you. I guess I look at this issue more from a perspective of someone that's going to have to put the plan together to satisfy your requirements. A couple of questions I have. You indicated that this was not going to be a reworked part 48 format. Can you give me some idea of what you are going to do? Are you going to use some of the components of part 48 or -- because part 48 was quite clear in its approach to surface mining, which is what sand and gravel falls under, and what is the proposal going to look at? MS. ALEJANDRO: I think actually it's a little bit too early for us to be real specific about what's going to be in the proposal. I mean, obviously we've got to hit the minimum requirements that are in section 115 of the Act. I mean, that's the floor -- the level which we cannot fall. What gets included on top of that, I mean whether we include some, you know, concepts that are similar to what's in part 48, I mean, I really do think that it's too early to tell, and that's really why we're here is to get some sense from you all -- I mean, if there's things in part 48 that you like, I mean, that are -- you know, you think kind of clarify things and you think that you, you know, would like to recommend that we incorporate them in some fashion, then, you know, if you're not prepared to do that today but you've got some areas that you'd like to touch on in writing, I mean, I encourage you to submit stuff to us before, you know, February 1st. Obviously, I mean, Congress has indicated that we're supposed to use as a basis for any proposal the final draft proposed rule that we get from the Coalition for Effective Miner Training, and some people who have been up here have already, you know, referred to earlier drafts of that. So if you don't have a copy of the latest draft, we can probably get you a copy, so you can see what the association is recommending. I mean, it goes beyond what's in the Act, but, you know -- well, I don't know if there's anything more I can say about it, but -- MR. GRIFFIN: So there is a draft in existence now? MS. ALEJANDRO: Right, but it's not the final draft. I mean, we are being provided with working copies, and, again, you know, to make sure that no one is confused, I mean, that's not MSHA's draft. We're being provided copies, you know, as they work through it, and, you know, it's changed somewhat, and I anticipate that what we get as the final draft on or before February 1st is going to be somewhat different from the draft, the latest draft we have now, but at least that will give you some idea of what, you know, the Coalition is thinking about, and then may provide some basis for additional comments that you may want to make in writing for us to consider. So if you want, I mean, anyone who -- I mean, you know, come up and we can get you copies of the latest Coalition draft. MR. GRIFFIN: Yes, I'd like to get a copy of that. MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. So just, you know, come up and let us know. MR. GRIFFIN: A few more comments that I'd like to make regarding -- and I have to use the part 48 as a basis, because that's basically what we're operating under now. MS. ALEJANDRO: Certainly. MR. GRIFFIN: One provision that I really like and I would like to see included in the final standard, there's a provision in there to withdraw a miner from his duties and retrain him, and basically, I think that's a really good thing. It's kind of a quality assurance, let's say, that if your training appears to be inadequate or the miner is not receptive, it gives you an avenue to retrain that miner. MS. ALEJANDRO: That actually -- I'm not exactly sure what provision you're addressing, but that may also be based on section 104(g)(1) of the Act, which provides that inadequately trained miners are to be withdrawn. So I mean, that would be something that would be required to include as well, I would imagine. MR. GRIFFIN: Another issue that would affect us, as well as any company that has multiple sites or, for instance, a portable operation where they've got an office at one locality and they may be anywhere in the state, is the records. We have two -- actually four locations, and from time to time an inspector may visit one of those locations where our records are not routinely kept. I think there should be a provision made for that. In other words, does the records for 12 men at a remote site need to be kept on that site, and I would propose that as long as it was in the office where it was made available to the inspector that should be adequate. MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. We've gotten comments on that, too. There's a lot of people who have recommended, you know, some kind of centralization recognizing the increasing, you know, computerization and centralization of records in business operations. One thing that some people recommended was to, you know, provide some basis for effective enforcement is that a reference -- when an inspector comes in and requests them, if they're not at the mine site, that they may be made available within some period of time. MR. GRIFFIN: Yes. MS. ALEJANDRO: And I don't know, you know, what that might be or, you know, how we're going to handle that, but we have gotten comments on that particular issue. MR. GRIFFIN: I believe one of the other speakers spoke to this as well. We have areas of our operation that are regulated by OSHA and areas by MSHA, and again, the idea of training begins to be a problem. For instance, in our operation our haul truck operators are not always the same people. We may from time to time draw out of our transportation department, which is under OSHA jurisdiction. MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes, yes. MR. GRIFFIN: My thoughts on this would be that rather than put these people through the entire training, train them only for the specific tasks that they would be required to perform unless, of course, they would be actually moved into the department as a permanent miner. MS. ALEJANDRO: Well, I mean, do those people come in to, you know, mine sites sort of as pinch hitters, I mean to fill in and substitute, or is that a regular part of their job? MR. GRIFFIN: Not so much as a substitute but as a very limited function. In other words, a haul truck driver -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Would come and load and then move on? MR. GRIFFIN: Yes. That's all he would do would be to drive the truck, and if the training were specific to that task rather than the overall miner training curriculum, why to me that would make more sense. MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes, and that's another issue we've gotten comments on is, you know, who is a new miner, who is an experienced miner, I mean different categories of employees with different functions and what type of training is appropriate depending on what they actually do, so that's something that we'll have to take a look at. MR. GRIFFIN: This also was addressed, and I'd like to clarify it a little bit. It doesn't apply so much to our operation, but in a sense, I think this would be a big help to smaller operators, and I really am sensitive to their needs because that was kind of my background was a small portable operation. If they were to keep an accurate text and attendance record of their safety meetings, could this be accepted as certificate of training? MS. ALEJANDRO: And that, again, is something that we've got a lot of comments on. MR. GRIFFIN: Yes. MS. ALEJANDRO: We've had a lot of people come in and say that they think, you know, short periods of training over the course of a year is more effective than giving it all at once, and, you know, a lot of companies have got these regular safety talks, and so the question is, you know, should we accept that as satisfying the refresher training or, I guess, as the 24 hours of initial training, and the one thing that we keep in mind on that is that the Act does require that records be kept of the training that's given, and obviously if you're giving training in shorter increments, then the record keeping part is going to increase, but I mean, I guess that could be a decision that an operator might choose to make, and that is something that we're also giving serious consideration to is how to handle that. MR. GRIFFIN: Well, and I think also that -- this also was addressed. The scope of the operation, in other words, do you have some sort of plan for determining the extent of training depending on the size of the operation? MS. ALEJANDRO: You mean as far as the amount? MR. GRIFFIN: The amount or -- in other words, like, for instance, a three or four man operation, obviously their training needs wouldn't be nearly as extensive as say a large portable or, pardon me, a large stationary plant with say 100 employees. MS. ALEJANDRO: And I can't say that I necessarily disagree with that. However, you know, I was talking about the floor that the Act gives us as far as requirements, and we cannot -- I mean, we have got to require in our rule a minimum of eight hours of annual refresher training -- MR. GRIFFIN: Yes. MS. ALEJANDRO: -- and a minimum of 24 hours of initial new miner training. So I mean, even if we were to conclude that it might be appropriate to handle it differently, I mean, that's the minimum that we're dealing with. MR. GRIFFIN: As long as it meets the requirements of the Act. MS. ALEJANDRO: Right, right. MR. GRIFFIN: Okay. MR. BURNS: And we really -- you know, as Kathy stated, we do recognize what you're saying, and what we hope to do is address that through, you know, more flexibility to address the various size operations and their needs and the needs of -- I mean, it's the size of the operation and the new miners you get. I mean, all new miners aren't the same, you know. You might have to train me more than you'd have to train Rod, you know. Everybody is different, so I think -- we try -- we want to try to address that through flexibility, but along the same lines of what Kathy stated, the Act requires certain things and that's our mandate. We have to comply with the Act. MR. GRIFFIN: Okay. One other question I've got is -- and this has to do with the trainer certification. When an operator submits a training plan, if they furnish evidence in the form of a resume or a narrative that a foreman or an individual either by education or experience is qualified to be as a trainer, to be a qualified trainer, is that going to -- is that going to be sufficient to have them certified? MS. ALEJANDRO: Well, as I think I said earlier, the Act doesn't set any minimum requirements for people who provide training. MR. GRIFFIN: Okay. MS. ALEJANDRO: I mean, it's wide open, and I mean, that's going to be a big issue here is what kind of qualifications should we impose for people who provide training, and a lot of people have come in and said, you know, the people with the experience at the mine site are going to give you the best training. Other people are kind of in the middle where, you know, you got to use the people with the experience, but they also need some kind of training in how to provide training, and then on the other hand, you know, there's people who advocate, you know, getting some kind of a formal approval in order to be able to do that. So I mean, if you've got specific recommendations for how we ought to handle that, you know -- MR. GRIFFIN: Okay. MS. ALEJANDRO: -- if you're not prepared to do that today, I mean, you could give us something in writing as far as how you think it would be appropriate and how we should handle that. MR. GRIFFIN: Okay. Also, when a plan is submitted for approval, is it going to be looked at on its own merits, or is it -- or is there going to be more or less just certain standards that have to be present in the plan for approval? In other words, if an individual operator can craft a plan that fits their operation and still meets, let's say, the requirements of the Act, is that going to be the basis on which you would approve? MS. ALEJANDRO: I think it's probably a little bit too early to talk specifically about how MSHA is going to go about approving, and that, again, is an issue. I mean, the Act requires that the training plan be approved by the Secretary of Labor, which means MSHA, you know, how should that process work. I mean, you all -- would you be comfortable with, you know, a process by which plans get sent into a central location or to the district and get evaluated, you know, or is it, you know, having the mine inspector make that kind of determination when he shows up to do his inspection? I mean, there's a variety of ways that we could go about handling that. Now, as far as, you know, how the plans are going to be evaluated is going to depend to a large extent on what we decide to put into the rule, I mean, as far as, you know, a program should meet these minimum requirements, it's got to have boom, boom, boom. Anyone who is going around to approve it is probably going to be looking at, you know, whatever the rule says that a plan has got to have and, you know, what's included in there. I mean, there are some minimum requirements in the Act, but I think there's a lot of flexibility as far as how we approach that, and, again, you know, if you've got specific recommendations, we'd love to hear from you. MR. GRIFFIN: Yes, and I think what we intend to do is take the time that we have left to us before the comment period expires, and we do want to, you know, put some thought into -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Sure. MR. GRIFFIN: -- our comments. MS. ALEJANDRO: We would appreciate it, and I'll give you all a short summary of what the process is beyond here, and you're going to have a couple different bites of the apple, and then when we come out with the proposed rule, there's a comment period after that where you'll be able -- I mean, it won't be quite so wide open, obviously. I mean, we're going to have a proposed rule for you to look at specifically, and, you know, you'll have the opportunity to send in comments in writing, and also there will be several public hearings at different locations. MR. GRIFFIN: One other thing -- I keep thinking of one other thing, you know. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. No, that's fine. That's what it's all about. MR. GRIFFIN: How likely -- well, let me ask it this way. The consultative problem bothers me. Why don't you have consultative services available? MS. ALEJANDRO: You mean right now? MR. GRIFFIN: Yes. MS. ALEJANDRO: I can't really answer that. You mean as far as assisting mine operators in developing training? MR. GRIFFIN: Yes. MS. ALEJANDRO: I'm really not qualified to answer that. I don't know whether Rod has some opinion. MR. BRELAND: Well, again, our reorganization, the educational field service group is going to try to the extent possible provide consultation services, recognizing we have about 50 specialists scattered throughout the United States, a good part of them in the eastern part right now. As I was talking about earlier, we're going to -- 11 of the recent 12 vacancies for specialists have been located in our western area, if you will, Midwest, mostly in the far west, so we expect to be able to have people like Mr. Hayden that you dealt with before scattered out more, and we want them at mine sites as much as possible, but given that there's some 10,000 mine operations in the metal and nonmetal that are presently in these exempt categories, it's obvious that they won't be able to make it to all sites. I think we are headed that direction to the limit that we'll have resources. MR. GRIFFIN: Thanks. MR. BURNS: And when you talk about the consultative services, you're talking about similar to what OSHA does? MR. GRIFFIN: Yes. MR. ZAGAR: That's correct. MR. BURNS: Yes. I'm somewhat familiar with that, and I mean, that is set up different than anything MSHA has, because they're really not -- it's an OSHA program, but they're not really working for OSHA. They come in, and it's confidential type evaluation, and as long as they don't see some imminent danger that the operator is not going to correct, that's the only time they break that confidential relationship. We don't have anything similar to that. I guess the only thing I could see maybe something, you know, help through the state grants with that sort of -- because that's a different expertise you're talking about. That's not just training. You're talking about some technical expertise and help. Is that correct? MR. GRIFFIN: That's true, but I guess what prompts my concern is that, you know, this is bringing this industry in under the training requirements is a pretty big step for some of these people, and it's not realistic to expect them to do that by themselves, and that's why I think that somehow -- and I know that this is all tied to funding. Somehow -- you know, Oregon OSHA can afford this. That money came from someplace, and I just feel like that MSHA needs to put some money into that service. After all, we're talking about safety here. MR. BRELAND: Presently we're funded in about $6 million of the $10 million that's supposed to be available for state grants, and that is an area that Mr. McIntyre (phonetic) is looking at and trying to see if we can get some congressional support for additional funding there. That would help. We're going to try to encourage state grants, as Kevin pointed out, who are already active to become more active, and those that haven't been as active to try to steer a lot of their activities towards again assisting in their more regionalized areas to provide some help. MR. ZAGAR: Let me say one thing about that. In fairness to our local field office, we have actually had them come out several times on their own to consult about a specific issue at our plant site, so they do -- they will do that if they have the time, but usually they don't have the time, but they have made themselves available on several occasions, and I think it depends on the field office and who is managing the field office and that situation. This particular field office here in Albany, Oregon, is pretty good about that actually in my experience with them. One thing I'd like to talk about a little bit real briefly and kind of just express it, I'm comfortable or more comfortable with the required components of part 48 specifically. In addition, some of the other issues that we have ongoing training being conducted is fall protection. We have a very -- a lot of confined space issues that both OSHA and MSHA would be concerned about. In addition to that, we do an oxygen and acetylene training module, which is very valuable, because that is a very big area of concern for us, especially with new miners who may not have that welding experience or oxyacetylene experience. So those are a couple of other areas that I think you might want to take a look at, including in the standard or the new standard, because there are a lot of accidents in those areas if you read the statistics. But as far as the rest of the requirements -- and I'll just go down -- I've got our plan right here, and I'll just go down for everybody's benefit what we include in our plan that was approved or at least accepted unconditionally. They couldn't accept it, but they said it would meet the standard. We've broken the 24 hours down into kind of hourly or hour and a half components that an inexperienced miner would have to be trained in, and it kind of goes like this: statutory rights of miner, that would be an hour and a half presentation, and all of these would be either somewhat formal lecture and videos and that type of thing. Self rescue and respiratory devices, hour and a half; transportation controls and communication systems, an hour and a half; introduction to the work environment, which is a walk around, taken by the hand, show them the plant site, show them the dos and don'ts, maybe show them a laborer shoveling out a tail pulley when it's locked out, not when it's running, those kinds of things. Escape, evacuation plans, fire fighting, fire warning, just site specific for the plant, ground control, an hour and a half; health module, just a basic PPE, hour and a half; hazard recognition, an hour and a half; electrical hazards, an hour and a half, which also includes lockout/tagout; first aid, which is eight hours -- most of your standard courses are eight hours -- and then health and safety aspects of assigned tasks that they're going to be assigned to. You go over what those health and safety issues are based on that task or those tasks that that new employee is going to be doing. That's how we kind of have ours set up and that's what was tentatively approved, so I just wanted to share that for the benefit of everybody in here on kind of how you could compile those 24 hours and conduct the training. MS. ALEJANDRO: Actually, I have a question on the issue of first aid, which has been raised before. I mean, as the situation with first aid, you say that it's going to be a minimum of eight hours. Do you bring someone in from the outside to give that and that's the shortest course that's offered on first aid? MR. ZAGAR: Generally, yes. We have -- we do American Red Cross, and they come in, and it's usually an eight-hour session, right. MS. ALEJANDRO: I see, okay. If you could, Mr. Zagar, could you just give us a short description of your operation, the size and locations and just for the record so we know where you're coming from? MR. ZAGAR: We have four operations. We have two in Eugene. We have a base rock operation, and it's about a 600,000 ton per year operation, and then we have our main plant, which is mining concrete and asphalt and aggregates, and that's about pretty close to the same, about 600,000 tons per year. MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. MR. ZAGAR: And so between the two there, we'll a little over a million tons per year. We have 24 employees in our department, including two foremen, and we have four haulage vehicles, two at each pit, and our extraction is through truck excavating, and pretty straightforward. One of our pits -- probably the most unique thing about our pits is we're right along the Willamette River, so we have to pump a lot of water, and we mine dry, but we do -- the other issue that we've -- based on last year's concerns about haulage accidents, we really do a lot of training on our haul truck drivers and task training with them, and I think we do a pretty good job of that. We take that very seriously, and they do, too, and so we review that on a quarterly basis, and we're always looking to make sure the roads are bermed and the roads -- we have a grader on the roads at all times when they're hauling to maintain the -- make sure the roads are graded properly and that kind of thing. Our other operation is at Corvallis, Oregon. It's about a 500,000 ton per year operation. It's also cab truck haulage with an excavator, and we have 14 employees that are under MSHA there, and then we have another operation down in Southern California (sic) by Azalea area, and that is also about -- and that's probably about a 700,000 ton per year operation. We have, I believe, 16 employees at that operation, and that's also a base rock and finish concrete and asphalt and aggregate producing operation. MS. ALEJANDRO: Thank you. Anymore questions? MR. BRELAND: Just a couple. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. BRELAND: When you talked about the documentation, you know, an accurate text of what the subject was and as one proposal, one of the provisions is a miner -- and which a lot of them do in the industry, they move onto other job sites and what have you, but they're able to take a record with them. Had you considered how you would provide that for them? MR. GRIFFIN: We use your standard -- I think it's 5300. MR. BRELAND: Form 5023? MR. GRIFFIN: Yes. MR. BRELAND: Well, you were talking about, I thought, though, in a proposal of just keeping a text and a sign-in sheet or a list of who attended. So you would do a summary of that and give that to somebody if they were going -- MR. GRIFFIN: Actually, I hadn't thought of that, but -- MR. BRELAND: You might consider that as one of the things that -- MR. GRIFFIN: Yes. MR. BRELAND: It would have to be addressed. MR. GRIFFIN: Yes. MR. BRELAND: Another thing, just to clarify in the plan, Mr. Zagar, you talked about your generic or your plan that was submitted, but, Mr. Griffin, you said something about them being site specific, that training plans should be more site specific. Did I misunderstand what you were -- MR. GRIFFIN: Well, I think that's the danger of a boilerplate plan and just filling in the blanks is it's pretty generic, and I think that each side is going to have characteristics that need to be addressed in the training plan. MR. BRELAND: Well, so are you suggesting maybe part of it should be boilerplate and then others -- there should be some addendum to that that's more site specific? MR. GRIFFIN: Yes. I think as you indicated, it has to meet the minimum standards of the Act, but I think looking at an overall operation is what are your areas of concern and are you addressing them is basically the question that a training plan needs to answer. MR. BRELAND: Okay. MR. GRIFFIN: If you've demonstrated in your plan, in the narrative of your plan, that you've addressed any characteristics that may be peculiar to your operation. MR. BRELAND: Just as a -- you know, you might consider that when you're making comments how you would want -- propose to address that. MR. GRIFFIN: Yes, and I think that is one of our concerns. MR. BRELAND: And then the one other thing on the certification of your instructor, I'm not sure I understood what you meant or what you were proposing out how you would select -- MR. GRIFFIN: Well, what my idea is to furnish a resume, and I think that practical experience needs to count for a large portion of that. We've got people that actually train -- do task training that -- you know, they've got a lot of years in this business, and that to me qualifies them as a trainer, and I guess my concern would be that you look at that experience level as adequate qualification to train. MR. BRELAND: I would think that that's probably, you know, going to be well received comments, but the one concern that others would have is what if you have a well qualified on paper person who is not demonstrating that they're either instructing what they should or they, in fact, aren't good instructors. Is there -- you know, there might be some concern about what would be the way to deal with that, remedial training, go through an instructor course itself. When you're considering your comments, you might think of that as well, and that would be an issue how do you address the proposal if somebody has got all this paperwork or background but, in fact, are not good. MR. GRIFFIN: Right. MR. BRELAND: Okay. MR. GRIFFIN: Yes, okay. MR. ZAGAR: Regarding the comment you made a minute ago about making the training specific to the site, I use the example of our lockout/tagout and how we solved that issue with our employees. We had some unique situations there that we had to address, and they were pretty much based on some areas that were remote or they were outside of the motor control center, and they had the ability when they working in the proximity of this equipment to lock it out. So we basically put lockout stations -- and actually what we ultimately did was we welded the locks to the breaker so that the locks are always there, and then we have a system where they actually take the key from that lock and put it in the lockout box and put their personal lock on the outside of the lockout box, and now it's pretty failsafe. I mean, they all seem to -- and it was their idea, because a lot of times guys before, they'd forget to bring their lock with them, and we have to work on something, and there was a lot of wasted time. We stress in our -- everybody knows in this business that time is money, and a big part of that is being efficient with your safety protocols and your safety procedures, and if you can do that, it goes hand in hand with the productivity of your operation, and I can't stress that enough. MS. ALEJANDRO: Do you have anymore? MR. BURNS: No. I mean, I did notice in your training plan you don't address explosives, so I'm assuming you don't use explosives at your mine, and that's why -- MR. ZAGAR: Right. MR. BURNS: And then you -- it seems to me that you add to that with the confined space training and the oxygen and acetylene training and welding, and I envision -- we do want to -- we do have to address the minimum requirements, but I also recognize -- and I believe in my own opinion that it's important that if you have someone that's doing maintenance work -- and that's an area where we have a lot of concerns, and I think everybody in the industry has a lot of concerns. You need to be able to train them on the issues that affect them. I mean, you could have -- I mean, the most important training could be the acetylene and oxygen training and confined spaces. I mean, that's -- if they're in there doing some welding in a confined area, that's a tough job, and they need more help in that area than they do, you know, necessarily in, you know, working on a high wall or something like that. So we do want to form a rule to allow that person to get more of that type training than the person running the crusher, because it's not going to do him as much good. MS. ALEJANDRO: Anything else? MR. BURNS: No. MS. ALEJANDRO: I believe Ros has got a couple questions. MS. FONTAINE: Yes. Mr. Zagar, the agency is responsible for developing a regulatory flexibility analysis to determine the cost of benefits for proposed rules. Based on your experience, could you give me an estimate of what it costs your company to train your employees on an annual basis? MR. ZAGAR: Yes. Right now I would say, including Dave's salary here and all of the components that we've put together -- of course, a lot of the stuff we have in place -- and it's taken us a couple years to accumulate it. So I think from this point on, we're going to be adding new videos and new training -- you know, just new information. You constantly want to try to refresh, but I'd say probably right now for us it's probably in the neighborhood -- just for our department alone, probably in the neighborhood of $50,000 a year if not a little bit more than that. It could be upwards to $75,000. Dave is also responsible -- because we have OSHA as well for our mixer fleet and our dump fleet and whatnot, he's also responsible to take care of that training, so it's kind of a mixed bag. If you took it overall, the whole thing is well over $100,000 a year. MS. FONTAINE: Okay, thank you. MS. ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much. The next speaker on our list is Ed Sinner -- and, again, I apologize if I'm mispronouncing this -- from Oregon Mine Safety and Health Training Program. ED SINNER MR. SINNER: My name is Ed Sinner, and that's E-d S-i-n-n-e-r, just like it sounds. The first thing I'm going to do is plug my program, the Oregon Mine Safety and Health Training Program. I am funded through MSHA, Department of Labor as a resource for mine operators to comply with part 48 training requirements, and a lot of sand and gravel people don't know about me. I hit mainly -- well, the people that I do hit are the ones that have to have the training. Up to now everything I've done for my clients has been done free of charge. Recently, because the way the budgets tends to go, I have been pretty much forced to start charging people that don't have mine ID numbers for at least my travel expenses, but everything else I do for training required operations is soaked up by the grant. I work out of Eastern Oregon University in LaGrande, Oregon, spend a lot of time over here. I did want to mention that as usual, the people in this room are the ones probably doing the job, the ones doing the training and whatnot. I have been involved with the Morris Brothers/MSHA training seminars. Actually the MSHA part has been going on for -- I've been in it three different years. I've probably got about a dozen different sessions under the belt, and it's a really good working model on the way the two groups can work together. I'd say the only limitations that I've seen out of that group are it doesn't get a very big audience. The Morris Brothers gentlemen were saying they might hit 250 people, and really it's been opened up just the last year or so. There tends to be a little bit of competition among operators, and it's gotten down to the point where people don't want to give up trade secrets and that kind of stuff. Well, training doesn't necessarily have to be like that. You can do safety training without competing, and so the Morris Brothers/MSHA model does work. If we could get more people in it, it would work even better. I have -- just listening to what's been going on so far, I have more comments than questions probably at this point. One is you brought up the grandfathering issue, and that is -- part 48, when it was put in, took for granted that people knew certain things. They'd been mining for years, and the grandfathering was addressed, and basically I just want to make sure that whatever new regulations come in for the part 46, if that's going to be the name, do have at least the potential for grandfathering experienced people in. Let's see, there has also been a -- I guess it's an implied exemption that on very small operations it has been possible at least on past training where if there's only two or three people at an operation, it gets to the point where is who is going to do the training, you train me, I train you, and that is an issue, and there has been the ability in the past to get an exemption from task training requirements based on if everybody at the site knows the jobs, everybody knows the jobs, and that won't really apply to new miner stuff, but at least maybe that's something else that should be addressed in the standard. One comment I had was I don't think it's productive to lock supervisors into being your trainers. I spent nine years supervising an underground or actually a couple of different underground mines. I can say that supervisors are not necessarily the ones that are best to look out for safety. Supervisors tend to be the ones that -- and this is not the ideal world where a supervisor will know all and do whatnot, but if it comes down to putting out rock and putting on an eight-hour training session, the supervisor is going to be the one that is probably going to put out the rock and just don't lock into the idea of supervisors doing the work. The fairly recent change in requiring a first aid person, competent first aid person, at sand and gravel type operations instead of a supervisor being trained in first aid is kind of an example of where the competent person might be better than a supervisor per se. There's also a new rule -- different subject. There's a new rule that's recently come out relating to experienced miners, and the rule is basically designed to address a lot of the same issues that we've been hearing this morning, and that is you get people that tend to move around, maybe you lapse a little bit. You go 14 months instead of 12 months without getting a new miner training or annual refresher training, and according to the law, you had to go back and get new miner training. Well, at an underground operation it's 40 hours, guys, so, you know, that's a big chunk of time and money. The new standard that has been out since September or October talks about keeping an experienced miner an experienced miner for a given period of time, and I would hope that that issue would also fall over into whatever part 46 training requirements there are, because I have seen a lot where you do end up hiring people -- well, ideally not out of a tavern, but if you need somebody to run a truck or run a loader and you're working out of Bly, Oregon, or wherever, there's two buildings in town, a post office and a tavern, and you're probably not going to get a new employee in the post office. So if they can keep a record of training that says, yeah, I was trained two years ago as a new miner or as an experienced miner, I would hope that some of that training would flop over. One other thing that I have noticed. I have been doing my job for four years now. I do tend to not exactly, always end up in the best training locations, and I would suggest that for at least part of the training time that you're doing, a mine site is definitely not always the best place that you can do training. I've done training almost in the back of a pickup truck before. You get five people in the little back room or storeroom in a shop or something like that, and it's not something where anybody is going to be able to sit down and concentrate on the message that you're trying to get across in a safety presentation. So realizing we need to keep things mine specific, don't get too locked into the idea of requiring everything has to be done on a mine site. Another issue that I've jotted down here is I believe the task training should be included as part of training because that is the site specific stuff that really is going to make or break it. If you've got three different people working an operation, you've got a loader, a truck and -- well, maybe a crusher, not guaranteed, by the time you go through the equipment that's there, that's a lot of the training that you need to cover, so task training should be credited as part of the new miner training. One other question for MSHA basically is if -- and I don't know if this is a can of worms or what. I'm going to try and keep it really short. These people have been operating under an exemption from Congress for -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes, since -- MR. SINNER: -- a long time, since 1980. MS. ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. SINNER: And I'm wondering -- we keep going back to the idea that the Act says that they are required to have 24 hours new miner training, eight hours any refresher in the Act. MS. ALEJANDRO: Right, right. MR. SINNER: I'm wondering if there is any possibility or leeway in addressing an exemption for that time requirement of 24 hours as an exemption to the Act like this group has had since 1980 for training in general. It is a different group than a big surface mine in a lot of cases, and potentially, you know, like we've discussed quite a bit this morning, maybe 16 hours for the whole year is more reasonable than requiring 32 between the 24-hour initial and the eight-hour annual refresher. MS. ALEJANDRO: I would say, I mean, for us to be able to do that, Congress would need to amend the minimum requirements in the Act, and I don't think that that's probably likely -- MR. SINNER: Okay. MS. ALEJANDRO: -- in the foreseeable future. So I think that realistically, I mean, we're going to have to work with the 24 hours, and I don't know that there's, you know, any basis for us giving any kind of an exemption from that. MR. SINNER: Okay. Well, that was the question. MR. BURNS: Looking at the history of the rider, there were efforts to amend the Mine Act that were never acted upon or were not successful, and that's what really resulted in the rider, but we don't have that discretion. It does take an act of Congress to change those numbers. We have to apply those numbers as written in the Act until Congress changes it. MR. SINNER: Okay. I had, I think, one last comment about first aid training, and there is a difference in first aid as far as this group. The requirements for this group, meaning the exempt operations -- actually, what this group has been required to have is a competent person on site trained in first aid basically in every work area. It used to say a supervisor had to be trained, and now it is just a first aid competent person. The first aid training that is specified in part 48, it does not have a time requirement on it. It does not say that it has to be a National Safety Council or a medic first aid, first aid class. It says when you do annual refresher training, when you do new miner training, you will do a first aid course that is approved by MSHA, and that's where if an operator has their own idea on something they want to do, you know, you can get a good, sound class in two hours. You include it in your training plan. It's approved by MSHA as part of the training plan, and you've got that issue covered. But the first aid issue is a two-part thing. MS. ALEJANDRO: Is that typically, I mean, how it is addressed in the plans that you're familiar with, that it's not an eight-hour course? I mean, it's something less than that? MR. SINNER: The training plans that I have had experience with helping operators create them, I basically end up being the trainer, and the class that I bring into at least in annual refresher training is I cover what to do until the ambulance gets there more than anything else. MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. MR. SINNER: To keep it site specific, sure, if they're way the heck out and they need more, we do that, but by individual training plan, it doesn't have to be an eight- hour or four-hour class. It just has to be -- you know, we include the outline of what I would talk about, and it's worked so far. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. SINNER: I think that's it for comments. I blasted a bunch of stuff out. MS. ALEJANDRO: I don't have any questions. Rod, do you have any? MR. BRELAND: I'm not sure I understood what you meant on the experienced miner. You're wanting anybody that's experienced before a new rule would be proposed or final would be deemed as experienced if they were working? MR. SINNER: Well, if you're working on a mine site and you've been doing the job, I think that it's reasonable to think that if you have been doing it, there should be some credit, be a grandfathering or whatever, for the experience that you've already got on the job. I hopefully or I wouldn't think that you would require everybody starting out on October 1, 1999, to have new miner training, and I just -- there should be a grandfathering idea built into the system, and I'm just -- I was just trying to address getting it in there. MR. BRELAND: That's all I have. MR. BURNS: No, that's all. MS. ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much, Mr. Sinner. MR. SINNER: That was easy. MS. ALEJANDRO: The next speaker that we have is Mike Fallon of Wilder Construction. MIKE FALLON MR. FALLON: Good morning. MS. ALEJANDRO: Good morning. MR. FALLON: I'm not going to be as polished and as streamlined as some of the earlier speakers that have been prepared. I've just made some comments as I sat here and listened, but I've been employed with a general contractor, too, for the past 21 years and as a result of some of our activities would come under MSHA jurisdiction. It was 20 years ago that I went through the cooperative -- MS. ALEJANDRO: Mr. Fallon, can you hear? (Negative responses from the audience.) Could you maybe pull the mike a little bit closer? Yes. MR. FALLON: Okay. Is this any better, or do you want the other mike? MS. ALEJANDRO: No. Actually I think the thin one that you -- MR. FALLON: This is the one. Just talk down low? MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. MR. FALLON: Okay. Usually I don't have a problem with voice control. They usually throw vegetables at me. At any rate, 20 years ago I went through the cooperative instructor training program, but because of the exemption, we never used it, and then I -- the company I was with, we got into open pit precious metal mining, and from a period of '86 through '92 had to contend with these training requirements. Now I'm with an employer that doesn't do any precious metal. We just have some sand and gravel activities incidental to our bread and butter line of work. So a couple of the comments that I would offer for your consideration have to do, one, with the instructor certifications. As I mentioned, 20 years ago I went through the cooperative program, which was, if memory serves me best, basically how to be a teacher type course of instruction with nothing on content. In the years following that, one person can't do it for a company with operations subject to MSHA from Alaska down to Florida and California over to West Virginia, so we sent selected superintendents, project managers to instructor training sessions typically two and a half days, and these were done through Nevada. Once again, the focus was primarily on how to be a teacher with nothing on content. In addition, I've written letters asking to have competency or acceptance of some of my people based on their experience primarily and their proven track record, so that's one form of qualification. I guess I would hope that MSHA as the agency puts together a program whereby the various operators of all different sizes can send the people for a couple day investment and have them walk away as qualified instructors with the content being both a combination of how to be a teacher but also content that MSHA expects us to put out at these sessions. I keep mentioning content. I know that was one of the hardest things for me to do with some of the smaller scaled operations we had was to try and come up with stuff that would fill eight hours worth of annual refresher. When you go through and you nix off the self rescue devices and explosives that have no part in your operation, it's a little hard to come up with the eight hours and have it be a meaningful experience. My view of first aid is that's something that's done after the fact. This is supposed to be safety training, which is things done before the fact, training to prevent accidents and incidents in the workplace, but as required, you include training. I attempted to de-emphasize that as the major component of the training. So I'd really like to see the agency come up with what they think is appropriate content. Training materials, during this time period of '84 through '92 I accessed many of the materials available from MSHA, and some were fairly apropos and meaningful and effective in my view, but many were not, and once again, the independent operator or contractor is left to try and develop his own meaningful, effective training materials. I've been to the academy at MSHA or the MSHA academy in West Virginia and leave with mixed feelings about the content of the materials that I received. I've accessed much of their training materials, and some of it's right on target, but some of it is very dated and stale. When you go through the plan approval, being a contractor that was national in scope of operations, we had to submit the training plan at a number of different district offices, and I'm going on memory, but it doesn't seem to me that it was a very much scrutinized training program, that the boilerplate was readily accepted with nary a comment or two along the way. I think if you're going to require the industry to, you know, try and achieve the goal of preventing these injuries, then we ought to be able to have some constructive evaluations of these training programs. I would hope that the training programs are portable. We have some small operations. I have two fixed locations and three to five portable plants, depending upon configuration, and I'd hate to have to do a separate plan every time we go in and move up, set up in a pit for crushing rock for a highway job. I'd like to have a plan that is perhaps in the name of the company accepted as opposed to the name of a location or a portable plant. I recognize that there are differences within the work environment from one location to the next, but if you look, a lot of the criteria is spelled out in part 48, it's the same from one location to the next. Definitions, when I'd submit my training plan to the training officers, I'd always put in my two cents, which was my previous understanding and acceptance of newly employed but experienced miner, which meant that somebody has been in the industry and working with this piece of machinery or this type of equipment could be considered experienced. I don't think that we're much different than many others. We try to hire people that are experienced that have some knowledge of what it is we expect them to do out there. It makes them a more productive employee for us, not trying to satisfy a particular MSHA requirement but rare is the time where we hire somebody fresh out of high school and put them into the workplace. We have a pretty stable work force in this company, but in my past life, we were around the country, and we did have to hire locally, and as a result, we had a lot of newly employed people. So we were left with a decision, are these people experienced or not, and a bulldozer operator working on a highway job for 20 years could come to what is a mine site and be considered a new employee. That never did seem right, so I always wrote that clarification that because of their prior experience, I viewed them as an experienced miner. Annual refresher, one of our mine sites was at high altitude and snowbound six months a year, and we consequently had a six-month season at that mine site, and we were deemed on the annual refresher, or lack of training, as you mentioned earlier, is an immediate withdrawal, which basically shuts down the operation until you get the members of the crew taken care of. We were dinged because we didn't have the documentation or training requirements, and at a six-month-a-year operation, I'd like to see some clarification of this annual refresher. Are we talking 12 months of continuous employment, or are we talking calendar year basis? MS. ALEJANDRO: You mean -- I guess I'm not clear on what issue it is that you're flagging. MR. FALLON: Let's say we hired this person. He came to work June 1st, and we took care of the newly employed experience miner training requirement. Okay? MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. FALLON: Now we come back. It's a year later. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. FALLON: Or actually five months later. It's June 1st again, and this person by virtue of this rigid interpretation is entitled to or required to have annual refresher training even though they've worked less than five months for us. So I'd like to have it spelled out that -- I think the intent was after 12 months of employment that people receive refresher training, but I think it is enforced on a calendar year basis. MS. ALEJANDRO: I see. Is the question then somebody comes on, you know, is hired at what -- I mean, and they get their whatever initial training it is that they're required to have. Are they also required to have that refresher training in that year as well? Is that --? MR. FALLON: Well, what I was -- part of the thinking was that if you work six months this year and then six months next year, at the beginning of the third year you better have your annual refresher done because you've worked a total of 12 months -- MS. ALEJANDRO: I see. So you're talking about -- MR. FALLON: -- versus some of these operators that work year round. MS. ALEJANDRO: Whether it's, you know, based on a calendar regardless of whether you're working or not or -- MR. FALLON: Correct. MS. ALEJANDRO: -- whatever your cumulative months of employment are? MR. FALLON: Correct. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. FALLON: And last but not least, I've heard some commentary today about the consultative branches of your various OSHA agencies, typically state plan states, and I, too, kind of share the same sentiment. You know, a year ago, a little over a year ago, MSHA conducted what I think they called the walk and talk, and it was in response to all the transportation fatalities, and I checked with my three or four locations that had that visitation, and to a man pretty much they were very receptive to that approach of trying to provide a safer workplace. It had took them some time to get over the initial skepticism that this guy was just going to talk to them about things of accident trends and what we might do as the industry to avoid repeating that, but once they broke through that shell, it was pretty much a participative dialogue, which is very unusual for the agency with the people that it's charged with protecting. So I encourage that sort of thing, and I would hope that the agency does take into the input that they get at sessions like this. I remain -- I don't know if the word is "skeptical" or "disillusioned" perhaps. It was four years ago where we tried to partner with MSHA to come up with a collective consensus on guarding requirements, and it wasn't just the local office. It was at very high levels, and it went no where, so, you know, I'm optimistic, but I'm sure the industry, as you've heard today, is willing to share what they have, which is not only materials but also a lot of collective experience. MS. ALEJANDRO: Questions. MR. BURNS: Yes. I guess my question deals with the annual refresher training. MR. FALLON: Right. MR. BURNS: Now, I'm not an expert on training. My recollection is -- and I'll have to look into this. Well, the Act says no less frequently than once each 12 months. Now, that's not necessarily specific along the lines of what you talked about, but I do believe the idea behind the annual refresher training was based on time and when people need to be refreshed about nonrepetitive type activities and that perhaps they were looking at, you know, a calendar period versus, you know, a work period, so, you know, that is something I'll look into. MR. FALLON: Well, you know, there's other highway contractors that are affected as me, and you might have a guy who gets around a crushing spread in support of the aggregate for a highway job for one month out of a given season or a calendar year, and you take the case of Alaska, much of our work is very seasonal limited to seven, eight months a year. So one month he's around a crusher that supports the highway crew, and then he's back to the normal highway construction activities, and lo and behold, comes up in the 13th month after he did that, he's back around a crusher supporting a highway crew. Technically, he's called for annual refresher. MR. BURNS: That's one way of reading it. MR. FALLON: Right. MR. BURNS: Okay. I mean, that is something I think we'll have to look at. MR. FALLON: Well, it would be nice to have a little latitude there. It's not as though the person hasn't been receiving, as you heard from others, routine safety training through safety meetings held with the crew or other forms of training. MS. ALEJANDRO: Anybody have anymore questions? MR. BRELAND: Well, just to follow up on that. One month, you said, that this employee might have worked and it's been 12 months, but given the example you gave, this individual might be 12 years before they got 12 months. You wouldn't be proposing -- MR. FALLON: That's true. MR. BRELAND: You wouldn't be proposing that that would be -- MR. FALLON: That's true. That's the other end of the extreme. MR. BRELAND: Yes. So I mean, I think you're right about you got to consider the possibilities when you're considering the flexibility. MR. FALLON: Right. MR. BRELAND: Now, if you came on the 13th month and you had planned to have the annual refresher completed in a certain amount of time might be different than saying just only on the 12 months itself I mean when you're considering making comments. The other thing on the academy material, you said you been to the academy. Was that in recent times? MR. FALLON: In 1985. MR. BRELAND: Okay. Because the academy is under a revitalization, if you will. They're doing an awful lot of new program materials. They're trying to gear it more -- a lot of it to metal on metal industry. MR. FALLON: That's good. MR. BRELAND: They are looking for a lot of sand and gravel kind of issues. I think you're going to find it has moved in a different direction in recent times, and part of our program will be to try to distribute materials through again state organizations and out to our field offices, and as we get scattered around, one of the things we'd like to do is have a good listing of materials in each district office and where we have training specialists located, so just for your knowledge there. MR. FALLON: That's great, and I hope that they start to de-emphasize the computer training programs they had back there, which we can get locally without having to go into Beckley. There's been -- I counted one time -- and I think it was preparatory to our meeting four years ago -- something like 20 percent of the course offerings were in the area of learning computer software programs and how to apply them, you know, and that just didn't make sense to me when I could get it locally and that I would expect to go to the academy to get training in, you know, ground control or something like that. MR. BRELAND: Yes. Well, some of that was intended I think in recent times was to further educate employees within MSHA to use some of those programs to better work with people in the field, but the academy intends to do some traveling. We're going to try to have some programs set up in the west. There's some partnershipping that's going on with some of the -- like University of Nevada, Reno, and Colorado School of Mines, to try to offer some of those kinds of courses out west, and we'd be interested in hearing from other, you know, schools that are out there presently as a means of trying to again get materials out and some help. MR. FALLON: You know, and I know that MSHA has delivered grants to -- you keep saying a number of state agencies. I'm familiar with Idaho, and I think even here in the State of -- Washington is across the river. They've given it to university extension services typically, and I've seen a variety or a variation of what gets delivered then from that entity back to the industry. So, again, anything you can do to streamline consistency and content, I think, is beneficial in the long run. MR. BRELAND: Okay. That's all. MS. ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much. We have a choice now. I mean, we may want to take another 15-minute break. We may want to break for lunch. We've got two more people who have signed up to speak. There may be other people who sitting here listening to what other people have said want to speak who haven't signed up or people who have already spoken who may want to come back up again. Does anybody -- I mean, do people want to break for lunch now, or do they just want to keep on? Anybody have any particular -- nobody wants to speak -- UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: Let's get going and get it over with. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. Do you want to take a short break now and then come back in 10 or 15 minutes and then just pick up in ten? MR. BURNS: Make it ten. MS. ALEJANDRO: Ten? MR. BURNS: Yes. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay, ten minutes. It will be about 10 till 12:00, and then we'll just finish up when we get back. (Short recess.) MS. ALEJANDRO: Back on the record. The next speaker that we have on our list is Jock Dalton from Dalton Rock, Incorporated. JOCK DALTON MR. DALTON: I am Jock Dalton, D-a-l-t-o-n. MS. ALEJANDRO: I think you're going to have to speak up. Oh, it's not on. MR. DALTON: It's on. It just doesn't work very well. (Pause.) Any better? MS. ALEJANDRO: Can you hear him? Speak. Say sentence or so. MR. DALTON: Okay. I'll try and talk as loud as I can here. MR. BRELAND: There you go. MR. DALTON: Better now? Okay. MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. I think if you just make an effort to, you know -- MR. DALTON: Okay. Get close? MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes, yes. MR. DALTON: Since I'm hearing impaired, I may be revisiting issues that have already been addressed here. One of the things that I'd like to actually ask you is what sort of attempts are being made in this training program to try to make the training stick to the employee. You know, there's some addressing the qualifications of the trainers, but dealing -- what we're dealing with is the employee. That is what this is all about is training them and bringing up their skills and addressing safety and operating practices that make them skilled and productive, and being skilled and productive involves being safe. So there are lot of operators here that have spent a lot of time and money trying to achieve this goal, and we're generally all looking for the same goal, and it's just a matter of how do we achieve it, and I think that's one of the reasons why a couple of people wanted MSHA to be more involved in the training itself, because they are trying to get MSHA in a proactive mode because it has potentially far greater resources than the individual operator, especially when we're talking about the small operator. I'm trying to skip around, because these are -- I didn't organize this before, but -- MS. ALEJANDRO: That's fine. MR. DALTON: -- I was just reacting to what was said. A lot of operators, because it's part time and seasonal, are going to lose employees, trained employees over the winter because they can't keep them employed, and the motivated employees, which are the ones that are probably most likely to respond to the training positively, to retain the most, are the ones that are most likely to be motivated to get another job and to move on. So part of what we're doing in training is trying to achieve either retaining employees or creating a pool of skilled employees from which to draw. Again, this works in the benefit of the employee and, you know, the miner himself. You know, part of your -- you know, if the training records or, you know, proof of training follows the employee, then that means that the -- you know, you as an employer, someone walks in the door and say, well, yeah, I've got documentation of training, and that makes him a much more desirable employee. The flip side of that is that by doing this it creates a barrier to entry to employee -- you know, potential employees who do not have that training. You know, it's give with one hand, take with the other. In our operation and with I think most other operators, what we are interested in is giving opportunities to employees, because with the opportunities, we also get something back. Another thing to address is with the individual miner, how to get him to become a stakeholder. The way MSHA's enforcement is currently structured, the concept is that the employer is the one who determines what happens in the workplace, and, you know, I've seen other types of regulation where the employee is the one who is considered to have the discretionary power, and the employer has little or no culpability. These two extremes tend to eliminate, you know, one or the other as having a genuine concern. You know, I take the example of the HMO. If there's no co-payment, you know, the individual has the temptation to go into the doctor for any little minor ache or pain. If there's even a token co-payment, say $5, $10, they think twice about that little stuff, and they start saying, well, I want to save this for something that is serious. One of the things -- there's an opportunity by having the training apply to everyone in the mining industry, and that is that if you can make the employee become a stakeholder and if you have the employee even to a very minor extent be a party to the violation and especially by using -- if you're trained and you have the documentation of the training, you should have a certain amount of responsibility in the violation because you should know better. Now, the question is, you know, coal mines or whatever, historically the idea was that the miner didn't have a choice, he was ordered to by the operator and, you know, it was either that or be fired, and especially for our small operators, we would much rather rehabilitate a miner than to fire him if we can achieve the level of safety, because we've invested a lot in his skills. And another thing is, you know, what we were looking at is essentially imposing a new level of regulation, because it's been in abeyance on a lot of small operators, and, you know, each operator is supposed to have an approved plan at a deadline. They're in charge is supposed to have examined and approved each plan before this deadline without an increase in man power. So how do we keep the ability to operate from being held hostage during the implementation period? And one of the things that comes to my mind is the idea of approval, you know, rather than outright approval, provisional approval of a plan. If you meet certain minimum standards during this provisional -- you know, you can get a provisional acceptance or approval of your plan, and that gives you more time to flesh it out or to meet changes and suggestions, and that way you're still operating in the letter of the law. You're having an approval, but by making it provisional, you're giving that window to where the details can be worked out, but by setting the standards for a provisional approval high enough to insure the basic level of safety where everybody is covered. So that's all I have. MS. ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much. Does anybody have any questions? MR. BRELAND: Just on this provisional approval maybe so I understand. Are you talking about like something that you would submit or a generic outline that says if you start off with this, that's okay to start with until it's looked at later? I'm not sure I understood what -- MR. FALLON: Yes. I think in this process -- here you learn an awful lot about what people think should be involved in the basic plan, and I think an outline is the place to start, and then you have to flesh out -- you know, as it's questioned, you have to flesh out what you really need to achieve that level of safety to which everyone is comfortable with as an interim measure. MR. BRELAND: Okay. That's all. MR. BURNS: I guess I just had a question on the -- you operate during certain periods of the year, and then you're down a certain period of time. Is that -- MR. FALLON: Well, actually we operate, you know, 12 months a year, but in Western Oregon you don't move overburden in the winter. The EPA would have something to say about that. So in our particular operation, we have a certain -- we have a certain number of people that are involved in, you know, moving dirt that can't work for about six months a year. So you have to -- you know, what you have is a seasonable operation superimposed on a full-time operation, and so you have -- for that number of employees, you have the same problem as if it was a seasonal operation, although we don't -- aren't like some of the portable crusher operators who move around, we still have to, you know, try to retain those employees during the off season, and it's very difficult. MR. BURNS: Is that something that over time is somewhat predictable and perhaps, you know, we could work with state grants to get a pool of new, you know, miners that would be -- at least have some training before it's time, you know, for the start up in the spring? MR. FALLON: You know, the question is, do you have the pool of trained miners. MR. BURNS: Yes. MR. FALLON: And that gets down to how much other activity is in the general area and whether they find better jobs doing something else. Mining and construction skills tend to be very interchangeable, and you have people that float back and forth between those kind of jobs. You know, one thing you might have to look at is someone who is trained, gets his 24 hours of training, then works in a mine for a season and then goes off and works two or three seasons in construction. When he comes back, do you treat him as a new miner again, you know, even though, you know, what he's been doing is equivalent skills, and how do you document it, you know. MS. ALEJANDRO: I mean, is that your experience, that you may lose an employee out of the mining industry for some period of time but that they may float back in, you know, a year or a couple years later? MR. FALLON: Yes, and mining, construction, transportation. You know, like for this particular seasonal stuff, you have several truck drivers, and the truck drivers may be employed in construction. They may be employed over the road. They may be doing anything, you know, in between, but, you know, once they've driven a dump truck and they know the basic operating rules, you know, really those skills stay with them. MS. ALEJANDRO: Yes. MR. FALLON: It's a matter of -- you know, my personal feeling is it's refresher training, you know. They know the basics, so what you have to do is go back and make sure that they haven't forgotten certain, you know, safety -- aspects of safety, watching them berms, you know, dump site safety, things like that. You're pretty much kind of refreshing them with the idea that okay, you're working on the mining end now, you know, these are the things you have to watch out for. MS. ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much, Mr. Dalton. The last speaker we have on our list is David Chavez from Peter Kiewit Sons. DAVID CHAVEZ MR. CHAVEZ: I always wanted to follow a music act, so maybe this is my opportunity. If I could, I'm just going to take a few minutes to address some of the concerns we have. Peter Kiewit is a fairly large organization, and we have numerous mining operations throughout the southwest that are currently exempt from these current part 48 training standards. Of course, I say exempt. I don't mean that we -- I know MSHA doesn't have the monies appropriated to inspect our facilities, but most of our operators still do the training. Listed in the November 3, 1998, Federal Register, I'm just going to address those questions, and then, of course, if anybody has any comments to make afterwards, I'll do that, but I'll just go down through the questions if I could. MS. ALEJANDRO: Okay. I just want to check to see whether people can hear him or whether -- do you need to -- maybe pull the -- I think if you pull the mike closer that it will work. MR. CHAVEZ: How's that? Okay. And like I say, what I'll do, is I'll just go down the list of the questions -- MS. ALEJANDRO: That's fine. MR. CHAVEZ: -- that were published in the Federal Register and try to address them as much as I can. Regarding the new miner training, there's seven or eight specific items that are listed under new miner's training. The question was, which of these subjects should be taught before a new miner is assigned to work even if the work is done under close supervision. Our response to that is a new miner should be taught all the items listed in section 115 of the Act. The one thing that brings us to concern is the portion dealing with first aid. I think it's important that in order to do proper training in first aid, it requires additional training above and beyond what the Act requires, and a lot of people mentioned in this room here today that they go off and six or eight hours additional training in first aid, and I believe that's one item that we could possibly not put a lot of emphasis on when we can get it done in other areas, specifically in other standards or in additional new standards that are going to be coming out. Number two, should training for inexperienced miners be given all at once or over a period of time such as several weeks or months? Our response is with the exception of a short block of instruction at the beginning of employment, training should be spread out over a period of months. Question number three, should this decision be left to the discretion of the mine operator? We believe the mine operator should have as much discretion as possible and flexibility to do not only his training operations but also his safety responsibilities under the Act, so I think it's important that the operator be given the flexibility and the latitude to do whatever initial training is required in order to get the personnel to do their functions, that the remaining training, 16 hours, 20 hours, whatever we decide, should be done over a period of months in order to comply with the standard keeping in mind that we realize that the Act does say 24 hours training, and we're not going to get beyond that. Question, what are the advantages and disadvantages of spreading training over an extended period of time? We see two advantages. One is we try to place together training done in groups of people in order to get the best -- get the employees together in order for them to exchange ideas when it comes to safety. In addition, occasionally we do a one-on-one training, but we like to get three or four employees together and exchange ideas once they've been out on the job and have certain concerns. Second of all, addressing the concerns especially for a lot of the small operators, especially in this part of the country where a lot of work is seasonal where they may hire a person today, if we require them to do the 24-hour training over a period of three days, a month from now they may lose a person. That's an economic disadvantage to them as we see it. Question, should supervisors be subject to the same training requirements as miners, and our response to that is yes, absolutely. A lot of our supervisors are also instructors, and they should have to go through the same training as hourly employees. Under task training, the question is, should training be required whenever a miner receives a work assignment that involves new and unfamiliar tasks. Our response is yes to insure that the job is accomplished in a safe and efficient manner. Annual refresher training, should specific areas be covered during annual refresher training? Yes. The subjects that should be covered is not only what's required under the Act, but it should be those subjects that the operator feels is necessary to cover for his or their specific operation. One good example brought up earlier today was some operations do blasting, some don't do blasting, and I think it's imperative that the operator be given the flexibility to determine what type of training is required for their operation. Question, can the eight hours of annual refresher training required by the Act be completed in segments of training lasting less than 30 minutes? Our response to that is yes. A lot of operators, most operators, conduct safety meetings. A person's attention span is probably only 10 or 15 minutes when it comes to a safety meeting, and if we are allowed to teach the eight-hour refresher training over a period of 10 or 12 months during safety meetings, I believe that we're going to be able to get a more effective training program by doing it that way rather than employees having to sit through a full eight hours of classroom training, which we've all been through at one time or the other, and sometimes it can be quite boring, depending on the instructor and the content. Training certificates, question, should the records of training be kept by the mine operators at the mine site, or should the regulation allow records be kept at all other locations? Our response to that is that should be at the discretion of the operator. A lot of small operators are able to keep their records at their location. Operations like ourselves, when most of our records are computerized, I think we should be allowed to keep them on a computer data base, and if the inspector asks for them, we could fax it to them or deliver them within a matter of hours or at least by the following day, or in our case, the inspector generally comes back for two or three days because of the size of our operations. Qualifications of instructors, should there be a minimum qualification for persons who conduct miner training? This is -- my response isn't much different than what's currently in part 48, and I have to look back at my experience, especially dealing with small operators. I believe that the -- who determines the qualifications for instructors and who is selecting instructors should be totally up to the operator. The operator knows the people that work for him. He knows the qualifications of the person. He knows their experiences. He knows their knowledge and abilities, and the operator should be allowed -- should be given as much flexibility as possible to determine who on their staff, either a supervisor, a safety person, a training person -- they should be allowed to determine who is qualified to teach in their operations. A gentleman before me or two people before me mentioned of going to the two and a half hour days of the certification to become instructors. They teach you there how to teach. They don't teach you experience, and they don't teach you the knowledge of the operation. That only comes by working there, and I believe that the operator is the person who should determine who is qualified to teach there. Finally, operations similar to ours, we do a lot of -- we have a lot of crossover between MSHA and OSHA. I believe it's essential in order to do proper training that somehow in this regulation that OSHA training that's currently being done should be allowed to carry over to the MSHA training in one manner or another at least giving credit. For example, lock and tagout, confined space, first aid training, all these subjects that we currently do now on the OSHA side of the house should be allowed to carryover to MSHA, and I believe that would benefit the small operator, too. For those that -- especially for those that do a lot of construction work, it would definitely benefit them. Finally, once again, I have to gear these responses here towards the small operators. There are three things that are important in this new regulation that I think is important for the small operator. One, like I mentioned earlier about when it comes to trainers, I think that the discretion and latitude given to the operator to determine who a trainer is, is essential. Two, the plan that is written, I don't believe MSHA has the desire or the man power to look at all these training plans that are going to be shipped into district offices to determine who in the heck is going to approve these plans. Different in part 48, I believe that the plan should be written and not submitted to MSHA, and as -- a person's -- maybe a way should be put on it when an inspector comes in and does an inspection, if they find that there's a lot of accidents, a lot of citations, then maybe the inspector should be given the latitude to look at the plan. I don't think we should burden some MSHA and other people to look at training plans when we want the inspectors out in the field enforcing safety and health centers in order to eliminate accidents, and I think that's our -- of course, essentially, that's our goal in all this is to eliminate accidents. Then, finally, once again, I think it's important that the operator, especially the small operator, be given whatever flexibility and discretion is allowable under the Act to determine their own training needs, to determine their training people and to determine what their plan is if anybody knows what their needs are. We've had this exemption for a lot of years, and a lot of this is new to a lot of people, and I believe -- once again, it's important that the operator determine what those needs are. Finally, I believe that there should be a grandfather provision in the regulation that should allow all those employees that are currently employed by operators to be grandfathered so they will not be required to do the 24-hour training and eight-hour refresher training once the law becomes in effect. Of course, subsequently, after that, they'll have to take the eight hours training, but I'm more concerned about those employees that are currently working there now. I believe they should be granfathered when this new regulation takes effect sometime in '99, we think, and those are my remarks. MR. BRELAND: I have a couple things, Dave. On the -- this is going backwards, I guess. You said the grandfather provision -- and that's come up a couple times, but, again, with this particular segment of the industry that there's a lot of seasonal work -- have you got an idea in mind for definition of grandfather, somebody working at the time, worked the last year, so much in the last several years or what? MR. CHAVEZ: Well, naturally I would ask that it would be someone who is currently employed at the time that the regulation takes effect, but going beyond that, I would suspect that someone who has worked in the industry over a period of time has some experience either with that operator or other operators. You know, I'll just throw a number out. Maybe six months, six months experience. They wouldn't be required to take that 24 hours training but maybe just the eight hours training and, once again, have it done over a period of four to five months so the operators -- they could get all their employees in. MR. BRELAND: Okay. Then also you talked about the annual refresher of being in the segments of less than 30 minutes, and that could be a concern for, again, the tracking requirement. Do you have something in mind on how that could be done? MR. CHAVEZ: Yes. Actually, we currently do it now. Since you come look at our records, that's the way we do it anyway, but we have safety meeting rosters. At a minimum, there's a roster printed, and we put a copy of that in the employee's file to designate what training he had that particular month, and we check it off in the employee's file. That's the easy way to do it on the paper side. We also have a system to where we have it computerized. We list all the items that are required under MSHA and then check it off on the date that was conducted and by who it was conducted and the duration of the time that it was conducted, because I think at a minimum, I think just simply putting it in the employee's file would be adequate to where the inspector can look at it if necessary. MR. BRELAND: Okay. Then you talked about the operator making the determination to select who is qualified. There's a lot of people talking about that as well. Again, I mentioned earlier with one of the other speakers that what if it's found in the on-site review maybe by an inspector or somebody else that the person that's got qualifications is really not doing a good job of teaching? Do you have anything in mind for a remedy of that kind of problem? It's likely to occur at some point in time. MR. CHAVEZ: And it probably would occur. To be honest with you, I don't see much different than what we're currently doing now, because we send someone in to do -- to become a certified instructor, and once again, they just teach in content but no really experience or knowledge of the operation. I believe that's the responsibility of the operator, that the operator determine who is competent to teach, and if the inspector determines that the person is not competent, then MSHA should address that issue specifically with that operator, but don't penalize, for lack of a better term, the people who are going to do a good job and pick competent people in order to get a good effective training because it costs money, and I think most companies are going to pick qualified quality people to do proper training. Let the inspector on the site, if he determines that the person is incompetent, let him address that with the operator. MR. BRELAND: Okay. That's all I have. Thanks. MS. ALEJANDRO: Kevin? MR. BURNS: No, I don't have any additional questions. MS. ALEJANDRO: Ros has got a question. MR. CHAVEZ: Yes, ma'am. MS. FONTAINE: Yes. Do you do most of your training in-house, or do you bring contract employees who do it for you? MR. CHAVEZ: Oh, we do all -- we do three. We do training in-house, we hire outside contractors, and then we take advantage of the grants program in Arizona given to the state mine inspector program. We take advantage of the grant program there, too, so we do all three. MS. FONTAINE: Okay. Using MSHA's definition of 19 or less is a small mine, can you give me an estimate of what it costs you to train your employees a year? MR. CHAVEZ: Well, we have a pretty good staff of people. There's probably eight or nine of us in the safety department. Well, my budget is actually $1.5 million, so I guess that gives you a pretty good idea, but, once again, we're talking OSHA training, too. MS. FONTAINE: Right. MR. CHAVEZ: Not just MSHA. We do all kinds of training, including -- we have ready-mix drivers, and we do defensive driving training there, too, but we do a lot of training. MS. FONTAINE: Okay. MR. BURNS: How many employees does that cover? I mean both OSHA and MSHA. I'm just curious. MR. CHAVEZ: About 3,000 employees, OSHA and MSHA, in the areas that I'm responsible for. Peter Kiewit wide, we have about 16,000 employees. MR. BURNS: And that's what that training budget addresses? MR. CHAVEZ: Yes, the 3,000 employees. MR. BURNS: Okay. MS. ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much, Mr. Chavez. MR. CHAVEZ: Yes, ma'am. MS. ALEJANDRO: All right. We've reached the end of the list of people who signed up to speak. I'd like to ask, is there anyone who hasn't signed up who has now decided that they would like to come up to the mike and give some comments? (No response.) No hands. Is there anybody who has already spoken who feels like they want to add something more? (No response.) Okay, no hands. What I'm going to do now is just give you a summary of some of the issues that have been touched on in some of the earlier meetings. You've heard a lot of them already today. One of the issues that we've gotten some comments on has to do with contractors, and there's kind of two issues here. A number of people have indicated that they believe that contractors should be primarily responsible for the comprehensive training that their employees receive and that the operator of the mine site should give these contractor employees site specific training but that the burden, the responsibility for the 24 hours of initial training and the eight hours of refresher training should fall primarily on the contractor's shoulders and should not be the responsibility of the mine operator. Another issue related to contractors -- I sort of referred to it earlier -- is that we've gotten some comments on levels of training. I mean, employees do a variety of different things. I mean, some of them are directly involved in the extraction and processing process, and these other categories of employees who do come onto the mine property but may not be involved in the actual mining process, I mean delivery people, et cetera, and we've gotten a number of comments on the type of training that those categories of employees should be required to have under a proposed or final rule. We've gotten a lot of comments on, you know, how much initial miner training needs to be given before the miner is allowed to begin work. A lot of people advocated, you know, following the part 48 model, which is eight hours of training and then you deliver the 16 additional hours at, you know, some later point in time. Other people have said two hours, four hours. People have said, you know, cover specific topics up-front with no specific time period required. We've gotten a number of comments from operators urging us to have these requirements be very flexible and also reduce any kind of administrative or paperwork burden that's going to be put on them. As you've heard today, we've gotten a number of comments on what appropriate minimum qualifications are for instructors who give training under part 46. We've gotten a number of comments recommending that we allow flexibility in record keeping and don't have a requirement that records be kept at the mine site, but it could be kept at some central location and then given to the mine inspector upon request within some minimum period of time. Then, finally, we've gotten a number of comments on how much time beyond the date that the proposed -- or excuse me, the final rule is published, how much time does the industry and the trainers need to come up to speed to comply with training regulations. Today we heard six months. We've heard people advocate, you know, a year, other people advocating shorter periods of time, so we've gotten a number of comments on that issue. So if, in fact, you're thinking that maybe you would like to submit something in writing, I mean, those are the issues that we've heard comments on. If you'd like to address those, I encourage you to do so. To close, I'd just like to give you some idea of what happens from this point on. As I mentioned to you, we've got a couple more public meetings. The last two are the week of January 5th in Dallas and then Atlanta, Georgia. We are expecting a draft, the final draft, from the Coalition. A number of you got copies of a draft from the Coalition, and we're expecting the final draft before February 1st. At that point after we get the draft and any other comments anyone has chosen to submit, we're going to work pretty quickly to come up with a proposed rule, which ideally we'd like to publish sometime in March or April. After the proposal is published, there's a comment period both through public hearings. We're anticipating having at least two public hearings and maybe more depending on what, you know, time schedule we've got, and then additionally at that point you can also submit additional written comments, attend the public hearing, you know, whatever you feel comfortable doing. The record will close, and then we are under an obligation set by Congress to publish a final training rule on or before September 30, 1999, and then depending on, you know, what the compliance deadline is, at some point after that, the mines that are affected by this training will have to come into compliance with the requirements that are set in that final rule. I would encourage you, again, to submit your comments by February 1st. Feel free, you know, to contact MSHA if you've got any questions. Additionally, I mean, for those of you who have got access to the World Wide Web, MSHA does have an Internet home page, and the address is www.msha.gov. MSHA is m-s-h-a. If you go to the home page, there's a button or a bar called "training regulations." If you click on that, we're intending to keep, you know, up to speed on any documents that are generated. I mean, that will be a quick way for you to figure out what the status of this project is. That's about all I have. I mean, does anybody have any questions? Otherwise, I mean, we'll just say thank you very much for coming, particularly thank you very much to those of you who have chosen to speak today, and please, you know, send us anything that you want considered as we formulate this final training regulation. Thank you very much. (Whereupon, at 12:40 p.m., the meeting in the above-entitled matter adjourned.) // // // // // // // // // REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE Public Meeting: MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION DATE: December 15, 1998 PLACE: Portland, Oregon This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the United States Department of Labor were held according to the record and that this is the original, complete, true and accurate transcript which has been compared to the recording accomplished at the meeting. __James H. Terrell________ December 17, 1998