IN THE MATTER OF: ) ) SAFETY AND HEALTH MANAGEMENT ) PROGRAMS FOR MINES ) Pages: 1 through 194 Place: Arlington, Virginia Date: October 8, 2010 UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION IN THE MATTER OF: ) ) SAFETY AND HEALTH MANAGEMENT ) PROGRAMS FOR MINES ) 25th Floor Conference Room 1100 Wilson Boulevard Arlington, Virginia Friday, October 8, 2010 The parties met, pursuant to the notice, at 9:01 a.m. BEFORE: GREGORY R. WAGNER, M.D. MSHA PANEL MEMBERS: GREGORY R. WAGNER JOSEPH A. MAIN MARIO DISTASIO KEVIN BURNS ALFRED DUCHARME RICHARD FEEHAN GREGORY FETTY HARVEY KIRK Q&A SPEAKERS: JIM SHARP MANUEL GOMEZ PATRICIA W. SILVEY KATHY SNIDER SHANNA DEVINE PRESENTERS: JEFFREY L. KOHLER Director, Office Mine Safety and Health Research NIOSH DENNIS O'DELL Administrator, Health and Safety United Mine Workers of America ANDY O'BRIEN General Manager, Safety and Heath, Unimin Corporation MARK ELLIS President, Industrial Minerals Association, N.A. ED ELLIOTT Director, Safety Rogers Group, Inc. FRANK MIGLIACCIO Executive Director of Safety and Health International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental, and Reinforcing Iron Workers MARK PREMO Senior Vice President, Chevron Mining, Inc. DAVE PARTRIDGE Vice President of Technology, Chevron Mining, Inc. ADELE ABRAMS Representative, American Society of Safety Engineers R. LARRY GRAYSON Professor of Energy and Mineral Engineering, Pennsylvania State University P R O C E E D I N G S (9:01 a.m.) DR. WAGNER: Good morning. I would like to first introduce Assistant Secretary of Labor, Joe Main, who is going to give opening remarks. MR. MAIN: Well, good morning and welcome to the first of three public meetings to collect information on safety and health management plans in the mining industry. The purpose of these meetings is to gather information about effective comprehensive safety and health management programs so we can learn about programs that are success stories. We will use this information from these meetings to help find ways to encourage operators with the assistance of miners to be proactive in their approach to mine health and safety. And as you all know, the Federal Mine Health and Safety Act -- excuse me, I'm from the old days, I always say Health and Safety so you can date me back to the -- the Federal Mine Safety Act of 1977 clearly replaces responsibility on mine owners for preventing and promptly correcting hazardous conditions and unsafe work practices when they occur. Despite requirements of the Mine Act, statistics on health and safety violations indicate that more mine operators are not being proactive in this regard, and are acceding responsibility in defining hazardous conditions and unsafe work practices to MSHA. More than 102,000 citations and orders were issued in coal mines in 2009, 35,500 for 2005. Similarly, in metal mines more than 72,000 citations and orders were issued in metal mines in 2009, up about 13,500 from 2005, and we believe this trend is going in the wrong direction which tells us that some companies are failing to implement the systems that are necessary to comply with the Mine Act. Mine operators must implement effective health and safety management programs. It's our belief that if an MSHA inspector can travel through a mine, identify health and safety violations and cause the conditions to be corrected, so can mine operators. If mine operators leave that important task to MSHA inspectors, they can expect to pay a penalty under the current rules. Owners' accountability, as all of us, MSHA and the industry, and for the industry accountability means that each operator taking ownership of safety and health conditions in its mines. When mine operators take real ownership of health and safety programs at the mines they operate, it reduces health and safety violations, improve safety and health conditions in the mines, reduce penalties it may pay, and provide themselves with more capital to re-invest in their mines and the people that work there. Both the causes and means of preventing accidents are well known. It's a matter of applying lessons systematically and pragmatically. Effective health and safety management programs and lessons and best practices make them a standard part of the workday are key to eliminating fatalities. For example, workplace examinations for hazardous pre-shift and on-shift, every shift can identify and eliminate hazards that kill and injure miners. An effective and appropriate training will ensure that miners recognize and understand hazards and how to control and eliminate them. With effective and committed management, safety measures should become second nature to miners and supervisors and trainers. The next public meetings will be held on October 12th in Sacramento, California, and on October 14th in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Our website has more information about these venues. We welcome everyone's participation and input to these meetings. It is important that we hear from you. We are interested in reviewing the information we collect from these meetings and plans and programs that successful and safe operators will bring to the attention of the mining community. We think those are important to share throughout the mining community for us to improve health and safety within our mines. I want to thank you again for coming here to Arlington, and I want to thank you for taking the time out to make the presentations that you will make here today, and those that will be making the presentations in California and Pittsburgh in the coming days. This will be important to improvement of the health and safety in the nation's mines. I thank you very much. DR. WAGNER: Thanks, Joe. Good morning again. My name is Gregory Wagner. I am the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Mine Safety and Health, and I will be moderating this public meeting to gather information about safety and health management programs. I would like to reiterate the Assistant Secretary's welcome and thanks for your being here, your willingness to participate in this meeting. I want to first ask our panel to introduce themselves, starting with Greg. MR. FETTY: Gregory Fetty. I am staff assistant to the coal district of Morgantown, West Virginia. MR. DUCHARME: And I'm Alfred Ducharme, attorney with SOL. I'm helping out this group. MR. BURNS: I'm Kevin Burns, Small Mines Office. MR. DISTASIO: Mario Distasio, Office of Standards. MR. FEEHAN: Richard Feehan. I'm with the Office of Standards. MR. KIRK: And Harvey Kirk. I'm with the Metal and Non Metal Mine Safety and Health, Safety Division. DR. WAGNER: So as Joe said, this is the first of three public meetings that MSHA is holding to gather information today, October 12th in Sacramento, California, and October 14th in Pittsburgh. We are really excited about this meeting and the ones that follow, and view them as an important step to help us focus on prevention in addition to compliance. This is our opportunity to find out what programs work and what results have been achieved. I hope in this meeting and in submitted comments we also learn what's been tried but hasn't produced results. We expect to learn the experience of the mining companies that have implemented effective programs, and also learn what's worked outside the mining industry. As someone who has worked in public health for many years, this is an opportunity to focus on prevention, efforts to anticipate and recognize potential hazards, and control them before they cause injuries, illnesses and deaths. Some companies have implemented programs to monitor their work environment, whether or not there are specific regulations requiring this. They compile information about employee injuries and near misses, or probably more accurately, near hits, and respond to the information that they're gathering with prevention focus. As you know, MSHA published a notice in the Federal Register announcing the meetings, requesting the mining community to provide information which the agency could use to develop a proposed rule. The agency has also invited representatives from academia, safety and health professions, industry and worker organizations, and other government agencies to share their experiences and views on the effective safety and health management programs. This rulemaking supports Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis's vision of good jobs for everyone. Her vision of achieving good jobs is through a strategy of creating workplaces where employers plan, prevent, and protect the safety and health of employees. Plan, prevent, protect is based on the principle that employers must find and fix threats to health and safety and assure compliance with regulations before inspectors arrive at the workplace. The plan, prevent, and protect strategy begins with the premise that Congress directed mine operators to achieve and sustain compliance with the law, but it doesn't end there. It also embodies a continuing attention to the recognition and control or elimination of threats to safety and health. An injured worker is injured whether or not a mandatory safety standard was violated. Some mining companies experience low injury and illness rates and low violation rates year after year. For these companies, preventing harm to their workers is more than compliance with safety and health requirements, it reflects the embodiment of a culture of safety from the CEO to the worker to the contractor. This culture of safety derives from a commitment to a systematic, effective, comprehensive safety and health management program implemented with the full participation of all workers. Several consensus standards have been developed, both here and abroad, that address the safety and health management systems, including one from the American National Standard Institute's -- ANSI's, and the American Industrial Hygiene Association's combined Z10-2005, Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems. There is also the ISO, the International Standards Organizations ISO 9001:2008(E), Quality Management Systems Requirements; and the British Standard Institution's -- BSI's Occupational Safety and Health No. 1801 from 2007. It's the Occupational Health and Safety Management Series, the Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems Requirements. So there is plenty of models to be looking at. As many of you know, our sister agency in the Department of Labor, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, earlier this year held stakeholder meetings as part of their rulemaking on what they are calling I2P2, Injury and Illness Prevention Programs. The I2P2 rulemaking is OSHA's version of safety and health management programs, and I can assure that MSHA and OSHA are communicating and collaborating frequently during the development of the proposed rule and we will learn from each other and from each other's stakeholders. As we said in the Federal Register notice, effective safety and health management programs generally include management commitment; worker involvement; a process for hazard identification; hazard prevention and control; safety and health training; and program evaluation. The general principles are widely accepted but the devil, as usual, is in the details. We hope to hear some of those details today and in future meetings, and after all these presentations you will have an opportunity to ask questions or present further views, but at this time I'd like to hear from our first presenter. So Jeffery Kohler from the National Institute of Safety and Health will be our first presenter. MR. KOHLER: Good morning. I appreciate the opportunity to share with you some perspectives that we have in NIOSH on this. We have become interested in this, particularly in light of some of the events that occurred over the past five or six years. Researchers in our organization have been looking at safety culture and some of the related occupational, safety and health management issues for some number of years, so I do appreciate the chance to come and speak with you. My remarks are brief. I'm going to talk a little bit about the research, but mostly I want to share some things that we've learned. You know, I think there are two questions as we go into this, and there has been a lot of discussion in the trade press in recent weeks on these initiatives. First, is there a health and safety management system, is this approach a significant value-added approach? And I think the evidence is out there and the record is clear that indeed it certainly is, and I want to share a few thoughts on lessons learned, why this is such a compelling idea at this point in time and why it needs to go forward; talk a little bit about some of the benefits; and then tell you about the experience that we have in NIOSH when we did a study in 2006, after the mine disasters in that time period. And then the second and separate question is, you know, can this approach be realized here? And I'd like to share at the end of my presentation a few thoughts on moving forward to ensure that such a system can be successfully implemented here. You know, if we look back five or six years, you know, it's really very clear that mining conditions do change and evolve, methods of extraction and production change and evolve. In fact, they probably change faster, the scenarios confronted in the mines probably change faster than any regulatory system can keep pace with. So, reactive responses to the last mine disaster, the last multiple incident, you know, event is probably not, you know, the best answer. You know, an expectation that compliance with regulations alone will result in zero harm is unrealistic. You know, there are those who believe if we comply with existing regulations then we are home free. We have done it all. There is nothing else to do. We have safe mines. We have a healthy environment for miners, and this is, you know, just completely unrealistic as the record has shown. Also, a belief that MSHA or government, you know, somehow is responsible for the safety outcomes in the mines is unrealistic as well. You know, the government or MSHA doesn't operate the mines. It is not there every day, doesn't understand all the nuances of that particular operation from shift to shift, so they are ill positioned, you know, to assume such a responsibility which they don't have. You know, in fact, we do need a different approach, and that's being proposed. You know, mine operators must take full responsibility for the safety and health outcomes at their operation, and in fact many do. Prescriptive regulation, you know, in our view, should only serve as a minimum expectation when performance alternatives are impractical. You know, that is to say that compliance-based prescriptive regulations are, of course, essential, but that there are alternatives to go above and beyond that when we can set performance alternatives. Operators should drive changes in industry health and safety through actions by going above and beyond minimum expectations, and I'm going to present a brief list in a little while, but in fact there are many operators out there who have for years now gone above and beyond and instituted innovative programs that have resulted in health and safety records at their operations that are significantly better than industry averages, so we know this is something that can happen. You know, we need an adaptive responsive model that builds on a systematic approach to assessing hazards and then managing risk, and that's the health and safety management system, you know, concept. You know, in the mines, all mine operators are supposed to incorporate to some degree different safety tools, practices, and processes to ensure safety and health for their workers. A management system provides the opportunity to put all of those together into a clear and executable plan to ensure that none of the pieces are being overlooked. It integrates the responsibility and the accountability of working safe across all organizational levels. It no longer becomes just the responsibility of one person with a certain title to ensure that safe conditions are met. In fact, it becomes everybody's job because it's part of the business model everyone is responsible for and has a vested interest in operating the safest and healthiest environment for the workers. It also builds shared leadership and participation in the decision making which will ensure that we make those improvements in safety and health. Now, in the safety and health management system there are a number of components and those are outlined in the public notice in the Federal Register. I wanted to just speak to what I consider to be a core component, fundamental aspect of why these health and safety management systems can be so compelling and so successful. In the July hearing on the mine and safety bill, as I recall Assistant Secretary David Michaels, you know, referred to the same concept that Mr. Main did a few minutes ago about find it and fix it, and I think that, you know, really boils down to the issue here, but I especially like that Assistant Secretary Michaels referred to as the common sense approach of find it and fix it, because we're not talking about the need for high faluting, extravagant, expensive systems. We're really delegating a very simple common sense principle, find it and fix it. Now, how do we do that? Well, you know, in all of these systems hazard identification is key, followed by risk assessment, and then risk management, and risk management, you know, in our view really means that you work to eliminate the hazard. It doesn't mean that you tolerate the hazard and then look for ways to minimize the damages that will accrue if you're not successful. So through design and other interventions illuminating the hazard is the fix it, you know, part of it. Now, admittedly, particularly in occupations like mining, it's not always possible to eliminate every hazard and not only taken all reasonable steps. Then we need to mitigate the hazard. You know, that is to take steps through engineering, engineering design and control, through training, through administrative actions, and perhaps others, we need to take steps that will ensure that even though the hazard itself may not be completely eliminated we've done everything we can to ensure that no workers will be adversely impacted by the hazard. You know, this need for this different approach is something that is being acted upon. In 2006, for example, the National Mine Safety and Technology Commission, you know, emphasized the need to go beyond regulations to advance safety and health. As many other groups have done, that commission in 2006 took a broad look and said, if we want to get to a goal of zero harm, we need to go above and beyond simply complying with regulations, and this health and safety management system represents that. Indeed, you know, the Australian mining industry crossed this bridge nearly two decades ago. You know, after the Mara Mine disaster, for example, you know, taking a look, they realized that they needed to do more than simply prescribe a series of regulations to ensure the safety of their mine workers, and over a couple of decades they evolved into, you know, approaches that are now codified in things like the OSAS-18,001 consensus standard. You know, if you look at U.S. mining companies, and in fact, you know, companies that are representative in one form or another by many people in this room today, you can find great examples that we in NIOSH have had the opportunity to become aware of and to learn a little more about, but we can go to numerous underground and surface coal operations and we can find good examples of programs in place that are going significantly above and beyond regulatory requirements. We can go to underground and surface metal and find examples in the United States. We can go to underground and surface non-metal and we can go to sediment operations both underground and surface. So, we're not talking about pushing the envelope into some, you know, brave new world here with these Occupational Safety and Health Management Systems. I think that we're talking about learning from the successful experiences elsewhere in this country and in the world, and applying it so that all mines and all mine workers have the benefit of it. After the disasters in 2006, you know, as we looked at this we understood that this core component of find it and fix it really represented something that we wanted to advocate for and make possible. We also recognized that for a lot of mine operators it was a daunting challenge, particularly smaller operators that didn't have the engineering, the professional occupational safety and health professionals working for them, it was daunting. How do you do this? How do you set out? So, our goal was to do a series of case studies and to go throughout, you know, the different commodities, big and small, underground and surface, and develop a series of case studies to first understand how it would work in a number of different operations, and secondly, to set out some templates so that others would not be intimidated and hopefully would follow and apply those templates. You know, we did that at 10 different sites. It's available in a published, you know, report, and the participants, you know, who were involved in that produced specific and adaptive prevention practices that reduced the risks at their operations. In all cases the investment that the operator made, whether it was a large, you know, multi-national company, or a very, very small independently-owned mine, was about a week of training and working with us. We sent in a couple of experts in this area. They worked with the company for three or four days on the process. They went through the process to identify major hazards at their particular operation. So, we're not talking about, you know, man months of effort and tens of thousands of dollars in any of these examples. We found a number of interesting things. There were just a couple that I wanted to highlight here. First, a few of the operations that we went to already had some form of this program in place. They really felt that they had it nailed, they were doing it well. In fact, they thought they were doing it so well they wanted us to come in so perhaps we could even learn about an improved approach, too. We appreciated that opportunity. But we found that even the most prepared participants when they went through, you know, this sort of structured systematic approach found a few areas where they needed to make improvement. That is to say they identified some hazards that they didn't realize they had even after they had gone through some of their own processes. There were a few participants, you know, who wanted to sort of back slide into some old thinking, and that was to say, look, you know, sure, there is this issue, but we're in compliance with the regulation, you know, we don't really need to fix it, we don't need to design around it. Well, we'll just put up a danger sign, or you know, whatever, and we'll be in compliance with the law. So there is no question that there is a cultural issue that has to be addressed, but you know, most of the participants in fact became disciples of the process after going through it. A positive approach by company leadership is key in doing this comprehensive system. You know, the leadership in sending a message is key and in part the leadership needs to embrace the fact that all workers, all employees need to be involved in the process. For this to work, this is not a process that only involves supervisors or people with college degrees, it involves everyone, first and foremost the people working the jobs who are perhaps most expert about some of the situations that they have to contend with. All right. So to sort of finish up my presentation I wanted to, you know, just make a couple of very general observations about, you know, moving forward and, you know, clearly MSHA has already done a lot of work to understand the international experience, the international consensus standards, the Australian experience. I mean, I think that's great because, you know, we need to learn about what has worked and what hasn't work. And as, you know, someone mentioned this morning, sharing the failures as well as sharing the successes is certainly very important, and such an approach is not without its short falls or its problem, just like a compliance-based on regulatory approach is not without its limitations, so it's good to understand the strengths and the weaknesses. We think it's very important to support implementation across all mine sizes. You know, that is to say those who will surely benefit from this will be small operations, and yes, it will present special challenges to them, but I think that needs to be supported. We think that resources can be developed, templates and other things that NIOSH could work with MSHA on to ensure that small mines are every bit as successful in applying this as larger mines with more resources. Yeah, we believe that it is important to address early the challenges that will arise from employing a proactive risk-based approach within a compliance-based regulatory framework. I mean, you know, it's no secret the two are not going to co-exist peacefully under the same roof unless people sit down and talk about what does this mean in terms of moving forward, you know; how do we adapt; you know, what do we need to do? I don't have an answer to that. I don't know if anybody does, but certainly it has to be talked about and worked through. You know, I think that success requires facilitating collaboration between management and labor. Some of the operations that we went to, for example, only a couple, in fact, I think we ended up not even including them in our study, but they had a view that this was really a management prerogative and a management exercise, and they balked at having labor involved in this risk assessment and management, which is, you know, just a complete -- you know, completely ineffective way to look at it. So, you know, we need to facilitate that. We need to provide training, education to make that shift. You know, recognizing and expecting that the cultural shift will be a lagging indicator of success. You know, that is to say a lot of cultures have to change. The cultural within MSHA will have to change, the culture of the inspectors, the culture of management, the mine operators, even labor itself, all that culture will change and it will have to over some period of time, and the good news is that once we see that cultural change that will be an important indicator that we have made significant success to that point in time. You know, finally, recognizing that this will be a journey, and this is a point that's always emphasized to me by some of my research colleagues in Australia, you know, who have worked for years and years to incorporate these principles into the workplace there, and they have said you have to understand. This isn't something that you do today and you have it tomorrow. Instead, it's something that you work at for years and years, and each year you accomplish more, and you move forward, you know, with those accomplishments, and I think we need to recognize that here regardless of whatever approach MSHA and OSHA decide to take from a regulatory point of view, you know, just simply passing a regulation or a law is not going to make it so overnight. You know, there are many important challenges that need to be faced, but it's a journey that we need to take, a journey of steady gains along with steady challenges lasting many years, but if we look around at the companies who are successfully doing it here in the states, if we look at the companies who have done it in places like Australia, you know, then we know that it's a journey worth the effort. So, I appreciate the opportunity to speak today. Thank you. DR. WAGNER: Thank you very much. Is there anyone on the panel who has a question now? MR. FEEHAN: I have a question, Dr. Kohler. You said that small mines, the question is really how did they do it, how did they put it together, but you said there were even the most prepared mines identified ways to mitigate hazards. Could you talk a little bit more about that, about some of the things that were identified and how it worked at these operations? MR. KOHLER: Sure, and I can talk about one specific example that I have knowledge, and it was a mine that has in place not what you would call perhaps an occupational safety health and management system, but it has an enlightened management approach to proactively identify risk and try and correct them, and the mine has a good record. But the mine was not familiar with some of the tools that one can bring to bear to do risk assessments, you know, bow-tie analysis and other kinds of tools that are not really complex, but they are useful. And when the mine had the opportunity to go through those analyses using some of those tools which are part and parcel to the trade of people who do they, they were able to uncover a hazard that they had been unaware of, and they sent a very nice e-mail, you know, explaining how appreciative they were and now how they realized there was even more they could do despite their past successful. MR. FEEHAN: Thank you. DR. WAGNER: I think we will take one or two questions if anybody has them of Dr. Kohler at this point. Jim. MR. SHARP: We are in a situation right now where there is a lot of conflict between operators and MSHA. We also see a system where you're trying to promote or MSHA wants to promote a proactive approach whereas the current regulatory system is a reactive approach. How do you see all of these factors that are built into the current system of mine health and safety being put aside in order for this to succeed? How is that going to happen? MR. KOHLER: If I had the answer to that, I'd be pretty rich and famous, I think. What I do know, as I said, this is far too important to fail. I mean, for the mining industry in this country this approach has to be an approach that we move forward with, and yes, there are aspects of the current regulatory system which will make it challenging, but we have operators here in the United States today who within the current regulatory structure are being, you know, I think successful with such an approach. So that's why I say I think this needs to be addressed early on. I think it's probably best addressed in, you know, meetings where people roll up their sleeves, and meetings that include MSHA and operators and labor, and others with expertise to sit down and talk about, well, what is this big barrier in the current system that would prevent us from being successful with this proactive approach, and then what can we do to eliminate that barrier. DR. WAGNER: Thank you. One more. Yes, please. MR. GOMEZ: Quantitative data, this appears to be more a case study approach or than anything else NIOSH has done that you're aware of that could demonstrably say management systems work. There has been a lot of work in the environmental arena, as you are probably aware, in the housing world, and some of that evidence is a little fuzzy, but you know, where is the beef? MR. KOHLER: Yes, certainly intervention effectiveness assessment is always important and it's always a challenge to get hard data. Our study does not have that kind of hard data. There were case studies to illustrate the process and the advantages and disadvantages. I think that if you address the question to perhaps some of the people in Australia where they have tracked this for some period of years, they report that there have been significant gains in safety. I have not analyzed that data. DR. WAGNER: If I could ask the first two questioners to each identify themselves for the record. So the first questioner? MR. SHARP: Jim Sharp with Sharp Media. DR. WAGNER: Second questioner? MR. GOMEZ: Manuel Gomez with the U.S. Chemical Safety Board. DR. WAGNER: Great, and the other housekeeping thing I wanted to mention is that anybody who did not sign in if you would please sign in when we take a break. I want to make sure that everybody who is here then we know who has come. So thank you very much, Dr. Kohler, and while he is unleashing himself, I'm going to ask Dennis O'Dell, Administrator of Health and Safety for the United Mine Workers of America to come up. I am also going to mention that there is a list of people who have requested the opportunity to speak in advance. I have got their list and we are going through them, but anyone else who wishes to speak will be given an opportunity after the nine speakers who have signed up are done. MR. O'DELL: Good morning. Is this okay? DR. WAGNER: Yes. MR. O'DELL: I thank you for the opportunity to be here this morning to hopefully share some things that we feel have been successful on behalf of the United Mine Workers of America. Again, my name is Dennis O'Dell. I am currently the Administrator of Occupational Health and Safety for the United Mine Workers of America which cover the United States and Canada. I spent 20 years as an underground coal miner, eight years as a field safety rep for the union, and under the direction of Joe Main, eight years and five years currently as the Administrator. I was asked to share with you today some of the things that we as a union do that help to enhance health and safety at our representative mines. UMW has always placed an emphasis on the importance of maintaining a self safe and health workplace, and some of the things we do are: we've established a joint committee between UMWA and the BCOA, Bituminous Coal Operators Association. This group consists of top management safety personnel from several operators and our international health and safety department. We meet periodically to deal with problem issues on a national level, issues such as dust, noise, ergonomics, new equipment design, new mining plans and so on. We also involve MSHA and NIOSH on these projects, looking toward review and appropriate development and revision of improved mandatory health and safety standards as well as any other health and safety matters of importance to the coal industry. Some of our past successes achieved by this joint work covers ways to reduce noise on equipment, reduce dust exposures among our monitors, safer roof control methods, and just recently our efforts on developing and testing the personal dust monitor. We have also jointly addressed the agency on proposed rules with our thoughts on how to make these new regulations better fit and protect the needs of miners and the industry. Another thing that the United Mine Workers has are trained safety committeemen in our operations. These individuals are elected by their peers, and these individuals are provided with 40 hours of training at the National Mine Academy in Beckley, West Virginia, twice a year. During this time they are provided with classes much the same as an MSHA inspector receives. They are also put through a mine exercise to help develop their skills in the event an emergency situation would arise at the mine. We encourage our committee to take this knowledge back to the mines and apply it, as well as educate the workforce on what they have learned. These committees also do inspections where they travel the mine in its entirety to identify any health or safety problems that need to be addressed. Our committees share their findings with the operator and work towards getting them corrected. If done correctly and cooperatively, many hazards are eliminated way before the agency has to cite the company. If we get them corrected by these joint inspections, everybody wins because it helps to reduce violations that may have caused an accident or an injury. We also have in place a joint industry training program that puts mine managers, safety supervisors, superintendents, and local union safety committeemen together for one week during the training session. These sessions where management and hourly employees get together they share classes and they learn together on many new subjects that enhance safety at the mine. One of the highlights of the training session is it allows management and our employees to have an open session to bounce ideas off of each other on how to improve mine safety and performance, how to reduce accidents, and how to encourage education and practice on safe mining practices. They do this in a setting away from the mine where they can be relaxed and have open, honest discussions among each other. Currently, we have many committeemen doing inspections on a more frequent basis at several mines, engaging in what we call "walk and talks" where we question miners on the sections with what their thoughts are in and on ways to improve safety. This is a joint labor-management effort with some of our companies as well as a way to show that safety really is a priority. Our goals are to eliminate or reduce injuries, eliminate fatalities, and reduce and/or eliminate hazards that we can control. With the increase of younger, new, inexperienced miners in the mine today, this gives us a chance to educate and share experiences from our older, more experienced miners. We have other tools in place that deal with special safety programs that provides solutions to safety provisions which regularly occur, and to ensure uniform health and safety practices such as program for operation and maintenance of all hoisting facilities, and emergency escapeways, arrangements for thoroughly equipped first aid station, arrangements for a doctor or nurse to be on call on short notice, arrangements for safe and quick and efficient means of transportation sick or injured miners out of the mine. These are just a few but the list goes on. We also have a tool in place for settlement of health or safety disputes so when a dispute arises at the mine involving a health and safety issue an immediate ernest and sincere effort is made to resolve the matter. Many times this is eliminated or has prevented an accident at the mine. Many of these programs are successful and continue to grow but in reality the reason for the success of these programs, besides the commitment of all parties involved, is the fact that we have a collective bargaining agreement between the companies and the employees that we represent. If it weren't for the contract agreement many of these successes may have fallen by the side, but I am pleased that the attitudes of making safety a priority has increased tremendously among our employers, but I often wonder and believe that if we didn't have a contract, if it would succeed. This is the one thing that separates us from the rest of the industry. Since 2009, there has been 62 fatalities in the industry, 62 miners have died. Only two of those miners were UMWA miners. Two is still too many but it clearly shows that our mines are safer in that respect. You can lie about accidents and injuries. You can lie with figures, but the one number you can't hide are fatalities. The other thing I need to point out is that none of these replace enforcement of the law, and we still believe in strict enforcement of the regulations. Dr. Kohler gave a presentation on risk management and risk assessment which is something that we really haven't supported up to this point. I have been able over the past five years in the position I'm in to spend a lot of time with the Australian miners, the workers in Australia, and they told me they have had some successes initially with this program, but now they are starting to re-think the way that they approached this because there they actually manage risk and in doing so still can end up in an accident or a fatality, and it has. So they are re-thinking the whole way of taking an approach to this. Reality is that we should not be in the business of risk management. We should be in the business of eliminating risk. We have to have the attitude that all fatalities are preventable. Hopefully in the future we will be able to address those issues in ways that a risk management or risk assessment style approach is exactly what Dr. Kohler said in that it eliminates the hazard. It eliminates the risk. I also have to say that one of the most important necessities to make any of this work is to have open communications between all parties, and I mean the workers, company personnel, and inspectors. We need to be talking openly about safety. You can offer any kind of program you want under the sun but it's not going to be worth the paper it's written on until everyone is 100 percent committed, and everyone is openly communicating, and talking about safety as a priority and in practicing what has been preached. But this is really a simple task. People have to realize that miners weren't hired just simply from their neck down, and that's been the attitude for years and years and years. Miners have a brain. Miners have experience. Miners do the work on a day-to-day basis. Miners need to be heard. Listen to the ones that do the tasks on a day-to-day basis and you will be surprised at what you may learn. Thank you. DR. WAGNER: Thank you very much. Are there questions from the panel? Time for one or two questions from people in the audience? Thank you. Our next speaker is Andy O'Brien from the Unimin Corporation. He's the general manager for safety and health. He is accompanied by Mark Ellis, President of the Industrial Minerals Association North America. MR. ELLIS: Good morning, Mr. Wagner and members of the committee. I am Mark Ellis, President of the Industrial Minerals Association North America, and the National Industrial Sand Association. IMANA and ISA are pleased to participate in this public meeting of the Mine Safety and Health Administration regarding mine safety and health management programs. IMANA is a Washington, D.C.-based trade association created to advance the interests of North American companies that mine or process minerals used throughout the manufacturing and agricultural industries. Its producer membership is composed of companies that are leaders in the ball clay, barite, bentonite, borates, calcium carbonate, diatomite, felsfar, industrial sand, kaolin, magnesia, mica, soda ash, talc, alastonite, and other industrial minerals. In addition, IMA represents associate member companies that provide equipment and services to the industrial minerals industry. Additional information on IMANA can be accessed through our website at www.IM-NA.org. Since its inception in 2002, IMANA has worked cooperatively with MSHA. IMANA recognizes that the first priority and concern of all in the mining industry must be the health and safety of its most precious resource, the miner. To that end, IMANA's oldest and most active mineral producer section, the National Industrial Sand Association, which was established in 1936, would like to present information on its occupational health program. The presentation will be made by Mr. Andrew D. O'Brien, which is a certified safety professional and is general manager of safety and health for Unimin Corporation. He also serves as chairman of the Silica Health Effects Committee which just last week received NISA's 2010 recognition of excellence award. Andy. MR. O'BRIEN: Thanks, Mark. Thank you very much for the opportunity to give you a brief overview of the NISA Occupational Health Program as well as the NISA Silicosis Prevention Program. We feel these are two programs that are gold standards that, if fully implemented, can and do lead to the elimination of silicosis within our industry. A brief overview: The OHP, the current OHP is dated 2010 and is a revision to the 1997 Occupational Health Program Manual. The purpose of the manual is conducting a surveillance program as outlined in the manual and is crucial to our industry in reaching our goal of preventing the development of new cases of silicosis in member company employees. There are four specific sections within the Occupational Health Program. There is an introduction, a respiratory health effects of exposure to crystalline silica section, a section of workplace dust surveys, and a section on respiratory medical surveillance for silicosis. The introduction addresses respiratory health effects of crystalline silica, workplace dust surveys, respiratory medical surveillance. The respiratory health effects of exposure to crystalline silica section provides an overview description of the respiratory system, discusses what pneumoconiosis is, what silicosis is with respect to chronic accelerated and acute forms of silicosis, the relationship between silica and lung cancer, medical surveillance, and epidemiology as well as exposure limits, and we talk about how to determine exposure limits via the PEL calculation. In our workplace dust survey section we discuss the purpose of workplace dust surveys, which is to evaluate workplace exposure to silica dust, and we talk about respirable silica dust sampling, specifically the equipment that's involved in the sampling of respirable dust, calibration of the sampling train, burette and electronic calibration methods, as well as sampling procedures, personal sampling and general work or area sampling. We also address direct reading instruments within the manual, which we have found to be key to very quickly identifying root causes for elevated exposures. This is particularly from Unimin's perspective has been a god send to us in saving time and money. You have an elevated exposure, you slap a PDR on an employee, the employee tracks what they are doing over the course of the day, and within one day sampling you can immediately tell where your problem may be and focus on that area. We discuss analytical procedures as far as gravimetric and x-ray diffraction, discuss NIOSH 7500 as the analytical method, sampling records with pump calibrations, data sheets, sampling results and activity logs. We also strongly stress the discussion and review of results, exposure results with employees and incorporate a mandatory requirement to discuss and present the results to each individual miner within 15 days of receipt of the results; essentially making the process quick as possible. We discuss sampling frequency and provide guidelines on how many workers to sample based on your population as well as your exposure; again, discussion of the results, what do the numbers mean to the miner, as well as sampling strategy to determine sampling frequency based on exposures. The respiratory medical surveillance for silicosis section discusses the primary purpose of establishing baselines, also to detect abnormalities at the earliest stage, and to prevent the development of silicosis, disclose occupational and nonoccupationally-related abnormalities to worker for clinical follow up. One of the benefits that a number of our miners have realized by participating in this program is that nonoccupational diseases or potential issues are identified through this process much sooner than they might otherwise be, sometimes life saving. Also identified potentially hazardous working conditions and develop data on which epidemiological studies can be based. The respiratory medical surveillance addresses medical and occupational history as far as respiratory history, smoking history, prior exposure to potentially harmful dust chemicals or other physical agents, and any adverse effects related to those exposures. Medical examination via the OHP consists of exam of the thorax to access workers' respiratory fitness, a 14 by 17 inch PA chest x-ray, although we have not gone to or recommended digital imaging; evaluated all images should be -- I should say all images both pre-employment and post-employment as part of the surveillance program should be or are required to be evaluated by an NIOSH certified B reader. You can find the list of current B readers at that URL, and radiographic interpretation. We talk about whether it's an art or a science, particularly at the earliest stages of disease. Even with the best of B readers, that can be a challenge. Pulmonary function tests are also a mandatory element of the program, and this most current iteration also makes mandatory TB tests for employees with more than 25 years of exposure. We also have a consensus x-ray interpretation which essentially ensures that there is consensus when there is an abnormal reading found. If there is an abnormal reading found that's nonoccupationally related, the employee is directed to seek medical treatment or clinical follow up from their personal physician or company physician. An abnormal x-ray occupationally related requires a second reading. If the first and second readings agree, then that's the end of the game, and whatever the consensus is that's the diagnosis. If the first and second readings disagree, then there is a third reading, essentially tie breaker, and the median reading of all three is used as the determination of what the level of disease is or even what the disease may be. We discuss x-ray retention and storage and apply ANSI standards for storage. The spirometry is, in the 2000 versions, a mandatory element of the program. It was optional up to this point. There is also an assessment with respect to the ability to wear a respirator performed by a physician considering the worker's health, the type of respirator, and the type of working conditions that the worker may be exposed to. We also address recordkeeping and worker notification, records kept past 30 years of employment, and worker provided with results and evidence of this exchange should also be kept on file for obvious reasons. Frequency of examinations are x-rays bi-annually, and x-ray frequency is based on the number of years since first exposure to silica dust as well as the age of the worker, and whether any signs or symptoms are present. That's an overview of the OHP. The second element is the Silicosis Prevention Program. That consists of six elements: OHP implementation, medical assessment, dust exposure assessment, dust control, employee involvement, and smoking cessation. The NISA Silicosis Prevention Program is a great program. We believe strongly in it. We think Unimin is a good example of how effective the NISA OHP and Silicosis Prevention Programs can be if fully implemented. There are 24 members within the NISA membership. Only nine have fully committed to the Silicosis Prevention Program which constitutes 37.5 percent of the membership. The commitment levels vary between participating companies, and some of the roadblocks to commitment which we explored recently surprised us. One was concern for the creation of enforceable data. Some operators are just not interested in taking dust samples on their own workers because they have a perception that that data can then be used against them either by the regulator or nonregulatory-based application. Cost is always a concern, although we have tried to reiterate that at some of our smaller facilities you may only be talking about half a dozen to a dozen samples a year which, even if you're running x-ray diffraction of every sample, is less than a thousand dollars a year. Some of our members still don't fully understand the program even after all these years and after all of our efforts to educate them. DR. WAGNER: I am just wondering. Do you know how much longer you will be going? MR. O'BRIEN: Basically done. DR. WAGNER: Good. MR. O'BRIEN: The NISA OHP is state-of-the-art. It will prevent new disease. The membership understands this but even with no cost mentoring the majority of members are hesitant to fully commit. And so I guess the message that we're bringing, much like the prior presenter said, is a program is only worth the paper that it's written on unless there is full commitment to it, and there are many obstacles to commitment. We firmly believe in management systems. I think our involvement with Dr. Kohler's group over the years, with their dust group and their ergonomics group, demonstrates our commitment to this. From our perspective the key is hazard assessment, and that's what we are focusing on is hazard assessment through our systems and the reduction in individual risk tolerance. DR. WAGNER: Very good. Thank you very much. Questions? MR. DISTASIO: I have a few. DR. WAGNER: Please. MR. DISTASIO: You were talking about the cost as being one of the possible roadblocks. Since this is all voluntary, why are the companies doing it in the first place? MR. O'BRIEN: It's the right thing to do. MR. DISTASIO: But are they finding some benefit to sort of offset those costs in terms of productivity or just lower workers' comp., something along the lines to try to make the business case, or is it just for their own goodwill or so to their employees? MR. O'BRIEN: I can't speak to what other member companies are doing, only to Unimin's perspective on this, and we do it because it's the right thing to do. We don't want to see people injured or ill. We have never made a business case to our executive management on why this should be done. It's just understood that it's the right thing to do. The benefits are that Unimin's experience in employing this program is that, although we currently have two silicotics working for us, actively working, both came through acquisition, and although Unimin has grown through acquisition primarily, we have not created a new case of silicosis in any employee that's ever come on board through acquisition, and this goes back 30 years. The program works and does prevent disease if it's fully implemented. MR. ELLIS: Just to add to that, I think that, you know, you mentioned reduced workers' comp. cost. That's obviously a residual benefit, and I think that the insurance carriers, to the extent that there are insurance carriers that are covering these operations, they look favorably on the program. It is a proactive thing that they're doing. MR. BURNS: I have one. DR. WAGNER: Please. MR. BURNS: I guess I could ask from the same viewpoint of the workers, but what have you done or what have you found that's really successful to impress upon new miners the real danger of these health hazards? Because I can remember when I was young, I mean, nobody thinks any of this stuff is going to affect them. MR. O'BRIEN: Right. MR. BURNS: I mean, what sort of training or anything, demonstrations, anything that you're doing that you found that really impressed upon particularly younger workers that the dust is really hazardous, it's a hazard all the time, you have to buy-in to protecting yourself, and making sure you use your respirators and all that sort of stuff? MR. O'BRIEN: We think the key is twofold. One is education. We have a very robust education process for any new miner regardless of age, whether they are 18 or 48. If they come into the industry and new into our company, they are going to get the same training program. The second element to that is enforcement. We have requirements for the use of respirators. We have requirements for participating in our sampling program, and if you're going to be employed by us you're going to comply with those requirements because it's for your benefit. DR. WAGNER: Have you applied some of the same principles that you've used and structured in the Silicosis Prevention Program to an injury prevention approach? MR. O'BRIEN: I would say we have, Dr. Wagner. We do not take a reactive approach. We try and look at the numbers, see in what direction the numbers suggest we do in, and get ahead of the injuries and illnesses. So it is a structured process whereby we set objectives from the executive management level down and filter that down throughout the workforce. DR. WAGNER: We have heard about employee engagement. Do you have employee engagement in your injury prevention efforts? MR. O'BRIEN: We do, absolutely. In fact, as an example, we wholeheartedly subscribe to the MSHA slam risk process, and on October 25th it was declared Unimin's-MSHA Slam Risks Day, and so all of our facilities, each miner at everyone of our facilities was wearing the same shirt, all of the plants had activities that they were running with barbecues and different things to promote the process, and then we also have continuous improvement teams that are currently functioning with respect to slam risks, but also working towards identifying ergonomic interventions which stem from some of the auditing tools that have been developed by NIOSH. DR. WAGNER: Thank you. Time for a couple of questions from the audience. Please. MR. GOMEZ: Manual Gomez from the Chemical Safety Board. The American Chemistry Council, the major trade group for the chemical industry, has a condition of membership, participation in demonstrable conformance with their responsible care program, which is a broad management system, health and safety management system. This is a program, a segment of your hazards. Has your association considered that approach; that is, a condition of participation for membership, and if not, why not? MR. ELLIS: Well, I think I would say that the responsible care program is a mature program. It's been in existence for several decades, and I think that the mining industry is not yet at the place that the chemical industry was 20 years ago, let's say, but conditions have caused that question to be asked, and we don't yet have a program that's unified across safety and health parameters that we would ask our members to subscribe to. That's an aspirational thing, but we're not there yet. MR. GOMEZ: Thank you. MR. ELLIS: If I could, Dr. Wagner, I would just like to get into the record a copy of the NISA Occupational Health Program, and also a Practical Guide to Silicosis Prevention that we've worked with MSHA on in our alliance program. DR. WAGNER: Thank you very much and thanks for your time here. The next speaker will be Ed Elliott who is Director of Safety for the Rogers Group. MR. ELLIOTT: My name is Ed Elliott. I am the Safety and Health Director for Rogers Group, Incorporated. I have been employed with them since 1985. Just to kind of give you a little bit of an overview, I'm going to talk today about kind of the real world application of what you're considering, and the Rogers Group was founded in 1908 by Ralph Rogers in Bloomington, Indiana, and it's grown with the nation's interstate system and infrastructure growth and it's still privately held by the Ralph Rogers' descendants. We rank eighth out of 5,400 aggregate producers in the U.S. This is according to the U.S. Geological Survey. We are the seventh largest crushed stone producer in the U.S. We have operations in five states: Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Arkansas. We have 1,300 total employees. Six hundred of those are in the aggregate operations, and our core business, of course, is crushed stone and then asphalt and asphalt construction. Our other business, we're in the concrete block production. And just to give you a little bit about the scope, we have 55 MSHA-regulated operations, and within the safety and health department there is myself and two other safety managers for the entire company. Talking a little bit about our system, we established the current system we're using in 2001, and we needed to find a way to reduce injuries beyond more rules. I mean, MSHA has got rules, I mean, our company had rules, and it's just -- it's a book that sometimes it sits on the shelf, and it just didn't get us to the level that we wanted to move to. And this whole approach was driven by our owners, the family, and the CEO of the company. They said we need to do something to break through the barrier to achieve lower numbers of injuries, and one of the things that I think when we looked this process and moving in this direction, we had to recognize that 90 percent of the injuries are the result of unsafe acts. There are a lot of people when they hear that they say it's blame the worker. I mean, that's really a very antiquated way of looking at him. Initially, a lot of time you may approach, but what we realized these unsafe acts may be caused by any number of things. In many instances, management would throw up barriers to doing things safely. So when we look at unsafe acts, we talk about what is the root cause of that unsafe act, not just to blame someone. This is our safety policy statement. This drives everything we do in Rogers Group. We are committed to achieving a zero injury safety culture by implementing all of Rogers' safety principles without compromise. We don't say zero injuries. We say a zero injury culture. People have to strive and have to believe that you can prevent all injuries, and we don't call them accidents. They are not accidents. We know what causes the things that occur in the mining industry. We look at this as an injury. We can find out and prevent that injury from occurring. We use what we have, as I mentioned, by being committed to our safety principles without compromise, and I am just going to touch on -- this is the process of how we manage safety, and I think what's important we don't manage our safety with respect to construction or block safety or aggregate safety. It's the safety system that functions throughout our company. If you have a person that's working in a construction unit in northern Alabama, they could go to an aggregate operation in northern Indiana, the safety is no different. It's the very same. First is management commitment, and we've evolved this a little bit. It needs to be not just management but leadership commitment. There are people that at times that are senior workers, that they have to demonstrate commitment to what goes on in the process every day, and we evaluate this, and I'll talk about that a little bit later. But I will include the details of the safety principles in the official record. I'm not going to go into the detail because of time. Line responsibility for safety. If you go and ask every person, and any of you could walk out of this room and go to any of the Rogers Group operations, and ask them, any employee, supervisors, hourly employees, who is responsible for safety, and they will say, "I am." They are responsible for safety, and that's an important part of it. It can't be -- the regulators can't make places safe. Safety directors and safety managers can't make places safe. The people that do the work have to be committed to making it safe. Safety training and education, critical in all aspects of the business. You have got to do task training, you've got to do occupational health training, you've going to do just new hire training. We have a training program now where we put employees in our aggregate operations through 40 hours of training before they begin doing their MSHA-required training. The MSHA-required training is so limited and somewhat -- I think the Part 46 is good, the Part 48 is so antiquated that there are a lot of things that we feel we need to do in addition to that, so that's what we try to implement. Also, the audit process. Now, the auditing a lot of people think about the IRS may audit you, but in fact what we're talking about is observing behavior. Most people that would perform an unsafe act have no intent to do that in the manner that's going to cause injury. So what we're trying to do is observe the day-to-day auditing of the day-to-day process of what employees are doing in their jobs. We require every manager, every supervisor, every location to do a minimum of one formal audit per month. Well, that's done by a team, it could be hourly employees, it could be a visitor that assigns it. Our president and CEO requires himself and everyone of his direct reports to go out into the field and do a formal audit at a location. We are also doing formal audits and that's something were supervisors doing it at all times as well as hourly employees. We do report. We keep up with this. We have a metric that we follow. Safety committees, we have a corporate safety committee that's made up of 12 people in our corporation, and when we first started this in 2001, we said what's the make-up of the committee? Well, typically as the old kind of antiquated way that management has all the answers, who was on the committee? All management people. Today we have five and at times we will invite six hourly employees to be members of that committee. Right now there are five hourly employees, and seven other operational people, and we found, and our president and CEO feels like that our corporate safety committee gets feedback on what works at the grass roots level, and that is critical as other people have said here. JSA implementation, the job safety analysis, project hazardous analysis, job task analysis, you can call it any way you want, but you have to look at the job, analyze the hazards, and then do something about it. Now, a lot of people say, well, mining is dangerous. I have worked in coal mining for five years and I've been in aggregate operations now with Rogers Group for 25 years, and people say, well, this is dangerous work. No, it's not. It is hazardous work. There is no question about it. The danger is where you don't know the hazard. If we walk out this door and go into a dark room and run across that room and no lights on, that's dangerous. We don't know what's there. But in our business we know what the hazards are, and we say with the JSA you cannot eliminate every hazard in this business. You can't do it. You can't do it in anything that you do. But what you have to do through the JSA process is reduce that hazard to a level where no one will get hurt, and you can do that in every single situation. Incident investigation, this is critical. We also look at near misses, and near misses are anytime where an employee may have been injured and it was just sheer luck that they didn't. And these near miss investigations are done with a team that will be hourly employees, the safety department may be involved or not be involved, and we share these and all e-mail throughout our entire company, and depending on the degree of seriousness of it, it may take two or three days to get the investigation done, but it's shared with everybody on e-mail in our company, and it's required to be shared in our safety meeting with every employee at every operation because whether that's a near miss in an aggregate operation, there are fundamental things that went wrong in the breakdown in the process that other people can learn about. We also do, anytime there is an injury in the company, that is reviewed by the president and the CEO, myself as the safety director, and then the investigation is presented to the CEO and he reviews each one of those, and he has to be informed immediately anytime there is an injury that occurs. And when I say injury I'm talking about reportable or recordable. And full involvement, this is all bookends. You've got the management commitment, you've got to have the company that's committed and willing to do these things, but if you don't have employee involvement in the process it will fail miserably. I think a lot of time with rules, we can put all the rules we want to out there, but if people don't believe in them, that they are going to be safer and avoid injury, they are going to ignore it. It's not going to mean anything. Now, some of the support elements that I think are important to remember, there has got to be accountability to the process. People have to clearly understand the process at all levels. Whether they are management or hourly employees through training, there has to be accountability to the process. Second, I think in our situation we have learned that there has to be some form of a substance abuse policy. Now, is it something that somebody is using illegal drugs or improperly using prescription drugs that we just fire them. No. We have evolved from that, and they get an opportunity to go through a process and to retain their job, but in our aspect of the business we know that the hazards are significant enough that substance abuse can be a factor, and we want to make sure we eliminate that. Regulatory compliance, that's an important part of anything that we do, and we look at this as -- and most of our operators will say that MSHA provides a service with another set of eyes. Now, I won't say that we think that everything, how inspections are done, that we agree with them. As a matter of fact, I think some of them are not intended whatsoever to improve safety, but the fact is regulatory compliance is something that we think is a positive part of what we do. Also, too, you need to recognize excellence, whether it's individual excellence in doing things and promoting safety and following the process, but those are all important. Also, having clear metrics, you've got to measure it, what gets measured gets done. I'm going to talk about our metrics. I'm not going to go into them because we don't have time to go into a lot of detail, but we have leading indicators that measure implementation of our safety principles. Are they doing the safety principles that I mentioned before? Do they have them in place, and are they functioning? And we also evaluate the current indicators. We look at the quality of the performance to those safety principles. If I look at a supervisor and I ask them, well, do you have your safety contact every day that's required? Yeah, I go by and wave at them. Well, is he showing management commitment? Well, yes, he's waving at them. But is the quality of it what it should be? No. So, you've got to measure whether they are in place and also the current indicators with the quality. Then we look at training indicators because they are a measure of the results to those safety principles, and when we look at training indicators, I'm just going to show you three. We have a number of others that we use but first is the recordable and reportable injuries. I'm going to show you a chart here in a moment that gives you the result of our company as a whole, all of our operations, and then I'll get a little more specific. Then the second thing is look at the workers' comp. claims. This is something that we've been able to see that tells us a little bit of what are we doing. Are we trying to be eliminating these things that people feel like they have to go to the doctor for, whether they are serious or not? And that's also looking at the business case. And let's face it, realistically if you can make the case that it's right and you make the business case also, almost any industry is saying, man, let me at it, let's do what we have to do, so this is a part of it. Also, the injury rates, I'm going to show you for the aggregate operation. This is -- I'm going to tell you the recordable/reportable injuries, and you can see we were running on average somewhere in the '90s anywhere from 70 to as many as 100 recordable/reportable injuries, and our company has fluctuated in size, but basically it's been in that 12 to 1500 employee range. Then we look, you can see that it went back up in '06 and '07. Part of that was acquisitions. We found that approximately 30 percent of all our injuries are people with a year or less of service with Rogers Group. It has nothing to do with experience in mining whatsoever, or any other aspect of our business, but that one year seems to be the point. It takes that long for them to understand we're not just talking about it, we mean it. Also, we had a changeover in CEOs right about that time, and I think it takes time for the CEO to kind of get a grasp on what has to be emphasized, but you can see that the process, and it takes -- somebody else mentioned, I think, it takes years to change the culture. The culture is a group of people with shared beliefs. You don't change beliefs because you put a rule out, and we've used them in the past, too, but don't do this anymore. Well, I would think like everybody gets the e-mail they are immediately going to change, but that doesn't happen. But you can see we have set records. The last two years are the lowest number of recordable/reportable injuries that we've had in our company, and we are on track this year to be slightly better than we were last year; not significantly, but slightly better. These are the workers' comp. claims, and we have found that our workers' comp. insurance rates have dramatically improved as a result of what we've been doing, and these are claims for the entire company, not just in aggregates, I want to make that clear. But you can see, and we focus on these, and talk about these at a management level. These are the reportable injury rates for our aggregate operations. These would be the things that pertain to MSHA, and you can see that we were averaging about in the middle three to four, the rates back in the nineties, and probably even higher than that but we didn't follow them as closely. But you can see that the rates have gone down significantly, and in fiscal year '09 -- each of these represents 12 months also -- that we set a record for our company in the aggregate operation to .08, and we try to go out and we make acquisitions and we find that will bump it up, and we take this very seriously. If these rates are right, we reconcile every month, we go to the workers' comp. claims, we verify what the treatments are, and we make sure that they are reported as they are supposed to be reported because this gives us a metric of what's going on. Some of the real things that I think are important to consider, I recognize that this is a radical change, an oversight approach. We can't go out and have inspectors approach it the same way as they do looking for a guard off. The size of the mine has to be considered. You have a small mine. They are going to need help with this. They don't have the resources. Time has to be allowed to change the culture. In many instances a rule comes out and then 30 days later you've got to comply. This is a rule that in my estimation you're going to have to leave time periods of one, two and even three years to have it fully implemented for people to buy into it, or they're just going to go out and buy something off the shelf and say, here it is. This is something that needs to be gradually rolled in. Some of the recommendations that I have -- what Rogers Groups does works with us in our culture. I think what's important to realize that Australia may do something one way, Great Britain does something one way. The EU as a whole may do something, and they all have good qualities, but our culture in the United States is not the same as the culture in those countries, and I think we have to recognize that. It must be simple and measurable. You don't want to get -- everybody would like to have what's the best program out there, but there is not a best program. It's not what you do but how well you do it as long as it's based on sound principle, and every company, if given some broad guidelines and elements, they can fulfill what needs to be within those. And I think consideration to giving credit to operations that are implemented in a safety management system, such as reduced penalties for other violations. If you require them to do this, there are going to be some people who do an outstanding job and are really trying. Then an inspector comes in and writes them up for a guard that's off. They are going to wonder what's going on. Are you trying to help me or are you just trying to write paper? So that needs to be a consideration. Inspections have to proportionally focus on implementation of the safety system. An inspector can't go in and say, let's go to your plant, let me look at your guards, or let's go to the equipment, let's inspect the equipment. That's a part of it, but it needs to be where that inspector would come in and say, let's talk for awhile about what kind of safety management system you've got in place, and what kind of success are you having, and how are you implementing this part of the safety management system. Don't rush the rule. This is too important to not get consensus with all constituents. More public meetings should be held on the district level to gain input from more stakeholders. There are a lot of small operators out there that probably don't have a clue this is even going on or being considered. I believe if you did some things on the district level closer to the people and get more input from them, they would understand what you're trying to accomplish. Just in closing remarks, we all seek to develop a culture of safety within the industry, but MSHA must also develop a culture, and Dr. Kohler talked about this, which diminishes the enforcement first approach to safety. We did that within our company to where if they weren't following the rules we were saying you're bad. Well, there are a lot of factors that have to be considered. Now, enforcement is an important part of the responsibility for MSHA. That is what Congress requires you to do, but there are other aspects of this that have to be considered. I want to say that the MSHA-NSSGA alliance, which Assistant Secretary Main has just, I think, recently signed with the NSSGA to renew that, had an excellent program that I will be sending an electronic copy and I will ask to be included in the official record that the core principles of the safety program, and I believe those principles that were developed back as early start in 2003 and worked cooperatively with many, and there are people here today in MSHA that were involved with that process. That is an excellent, excellent program that can be used already as a framework for a rule. And I want to thank you as an agency for taking the first step in loving mine safety into the twenty-first century. We have got to get past just trying to meet all of the rules and thinking that's going to make us safe. We can achieve zero. We are committed to achieving zero in our company, but we have got to do it all working together in looking beyond just rules. So thank you. DR. WAGNER: Thank you very much. Appreciate your bringing data to the table here so we can see what the results of your program have been as you see it. Any questions from the panel? MR. DISTASIO: Yes. First of all, I want to say those are very impressive statistics. Amazing turnaround once management got involved and decided to make the changeover. I assume you have some information on the business case. I don't know what you can share with us but anything you can would be appreciated. MR. ELLIOTT: Okay, I would say -- MR. DISTASIO: We think like lowering the workers' comp. and this sort of stuff that you're tracking obviously would be helpful. MR. ELLIOTT: Okay, I'll send you some additional information on that. MR. DISTASIO: And then just basically, you know, what did it cost you to put a program like this in? I mean, obviously it's more commitment than anything else is what it seems like from my perspective. MR. ELLIOTT: Well, initially, if I can answer that. Initially, when we had to put all our people through training the corporation expended about 300 to 350 thousand dollars. But once they decided they were going to do it the owner said, let's do this, but that has been paid back so many times, and I think the hourly employees realize that it's made a difference, and today we have supervisors -- anytime we hire somebody they have to go through supervisory training, but it pays off. It's not going to pay off in six months or a year, but any process -- what I told them -- this is no different than crushing rock and making coal. When was in the surface coal mine, we had certain processes. You uncover the material, you removed it. If you've got a process that functions, anything that screws that up you've got to correct it. Safety is an equal part of our business. It can save you money, it can be more efficient, and I have found as a supervisor that when you make an operation safe you're going to get more production. MR. DISTASIO: That's what I like to hear. MR. ELLIOTT: It is. I mean, when I was a surface coal mine supervisor, I had 35 people work for me. On the day shift, I just -- quick story. The day shift superintendent, he didn't like berms up and everything. He would push the things off. Well, at night when I came in, I told our people, before you start dumping those truck, you put the berm up, and invariably we would get equivalent number of loads per hour or more because we did those things, and people believed in it. So I think that's important. DR. WAGNER: You want to identify yourself, please? MS. SILVEY: Pat Silvey. I'm sorry. MR. ELLIOTT: I knew you by that time, right> MS. SILVEY: I have a question on your statistics, and I echo what Greg said. Thank you very much for bringing that to the record, and I know the program hadn't been in place but a few years. In 2003, I believe, the statistics went down below -- you can show them again -- went down below one, and then -- MR. ELLIOTT: They jumped back up. MS. SILVEY: Right. Went to about one, so I thought almost now -- even though, granted, much better than where you started, I would say that, well, now, I'm looking at '09. Are there particular -- I was focusing on '03, but '09, too. Are there particular things that happened with respect -- do you think, is there anything that you can gather from that? MR. ELLIOTT: There are times where you have a workers' comp. claim, let's say a person gets dust in their eye. They can go to the doctor and the doctor checks them out and just washes it out with an eye wash, and it's not reportable, but that doctor might say, well, look, there is a scratch there. We're going to prescribe eye drop, prescription eye drops, which make it reportable. So I think what we've found and there are times that when you start dropping your numbers down and you're getting better, you're going to find that there are circumstances where people will go over that level a little bit where it's prescription eye drops and where it's not. What we are also finding a little bit is that we've seen, and this is something that's been in MSHA for awhile, you will recall this, about age-related things. We have had a couple of injuries in fiscal year '10 where we had employees doing a job that was a normal job, nothing hazardous, and then they would say, well, man, my arm hurts. Well, they go into the physician, the physician said, well, you've got a strained muscle there. Part of that may be from the fact that this person is late fifties, early sixties, maybe he wasn't really used to that, now he's got a condition. So, I think we're going to see as the baby boom generation moves through our industry that we're going to have a little bit of that, and I think that's what -- we know that's what happened in fiscal year '10. We had at least four injuries of those 23 that there was nothing unsafe done. They weren't put in a situation where there was an unsafe act, but they developed a soft tissue injury. DR. WAGNER: So this actually raises the question of whether you adjust your approach, depending upon the specific demographics of the workforce of any particular plant. MR. ELLIOTT: We have not looked at that as much. In the last two years, we're doing more analysis of our workers' comp. claims to see if we have these kind of associated problems, and we think we're going to have to look at approaching it differently even to the effect of having people to learn to do some stretching exercises or something before they undertake -- all of us when we were 20 years old were bullet proof and do anything, and a lot of times a person that is later in their career still approaches it the same way. So, we're trying to look at maybe developing a program to start targeting people to think not only about the hazards but think about the physical attributes of what's going to be required to perform that task, and that's the thing with a safety system. You don't look to make quick decisions and quick answers about things. You want to make sure you look and find what the root problem is, so that's something we're looking at now. MR. KIRK: I have two questions. One, did you say that acquisitions were part of the fluctuations here? MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, we have had issues with that and I think back in -- I want to say '06 -- we made an acquisition and then it jumped up. We find the more stability you have the more the leadership is able to treat, understand the qualities of each of the workers and their ability to perform the task, and put people in the right place, and we've had supervisors, too, that you get a new employee, they come in, they are willing to do anything. So, sometimes a supervisor doesn't think about, wait a minute, I need to have an experienced person do this task versus a new person. So, educating our supervisors and how to recognize the limitations of workers, that's another part of it that I think is gradually helping us, and with an acquisition we know it's going to be problems. It historically is. MR. KIRK: And the second question is, did you also track severity, or do you just use your worker's compensation cost to look at that? MR. ELLIOTT: No, we do track severity, and I could have brought that. I just didn't bring that chart, but we look at lost time injuries. But what we also look at is we take the workers' comp. claims as an indicator, which I didn't talk about, but we look at severity of the workers' comp. claim. There are times that you can look at that and it will tell you whether -- whether there is an injury or not -- we can look at did that have potential to be a very serious injury, and so we look at potential factors in our workers' comp. claims that helps us target things that we need to be looking at. MR. KIRK: And do you find severity has been driven down, too? MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. MR. KIRK: Thank you. MR. FEEHAN: Yes. Thank you very much for your presentation. I was wondering about your safety audits. What kind of -- when you're doing safety audits, what kind of rules do you set for the auditor? I mean, do you set up the tasks? What's that look like? MR. ELLIOTT: We notify the operation that we're going to do an audit. It's a maximum of one hour in length. What you're objective is is to observe the people doing the work. Then when you observe them you will go to the person and then you will talk with them, discuss with them about safety, what was your safety meeting about this morning, what was your JSA, what went into the JSA on the task you're doing. And if we find that they are doing something that's unsafe, you bring that to their attention. You discuss it with them. Maybe they are using the wrong tool. Well, why are you using this particular tool? Well, we didn't have the one we needed. And then we will put that down, and at the end of the audit process we will go back and sit down and do our findings, and we'll say, well, Richard and Harvey were out there doing that job, and they were using the wrong tool. What do we need to do? And then we will assign someone the responsibility the next time we do that task we will put it in the JSA, we will get the right tool for them, and that's a -- and what's interesting there, people in our company they initially said, well, you shouldn't tell them that you are coming in to observe them doing their work, but in fact when they do their work we know if they do it safe, and they tell us, well, we can't do that safe. No, we saw you do it safe. We know you can do it safe. So you try to raise the standards of performance, and you try to recognize people for doing a good job, and telling them, I appreciate your doing that safely and wearing your safety glasses. We had slips and falls was a major problem, and then when we started attacking three points of contact, and now that was something we will do in our audits. We will say throughout the corporation look for this as you go around auditing our operations, and it helped us get today where you won't find anybody mounting or dismounting equipment and not using three points of contact, so it's just part of how it works. MR. FEEHAN: Do you choose certain tasks? MR. ELLIOTT: No, just whatever the work is going on that day. MR. FEEHAN: Do you make sure that it's comprehensive, that you get the truck drivers as well as the -- MR. ELLIOTT: Crane operators. MR. FEEHAN: -- crane operator? MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. We do the people in the office as well. DR. WAGNER: Greg. MR. FETTY: Yes, I was going to ask have you seen any correlation with your violations in terms of reduction with the implementation of your program? MR. ELLIOTT: Zero. There is not a -- and I think it's something that people -- it's just like rules. Somebody may say they're following the rules, you know what I mean? And maybe they are not following the rule because sometimes it may be an interpretation about a guard whether it's right or not. But they feel like when an inspector comes in, it's like that police officer we see always parked on the side of the road. Everyone of us eases off a little bit, right? Whether you're over speeding or not, and I think that's a little bit what happens when MSHA comes into a mine, you know, for that twos and fours. So, we try to de-emphasize that, but we have not seen a correlation. Now, we do see sometimes there are problems with the -- when we see a lot of citations, we feel like there is a problem at the operation with the compliance side of their business, but we really focus on people not doing things -- as a matter of fact if they do things that are unsafe, if a supervisor were to allow somebody to say work on a conveyor without it locked out, then the changes are the supervisor is either going to be suspended without pay for a significant period of time, or terminated if they allow those things to happen. So, we are just not focused as much -- we see improvement in our overall citations for inspection when we focused upon it. We were about five and a half average. Now we're down to about three and a half average per inspection. MR. FETTY: So there has been a reduction with the implementation of your program? MR. ELLIOTT: The basic concept is the same, yes. MR. FETTY: Okay. MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, right. But I meant as far as injuries or anything, there is no correlation between injuries and citations. MR. BURNS: You mentioned that you think there is a correlation in the up tick in injuries with your change in leadership, and that's not unusual, and it's not unique, but what lessons have you learned from that? I don't know if you have the answers right now but you can let us know what as a company you would recommend be done differently based on what you learned from that change. MR. ELLIOTT: What we've learned is that the CEO that we had come into the corporation did not have tenure with us other than on the board of directors prior to coming in as CEO. I think he didn't understand the process. Once he understood how critical it was for his involvement, then he really engaged, and you mention about the business case that in every one of the performance metrics for his direct reports is a safety component, so they are very attuned to it and he didn't do that the first year he came in. So it kind of sent a message that it wasn't as important as it had been, but once he realized and he became aggressively engaged, then you saw we set those two records for 23 the last two years, so it shows. We just have to do a better job of educating the CEOs, but sometimes you can't educate the people at the top. They kind of think -- you know how that works. (Laughter.) MR. ELLIOTT: I couldn't resist that. We didn't talk about -- (Laughter.) DR. WAGNER: A good time for one or two questions. Identify yourself, please. MR. SHARPE: Oh, I'm sorry. Jim Sharpe from Sharpe Media. Ed, you know, you're the largest crush stone operator, you've got six or seven hundred people involved in the aggregate, you've got three people involved in your safety unit, and it's a fairly sophisticated system that you outlined here. Let's take that down to a company that has the size of 20 employees maximum, no full-time safety director. Are you optimistic that a company like this can be put in place for an operator of that size? MR. ELLIOTT: Eventually an operator of any size could put in something like this, but I think that's why I said about the core principles of the safety program that the MSHA-NSSJ Alliance put together. It is much simpler, and I said at the beginning it needs to be simple, and measurable, and you need something to where some broad concepts that are proven concepts. If you ask every successful company in safety, they will tell you there are certain things -- the management commitment, the training, accident investigation. This isn't rocket science. And so a small operator could put those things in. How sophisticated their investigation process was, or how sophisticated their training process is, it's going to differ, but they can still start down that path of those leading indicators that we know make a difference. DR. WAGNER: Thank you very much. I think this is a good time to take a break. We will start back again in exactly five past 11 on the first clock up here. (Whereupon, a short recess was taken.) DR. WAGNER: Our next speaker is Frank Migliaccio, Executive Director of Safety and Health for the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental, and Reinforcing Iron Workers. MR. MIGLIACCIO: Before I begin, I'd like to thank you for giving my organization the opportunity to come here and speak today. I want to give you a background of what the iron workers do first because people say, what is iron workers doing on mine sites, and once we are on a mine site we are considered miners. All right, when we talk about from the top down the involvement, Walter Wise is our general secretary and is second in command of our organization. So he worked in the field, he's also a trustee on our national training fund, he's chairman of the Iron Worker MSHA committee. He served apprenticeship in 1974 to 1976. He's worked throughout the coal fields from 1981 to 1989. There is a picture of him. A lot thinner back then, and the one thing about Walt, and he will become our general president within the next say five to seven years, Walt still is involved in the training of the iron workers in MSHA. When we do the train the trainer classes he's in there with me teaching the classes. So we have the involvement of our labor right off the bat. International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental, and Reinforcing Iron Workers is a member with the AFL-CIO. We were formed in February 4, 1896, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, compromised of six local unions total 3,650 members at that time. Safety was the number one issue then, and our general president today, Joseph Hunt, still considers it our number one issue today. In 1911, our organization was losing 1 percent of its membership a year in job site fatalities. One hundred and seventy-four local unions in the United States totaling 95,500 active members today safety still is the number one issue. In 2009, we had 12 fatalities or .0125 percent of our membership. Employed by thousands of contractors under collective bargaining agreements throughout the local union hiring halls. We erect structural steel. This is just one of the jobs out there in Greenbank, West Virginia. Bridges, columns, reinforced columns, we install and move heavy machinery, we install metal siding and glass curtainwall, same thing, metal siding, glass curtainwall, erect metal buildings. I.M.P.A.C.T. is our labor/management group, Iron Workers Management Progressive Action Cooperative Trust, and we have a membership on the board of both the labor and management, so we are very oriented with the labor/management groups. We have the one main body and we have 10 units around the country and in Canada. It drops down to National Training Fund. They send their information, or the National Training Fund works under that umbrella. From there it goes to the apprenticeship, JIW upgrading, Journeyman Iron Worker upgrading, certifications. The instructor training standard curriculum materials, recordkeeping program is off under this. That goes to the local union, J.A.T.C., and that goes to the local union membership. Everybody is wondering why I'm going through all this right here. When we talk about membership buy-in everything our organization does has to be voted all through a collective bargaining. Our membership has to agree on every bit of training that goes out the door. That's part of why we all belong to what we do. The national training function, the trainer classes at three regional training centers: St. Louis, Missouri; Oakland, California; Northern New Jersey. We also have an annual instructor seminar, and this year it was held at Eastern Michigan University and Waghtenaw Community College. When I bring this up, this is where we actually do the MSHA train the trainers, where we train the instructors to go back to their locals and do the training to the membership, both the apprenticeships and journeymen that's going to go out and work on mine sites. Prior to this, for 26 years we were out in California, the first year was in Berkeley, second year was in La Jolla, and all the rest of the years it was in San Diego. Somebody said why did we move from there, we outgrew it. We went from 28 students the first year to over 750 students the last year before we moved to Michigan. We outgrew the facility. This is the training. You can see some of the instructors, just the general members -- the general president and everybody is right up front there. In addition to the three-year and four-year apprenticeship program requires 204 hours of classroom instruction, and during the skill upgrading the National Fund offers the following certifications. Various American welding societies certifications for accredited facilities and local unions. We have 40 hours of hazardous material, OSHA 10 hour, OSHA 30 hour safety courses, CPR and first aid. We have scaffold user records, post-tensioning, installation, subpart R steel erection, arrow lift and MSHA safety training. We do the new miner safety training for our members before they even go to the contractors, so we offer our contractors benefit that is not costing the contractors anything to have the members trained. We also do the refresher classes at our facilities for the mining contractors, and if they are still working they get paid, and if they are not they do it on their own. They don't get paid for it. We do the task training which goes up in that 204 hours of three or four years of training as an iron worker. This is the local facility in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. This is a training facility classroom, hands-on welding, rigging, instruments, reinforcing, and it's just an arrow lift in the back. We do all sorts of training at these facilities, and that's an apprentice preparing for a contest that's held every two years throughout the United States for the outstanding apprentice for the United States and Canada. So the journeymen iron workers have a professional attitude and skills. Now, this is the important part. The international dedicates nearly $50 million a year, that's 50 million, that's not 50,000, that's $50 million a year to the membership training. That money is negotiated through collective bargaining, and that means every member votes on how much money is going to go out of their local that goes into their training fund to train their journeymen who have already gone through an apprenticeship, and our apprenticeship. Now we're going to what we do on mine sites. Layers, sheeting, shafting cable change-outs, maintenance, installation. A little bit of everything is what we do on the mine site. A mine site is made for us, for construction that we do because we do the construction on a construction site every single day of the year. We just take that same training, we moved it over to this along with the MSHA required, and we've got it. Approved training plans, the iron worker, 30 CFR Part 48B plans have been expanded to also meet the requirements of 30 CFR Part 46. Most of our work is done above ground. We have one local in Utah that we have underground instructors, but most of our instructors are surface instructors. We have 83 local unions have approved training plans, approved instructor's card. We actually give our members a photograph card. They get their From 3000M. They get that, but this also takes its place. The form if it's in anybody's pocket gets wet, you can't read it. This is laminated with their photograph and nobody can lie who it is. With 290 iron worker instructors have been trained and certified and approved by MSHA to be trainers. They incorporate in the local union apprenticeship classes, we have 7,745 iron workers who completed new miner training and refresher classes and that number is wrong because yesterday we just did the upgrade, we have 8,081 now, and they get a new miner's card the same way, laminated with a photograph on it of what training they have gone. Since 2000, union iron workers have worked over 13.5 million man hours on a mine site. Now that might not seem like a lot, but eight years ago when we started we weren't doing anything. Excuse me. Ten years ago we saw we weren't doing anything. Now you see what we have come to.\ Now, with that we have only suffered one fatality. Now on a regular job site we go through the years where we have had an average of 28 fatalities working with a regular construction site and as many as 32 fatalities in a year. But on a mine site, we've had one in all these years. There is the webpage for the iron workers organization, and I.M.P.A.C.T.'s website also. So what's so hard about preventing worker accidents? Does the worker want to be hurt? I don't think so. Does the employer want anyone hurt on the job? I don't think so either. And we definitely know the owner doesn't want anybody hurt. These are job sites. This is just regular job sites and we do this same work on the mine site. This is a collapse right here at the Convention Center here in Washington, D.C. Nobody was hurt. Nobody was there. It happened the first thing in the morning. Crane tipped over, this job here a fall from the scaffold. This iron worker here was lucky. I call that a near miss. A stud dropped seven floors, hit this iron worker in the arm, and I'm not going to say where it fell, but this boy was tough because we went right back to work after he got stitches. Now here this is sooner or later, the Henrich Triangle. You've got 600 near misses, 30 of them are minor, 10 are serious, but sooner or later you're going to get that fatality. Now everybody say, you know, fatalities, they do occur and fatalities they do happen. I do a lot of training around the country talking about classes and so forth of what we train, and I tell them everybody would like to see everybody go home every single night the way they went to work that day, but we know that doesn't happen. And what I call that is the fantasy world. What I call as the real life world is that one fatality. It happens. Whether they're driving to work, driving home, it happens. If no one wishes an accident to happen, who do we blame? Human behavior, and I heard one gentleman say this morning everybody blames the hourly worker, it's always the hourly worker's fault. Sometimes it may be, but it's the company's responsibility to make sure their foremen go out there every day and make sure these people work safe. If they see them doing something unsafe, they should send them home. When I worked in the field, I've been an iron worker for 40 years, I had two things. If you can't do what I tell you, you can't work for me, and that's the kind of mentality we are getting across now. I want to show you why. This is some more work we do out there. Modify human behavior. Define the correct behaviors, train to those behaviors, and punish or reward the behavior. That's how it works. Transition mine facilities: worker attitude, OSHA contradictions. What I mean by OSHA contradictions there, we train -- every instructor that trains our MSHA members have to have the OSHA 500 train to trainer card in their pocket. They also have to have the first aid CPR. All our instructors that go and take our classes, the train to trainer classes, have to have the same thing. The problem that we train is we train so much OSHA 500 that the standards don't coincide a lot of time, and one that comes to mind is the fall protection. Fall protection standards in OSHA, there are three. You've got subpart L, which is scaffolding, it's 10 feet. You've got subpart M, which is general fall protection, it's six feet; and you've got subpart R which involves my organization, steel erection is 15 and 30 feet. We have a definite area and distance that we know that we have to be protected with fall protection, and we require a full body harness. MSHA, on the other hand, if you read it, it's very vague. It actually says if you have the capability of falling, you have to be protected by fall protection. Does that mean if I fall off a curb, fall off a table, fall off a ladder? It's really up to the compliance officer out there on the job. There is good and there is bad to that. Sometimes they can say, well, you know, we know what you're trying to do, we'll go over here. Then sometimes somebody you get somebody who has a bad day, they throw you off the site. So the contradictions between OSHA and MSHA standards is a problem. Now, it's a new environment for our people to go out on a mine site and work. It's the same work they do on a regular construction site, but it's a different environment. A lot of machinery, a lot of big trucks, lot more conveyor belts, lot of dust, lot of problems out there, and like I said, most of our work is done above ground. We're all familiar with the equipment but through the time getting out there we get very familiar with that equipment, and some knowledge. Now, my transition to construction, same thing. MSHA's contradictions I always think about. It's a new environment for people who work here, come back out, unfamiliar equipment, summation and knowledge. So it's back and forth. MSHA signed a alliance with the iron workers on July 18, 2004. At the time we were the second organization they signed with the Operating Engineers were the first, a couple months later we signed with them. We have been working with them very close, as close as possible with them ever since then. Here is the signing. It was done out in San Diego, several MSHA members in there, some are retired now. Jeff is still here, but then our general president, Joe Hunt, he sided with them. Now, the MSHA-Iron Work Alliance shares best practices and technical knowledge back and forth. We get what they have. We give them what we do, and it's been working out for years. Develops and disseminates safety and health information. It fosters a culture of prevention. Master instructors for 2010 was Jack Gavett from Local 229 in San Diego, and myself, and I'm out of a local here, 201, but I've been working at headquarters for 20 years. David Weaver, Jeff Hoblick and Pat Hurley, Pat works in this building, David and Jeff work for MSHA around the country. We do a 20-hour MSHA classroom, we do 20 hours of PDC classroom, professional development classes, and they are actually taught by college professors who to train. Local union instructor become an MSHA instructor. They have to have a minimum of five years instructor at the local union. They have to be recommended by their joint apprenticeship committee from the local union to actually take the class. They have to have worked at the trade for a minimum of five years, and like I say, they have to have the OSHA 500 instructor card, and the first aid CPR card. I know MSHA requires the first aid training, we go a little step further, we have the CPR training also, and this is to ensure that everyone returns home every day from work. That's it. DR. WAGNER: Thank you very much. MR. MIGLIACCIO: Thank you. DR. WAGNER: Let me turn first to the panel. MR. KIRK: Yes, I have a question. MSHA doesn't count the contractor hours, so you have a tough time with injury rates. Do you track injury rates among your union members and do you differentiate between general construction and mining at all? MR. MIGLIACCIO: No. Every district counsel tracks their injuries and they do that four times a year through their meetings for the district council. The only thing that actually comes into my office is the executive director safety note is fatalities. MR. KIRK: Yes. MR. MIGLIACCIO: I get all fatalities and I have a report card that has to come back to me within five working days of the fatality with what happened. They have to tell me a lot about the person and then I'll do an investigation. MR. KIRK: So you don't have any hard numbers that indicate how trends may be going as far as injuries and how that works in the success of your training program? MR. MIGLIACCIO: No, just the fatalities have been drastically reduced, but no, not injury count. DR. WAGNER: I have a couple of questions. MR. MIGLIACCIO: Yes, sir. DR. WAGNER: Have you had experience with your members working on sites that have health and safety management programs that are in place, committed to, versus those that aren't? MR. MIGLIACCIO: Are you talking about mine sites? DR. WAGNER: On any industry. MR. MIGLIACCIO: On mine sites, we have the safety meetings and they are attended to by everybody there once a week. Anything goes on that comes across there and that's the actual people doing the work are a part of that committee. Our regular construction sites do the same thing, so there is -- I mean, we always have -- now if there is an accident on the job, whether it's our trade or not, then that just upgrades another meeting that week. Our management, they know how important it is so that's all on company time when they do this. This isn't something they do on the outside time. The management wants to make sure things are safe, too. Like I said, just having our fatalities rates have been dropping for the last I'd say seven years they have been coming down, and I put that all to -- our number one kill is falls. I mean, if you look at the sites we work it it's the number one killer. Since subpart R came into effect, we have to be tied off at 15 -- at 15 feet if you're doing anything, but if you're a connector they have a variance of 30 feet. When I worked in the field, that was my tie-off right there. That was my hand was my tie-off, I trusted my hand. The difference is is with the new standards come out with OSHA you're starting to see that this new -- everybody has to be tied off. We have trouble with the older members because they are like me and they're used to using nets, and we have a hard time getting them to use the harnesses. Here, again, if they don't use them, they should be put off the job. The company is going to get cited for it. The foreman works for the company and it's their job to make sure they do it. So you can see it's been coming down. Last year was our best year until this year. We had nine fatalities. This is the first time we have had single digit fatalities since, and we have been 100 years old. This year we have got three fatalities. Now don't think that's all due to training, the economy is terrible, so our work hours are terrible, too. What I do is I look at man hours for working out in the field, and I look at the fatalities we have that year and I make my adjustments, and I make my reports that way. This year is terrible. DR. WAGNER: Do you feel that all hazards can be eliminated from the workplace? MR. MIGLIACCIO: Manmade hazards, yes. Natural hazards, no. And the reason I say that we've had membership working out there, a storm jumps up, they get electrocuted by lightening. There is no way, that's what I was saying about you can't control every aspect. Manmade, yes, I think they can. Look at our fall rates. They have come down drastically. DR. WAGNER: Any questions from the audience? Please, and I'm sorry, to capture you if you would come closer to the microphone on the table to ask a question, identify yourself and then ask him. MS. SNYDER: Kathy Snyder, Mine Safety and Health News. Just curious, in addition to safety training are there elements of safety that are part of your collective bargaining agreement with your employers? MR. MIGLIACCIO: Okay, I think I know what you mean. MS. SNYDER: Safety programs, following certain rules. MR. MIGLIACCIO: Oh, yeah. I mean, the companies have -- a lot of companies have rules, our safety programs have to be written. The company has to have a written safety plan. Some of the things that the companies have to do now, which just came across from OSHA, was safety equipment has to be purchased by the company, so the collective bargaining, the unions, we know it's going to happen that way. Right now we have an organizing campaign with a company in Maryland and Virginia that they're making their workers buy their own safety equipment. That's against the law. Now, the two things that the person has to buy themselves, the worker has to buy themselves are personal items. If you wear prescription lens glasses for your safety glasses and you require a prescription, they have to purchase that themselves because they can take that with them. The other thing is safety boots, the steel toe boots, I should say. On the mine sites we know, all our members know before they get there they have to have steel toe shoes to get out on the job site, but the one thing through the collective bargaining agreement what we do is we work it out with the contractors that they will give them so much money towards those safety shoes because, believe me, they get cold in the winter and nobody is going to wear them off the job unless they have to but nobody else is going to want to wear them on the job if somebody else has their feet in them. I hope that answers your question. DR. WAGNER: Thank you very much. MR. KIRK: I do have one more question if I can. DR. WAGNER: Okay. MR. KIRK: You didn't really call it out but I see some of the principles of the safety and health management programs in here as far as management leadership commitment as far as your headquarters people and also in the field, the supervising foreman and training accountability, working through the lines. Were these principles, are they written into your program and were they done on purpose, or do we find that they just sort of evolve? MR. MIGLIACCIO: Well, they are written, any of our written programs or contractors, like I said, have to have a written program, a safety program. They have to have it on the job, and they have to keep it back at their headquarters, and through the years a lot of thing has just evolved, but with the new regulations coming out there is new stuff being put in. It's a living document, so there is constantly things changing there. MR. KIRK: Do the iron workers -- have you guys purposely instituted this or do you depend on the contractors? MR. MIGLIACCIO: No, no, we have instituted a lot of it. Now, we've got good contractors, don't get me wrong. A lot of contractors sit at our table. They spend their money to come to our table and work with us. They helped put this together. Just like every other industry out there, not every contractor is forthcoming like that. You have got to drag them tooth and nail to get them to come to the table, but once an organization agrees on it, and they sign a collective bargaining agreement with a local union, then that means they are under that agreement and they have to do everything that's in the agreement. One of the things we have in New York City fall protection, subpart R, like I said, 15 feet and 30 feet. In New York City, a contractor up there signed a collective bargaining, knew that that was the agreement, and we all know that the state or the contractor can meet or exceed the standard. Well, one of the contractors wanted 100 percent tie-off for all the iron workers working in the city. And they said you signed the collective bargaining agreement and that's what we live by, and if the iron workers didn't want to tie off and 100 percent, they didn't have to. I'm not saying that's right, I'm not saying it's wrong, but the contract knew they signed the agreement. They just don't think they can enforce the issue. DR. WAGNER: Thank you very much. MR. MIGLIACCIO: Thank you. DR. WAGNER: We are having two speakers from Chevron Mining, Inc. next. Mark Premo, Senior Vice President and Dave Partridge, Vice President of Technology. MR. PREMO: Thank you, Dr. Wagner and the panel. On behalf of Chevron Mining and Chevron, it is a pleasure for us to be here this morning to talk about our processes and program. Dave Partridge and I are with Chevron Mining, the mining division of Chevron Corporation, and we are headquartered in Denver, and we're a fairly small company, a little over a thousand employees, and three mines, and actually four operations: one in reclamation mode, but the mines are surface coal, hardrock underground and underground coal. A lot of what we talk about here today, and Dave and I are going to kind of tag team, but a lot of what we talk about here today are the management system processes that are from Chevron adapted to the mining business. We have certain governance from the corporation that we adapted to mining. Most specifically, as we dig a little deeper in our discussion, we're going to focus on underground coal. We think that's probably the focus area for this today. Just a couple of lead-in comments and then Dave will take over awhile on the management system process. We do believe, first of all, that all incidents, all accidents are preventable. We firmly believe that in the corporation. There is no one answer to this question that's before us today, what do we do about safety; no one answer. We think it's all the way between culture, consistent processes, consistent use of the processes, compliance. We think it's a lot of things that contribute to the right answer, but no one answer. The mine that we'll focus on a little bit later in the discussion is underground coal mine with two continuous miner units, around 3 million tons per year, around 380 employees in total, so that we can kind of get more into those details as we go forward. So at this time Dave Partridge, Vice President of Technical Services, will talk and Dave has got around 35 years in the industry, both surface and underground, both coal and hardrock, so Dave. MR. PARTRIDGE: Thanks, Mark, and again thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I'm going to talk a little bit about the safety management system that we use in Chevron Mining and apologize if I use a few acronyms as I go but that seems to be part of our culture. The Operational Excellence Management System is Chevron's integrated approach to a management system, and so it not only covers safety and health, but it covers the environment, reliability and efficiency, so those five components which really dictate the whole operating environment for a mine are what we manage in one comprehensive safety system or management system, and I think that in itself may be somewhat unique and somewhat beneficial and you have a holistic management system that everybody is familiar with across the organization in every different part of the operation. What we do initially is establish a vision and I'll refer to the Operational Excellence Management System as OE, Operational Excellence, and we established an OE vision and that vision that we have is recognized and admired by industry and the communities in which we operate is world class in safety, health, environment, reliability and efficiency, and sometimes we struggle with what that definition of world class, but we've tried to set some metrics or objectives for Chevron Mining and make sort of a quick metric 0-100-0, so we strive to have zero incidents and injuries. We want to have 100 percent of our planned production, and we want to have zero citations, violations and spills, so that's the ultimate objective for our organization. When we take a look at the Operational Excellence Management System, it was built with three distinct areas: leadership accountability, management system process, or again MSP, another acronym, and the early expectations. And Chevron guides this with a -- it's about a 10-page brochures that sort of outlines at a very high level what operational excellence is and how the systems should function. In the leadership accountability portion is, again as other speakers have mentioned, you probably, probably that most important key element. If leadership isn't on board with the management system from top to bottom, it's not going to work for you, and Chevron is very committed from the CEO of the corporation on down, our President Fred Nelson, very committed to operational excellence, and that leadership role runs all the way down through the organization, even down to the natural leaders in your workforce that aren't necessarily having the titles of manager or superintendent, but the safety committee leaders and just natural leaders, and very key that those folks are on board, understand the program, and want to move forward with it. Then the second area is the management system process and that's really the governance around how we manage, and we have five steps in the graphic that surround leadership accountability, and first we want to set the vision objective. Then we want to assess how do we stand against what we define as world class performance, what are the gaps? After that we put together a plan, what's our plan for the year to try and close those gaps? Then we implement that plan, and then towards the end of the year we do a review, how did we do on the actions that we set forth to close that gap? And then every year we go around that cycle. We revalidate our vision and objectives, and then run through that cycle on an annual basis, so it really helps to drive towards world class performance and make a continuing improvement in the management system. And this MSP is operated at the mine level, it's operated in our corporate mining office level, and then it's operated at the corporation level, so we take inputs from the MSP from the mine levels, feeds up to my level, I feed it up to the corporate level, so we're all looking to continually improve our management system that way. And then the real basis for how we do work within the management system is what we call our OE expectations, and there is 13 elements that are listed in the book here, and I'll walk you through those real quickly. It's really the basis for how we're going to perform work in the workplace. Seven of the 13 elements really have a safety and health focus, and you can see there are things from security personnel and assets to safe operations, which is the one we'll zero down on today and get into more detail; management change; contractor health and safety management; incident investigation; emergency management; compliance assurance. So those are really the core elements that focus on safety. Then we have six additional elements that certainly touch on safety but they are more focused on the reliability, efficiency, and environmental area, and those include facility's design and construction; reliability and efficiency environmental stewardship; product stewardship; community awareness and outreach; and legislative and regulatory advocacy. So, those 13 elements, we feel, really encompass the whole business and the way we operate our business. So just to do a quick drill down to give you a feel under element three, safe operations, we have, I think, 11 OE processes, we call them, in place which now start to detail out how we're going to safely manage our work, and things such as safe work practices, risk management, JAs, this was talked about, Haz. Comm., motor vehicle safety, repetitive stress injury prevention, behavioral-based safety or workplace observations, occupational hygiene, fitness for duty, training, and then documents and records management. And I'm going to do one more drill down here just on safe work practices to kind of show you the level of detail that we get into, and the safe work practice is really how we control the work out in the field. They define how we want our employees to do work. Through following those safe work practices, we think we can perform incident and injury free. And Mark is going to talk in a little more detail about a few of these but think incident free, self-performed safety assessment is a pre-task process that employees use to make sure that they assess the risk and perform the task safely. Of course, lock-out, tag-out, working at heights, lifting and rigging, manual material handling, excavation trenching, confined space entry, hot work, electrical safe work, and permit to work simultaneous operations. So those are really the nuts and bolts that we train our employees on so that they know how to properly manage the work safely. I think with that I'll turn it back over to Mark here and he'll dive into a little more detail on a few of these areas. MR. PREMO: Thanks, Dave. We really have a lot to talk about. I'll try to go fairly fast and again, as Dave mentioned, we are really just hitting the highlights here, the top kind of level of the things we do. This topic is so involved, so integrated and so near and dear to our hearts we can talk for two days steady, straight. So moving forward here, critical safety tools, we have got, and I want to really highlight a couple of things we have heard already today. We're going to talk about a lot of things here that are tools. They are in the toolbox. If I, management, or if I, an employee, a worker on the face, if I'm not committed to it, if I'm not committed to use those tools, use the right tools at the right time, they are going to stay in that toolbox. So underscoring all of what we talk about here in terms of regulatory control, policies, and these tools, these processes, it has to be a personal and strong value commitment from each and every employee, including, as Fred mentioned, our CEO, and that goes to the CEO of Chevron Corporation who we talk to regularly about this topic, to supervisors, to workers, each and every person. It only takes on lapse on one shift on one day and the worst can happen, so that's why it's so important that this is absolutely comprehensive, absolutely every task the right way every time. So the tenets of operation, we will have those in a minute here, and stop work authority are two of those tools, and I want to really highlight and talk about those. Everything we do comes as well with training. There is training packages that the mines use. They adapt to their own operations, but the core fundamentals are consistent among all the operations. So our tenets of operation are guided by two key principles. Do it safely or not at all, and there is always time to do it right. And I'll say that these slogans are good, but if that's on a wall in a poster or if it's on a bookshelf and we don't do it right, then it's going to be the same as a lot of what we may have seen in the past, that it will just sit there. So when we're in the operations, I expect that general managers, I expect myself to live by that, and that may mean -- I caution someone taking, stop a project, stop a job, and get more tools, get more people, and not production over safety. Safety is preeminent. Safety is the core value. Safety is the foundation. Production will come later. We make it a habit out of addressing, talking with employees on a ratio of five to one, safety comments and well being comments related to -- as compared to production comments. I have learned, I have learned talking to folks in the workforce that I don't really even need to talk about production. They know that's why we are there. They know that's why they are there. When I go into the mines I talk about safety, talk about the person, talk about safety, talk about what we are doing, how we are going to do it safely, talk about incidence and injury, what can I do, what can I do from my position to bring more to you for this operation to be safe, for you to be safe in what you're going to do. And if we get around to the production toward the end of that discussion, fine, and most times we don't, we don't need to. Production will follow. So an example of we do it safely or not at all, and there is always time to do it right. An example of some of the tenets of the operation, always operate within the design of the environmental limits. I mean we are all guilty of pushing everything to the max, and unfortunately sometimes cross the max, but we have a tenet that guides our decisions, that guides our actions, that guides what we do. A favorite of mine, number two, always operate in a safe and controlled condition. Absolutely table stakes must be done, and number four, follow safe work practices and procedures. We talk about these tenets in every safety meeting, every conversation, every root cause analysis refers back to the tenets to find out which tenets were in play, and I can guarantee you that it's usually a combination. Every accident is a combination of several of these tenets, or a bridge, or weren't taken into consideration with what we were doing. The swiss cheese kind of example that you hear about. Number eight, address abnormal conditions. If we get all set for what we're going to do, we plan it all out, and a good question is how many days go exactly as planned? How many things go exactly as planned? Not very often, hardly ever. So we've got to address abnormal conditions or changes. So that's kind of one of the bases. Every employee in the organization, people working on the face, equipment operators, supervisors know these tenets. They know that they are to be a guide for our decisions. Stop work authority, this is another fundamental and basic foundation principle within the mining operation. Every employee in the mining operation, myself included, and this is consistent across all of Chevron, 65,000 employees, have stop work authority, and that stop work authority is you can immediately stop any unsafe activity or behavior that threatens the safety, establishes the responsibility and authority, so here comes when you have authority you have responsibility. We all do. We know that. Stop, notify, evaluation, correct, and resume. Every employee has a card in their pocket or they have one in their lunch pail or they have two or three or they have lost a few and they have a few more. I mean, they are all over the place. So you have stop work authority card. And one thing I'd like to note about this. Years before we started stop work authority we would always tell people, remember, do it safely or not at all. That was all good. But I was a little bit assuming that that would work that that did it, and I learned later, this is a really key learning for me. I learned later that the card actually, that the general manager's signature, my signature, the CEO's signature, it means something to people. It means something to employees. So actually having that, not that they have to physically show it, they don't have to show it, but they have it, and it reminds them. It reminds them of that authority and that responsibility they have to have. So, so many employees I've talked to and they said, you know, I really did not recognize my full authority or my full responsibility until I was reminded of a day after day shift after shift. So I really believe the card did well. The other key thing about stop work authority to me, and I've seen it personally, I have exercised stop work authority myself, but stop work authority comes in all shapes and sizes. It doesn't need to be -- it can be but not always it won't show up as shutting down the whole production run. It might be shutting down a maintenance project to get a piece of equipment properly equipped. If I am an individual employee working generally by myself on a repair, and I'm getting ready to use a tool that's not intended for the job, and I heard that earlier today, I can either stop work authority right there, me, myself and I, and take the one minute, five minutes or 10 minutes, whatever it takes to go get the right tool, or I can try to adapt and do something that might slip up and bust my knuckles or get stitches or whatever. So that stop work authority comes really in small packages. It may come in big packages. It may mean that we've got to shutdown a whole operation for a day or two until we get things straightened out. It doesn't happen that often but certainly every employee in the operation has the authority. I have asked employees when things were getting a little bit out of whack and didn't feel right, didn't look right, didn't seem right, I would ask them did you stop the work? Well, no, I didn't. I said, well, why not? You should have. I'm depending on you. I'm not there. I'm not there on that continuous miner section on a shift on a certain day of the week, I'm just not, and so everyone has that authority. It really a valuable tool, really important to me. It's important to me that the employees have this. It's important to me that they know that they are comfortable with it so we continue in our employee surveys to ask are you comfortable with stop work authority? If not, why not? Then we assess our gaps and fix that. There is a view on the screen there what stop work authority covered. An employee or contractor for the McKinley Mines, this happens to be in New Mexico, we've got one for the entire company as well. You are responsible and authorized to stop any work that is unsafe, does not comply with the law, or comply with this tenet shown on the reverse side of the card. There will be no repercussions to you. Your ideas and concerns are important. This is our commitment to you. This one happened to be signed by the general manager of a service coal mine in New Mexico. Moving on, we have, as Dave mentioned, one other process, think incident free or self-perform safety assessment. This is a process, and again I've really have to reiterate, these processes are out there to check the box. They are not out there to make more paper. They are not out there to be a block for what you do. They are a tool for what we do. So the self-perform safety assessment covers four areas. It covers state of mind, training, planning, and proper tools and equipment. Every employee has -- they've got cards for this as well, but most people have it memorized, and there is a written sheet shown on the right here, and the employees do go through this process with their crew or themselves, it could be an individual, it could be crew-wise, and they go through these four components before starting a job or a shift, so they will look at it and say, do I have what I need, do I have the planning done, do I have the tools, do I have the right state of mind, and we have state of mine covered, yellow on some of the cards, that's the most important; training, training, am I missing anything? And really some steps to go through to really think about what's going to happen. What we did originally we were saying we want you to do this before every job, read it before every job, and then during the shift if something changes, we finish this job and I'm going to move onto something else. I'm going to move to a new area of the mine, I'm going to change the hall around or go do something different, and you may do that again. I've got enough for repair and I'm going to move on to the next and do it again. It could take five minutes if it's a complex job, it may take 30 minutes of a crew meeting to go through this. Whatever it takes it takes. That's all good. So we had the card and we were going through this and we probably weren't getting the results we wanted, I don't think we were, so we implemented kind of a phase 2 or another component. On the right side of that screen you see it's the written card. They actually go through it and write down the things that could be a potential hazard with what we're going to do today, the tools, equipment, what could get me hurt, any changes, and I'm willing to make changes if I get into this and something -- a condition changed, so it's a commitment. Most employees sign them. If I'm in a mine visiting one of our mines, I'll go to an employee and say, how is your SPSA or TIF before the shift, or during the shift? They will tell me. I'll ask them, I'll look at that card, and by the way, they want to see mine, and I'll have mine in my pocket. Mine won't be really fixing anything or carrying anything because I don't really know how. I could try and then they would have to redo it, but what I have is -- my TIF usually is I'm here for my tour, and underground, of course, I've got to keep an eye on slips and trips, I've got to know where the car rats are on the section. I've got to know what's happening in the haulage so I know where to go, where not to go. I've got to watch out for overhead. State of mind, sometimes I let folks know when I'm going underground, I say, look, I'm going underground 16 hours today, 12 hours -- I'm not whining by the way. I've been all over the place and I'm a little fatigued right now, so help me, keep an eye on me. I'll watch where I walk. I'll watch where I step so I won't slip, trip, or fall. So it's for everybody in the organization. It's really fun to be able to say let me see your TIF. We trade them. We look at each other's, and sometimes I will have an employee sign mine, has a countersign to say they acknowledge it's very good. Hazard identification tool. We have a hazard identification tool that supports the TIF, SPSA. It's a visual tool. It focuses on hazard ID, and again, it's another -- it could be a pocket card. These are for learning to help us memorize. We have them around. We can refer to them. They are all over the place, but it talks about the hazards, a method to unduly tasks, to do them reliably. It's control hierarchy. Remove the energy source. Prevent energy release, protect and use stop work authority when you need to. You can see a lot of these processes they integrate. As Dave mentioned earlier, these aren't single one-stop things that we put out there. They are things that we really -- that all tie together. They all integrate in the management system process, so that's how we keep track of what we're doing. So this addresses gravity motion, mechanical-electrical pressure, temperature, chemical, biological, radiation and sound. I will say that if you ask someone about -- in this case we're removing the energy source. If you ask someone lock-up tag-up, 90 something percent of people immediately think about electrical. That's where our mind goes. That's what we're trained to do. That's what we think, and then we've got to remember there is motion, there is kinetic potential, there is all sorts of energy out there that we may not have addressed. It's to help us do that. Hazard identification, too, those hazards have been mitigated, and work proceeds. Manual material handling, we tracked our accident and incident rates and as always, and particularly in the underground mines and on surface mines as well occasionally, but a lot of our accidents were in manual material handling. Lifting, carrying too much, twisting ergonomics, rotator cuff, knees, you name it, we're used to that. Smashing your hands, whatever. So we look constantly for better ways, mechanical ways, leverage, get some leverage. So we introduced some mechanical material handling safe work practice, a tool, and we talk about lifting, pushing, pulling, reaching, grasping, slipping, struck by and caught between. So it's the guide that guides the manual material handling. That process has a bunch of things in there to do, not to do, so it helps guide that work. Our goal is to eliminate and avoid the hazards, reduce and control. Compliance assurance, I really do want to spend some time talking about this one. We have all these processes in place, and a lot of the audits that take place after that will tell us how we're doing. Are we doing what we say we're going to do? Do we know, are our people aware of how the tenets of operation guide their decisions. Are they aware of the things that are un manual material handling? There are safe work practices that Dave mentioned. So, we have five levels of audits that we do at the mines as part of our compliance assurance process. A level one audit is the largest audit. It's a corporate, corporate team. There is a significant amount of governance around these audits. There is legal oversight as well. The level one audit is Chevron-sponsored, corporate-sponsored and it's a week long audit. The audit team can be anywhere from probably five to 10 people. Subject matter experts in certain areas. The nice thing about our mines is that we will have folks at our -- one of our coal mines will maybe on an audit team for Chevron offshore oil platform or a midcontinental oil production unit, or shipping. The value there is that we learn best practice sharing and things across the organization, across the broader Chevron organization, best practice things. There are plans that we can put to work in a coal mine that might be a best practice from an oil field, so there is good sharing that way. So that's the level one audit on a three-year cycle. The level two audit is annual self-assessment of our OE performance. I do want to make a comment about this. At the annual self-assessment, we take those processes that Dave talked about, and there are pages thick, everyone of them, several things that we do in those processes. We do a self-assessment to see if we have followed our process, and this is where everyone is involved. Every person in our entire organization is a safety person. Every person is an EO person. It doesn't fall into somebody's department. Everyone is involved. I am sponsor of several processes as well as Dave, and line managers are, supervisors are. A supervisor, that's a second supervision, may be a sponsor of a certain process in that mine. They are the ones that make sure we have the right documents, the meetings, the people at the audits, so on and so forth. So the level two audit self-assessment. We also include in that at the mine level, and also at the Chevron Mining level representative employees, so there will be a fire boss or a ram car operator, or a shear operator that will be on that team to assess how we did in a given element, a given process of OE, and so those folks that are on that team will come to Denver and we will have a review for the corporation, so there will be a shear operator in our office in Denver for a couple of days to go through the process. What we've learned is it's not altogether that revealing for the senior leaders to sit around a room and talk about how the senior leader is doing. You probably know what the answer might be. (Laughter.) So, it's so important to go out and get other peoples' view, other peoples' idea, and that's how we involve people. Level three audit is the next level down and that's Chevron Mining sponsored. It doesn't involve the corporation, doesn't involve others, but Chevron Mining, our own, our four mines. We have an annual cycle for each of the operations. It's a week long and the team might be six or eight people. We do include other subject matter experts out there. As a matter of fact, we have included several retired MSHA inspectors on these teams that are consultants now. They are on these teams. They come in and help us with a new set of eyes looking at it, what's your process, how do you track your weekly inspections and fix things, so they do help us a lot. They bring a lot of experience. The level four and five audits, this is really important as well. These are mine audits, so Dave and I in Denver we're not directly involved. We do hear about them, we do kind of track them, we have a process to track these. But a level four and five audit will include the mine safety committee, and the safety committee chairman and other subject matter experts in the mine, other informal leaders in the mine, workers, they are on the audit team, and they will go through the mine and look at everything and you can kind of consider it your bi-monthly or weekly inspection. A point that I want to make here that I think is really interesting in terms of gaining mutual trust, communication, mutual respect and alignment for all of what we do is to include everyone. This isn't management stuff. It's not a worker thing. It's all of us. So on these level four and five audit teams, of course the safety committee and a lot of folks are very involved, and I'll say one more thing. This is important. At one of our mines the local union safety committee chairman, and Dennis knows all this by heart, we all do, but in the contract it's elected and they do the inspections every other month and other things, we have asked that person at one of our operations to back away from the job they are doing and be a full-time safety person, be a safety department as a committee person. So now our weekly inspections, the chairman of the safety committee is really handling a lot of that work, and really instrumental with striving for incident and injury free, and that's their full-time job at the mine. That's what they do, so that's very important. The audits are documented, actions are developed and tracked, so a tracking system is so important. It won't do any good to write a bunch of things on a list and never get back to it, so we're continuously and constantly tracking through systems. The historical mining culture, we heard this today, our historical culture is this is mining so, you know, there are going to be accidents and people are going to get hurt, and I've been in this about 30 something years now. As I said, between the two of us we have 70 years, so when we're together we're pretty old. But that's the old paradigm. This is mining so people are going to get hurt. Go around a mine. Look at how many fingers are missing. Look at how many people aren't walking straight. It's sad. It's not right and we can do better and we're going to do better. Our belief, as I mentioned, is that we are and can be -- we believe we can be incident and injury free. So the processes and safe work practices, they won't yield the results, along with regulatory effort, won't yield the results unless everyone takes ownership, everyone takes ownership. So, for instance, at one of the mines when we put in behavioral-based safety we didn't buy a program and go put it in. We asked six people from the workforce and a couple of supervisors, a team of eight to back out of their normal jobs for about six months or a year, and develop a BBS program. They took the best that was out there. They went to review BST, DuPont, all the ones that are out there that we all know about. They took pieces from those and combined them and put them into what worked for us, but they designed it. That was the beauty of it. They designed it, it's their program, so that's one way that we said ownership, you have to have ownership. A concerned effort is underway to develop an IIF, incident and injury free culture, and care and concern for employees. One of the ways that comes out is that until we have a care and concern for our people, for our folks we work with, we can't truly stand in the gap and be there for them to help them be incident and injury free, and that includes directing less safe behaviors. If I don't have a relationship with someone, trust, or some communication type relationship, I will be reluctant to stop them. We recognize that, so we have a component in our training that builds that relationship from all levels of the organization. It starts at the top of the organization, cuts across traditional boundaries. We do everything we can do to have it not be us and them. As I mentioned, we have some full-time roles for safety committee folks. It goes all the way from the CEO of the company to the people on the face, the BBS team I mentioned that was designed by a representative workforce, the whole BBS process in the mine. So it's a cultural change. We have made significant progress but there is much work to be done. I'm not saying today that we are there. I'm just saying that I think we found out that -- we came onto some things that we think is working. I'll show some metrics in a little while. DR. WAGNER: I wonder if we could move towards metrics pretty soon. MR. PREMO: I'll do that. I'll move along. As a matter of fact, the next slide. DR. WAGNER: Thank you. MR. PREMO: Leading indicators, we have got BBS observations, near miss reports and stop work authority. We talked about those processes, but we do record the numbers. We do record those and review them on a monthly basis with all the operations. For instance, so far year to date there has been 18,000 BBS observations at the underground coal mine in Alabama. There has been 1,700 stop work authority events, so that will tell you that they do use that. We use these as leading indicators. If these drop off, it's tip off that we've got to get on it, we've got to be looking at it. We think leading indicators have much more leverage than lagging indicators. Injury rates, this chart will show some difficulty after 2000 where our rates were -- for TIR, our reportable rates were fluctuating. We had a bad year in 2005. You can see both of those. We started getting better in '06, then it leveled and now we're on the end of 2010 on a decline. Our current recordable rate is 1.49 at the underground mine in North River. That's 3 million tons, 300 employees, and our days away from work rate is .3 at that mine. That's one incident so far this year for days away from work and five incidents for recordable at that mine, so that's -- as Dave mentioned, I don't know if you can see the pointer -- OEMS development started and it's fully deployed. You can see it's a journey. It doesn't happen overnight, so the trajectory in the end is to head to our target. I would mention the coal mining industry is, as you see those targets right there, they are tenfold, they're times 10 what major oil companies will experience. So if you look at all the major oil companies, their numbers are a tenth of those, so we are targeting those targets in mining. I want to take a look at citations. We put in a citation reduction process at the mine as part of our compliance assurance. We have 143 citations at the underground coal mine in Alabama this year. So far our rate is three or so, and we have reductions that range from 11 percent to 35 and 35 percent year on year. I think that the way we got there on this is using the audits, using the tools we talked about, but also supervisors and employees are -- they are in control of their domain. They know that work, they know the equipment, and the employees in the coal mine did step up and say, I can make this compliance happen. We have many, many inspection shifts after inspection shifts with no citations, and the inspectors are inspecting us hard. They are looking at everything, I mean everything. We are very comprehensively inspected. The way I address the employees is it's our goal to eliminate citeable conditions, citeable conditions. So to wrap up, our safety management systems are yielding results. All levels of the organization must have commitment, senior management, my management, employees, and that commitment, there are ways to demonstrate that. It's not just commitment that I haven't told anybody about or no one can tell, but people have got to see it, so there is ways to demonstrate it. The overall management system integrates safety in managing the business. Safety is how we manage the business, not the other way around. It's part and parcel of everything. Seeing results takes times. It's a journey. It isn't going to be overnight, and the organization has got to stay the course. We have got to make commitments and stay with them. We can't flip-flop around with all different things year on year. There has to be consistency. That's what we have learned. The processes of regulations and policies by themselves don't -- we won't get the benefit or get incident or injury free until we make that step to say that safety is a value, foundation of value each and every employee of the organization. We would be happy to answer any questions. DR. WAGNER: Thank you very much. MR. FETTY: I have a question. How long has your program been in place? And then to follow up with that, after you initially implemented it, how long was it before you started seeing some benefits? MR. PREMO: I think we are pretty well four or five years now, about five years on implementation, but implementation is even a journey. We developed it year after year, make it stronger, so all these processes have shaping plans, so we implement it with the core and we shape it as we go. So I would say in the first couple of years it's sort of up and down. You're not sure. You're feeling your way along, and then maybe in years three to five you start seeing the results. Dave, any comments? MR. PARTRIDGE: I think that's right. MR. PREMO: Any other questions? MR. KIRK: Can you say something about the management change and how it affects safety? MR. PREMO: Absolutely. Management change is another -- it maybe wasn't highlighted in here. Dave mentioned it. It absolutely affects safety because when we go do something, whether it's a mechanical process or a repair, if it's parts were putting on or a process, we have a process we go through to address every other effect that it might have, and we have caught several things that may have led to a condition, a situation or an incident, but the MOC process did uncover something that was haywire with what we were trying to do because of the process. I don't have stats with me, we do have them. Management change is something that in the RCA and root cause analysis is also addressed. Did we do, what did we do, so yes. MR. DISTASIO: I see you spent a tremendous amount of time with this, I was in fact shocked when you shutdown card, and even more shocked when I saw the 1,700 shutdowns in a year for just one facility, and how did your upper management deal with this, I guess, when someone came up with this idea to give that authority and it's got to have an effect on what we normally perceive as productivity? And we normally think that with all this stuff being shutdown, people taking time to do TIFs, do the audits, and all this. I'm losing time here, and yet you must obviously feel that this is a benefit. MR. PREMO: Very good question, and those are the components that are strongly endorsed by management, so management is already behind them when we implement them. Initially there is a reduction in everything we do, but we've got to stay the course and say, hey, that's part of life. We're not going to have accidents. So eventually as people get good at this and can do these things it's not altogether a matter of how long we run, but how efficiently we run, so we're doing these processes and doing things that uncover inefficiencies inherently in our process, the TIF, I might figure out something that I'm going to need dene on the face mid-shift, I'll take it with me, so then if something happens down on the face that would have -- what I said before, I just didn't think about it, just took off, I didn't have to stop that 20 minutes down the shift and go get it or whatever. So there are inherent inefficiencies. But the stop work authority, I'll say in total, are running higher tonnage and higher efficiency, higher productivity with all this in place than we were previous. That's all there is to it. DR. WAGNER: You mentioned the results from your underground coal. Do you have comparable results from the underground hardrock and surface coal? MR. PREMO: We do. Right now I think the coal is showing -- the underground coal is showing the best results maybe because the databases were bigger in terms of incidents to work with, so we've made a larger percentage change, but we're seeing results at all the operations, similar. One thing I will say some of the places are quite small. We become statistically challenged. One accident throws us out of the range for the metric for the year. So we're a little bit challenged there, but we're seeing results across the board here. DR. WAGNER: You have one more? MR. FEEHAN: I do. Thanks for your presentation, Mark. Tell me a bit about how you prepare your first line supervisors and your managers and your employees for this program. Did you take your first line supervisors and put them through a week of training of what you're expecting, or was it an hour a month or an hour a week? What went into that. MR. PREMO: Good question. It varies from mine to mine. There is a significant amount of training behind everyone of these processes, but we do have standardized OE training that takes place. For instance, at one of the mines the target training for every employee is a day per month for the year, so 12 days of training for each employee for the year to go through the session. The surface mining in Wyoming was on a fault protection most recently, that's as an example. The folks will spend a shift in fault protection training, that sort of thing. So each process has its training. Overall OE has two-three days of training. The mine in New Mexico has OE training for an hour every Thursday of every week for the entire year, so that's kind of how they handle it. DR. WAGNER: Time for one or two questions from the audience if there are any. Larry, and please come forward and identify yourself. MR. GRAYSON: Larry Grayson, Penn State. DR. WAGNER: No, they don't project. It's just for the court reporter. MR. GRAYSON: Penn State University. Following up on Richard's question, what was the implementation process like from early commitment to all the way down through the organization until you finally kicked this into gear? MR. PREMO: Good question, Larry. The implementation process had its ups and down, so basically what we would do is -- in designing the process get a lot of input from the teams at the mines so they wouldn't get something in a mining operation from our Denver office, got a lot of buy-in, fit the purposes. There are a lot of processes, even in the OEMS, Dave mentioned that worked real well in an oil field for Chevron, but may not work so well in our coal mine, so we designed those fit for purposes. The implementation at the mine is training for all employees, and I think the hardest hurtle and one that we are starting to get a handle on is supervisor commitment because -- just because vice presidents or managers or department heads think something is good, it still is not going to work every day, every shift out there unless the supervisor says that's my process. So there were challenges in that area, so special training for supervisors and accountability piece, I didn't mention it, but there is an accountability piece as well. DR. WAGNER: Thank you very much. Mr. Gomez? MR. PREMO: We are also going to submit a couple of books too, Dr. Wagner, for your information. MR. GOMEZ: Manuel Gomez, U.S. Chemical Safety Board. A number of the speakers in your presentation of the issue of behavioral safety and observation of safe behavior appeared, and not directly in yours but in earlier one; not only that but the issue of behavioral safety assumptions arising from such observations. As an aside, in a number of the catastrophic incidents that we investigate, although the immediate cause of some of those incidents may appear to be -- may actually be an unsafe, a so-called unsafe act. Note for the record that I used hand quotation marks. In fact, a good cause is often much more complicated and it's related to production pressures. Often standard operating procedures that have historically been shortcut to meet those production pressures, et cetera, et cetera. I won't belabor the point. But my question is do you do behavioral safety observations -- and I suppose I should add sanctions -- for foremen, for line supervisors, upper supervisors, perhaps the plant manager and I suppose somewhat jokingly I could say for members of the board of directors, but I don't quite mean that, but I really am asking because those production pressures, another perverse incentives that sometimes drive the so-called unsafe acts at the trenches, so to speak, we have found in our investigations are often driven by pressures from above. So do you do those observations, and are there sanctions? How do you make sure people do what they are supposed to do in the management system that are not the front line workers? MR. PREMO: Good question and I'll address that. We do the behavioral-based observations primarily when the work is being done, but that can and does include supervisors' direct oversight of that work. The accountability for supervisors is that implementation of these processes to achieve incident and injury free is part of their employment performance evaluation. There are supervisors that have been asked to leave their employment due to not getting the work done the right way, and we try everything we can do to not only let that be indicators, but other indicators. We stress from the CEO of the company, myself, Dave, is that this is safe work, safe behaviors and safety over production. One of the general managers shut down a truck fleet for a few days, most of the trucks, some of them got back in the run for weeks, because it was a chronic problem, and we couldn't get them fixed, we couldn't get them fixed, so he just put his foot down. My advice or my comments back to that general manager in his performance review was plus, plus, plus, good job. Good job shutting that down. I know we missed yardage that week, the month. I know we didn't hit our monthly targets, but that's not important to me. What's important to me is getting the equipment so it's in absolute operating condition. So we manage it through what we call PMP process, performance management process for salary people, and these metrics are in there for every supervisor, including myself. DR. WAGNER: Thank you very much, Mark and Dave, for all the information you brought us today. Adele Abrams is here representing the American Society of Safety Engineers. Thank you. MS. ABRAMS: Thank you and good morning or good afternoon I guess now. I'm pleased to be here on behalf of the American Society of Safety Engineers to comment on the proposed safety and health management program initiative. My name is Adele Abrams. I am the Assistant Administrator of the ASSE mining practice specialty. I'm also President of the law office of Adele Abrams in Beltsville, Maryland, and I am a certified mine safety professional as well as an attorney. ASSE is a nonpartisan individual membership society that next year we will celebrate its hundredth anniversary. So I think it's the oldest safety organization in the U.S. as well, and it has over a dozen practice specialties, including mining, which has I think about four or five hundred members at this point. Our membership includes industry, persons employed by industry, by labor, by the federal and state governments and some municipalities, and it's also important to note that ASSE has been quite active in the companion rulemaking that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is doing, which they call I2P2, an injury and illness prevention program. I'm going to give you some overview of ASSE's positions on this issue and then time permitting just go through a little bit about the components that we see is essentially in a safety and health management program, and I have given Dr. Wagner a power point, which I am not going to be showing up here because I didn't realize you were going to have the technology available, but I do ask that that be included in the record. ASSE, first of all, has a central concern that any regulatory approach for this standard has to be encouraging as much as possible employer ownership risk-based integrated safety and health management systems within the existing regulatory framework, and by risk-based ASSE supports the establishment of a system that not only requires employers to identify the risks in their workplace, but also gives them the necessary latitude under a performance-based approach to address those risks in ways that take into account the risks that are unique to every workplace. Our members do implement many of these programs within their individual companies, and I'd like to add that some ASSE members will be testifying at subsequent hearings on behalf of their own companies, and talking about the programs that they have in place. But given the current reliance on very prescriptive standards, how much latitude employers are given to address risks is an important question that we hope MSHA will address in its proposed standard. We are hoping that this will not turn into some kind of "gotcha" enforcement action, or something that will be used to double-dip on citations where, for example, a guard is found missing and an employer is cited under the guard standard, and then is cited again under a safety and health management program standard for not having already corrected that before it is found by an inspector. The mining environment is a very dynamic one, and even the daily workplace examinations by the time you get from one end of the mine to the other conditions have changed where you started out, and that has to be understood by MSHA as well. ASSE notes that in 2007 the U.S. workplace fatality, and this is for all industry, not specific to mining, was 3.8 per 100,000 workers, and in the United Kingdom that rate is 0.8 or more than four times less than what we have in the United States, and this is a significant number because the U.K. does rely on risk-based safety and health management of its workplaces. We believe that this rulemaking is an unprecedented opportunity for MSHA to begin to move toward more successful model of encouraging employers to manage risk than what the current prescriptive system has in place. But without a vision for a new approach to managing safety and health risk, the results of this won't really contribute to improve workplace safety, and the worst outcome would be simply a new standard that serves as some kind of stow-away charge, general duty clause for the mining industry and just adds another enforcement opportunity to drive adherence to existing standards and then piling on under the safety and health standard. We also have concern that this rulemaking not evolve into something that simply results in a written program that sits on a shelf someplace. As another witness mentioned earlier, this should be a living document and it's one that should be implemented in the workplace on a daily basis at all levels within the company. So, moving on from the enforcement issues, we also want to note that there are, as mentioned earlier by other witnesses, national consensus standards out there that deal with safety and health management systems, and in particular we want to draw your attention to the ANSI-Z10 2005 edition standard which is for safety and health management systems. This is a voluntary consensus standard and under the OMB Circular A-119, which implements the Technology Transfer Act of 1995, an agency that is going to engage in a rulemaking is to consider existing national consensus standards that are prepared by agencies such as ANSI, and to utilize those within a rulemaking or to explain in the preamble why they have chosen to depart from that. So of the standards that are out there, the ANSI-Z10 is probably most on point to this rulemaking. However, there are others that should be looked at as well in determining the elements of a program, and these would include the ANSI-A10.33, which is a construction standard, but it deals with safety and health program requirements for multi-employer projects, and as you know there are many, many contractors who perform work on mine sites, and it is integral to any safety and health program that there be coordination and provisions that deal with contractor safety. There is also the ANSI-A10.38, 2000, and there is a revision that occurred in 2007, which deals with basic elements of an employer's program to provide a safe and healthy work environment, and again, while this is an ANSI construction standard, there are many commonalities between the construction field and mining in terms of the work performed, and the equipment used, especially between construction and the aggregates industry, for example. And then there is also the ANSI-A10.39 standard which deals with safety and health audit programs, and once again, although this is geared toward construction and demolition operations, there is no reason why it would not be germane to an MSHA rulemaking for safety and health management programs for the mining sector. In terms of the scope and application of a rule, ASSE does not recommend exempting small mines generally. We think that a flexible program is something that could be utilized at all levels. However, MSHA should recognize that there is going to need to be some kind of phase-in for small operations, and I personally deal with an awful lot of mom and pop mines, some of which have as few as, you know, three or four employees. They don't have a safety director. Everything that has been talked about in here today already is going to be something of a foreign language to them, and there is going to be need for them to ramp up. There is going to be a critical need for MSHA to provide some really good templates, some appendices to the rule model programs that are going to be able to be adopted at small operations relatively easily, written in plain English, and hopefully compliance assistance on this that will be separate and apart from any enforcement role because right now there is a lot of fear and trepidation out there about what happens when you ask for technical support, and a supervisory inspector with an expertise in the area is sent instead of somebody from a tech support department. And if the small mines office does meet its demise, as rumored, it's going to be very critical that something come up in its place to help in the implementation of this standard for small operations. Also, it may be worth considering some sort of audit safe harbor because to evaluate these programs you're going to have to do audits, and because of the strict liability nature of the Mine Act, as well as there being no statute of limitations, there is a certain amount of concern about having audit documents around. With OSHA, they have a policy right on their website that says if you audit and you fix the things that you have identified before OSHA does an inspection, they are not going to use that to cite you. With MSHA and the strict liability, simply having a record that says that someone was observed working without fall protection or a moving part was noted without a guard on it, that documentation alone could be used to support a citation. Of course, the longer something exists the more likelihood that it could also trigger a willful violation, a failure, or even criminal prosecution, and there is concern that those who do the audits, which are going to be in large measure the safety and health professionals, not become the designated felons for purpose of implementing these programs. Finally, in terms of the appendices, as I noted, it's going to be very critical to have some programs that can be put in place as templates and modify this. MSHA did this quite well with the Part 46 training programs where there were things you could take from the website. Similarly they did it for the hazard communication standard so that small operators would have something to work off of, and I think that is going to be very critical. And lastly in terms of our position, ASSE would like to encourage MSHA to engage NIOSH in helping it come to a better understanding of how these programs can work in the mining industry, and also in helping it gauge the economic impact. Quite frankly, there aren't that many operations out there that have long-term experience with formalized safety and health management programs, and so there is not a lot of data out there about the cost benefits. Clearly, that's something MSHA is going to need in putting a rule out and NIOSH may be able to be of assistance in that. Now, I've mentioned the ANSI-Z10 standard quite a bit, and I just want to note a few of the program elements very quickly here, and then I'll be happy to respond to questions. The basic elements, and there are five of them, are management leadership and employee participation, planning, implementation and operation, evaluation and corrective action, and then management review. And in terms of taking these one at a time, and I'll give the Reader's Digest version of these, for management leadership, that includes protection and continual improvement of employee safety and health, effective employee participation, conformance with the organization's health and safety requirements, and compliance with all applicable laws and regulations. For employee participation, there should be recognition that employees do have a personal responsibility to comply with all safety and health rules established by the company, but they must also have the opportunity to participate in safety-related planning and provide input into implementation, evaluation, and corrective or preventive actions that are geared toward addressing the identified hazards in the workplace, and this can be accomplished by safety and health committees, but nonunion companies have to be mindful that there had been decisions that bind some safety committees to be employer-dominated labor organizations. And so legal advice would need to be taken into consideration when forming one of those, and similarly in a union environment any proscriptions that are in the collective bargaining agreements would have to be recognized and adhered to. On the planning front, proper planning involves thoroughly documenting and reviewing all equipment and processes to determine risk factors, conducting a hazard analysis to identify potential and existing hazards and exposures, and to evaluate the frequency that employees will be exposed to the hazards, and then identifying the hazard control methodologies to evaluate the potential severity of the hazards. Implementation and operation includes training programs and those would include training on company policies and procedures. The use of appropriate personal protective equipment, a review or development and modification of job safety analyses or job hazard analyses forms, maintenance and housekeeping, site-specific emergency and security procedures, work site evaluation, incident investigation, and all the procedures, and then applicable MSHA standards and consensus standards. In addition, the steps involved with implementing these programs include elimination of the hazards to the extent possible, substitution of less hazardous materials processes or equipment utilization of engineering controls, warnings, administrative controls, and then last on the hierarchy, of course, would be personal protective equipment. After all, engineering and administrative controls have been utilized to the extent feasible. There should be regular and frequent evaluations of the program conducted by management, audits, as well as corrective actions and follow ups need to be documented, and if any audit reveals an issue of noncompliance with a mandatory standard or a company requirement, conditions must be abated immediately. And then finally, management review should include an annual review of applicable standards, policies that MSHA might put out, as well as internal safety programs to help identify and correct any weak areas, and this review ultimately should provide a clear picture of the effectiveness of the Occupational Safety and Health Management System, as well as its impact on the business needs of the organization. I have included in my material that I handed in but I will not go through now some annual direct costs for various types of accidents, and those are compiled by Liberty Mutual from their workplace safety index. But just from the high view of this for all industry workplace injuries and illnesses total direct an indirect costs are estimated to be $155.5 billion which is nearly 3 percent of the gross domestic product, so this is not an insignificant number, and indirect costs are about 20 times the direct cost because that includes training and hiring and compensating replacement workers, repairing damaged property, conducting the accident investigations, shutdowns due to accidents, and the accompanying lost productivity, the administrative expense, and not to be ignored employee morale and increased absenteeism which naturally follow up safe operations or operations that have suffered some kind of catastrophic event. It is also critical that near miss incidents be investigated as seriously as others, as other speakers have mentioned, because they reveal the true accident potential for the workplace, and also can identify common and dangerous shortcuts that may have inadvertently become a standard operating procedure. If job hazard analysis is used, those need to be periodically reviewed to make sure that they are still applicable to current processes and equipment, and any processes that are related to a high number of non-fatal but lost time injuries need to be carefully reviewed to see if they require re-engineering. So that basically is what I have to say here. My handout also mentions, in addition to the consensus standards I have already indicated, that there is the ILO OSH-2001 guidelines on Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems. That should be taken into consideration. The OSHA 1989 Safety and Health Program Guidelines, which are still available on OSHA's website, and then some of the other standards, like the 18001 Occupational Safety and Health Management's specifications, and the 18002 guidelines, and these can be designed to integrate with the ISO-9001 quality management systems, and the ISO-14001 environmental management systems. Lastly, if companies in the mining industry do have effective programs in place already, we hope that that will be taken into consideration so that these will not be thrown overboard and force the companies to start from scratch, taking it a different direction. OSHA at stakeholder meetings talked about, well, the program needs to be tweaked. But if a program is demonstrated to be effective and there is a lot of time and money that has been put into place, it's got the union environment, it's got the promoter of the union, you know, as the saying goes, if it ain't broke don't fix it, and we hope you will take that to heart. Thank you very much for your consideration of ASSE's position and I'm happy to respond to any questions. DR. WAGNER: Thank you, Ms. Abrams. As a safety professional, if you went down to a mine site, you and others have said these programs, these plans shouldn't just be paper and go on. How would you go on a mine site and evaluate or audit whether or not there is a program that's actually being implemented? And the second part of that since you ended by saying that you thought that effective programs shouldn't need to be modified, what are your measurements of effectiveness? MS. ABRAMS: Well, there is a couple of questions in there, obviously. I do safety audits at mines. I'm not a health professional, but I do do safety audits sometimes with others from my company who are not attorneys, and part of the audits that I do I asked to see what programs does the company have in place, and a very simple indicator for me is I'll go around and I'll talk to employees, and I'll ask them, you know, what programs do you have. And if I get the view and the headlights look, I know that that program is not having that trickle down effect where the employees are aware and are a vibrant part of the programs. If I ask them do you have JSA, and they don't know what the heck JSA is, and the company has told me, well, we've got this great book of job safety analyses, I know that those aren't really being followed because the people who are doing the actual work are unaware of it, and to me, that is not a living document. You know, safety committees, do they meet, if they meet, you know, what are they doing? Are they participating in some of the internal audits. To me, that is part of a vibrant program. You know, if you just have an outside hired gun, and I hate to use that phrase, but you know if I come in once a year and do an audit and I give a report to management, you know, it's out of my hands at that point. I don't know whether that document is then discussed within a group of rank and file employees as well as managers to see what corrections need to be made. This is not something that by nature can be effective if it's solely within the control of management, you know, and it may sound like hierarchy for a mining attorney to be saying this, but, you know, I do believe that employee empowerment and participation is a vital part of this. It does not mean it has to be a union workplace, but the people who actually do the job are the ones who are going to best identify the hazards and be able to give valuable feedback to management. I really liked what Chevron was doing in terms of the self-assessments, coupled with the corporate periodic audits. I think that those can be very effective methodologies. DR. WAGNER: Do you think there should be any documentation of the actions that are taken under a program umbrella? MS. ABRAMS: Well, you know, I always tell clients when I do training on safety matters that, you know, undocumented things never happened. You know, not to mean that you should be pencil whipping something, but you know, how are you going to know that it was accomplished if there is no record of it? How are you going to know what problems were identified and need to be corrected if there is no record of it? But that is why ASSE has long been an advocate of some type of audit privilege where if you're trying to do this in good faith, that those should not then become basically the sword to spear you with, and there was legislation a number of years back that would have implemented that, but as I mentioned, OSHA does have a safe harbor policy on its website, and that is something that MSHA should consider, I believe. DR. WAGNER: And that's certainly back to the end of your discussion about don't mess with effective programs, what are your measures of an effective program that shouldn't be messed with? MS. ABRAMS: Well, first of all, you know, is it a paper program or is it a living program. That's the first thing, and that can easily be determined by interviewing people and finding out what level of awareness there is. The second thing are the metrics that some of the companies have discussed, and effective program is going to have an effect. That may be simplistic, and bad things can happen to good companies. I know that firsthand. You know, many of the companies I work with I think have top-notch programs. It does not mean that that an accident cannot happen. Simply having an accident should not disqualify a program from being considered effective, but you have to look at the overview, what kind of trends are you seeing, and this may take time, but the programs that I'm talking about, you know, if it ain't broke don't fix it, they should have some record by the time this rule comes to fruition, and the very fact that the agency is embarking on this rulemaking now should be sending a signal to companies that this on the road to becoming law, and you know, you can get started now and utilize things like ISO or the ANSI-Z10 as models. You know, I can't think of any components that MSHA should put in a program that are not included under those standards, the consensus standards, that is. And if you have all of those main components, let the program work. You know, certainly if MSHA comes on site and are repeatedly seeing a lot of noncompliant conditions, that could also be an indicator that perhaps the program is being given lip service but is not actually being implemented at the ground level. DR. WAGNER: Thank you very much. Time for one or two questions from the audience if anyone has one. Thank, Adele. MS. ABRAMS: Thanks. DR. WAGNER: And the last scheduled speaker, although again I'll say anybody who would like to speak after the scheduled speakers certainly the microphone will be open. We have Professor Larry Grayson, Professor of Energy and Mineral Engineering at Pennsylvania State University. MR. GRAYSON: Okay, thank you for the opportunity. I'm going to try to not be redundant here from what I heard from Cheveron and what Adele has talked about, and instead try to focus on the things that I think are at the heart of making this work, and some of that has already been said. I'm going to skip my background. You have got all of this on these slides, so I'll skip all of that. But right here, when we worked in the old days, and I'm giving you a context from when I start off as a UMWA miner, and we worked for a steel company, captive mines, and there were a number of steel companies as you remember, and they had some fairly elaborate safety programs. Much of that was documented. So production and safety were both important. Corporate safety inspections occurred, sometimes twice a year, and they would go through the mine just like our mine health and safety committee would, and they would come back with another report, and things to do and take care of as quickly as possible and prioritize it, try to assign people to take care of those conditions and issue that had come up. Then we had the redundancy with the safety committee, which is good. The more we do this the better off we are. The same thing with MSHA and the safety inspectors. So all of that works together. But having a corporate safety group that comes through and does exactly the same thing, and forms these systems, and implementations of these systems in a way where you actually build a culture is indeed the way to make sure that things are running right. So we would have meetings. So it doesn't have to be a union mine to have a workforce/management joint meeting looking forward and trying to have continuous improvement on the operational side and the safety side, anything else we address at an operation. So that I think is a critical point, too, that we have regularly scheduled meetings with the workforces, so they have been empowered, and from that point they are empowered again out at the work sites. State and federal inspections are intense, really as they should be, although clearly we double those efforts ourselves. Important features from '75 to '81, and this is kind of talking about how things have transpired historically, but a superintendent where I worked was allowed to make the safety decisions. I was a superintendent for awhile. So when we wanted to sit down with the safety committee and do things, we actually had the authority to get that done, and I would come to a safety committee, just like the union would, and we would both have our list of things that we thought should be addressed. We certainly had to prioritize those from time to time, but at least the effort was made to correct all of those things, and very rarely did we disagree. Interestingly enough, we would find things that had occurred in the past that were never addressed, and then we addressed them. So when you set up that type of a system you've made your commitment that you're going to address things that really need to be addressed, even if they hadn't been addressed in the past. So when that change occurs to the safety system's approach, that's when all those would be identified. We got regular feedback one to another. We all had accountability from top to bottom. That's part of the job of someone who is in charge of an operation. They can't be so decentralized that you can do what you want. There is a system that guides it all. So day to day, every single day there is an accountability for all this from the superintendent level all the way down to the miner to be able to accomplish all those critical tasks the way they should be to keep us all safe and running well, but that takes regular feedback as well. At that time we had enough employees to do the job. There comes the transition. So that transition from '82 to '84, when the last deep recession hit, was the steel industry was pretty well devastated as you well know. Immediately, within a couple of years, we had reduced our workforce by about 50 percent at the mine where I was, and it was pretty standard all the way around. So, cost-cutting measures were pretty intense. We did more with less and not better, so sort of against the quality control concept, the quality management process. The other production work actually did suffer, the nonproduction work, and that's where we fall behind. That all of a sudden then is where we get more citations and we're not able to take care of them. Everybody is hurrying and rushing a little bit more, and that's where we start to see some more injuries. So not tenable. So much higher productivity tons per shift. As you know, since 2003, our productivity in the underground part of the industry in general has gone down fairly dramatically, but including until the last year or so. So there was a reduced cost per ton, a fairly dramatic reduction reflective of the situation, the economy. A large percentage of miners worked a lot of overtime. It became a joke a little bit. You know, we had a target, we had to go from 500 to 250, supervisors from 80 to 40, and some people were doubling out, doing double shift in maintenance, fire bosses, everybody, and a lot of them don't like that. Of course, they were making more money, but many didn't want to do it, obviously, We fought basically for our survival at that point in time. Okay, now I'm not going to cover this too much because I think everyone else that I've heard at least have already covered a good bit of this, and there are different ones available. Some countries have to do it, and it's a very thorough process. I've been involved with some Australians who came over here to do some bit testing, actually in a mine back a few years ago, and it was very rigorous. The day before we were going to go in and do dust sampling and also testing how well the bits functioned. We spent four hours in a risk assessment process. I'm not saying that's the way it needs to be done, but that was how it's done, so everybody in the mine and the team that was going to go underground sat there and says, well, what if this happens, what if this happens, et cetera, and we agreed, we covered it like a blanket, so they have to do it. It's part of their business there. Common elements. Really you could break this down to the elements as were discussed by Chevron. You can add more elements in, and this is the ILO document that I've referred to in the previous slide. So all of this is important. I won't go over details. You can read them later. You've heard some of that already, and there is more. I'll let you see those. Again, you've heard these, and this will be part of the record, I guess, the power point, so I won't need to go over it again. But to continue improvement of the management review, prevention action, all of the audits, all of this is extremely important to a program. It's part of the evidence you're going to be looking for. Associated with this there will need to be a plan, so it's good to have systems in place, but we certainly have to have the plans in place, too, and there are ways to put plans together. Here is the New South Wales guidance document, February 2008. It describes step by step how they put the plan together, and I think Adele was talking about that. I think it's especially important for smaller operators. So the elements of the plan is sort of management structure, how the risks are to be managed, arrangement for the safety use mine plan, electricity, other energy sources, contractor management plan. Well, that's not required in 39 states as far as management and the way it's done over in Australia, they actually tie the contractors and the management together, so that's something that's a little bit different, not necessarily all bad, but we have the situation, and finally the emergency plan, and we do have the emergency response plan. It might be more robust in many cases than what we're looking at. So they have excellent results in Australia, NIOSH, I think Jeff Kohler was scheduled before. He was here? DR. WAGNER: He didn't present any data. MR. GRAYSON: Okay. Well, I chaired the commission report as you remember, NMA sponsored it as far as paying for travel expenses and everything, but it was tri-partite, and a lot of neutral folks on it, too, and in there we had recommended the major hazard risk assessment approach, although we thought that it probably should be modified from the Australian model being used. But in there they -- in that report that NIOSH did that followed up on their recommendations they saw what Australia had done, and began the implementation basically in 1997 and 1998, and results are pretty clear on what had happened, and again these are formal effective Mine Health and Safety Management programs and systems, and you see from the bottom curve there on the far right side and trace that back what the dramatic improvement was beginning right around the 1996 and downward, and this is the fatalities. They are looking at millions of tons -- no, millions of hours works. They wouldn't use tons, obviously, but anyway that's what they were using. And then you see the U.S., so the U.S. is the top most point up there in the 2005 record, and we know what happened in 2006. We know again what happened in 2007 and now in 2010. So that's our challenge, to become premier in the world and getting our injury rates and fatality rates down. We are doing a good job but not quite good enough. Zero is the number as we well know, and many of our large companies and small companies get zero on both the non-fatal loss, accidents and also fatalities as you well know. Many of them don't get orders. Maybe some has, in essence, but many of them perform extremely well. So this is a very formal and significant documentation approach that we have been listening to, and basically they require commitment from the top and this an absolute must just as expressed earlier by Chevron, absolutely commitment. You know, living and breathing with everybody during that process of implementation. And I'll show you very formal systems, very high level of documentation. It might not be exactly right for us. You know, we're going to have to, I think, in order to make especially the in-roads that we need to have in the small operations enormous documentation is not going to be feasible, I don't believe, so we're going to have to be careful about that. Although not as formal, several companies in the U.S. have shown the results. I've shown some of them there, and there is some on the metal side, too, You see Rio Tinto and others are very good, Arch, BHP, et cetera, all the way down the line. Well managed companies have dramatically reduced their lost time from of accidents, as you will know, or if you haven't seen them yet you will on how well they have actually done. I think we should not be leaving disabilities out, neither full nor partial. We probably really ought to be looking after that statistic as well somehow. And then finally withdrawal of imminent danger orders, so they have dramatically reduced those as well. One study I had done recently on 40 long-well mines which are all pretty much large mines, 10 of them had no orders, no withdrawal orders of imminent dangers nor training ones, training orders. So it can be done well. In general, there are approaches to safety and health management are much more systematic and well documented than the vast majority of our operations, but of course the vast majority tend to be 90 percent small mines, and on the coal side, and maybe 70-75 percent, and that's somewhere we deviate from Australia, by the way, I did mention earlier. It's just the opposite over there. They have 75 percent large companies, 25 percent small companies, small amount of employees whereas the United States it's the other way around, 75 percent in coal, 85 or 90 percent in some of the other sectors, and so it's really quite a different matrics look at what was done there with largely large companies versus over here largely smaller companies. Okay, the problems to be overcome in making a rule, and in my opinion, unlike in Australia, we have those small mines, and I think you have already gotten that point from Adele and I think probably would take it seriously. U.S. operations, this is just state of the art here, what's going on. The operations, compared to what it was before 2006, and the way it is today. They field a battling, and battling very hard in their mines to simply comply with the regulations now what appeared to be somewhat easier before. But they have developed this combative mindset, as we all know, and this mindset is going to preclude cultivation of these best practices and we do it in a systematic way. So, something that everybody can understand. Guidelines to follow, and stuff like that. And then with that, I think, as you saw from Chevron, as you implement, no matter how it affects production early on, and the small mines would be out of business if they do that right away, they would be out of business if they did it the way Chevron did it, so somehow we've got to work that in, and phase it in as was suggested before. Then when we phase it in and we build those best practices, they are going to see a realization in their productivity, their total production, a lower cost as well as the health and safety side, the compliance side. Well, most of the companies as you will know, you know, progressed since 2006-2007, and, you know, just honestly speaking they feel they are unfairly penalized. I'm not saying they are, but they feel that way so we have that hurtle that has to be overcome as well. Their workforces are kept busy in abating citations, and they believe that prevents them from being more active, proactive. You've heard that testimony before up in Congress, too. It doesn't necessarily mean it's so but that's the situation, so we have to be mindful of the situation we're trying to deal with. So the way forward, in my humble opinion, is that our emphasis is going to be on the compliance with myriad of complex regulations. It's not going to change. It's very prescriptive and we have to do that. We have to do well. I think everybody realizes that. It's not good to gripe about it, we just have to take it to heart. So, my management of health and safety management systems I think will help us do that although it should be less formal than it has been over in those other countries where it has been, I've seen how that one works. So, it's not just a culture of safety. I think just about everybody has a culture of safety. Everybody is going to look out for everybody else, and they are doing the training and they are following the work practices. It may not be the best work practices, that might be the gap, but they are following the work practices that have been done traditionally. So we have that change in the culture from the culture of just safety to one of absolute prevention, so everybody now has built that system to where the commitment starts from the top and they build it all the way down where everybody performs their jobs the way it's supposed to be done. We can run and do an inspection, you know, we can find people doing things they shouldn't be doing. It's just the way it is, and that's part of the culture. It can't be done. So the commission recommended that a culture of prevention is what's first and foremost. That has to be the focus and we need the systems basically to get there, a whole different kind of a culture. Solid risk analysis is important. The hazards we focused on in some of the other presentation with significant hazards that they've identified, and then analyze for what the best solutions could be. There may be multiple solutions in some cases, and then implement, and then evaluate and see if they work in the way they intended it to work. Simple regulatory compliance alone may not be sufficient. You've got to go beyond compliance. That was stated very clearly in the commission report as well. Some industry leaders stepped forward on that and did a really good job expressing that important fact. So, the process must first commit to building corporatewide safety culture prevention even in a small -- I mean, in a large company with a lot of small mines. Sometimes they are just small mines. They too have to have that commitment, so somehow an embodiment of the commitment and a process to get that done has to be part of this whole thing if we are going to change the culture. So as an example Consult Energy, they just as easily picked someone else, but they made a presentation at our university and it was quite an extensive process they went through to get there, and so the "Path is Zero" is what they called it, and you have already seen Brett Harvey's comments before about we don't accept accidents, and that is not just lost time accidents or anything else. It's anything that wasn't planned that happens in the general sense of the word is an accident. And really they don't sanction any of that, and especially want zero fatalities and zero lost time injuries. Now, this is the process that they use. They've got the 48 percent of all its employees. You will probably see this in Pittsburgh with a little more fervor, I believe. That is an immense process that they went through as you can see there. So they got the buy-in and the empowerment, and the first line supervisors, the front-line supervisors know absolutely that is the way the job is going to be performed the way it's supposed to have been. Second, each operations management must specify and adopt and implement the techniques that it believes will attain that high level of safety goals and objectives, so no withdrawal orders, no danger orders, less than 10 percent S&S. They have got to set goals. They have got to put a little reach in your goals. That's what we always do in our businesses, put a little reach in our goals, achieve it again, we set the goals, obtain those goals, and this means that mine safety management plan is needed to drive accomplishment of those goals. All of us in the industry know that we had a production level that we had to meet and we had a cost level that we had to meet. We also had citations that we didn't want to get, and there is a lot of pressure. I understand that. We all understand that. But you get there by being systematically building that culture, and the culture implements the systems and they may analyze those and the feedback is regular and everything is done the way it's supposed to be done. So, risk management's role. There is different ways of doing that. I won't belabor the point but it basically gets to this point here where there is the corporation, the mine plant, the mine end of plant, the supervisors, the workers, and everybody has to have a clear policy, they endorse the policy, commit to the policy, and follow the policy, supervisors as well. Consider the risk all the way down the line. Understand and treat the risk down at this lower level where we are actually doing the work. Enable the people so that they can do what they were planning to be done. The same thing here at the mine plant level, and the same thing at the supervisors, and then the faithful task is execution by everyone. Every single pre-shift examination on-shift examination, everything, maintenance, et cetera, reenforcement, communication, all the way down, reenforcement and communication. It's got to go over and over again. Now, there are different ways to do this. We can do plots of trends and stuff like that. We can use table data. We can prioritize from a metrics approach. We can do quantitative risk analysis. This right here is just one that was recently done on serious violations as exemptions to the plan, and this is on ventilation, specifically a 75.370(a)(1) ventilation plan. This is just one example of what you can do. You can put the citations the S&S right there, plot them over time quarter by quarter, and see what we have done. You can see from here first quarter 2008, steadily down, a concerted effort with a little blip in a couple of places, but generally concerted effort with inspectors changing quarter by quarter, and you know no orders on this particular one, there is one there. So we can look at those trends for every citation in my opinion that's a major hazard-related citation because those are the ones that are going to paint the industry, the coal industry and everyone else because of it with the same wide brush, so we've got to be faithful in managing that. We can do it this way. Australia will do some things this way with risk measures. Not everything is quantitative, and they can be qualitative, but at least you're looking at it, thinking about it, and say I've got some stuff that's appearing here that I just can't have, and we have to take care of those problems and move them off that chart basically. We talked abut material handling earlier at Chevron. That plagues us as you well know in the industry, time in memorial, persistent, persistent, and then right here is one case study, lost time accident record from one of the mines within the database we were analyzing, and there is the one, 79 percent by those five. Here, if you look at the days lost, you might prioritize it that way, and 2,213 for material handling in that one mine per year. It's amazing. Another, you can do quantitative analysis this way, 54 nonfatal days lost accidents in a year with this many hours, loss and restricted days added up to this, total miners employed 313. All I can say the probability of any miner getting hurt that year is 15 percent, totally unacceptable, and that also happens to be the nonfatal responses. I can do it by risk. So if I know on average what the -- if I got the details like someone showed earlier on exactly how those breakdown by the number of lost days and per incident, then I can get an even better calculation, but here, you know, I've got 15 percent probability here times 20,000 on average, get better data, but there is $3,034 per miner and that's $946,000 in one year. Certainly serious considerations for improving that rate. And we can say the same thing, do the same kind of analysis with elevated citations. So then we begin to manage with high incentives. Now, we can look at this as average days lost per miner, et cetera, but the bottom line each person plays a critical role really in this safe, efficient, cost-effective -- H.L. Boulding, you recognize that, I'm sure., it's a good statement, whether a corporate or division manager, plant manager, supervisor, all the way down. So it's a critical role for management. Serious transfer of accountability at all levels, and ways to understand that we're doing the things that we're supposed to do. Tracking, if you will, of the desired performances. And then here, again when you get down to the mine manager, again it can't be hands off. It's got to be adoption, and you've got to build that culture. They are involved in the process too, and we see evidence that indeed everybody is speaking the same language and we're dedicated to that plan, to the system. So there has to be some kind of evidence. Supervisors, again, play a critical role. They and their workers have got to work together to do things faithfully. No short cuts. Examining the workplace as well, 'fess up when we see a problem that needs to be taken care of, and take care of it. Make sure it gets done right away. The thing that was most frustrating for me giving a list, I have a worker on the roof bolting machine that would say this is jumpy, and jerky, and we've got to get the hydraulics fixed on this machine, and you know, they're not complaining yet about safety, but you know, you've got to get this fixed. You go to maintenance, and they said, okay, we'll put it on the list. All right. Sure. There is other priorities, but the thing is the next shift when I came in there is kind of like bad faith because it wasn't done. Now they are saying, okay, this is really getting dangerous at this point in time, and pretty soon this thing is going to go crazy on us, and we're going to get hurt. So I go back again, say we've got to have this done. They finally get it done, right? So I mean when we see things we have to take care of it because we don't know when that critical event is going to occur. So day in and day out basically the commitment to executing it systematically. The majority of exertions from plan, excuse me, are going to be eliminated, all of these right here. So it will help across the board in our operations, and continuous improvement, and we want excellent performances. We even want to be able to hold our industry in general as the premier performer across the world like we once were, and I think we can get there personally. That's it. DR. WAGNER: Thank you very much. Let me first turn to the panel for any questions? I probably prewarned with my question to Adele. You know, people can download the ISO standards, the ANSI standards, and put it on their shelf and say, oh, we have a problem, we subscribe to that. You walk onto a mine site, first of all, you said that commitment from the top is critical. You walk onto a mine site that you don't know who the corporate owner is but you're on the specific mine site with 100 miners there. How are you going to tell whether or not there is commitment from the top? MR. GRAYSON: I think actually Adele said it pretty well. Getting into the conversation with the workers and as you do your audit and everything, and the same thing works with, by the way, environmental management systems for 4001. When I was at the University of Missouri, we implemented 4001, and the auditors would come in, and they would talk to the individuals. Do a random selection of laboratories, for instance, and then people associated with those laboratories, the graduate students, and faculty members. The chancellor had made it absolutely clear we don't want any aspersions on the aspects and the possible aspects. So the auditor would come in. We all went through our regular training every year just like, you know, for the systems too, so we understood the entire system, what everything meant within the system. The auditor came, we would give the feedback, but they would also go in and check and see if what we said was actually manifested in that site, the work site. So, the workers know exactly what's going on. Supervisors, et cetera, will know, but it's a consistency check throughout the organization that will end up showing you exactly because later on they will have to trace it going out, not just at that site. They will trace it back up again and see from them, too. DR. WAGNER: You mentioned that you felt that we might need the level of documentation, the voluminous documentation, and thick plans that they have in Australia. What would you consider adequate documentation that a good program is in place? If again you were to walk onto a mine property and you're asking the question do they have a good enough program here, what would you look for? MR. GRAYSON: I think primarily it kind of comes down more like, well, maybe what's in South Africa where there is a hazard identification and risk assessment approach, and they are seeing evidence that hazards were identified, and those hazards were indeed addressed, and some documentation along those lines. Now, the hazards can be indicated like on an ongoing basis by citations, too, and I think Adele mentioned that as well, but that ends up showing you and you can prioritize those hazards. Certainly it would take care of the more important ones first, make sure you're really safe from a major hazard then, but then also from all the others in the process have to be taken care of. So, within a plan like this it's just a reporting of data especially on hazards, what actions were taken to take care of those hazards, right, and then whether or not those hazards were eliminated or if the work practices were changed, and whether or not they were reoccurring after they had been taken care of because that's a clear indication of whether it took within the culture or not, and realizing that some things are going to happen that are really tough to deal with like a major reform or something like that. But there are things we do in that situation, too, like additional support systems and things like that. For instance, one good example was we were using conventional bolts in a fairly wet, very laminated shale type section, and we had a fall on the roof machine, it was out between shifts. It took awhile to fix, get it uncovered, get it back into operation. A week later it happened again. Well, that's a clear indication that something had to change, and most operations are doing this on a regular basis. They are looking at their roof conditions and stuff like that, and they know when additional support is going to be necessary, or if they are just ignoring it, then they are asking -- that's a real recipe for danger. So identifying that risk and then what action was taken. Our action was to switch resin bolts at that point in time. Never had another fall in that same section the rest of the life of that section after we switched resin bolts. Additional supports may be needed in some cases in some mines but they have to deal with those, identify hazards, and hopefully take care of it. DR. WAGNER: Last question from me for now. Adele suggests that we should not mess with success. How would you evaluate whether or not a program is sufficiently successful that it should be left to stand? MR. GRAYSON: I also think that the data day in and day out will end up showing that. You will see what's happened over the years, and like that one trend I was showing there. Even though there were a couple of blips that went out, overall it went down. DR. WAGNER: So if I said I like my program and I want to keep it, what would you say? MR. GRAYSON: As long as they are meeting the minimum requirement of the regulation, fine. We would love you to go beyond that. Compliance is not enough, let's go beyond compliance. DR. WAGNER: Any questions from the rest of the room. Mr. O'Dell, do you want to come closer to the microphone so that we can get you, so that you can get on the record. MR. O'DELL: Dennis O'Dell, United Mine Workers. I have a comment and a question. 2005, after the tragedies that took place we started looking into risk assessment, risk management, approach to safety, and I know we were involved with you somewhat on that report that came out then. Since that time we've had the opportunity -- I have been fortunate enough to develop very close friendships with the CFMU union in Queensland and in South Wales, and have been able to spend some time with them and travel across the country and talk with them, talk to their workers, and I found out, and trust me, whatever works I want it to work here, and they do some things better than us, and we do some things better than they do. There is a back and forth on this. But the thing that troubles me on the risk management, risk assessment is now I'm finding out that as they look at it, as they look into this mirror, because as they are educating us we are educating them, so you know, they tell me ideas. I exchange what is going on with the MSHA regulations, and say, oh, this would probably apply better if we used the regulations that you have in the United States versus how we try to approach our risk management because the bottom line is in a risk management you still are managing the risk. At the end of the day there is a possibility that somebody can get hurt or a fatality will occur or equipment malfunction. And so in some cases regulations actually apply in cases better, and we are starting to see that now. I am just curious, the information that you referred to and others have referred to and the reports, you know, where they get that from because what I have found is -- in my travels I get to talk, and I'll tell you sort of what the red flag up to me is Australia claims they have no cases of occupational pneumoconiosis, no black lung cases in over 50 years or whatever it is, but I have visited miners while I was there who was on oxygen bottles and clearly have black lung. They just kind of disappear. They don't record that. They sweep it under the rug, and that's the truth of the reality. And so I'm curious, the information that you and others have got about Australia is it information from the operators, is it government records, is it a combination of everything? I mean, I'm just curious where all that data that everybody refers to about Australia being so good in this, where that actually comes from. MR. GRAYSON: Well, that's how each of the states or territories, I guess, they call them, so Queensland has its own database, South Wales has its own database. I do believe they are accessible. MR. O'DELL: Coal Party Services, is that the group -- MR. GRAYSON: Which one? MR. O'DELL: Coal Party Services, is that one of the groups, part of the government that you got the information from? MR. GRAYSON: No. MR. O'DELL: We can talk about it. MR. GRAYSON: That was the chart that Tony had put together, Dr. Gilney and his group, but there is still quite a difference here as compared to their operations, and you're right. On the risk management side we can't lose sight of what it really takes to build a culture, and that is the fear, I think for all of us, that we get a regulation that's going to give us paperwork to do but we really don't get down to the bottom where we are going to have some evidence development and stuff like that. That's going to be important, too. MR. O'DELL: And there is still trust issues. I worked in the mine from the late seventies to the late nineties. They tried risk management, risk assessment, and at the end of the day they always blamed the workers. That was the old -- I mean, seriously, that's the way it worked back then, and I know that's not the case now, but there is a trust issue that needs to be overcome by this, and I hope people take heed to that. And the other thing that I've learned from the Australians is they move forward in Australia, whether -- labor and management work together on the risk assessments, and they are supposed to agree at the end of the day. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes management will move forward. If they were stuck and won't move forward, they go ahead and move anyway, and that's what we are seeing that sometimes accidents and injuries occur, so I think we need to take all those things into consideration. MR. GRAYSON: Yes, that's how they originally got to the risk assessment and care approach is that they agreed to agree right after the Moore accident and tried to do something, and it isn't necessarily the same relationship the whole time. DR. WAGNER: Any other questions or comments from the room? And are there any other people who didn't sign up? Thank you very much, Larry. Any other people who didn't sign up in advance who would want to make a statement at this point? MR. ELLIOTT: Could I answer your question about how you determine, you know, whether it's working or not? DR. WAGNER: Sure. Ed Elliott again with Rogers Group. What I wanted to tell you is we do that, we have a -- if we found training indicators or some current indicators go negative, what we will do is go on and first evaluate what the management at that operation is doing according to the safety principles. For instance, if you have five or six key elements, you may go in or an inspector let's say could go in and say, all right, what is your process of demonstrating management commitment. Then the operator would say, we do this, this and this. Then you might go down, how do you do the risk assessment or JSAs. Then they would tell you how they do it, and how the plan is. Then I believe an inspector would go out, talk to the miners, observe the work that's being done to those metrics that the operators says that they have implemented to have in their safety management system. So that's what I talked about in my presentation about having an inspector having to take time. DR. WAGNER: Thank you very much. That's quite helpful. Anyone else? Please, come all the way forward. Identify yourself first, please. MS. DEVINE: I'm Shanna Devine with the Government Accountability Project. We are a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy organization, and I would like to thank you for this opportunity to provide public comments to help ensure an effective safety and health management program at mines. From our organization's perspective, accountability and employee and management participation are absolutely integral to an effective mine safety program. And I would also like to thank the presenters throughout today's presentation. I would like to thank Professor Grayson who is particularly on point. I would like to know what concrete actions this board is taking to make accountability and transparency the cornerstone of the safety and health management programs, and specifically is there a whistle blower policy being considered? DR. WAGNER: I'm sorry? MS. DEVINE: Specifically is there a whistle blower policy being considered, and if so, what policy is it modeled after? I understand that these programs are intended to maintain compliance with the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act. The Mine Safety and Health Act of 2010, that is in the House of Representatives and is in conference in the House at the moment, it does include robust whistle blower protections. It's the cornerstone of the act, and I would strongly encourage this board to consider that language in proceeding with forming these model programs. And lastly, I hope there will be a greater commitment to transparency and openness in these programs than we have seen in the proceedings for the investigations and hearings in the Upper Big Branch incident. Thanks all. Thank you. DR. WAGNER: Thank you very much. Any questions? Any questions from the audience? Thank you. Any additional speakers? MR. SHARP: Jim Sharp. Sharp Media. I have been listening to this this morning and I have been five years reporting on mine safety and health affairs, and I just have some serious reservations about what you're trying to do. First of all, I don't think that you can simply come up with a rule and impose it on mine operators without first changing yourself. You've heard Dr. Kohler this morning talk about MSHA has got to change as well as operators got to change if there is going to be a culture of safety. I'd like to see how MSHA plans to do that before you impose a rule on the mining community. That's a big job. It's going to take several years, and I just don't see it happening quickly. I also don't understand how you plan to impose a proactive system, and this was touched upon this morning, a proactive system on a mining community that has been subject to a reactive command and control, compliance-oriented system since the Mine Act was instituted, in fact, the Coal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1969. I mean, that's what you have got to deal with out there. That's the culture. That's a big switch that you are going to have to deal with and come up with a plan to address. In the last couple of years the level of hostility that has arisen between the mining community and MSHA has reached what I -- in my experience -- an unprecedented level. Now what you want to do with the backdrop of that hostility is to impose even more regulations on a mining community that feels like it's already been beat up beyond recognition. You're going to have to overcome that hostility if you're going to get cooperation from the mining community. You're going to have to take concrete steps in order to do that. The other thing that has not been mentioned and I think all of this has sort of been touched on this morning, but the one thing that hasn't been touched on is the politics of this. Safety has been politicized in the last couple of years. Now we are about to go through an election in the fall, and if it goes as the pundants have been saying at least one house of Congress is going to the Republicans. That's going to be the House. If any goes, it's going to be the House. That's where the money is. That's where the budget starts. I think you're going to see a vindictiveness expressed by a number of lawmakers toward this agency and its budget as a result of what's happened in the last couple of years, and how you're going to get through that is another issue that you're going to have to face if you want to get this thing through. My prediction is that with the formidable forces that you are facing right now, many of which are of your own making, there is far less of a 50/50 chance that this is going to go through, and if it does go through, it will be nothing more than a paper exercise that will really not accomplish much. That's all I have to say. DR. WAGNER: Thank you very much. DR. WAGNER: Any questions from the panel? Any questions from the people in the room? Any others who would like to make a statement for the record? Well, if no one wants to make a presentation, I am again going to say that we appreciate everybody's participation today, those who spoke, those who didn't, and want to remind you that even if you didn't speak today there will be further opportunities in California and in Pittsburgh next week, and also if anybody said anything here that stimulates you that you would like to provide written comments, or any other information that you feel that the agency should be taking into consideration in the course of our exploration of this area, I'd like you to submit it. We have a docket open until midnight Eastern Standard Time on December 17th, and we will take every comment and concern into consideration in developing the agency's proposed rule on safety and health management programs. And throughout this process there are a number of opportunities for ongoing engagement participation, and I would encourage you to take advantage of them. Once again, thanks to all of you for coming here and for sharing your thoughts. (Whereupon, at 1:38 p.m., the hearing in the above-entitled matter was concluded.) // // // // REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE DOCKET NO.: None CASE TITLE: Safety and Health Management Programs HEARING DATE: October 8, 2010 LOCATION: Arlington, Virginia I hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence are contained fully and accurately on the tapes and notes reported by me at the hearing in the above case before the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Date: October 8, 2010 Gabriel Gheorghiu Official Reporter Heritage Reporting Corporation Suite 600 1220 L Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20005-4018 TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS HERITAGE REPORTING CORPORATION Official Reporters 1220 L Street, N.W., Suite 600 Washington, D.C. 20005-4018 (202) 628-4888 contracts@hrccourtreporters.com 71 Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 194 Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888