DEPARTMENT OF LABOR MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION PUBLIC MEETING - TRAINING Thursday, December 17, 1998 Doubletree Hotel 222 North Vineyard Ontario, California Pages: 1 through 133 Place: Ontario, California Date: December 17, 1998 DEPARTMENT OF LABOR MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION PUBLIC MEETING - TRAINING Thursday, December 17, 1998 Doubletree Hotel 222 North Vineyard Ontario, California BEFORE: Chairperson Kathy Alejandro Rodric M. Breland Kevin Burns Roslyn Fountain I N D E X Page STATEMENT OF MR. C. DUANE NIESEN 9 STATEMENT OF MR. TONY SERPAS 46 STATEMENT OF MR. MALCOLME DRIGGS 64 STATEMENT OF MR. PETER WARD 69 STATEMENT OF MR. DANNY LOWE 79 STATEMENT OF MR. PHIL GAYNOR 90 STATEMENT OF MR. LARRY NELSON 100 STATEMENT OF MR. RICHARD DE ATLEY 107 STATEMENT OF MR. GERN HALLENBECK 117 P R O C E E D I N G S (8:15 a.m.) CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Good morning. My name is Kathy Alejandro. I am with Metal and Non-Metal Mine Safety and Health, Mine Safety and Health Administration, U.S. Department of Labor and on behalf of the Mine Safety and Health Administration I would like welcome you the fifth of seven public meetings on regulations for miner safety and health training. These meetings are intended to give individuals and organizations including miners and their representatives and mine operators both large and small an opportunity to present their views on the types of requirements that will result in the most effective miner safety and health training. These regulations would be appled at those nonmetal surface mines where MSHA currently cannot enforce existing training requirements. I would like to take this opportunity to introduce the members of the MSHA panel are here with me this morning. To my left is Roslyn Fontaine who is with MSHA's office of standards, regulations, and variances. To my immediate right is Kevin Burns who is also with Metal and Non- metal Safety and Health. And to my far right is Ron Breland who is the western operations manager of the newly formed Educational Field Services within MSHA. Since 1979 MSHA has been guided by a rider to its appropriations. The restriction currently states that: . . . none of the funds appropriated . . . shall be obligated or expended to carry out section 115 of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977 or to carry out that portion of section 104(g)1 of such Act relating to the enforcement of any training requirements, with respect to shell dredging, or with respect to any sand, gravel, surface stone, surface clay, colloidal phosphate, or surface limestone mine. In the Omnibus Budget passed by Congress on October 21, 1998, MSHA was directed to: . . . work with the affected industries, mine operators, workers, labor organizations, and other affected and interested parties to promulgate final training regulations for the affected industries by September 30, 1999. It is understood that these regulations are to be based on a draft submitted to MSHA by the Coalition {for Effective Miner Training} no later than February 1, 1999. MSHA expects to publish a proposed regulation in the Federal Register some time in early spring of 1999. The regulations that MSHA will be developing must include the minimum requirements in Section 115 of the Federal Mine Safety and Healthy Act of 1977 (Mine Act). To summarize those requirements: Section 115 provides that every mine operator shall have a health and safety training program that is approved by the Secretary of Labor, and that complies with certain requirements. Section 115 specifies that surface miners are to receive no less than 24 hours of new miner training, no less than eight hours of refresher training annually, and task training for new work assignments. Section 115 also requires that the training cover specific subject areas; provides that training is to be conducted during normal work hours at normal rates of pay; requires that miners be reimbursed for additional costs they incur incidental to this training; and provides that mine operators must maintain miners' training certificates and furnish such records to the miners. In addition, MSHA is looking for suggestions and comments as to how best to achieve effective miner safety and health training, consistent with the Mine Act, including any additional requirements that should be included in the proposed rule, and most importantly why. Four meetings have already been held in Northbrook, Illinois; Denver, Colorado; Albany, New York; and Portland, Oregon. Two other public meetings will be held at other locations on the week after New Year's in Dallas and Atlanta, Georgia; and this is designed to give as many individuals and organizations as possible an opportunity to present their views. This meeting will be conducted in an informal manner, and a court reporter is making a transcript of the proceedings. Anyone who has not signed up in advance to speak at the meeting and who wishes to do so should sign up on the speakers' list which is currently located on this table but it will be available for you at a break. We also ask that everyone who is here today, whether or not you wish to speak, to sign the attendance sheet which is located on the small table on as you immediately as you come into the room. Anyone who wishes may also submit written statements and information to us either during the course of this meeting or afterwards and we will include these submissions as part of the record as a proposed rule is developed. Although there is no formal deadline for submitting written comments I would strongly encourage you to submit anything that you wish to be considered by no later than February 1, 1999, to ensure that your comments are fully considered as we develop the proposed rule. If you, the comments should be sent to, if you've got a copy of the meeting notice, sent to the Office of Standards, Regulations, and Variances; and the address is in the meeting notice, but I can give you that address later if you need it. Although we are most interested in what you have to say to us, we will also attempt to answer any questions that you may have as the meeting proceeds to clarify the process or whatever, what the purpose of this meeting is. MSHA is specifically interested in comments that address certain areas, although we certainly strongly encourage you to comment on any issue related to miner safety and health training at currently exempt mines. These issues were outlined in the November 3rd Federal Register notice that announced the scheduled of public meetings, and I will give you a brief summary of these issues right now. Should certain terms, including "new Miner" and "experienced miner" be defined? Which subjects should be taught before a new miner is assigned work, even if the work is done under close supervision? Should training for inexperienced miners be given all at once, or over a period of time, such as several weeks or months? Should supervisors be subject to the same training requirements as miners? Should task training be required whenever a miner receives a work assignment that involves new and unfamiliar tasks? Should specific subject areas be covered during annual refresher training? If so, what subject areas should be included? Can the eight hours of annual refresher training required by the Mine Act be completed in segments of training lasting less than 30 minutes? Should the records of training be kept by the mine operator at the mine site, or can they be kept at other locations? And then finally, should there be minimum qualifications for persons who conduct miner training? If so, what type of qualifications are appropriate? I would now like to introduce the first speaker this morning. We ask that all speakers state and spell their names for the court reporter before beginning their presentation. And I would like to thank you all very much for coming. Thank you. The first speaker on our list is Duane Niesen from CAL OSHA. And you can either stand at the podium if you wish or sit at the table, whichever is, you are most comfortable with. MR. NIESEN: Better stand as to prove I can. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. STATEMENT OF MR. C. DUANE NIESEN MR. NIESEN: My name is first initial C. Duane, D- U-A-N-E, Niesen, N-I-E-S-E-N. And I have to say if I knew I was going to be first I'd have called later or something like that. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. NIESEN: I work the State of California, I'm in the 40th year of state employment and I work for CAL OSHA. I've been with them for 25 years. I work for CAL OSHA's mining and tunneling unit which includes the unit that I supervise which is a mine safety unit. My unit carries out a state grant assisted program for training miners. The people that I supervise, my trainers and myself, on occasion reached about 2500 miners and contractors per year which MSHA based training. Some of it is the regular new miners' training, the eight hour refresher; and lately MSHA instructor training, supervisor training, and some specially tailored courses to fit specific mine operators' requirements. I've been in this particular unit for about three years. I was with water resources for about 15 years, bringing water to sunny southern California where we now enjoy it down here. I've been CAL OSHA since its inception in 1973. I spent 10 years in the field as a compliance inspector in all industries in California. I spent 12 years as a district manager in Sacramento, California supervising a staff of about 12 industrial hygienist and safety engineers making inspections in that district. I've been involved in one type of training or other during all that time. I was especially involved in the inception of what's called California's Injury and Illness Prevention Program found in California Code of Regulations 3203 which includes also: Training requirement for the State of California enforced by CAL OSHA. I'm here this morning to give the views of my unit on training for miners in general and to address those particular questions found in the Federal Register specifically. First of all CAL OSHA believes that training is absolutely essential. I think that the MSHA recognized that in 1977 by the Mine Act and by its promulgation in Part 48 by making it a specification standard. California miners are also subject to CAL OSHA regulation in the training area that's addressed by 3203(a)7 which is a performance oriented standard but it also compliments MSHA's specification oriented standard in Part 48. Because of the nature of the industry, training I think is the single most important factor in preventing accidents and injuries. California mining industry is its second most dangerous occupation following timber falling which is rather small. California has about 700 active mines, 11 or 12,000 active miners and innumerable contractors which we're also concerned with now. California's 3203 is a performance oriented standard and it is rather broad because it applies to all of the California industries from logging to banking. It contains a training requirement that employees must be trained in the hazards specifically found in their job assignments. MSHA's Part 48 is most specification oriented because it is a standard aimed at a specific industry and I think rightly so. There's not much secret about what harms and kills miners. MSHA has done quite a good job in quantifying that, keeping track of it, we know the basic problems. Therefore, a specification standard is applicable and Part 48 enumerates that. I'd like to speak to a couple of the ideas that I've heard. One that individual mine operators should pick and choice the subject matter that applies only to their mine sites. I think that is in general unwise because the certificate issued by MSHA applies to all mines in the United States. The subject matter contained in Part 48 which is pretty much on point when it comes to those things which injure miners in general, is true to a certain extent in all mine sites especially in California; not just sand and gravel, not just underground gold, but major hazards enumerated in those training requirements are pretty much universally applicable. If individual companies are encouraged to train only in those areas that affect their particular mine sites, the miners who transfer or move to other jobs will be ill prepared for the hazards they run into at other mine sites. And since this certificate as it stands now at least, is applicable everywhere. Those miners should be basically grounded in the well known and well documented hazards that occur at most mine sites. I've always believed and believe today that sand and gravel and the other exempted industries certainly need safety training as much as anybody else and I think statistics will bear that out. There are certain parts of part 48 which have been called too restrictive. One is the approval of an individual mine safety plan, training plan for each mine and there may be room for some loosening of that particular requirement. CAL OSHA requires in a parallel requirement that it be sort of tailored to the operation that is found in any place of employment and that's been successfully in the mine. We believe that CAL OSHA's 3203 and part 48 provide a basic minimum standard for mine safety training. There are people that I have run into in training at mine sites who believe that that is the end of the requirement and I think it's something like marriage, if you think that's the end of it when you go into it, you're sadly mistaken and you're going to be in for a pretty rough lesson. I think Part 48 and basic safety training in any industry is a minimum basic preparation to prepare new employees to face the hazards they're going to run into on any particular site. Mines present certain well recognized hazards and to allow a new employee to go to work in a mine site without basic grounding in certain hazard recognition and hazard mitigation issues both defies the intent of Part 48 but it also runs afoul of CAL OSHA's 3203. It's not allowed, not even in any industry at all. And so some of the issues I'm going to speak to are based on these basic opinion, I suppose. What I'd like to do now is go down these questions very briefly and give an answer and little bit of explanation of why we think like we do. Number one is should certain terms, new miners, and experienced miner be defined, if so how should these terms be defined. As an enforcer of governmental regulation for 30 odd years, yes, those terms should be very definitely defined. Without definition any regulation is practically unenforceable. I've had all of these impressed upon me in the last 25 years. Any regulation which uses specific terms must define those terms. In fact the definitions sometimes determine exactly what those regulations mean and how they are applied. Without them the regulations are pretty much meaningless. The miner, new miner, experienced miner are pretty well defined now in Part 48. I really don't see any major problems there. MSHA has a program policy manual which further explains some of the regulation and if there is any doubt about what those terms really mean or any explanation necessary it could certainly be brought out in that publication, but they are pretty well defined now and they should be kept. Question two is which of these subjects should be taught before a new miner is assigned work, even if the work is done under close supervision. As I said before mine hazards and things that injure miners are pretty well defined. People know what they are. Now I've seen any number of MSHA's charts, pie charts, bar charts, statistics and all that; California runs their own and what hurts miners is not a secret. Therefore, I believe that certain subjects should be mandated in this basic fundamental minimal training standard to prepare a new person to go to work in a mine. I think there's a proposal out for part 46 on this subject matter and the one I saw, pretty much parallels part 48. Part 48 seems to address those issues that MSHA has identified as being the primary ones for mine safety. Those things that hurt miners. Two exceptions in the proposal in part 46 that I read, let me read down the list. Statutory rights of miners I think that should be included. Use of self rescue or respiratory devises as appropriate. And we all know that we don't teach self rescuer operation for above ground operations like sand and gravel. I don't think that's done anywhere. I doubt that MSHA enforces it out here. Certainly it's not applicable. Hazard recognition, that's pretty broad. It can include anything in there. Unfortunately because it is so broad sometimes it's not paid attention to in enough detail. Emergency procedures, that's another broad category. Electrical hazards, very broad. First aid, MSHA has a very specific requirement on first aid for miners. I don't think it's misunderstood, it's pretty plain. One thing that's not mentioned in the part 46 proposal that I saw is powered haulies and traffic safety, that's the number one killer nationwide in mines. I think that should be specifically singled out, make sure it's not missed because those hazards are present on almost all mine sites that I'm aware of. Since it is such a prominent subject as far as mine injury and fatalities concerned, it should be specifically singled out. Another one which I think should be singled out is ground control because in California especially in sand and gravel operations that's a very important subject which injures a lot of miners. Walk around training, mine specific, that's in part 48 now and I think that's essential. You can't learn all this in the classroom. I'm the last one to suggest that you can. The classroom as I said before is a basic grounding in basic subject matter. Walk around training should be adaptable and adapted to the specific hazards and operations found on a mine site. This is very parallel to 3203 which requires specific training for those job site hazards encountered on any job. The last one, number ten, that I would recommend is health hazards that's a very, very broad category. But in California and especially in the sand and gravel industry, I think they, that should specifically include at least an orientation on silica hazards. Silica is largely ignored in California by CAL OSHA, wrongly so. I believe that the 24-hour new miner requirement and for underground people with 40-hour is a pretty good basic start. I see no reason in changing that. There might be a modification possible. In our experience and like I said my particular unit reaches about 2500 miners a year in California, a certain time needs to be allotted for this basic information to be gotten across to miners really before they're introduced to the mine environment. Hazards exist the first day they work on the job. Putting it off for 90 days of six months, putting off a basic training I think would do miners a disservice. They are not going to be properly prepared. At least eight hours initially training, I would recommend 16, two days, and the other 24 hour, or a portion of the 24 hour requirement could certainly be done by walk around training, first aid training, specific hazard training, job orientation, or whatever. But to get these basic subjects across in any kind of a learnable fashion. I would that that is going to take at least an eight hour block or a 16 hour block, preferably before a miner goes to work. There again this is a minimum standard. That first block of training should not be an end, it should only be a beginning. Question three, should training for inexperienced miners be given all at once, or over a period of time. I think I asked that just a minute ago. Certain basic training should be given before miners are sent out to work. CAL OSHA also enforces this under 3203 regardless of the job. An employee, especially a new employee should be oriented, taught what the hazards are, taught to learn to avoid them, taught to understand the basics of the regulations regarding them. The most hazardous the industry, the more intense and possibly the longer the training has to be. A brand new logger is not going to be allowed out in the woods without close supervision and also a sit-down session. None is specified by length of time but prudent operators are going to sit that person down and train that person in the basics whether it takes an hour or three days. To turn a new employee loose in a hazards environment is not prudent, it's not profitable. I've heard some people say that training should be broken down in very small increments because the adult attention span can't handle very long sessions. I think it's an insult to the miner, myself. I've seen a lot of them and I've seen a lot of training in other situations. Adults, as any instructional technologist will tell you, have longer attention span than children and they learn well when they learn things that they need to know. And if these training session can be made value to the miner. The miner is certainly smart to know that it's a need to know thing and that miner is going to stay awake. And running through training records and personal associations with about 7,000 miners in the last three years I'd say, less than one percent have fallen asleep. Almost all of them have stayed awake during the whole thing whether it's eight hours or 24 or sometimes 40; and over and above that they made significant contributions to the training sessions in the process. Keeping people awake is largely a function of how the training is and subject matter, and this is important subject matter and if we're going to specify something that we really want to tough on, let's tough on the training. Let's have MSHA, state grants, EFS get in here and push some good stuff and some good people. People can stay awake. Should supervisor be subject to the same training requirements as miners? I'm not sure but in California there is no requirement you have to be smart to be a supervisor. It's certainly desirable but I think it will bear out in my experience over 25 years of accident investigation, supervisors are just as prone to injury and hazards on the job as anybody else, sometimes more so. In fact some supervisors, none here I'm sure, get the attitude that they're bullet prove because they are supervisors and they don't need training. And that's a fallacy, I can speak from experience. Number five, should training be required whenever a miner receives a work assignment that involves new and unfamiliar tasks. My opinion is yes they should. It makes good sense. If you're going to run into a new situation or a new machine or a new hazard that you be instructed in the safe operation and the safe behavior associated with that task. CAL OSHA requires this. I don't think it has to be hard and fast. I don't think there has to be a set time involved because tasks and operations and new processes vary so much, it should be up to the operator of the mine to properly orient that person but again new training is important. Should specific subject areas be covered during annual refresher training, if so what subject areas should be included? Well if you're going to give trainees basic training in the first place with subject matter dictated certainly pertinent subject matter should be also incorporated in refresher training. Required under part 48 now and in, probably 75 percent of our training that we give to miners in California includes, is refresher training and it has been my experience that those miners need it. They need to be refreshed. Not just miners, in any industry. It's a human peculiarity I suppose that when you get around a job for a long time you become complacent. You forget some of the basics. It's true with any profession with any area of learning. You're concentrating on your job, you're concentrating on a particular are and you need to be refreshed in the reason that you're there, the overall safety hazards, the things that you might not see in your day to day tasks that may be important to your safety and health. And so certain subject matters, yes, should be included in the refresher training. Now the argument is well we get tired of this after five or six years of the same old videos, same old instructor, and all that. That is not a fault of the training requirement, rather a fault of the administration of the training. I'm sure that I've been guilty of that same thing, too. We have certain subject matter that we have to cover, it is a consistent struggle to try to find new ways to bring it across, but then that's a training problem, not necessarily a subject matter problem. Because the same subject matters injure miners and kill mines day after day, year after year. As soon as that stops I'd be all for changing the requirements but it's not stopped and I doubt if it will. Can the eight hours of annual refresher training required by the Mine Act be completed in segments of training lasting less than 30 minutes? It has been my experience over 30 years that important subject matter and safety and health of miners certainly is important, it's life and death, cannot really be introduced or refreshed on a particular subject in a very short time such as tail-gate sessions. I've had a great experience in the construction industry, more than 30 odd years. Tail-gate sessions are a great way to meet the rather loose training requirements of most of other regulatory agencies including CAL OSHA. I've seen hundreds of them, they last from three minutes to ten minutes and usually they are lip-service to the subject matter. They don't do the employees much good. They are only done to satisfy someone's record that they be done every ten working days or so as CAL OSHA requires construction. Same is true in the mining industry. If you're going to teach somebody something, you need a reasonable time to explore the subject, get feedback and so forth. And so I think 30 minutes which I believe now is the MSHA minimum, is a good minimum. Underneath that lip service will be paid, employees won't be properly prepared. A record will only be created. Nothing effective will really be gotten across. I think tail-gate sessions are necessary for day to day operations, reminders, suggestions, input, and dialogue; but for basic training I don't think 30 minutes any too much. Should records of training be kept by the mine operator at the mine site or should the regulations allow records to be kept at other locations? You've got permanent records, pertinent records to a mining operation where else should they be kept. CAL OSHA had a great amount of bitter experience in this area as far as training records, injury records, and so forth like that. We require that they be kept at the principle place of employment. The reason is if they are kept somewhere else it's going to waste the mine operator's time going to get them. It's going to waste the regulator's time waiting for them. It's going to result in a lot more citations, a lot more litigation, and it is not effective. These training records, and I've seen some that are small and some are big, there really isn't any volume requirement. Some of the bigger ones are some of the least effective. If they affect the safety and the health of the workers and they reflect an ongoing effort at training and the well being of the employees, why should they not be kept at a mine site. You keep them in a binder, you can keep them in a file folder, you can keep in a lock box in a pickup truck as long as they are there, there are a lot of other records which are required by CAL OSHA to be kept at an employment site, and training records are really not that big. I've heard a lot of argument for about seven years now effective records need not take up a whole room or a whole file cabinet or a whole briefcase for that matter. So, I think it would be safe, less time consuming, less expensive for the mine operator both and the regulatory agency to keep them where they belong. To keep them where they are permanent, pertinent, pardon me. Number nine, I think is the last one. Should there be minimum qualifications for persons who conduct miner training, if so what kind of qualifications are appropriate. Wow! One of the big gripes about refresher training is that it's dull. If you open it up to anybody what guarantee is there that it's not continue to be dull and there's also no guarantee that you're even going to cover pertinent subject matter. There should be some minimum qualification, again, for instructors. Right now there is determined by MSHA, it's determined I believe right now by the training specialists as far as I know in the district office. And from what I understand of the process it is a, comes out of an evaluation of the trainer's mining experience and the trainer's instructional experience. In general I think it's a pretty good idea. A certificate is issued. I could be engraved, it's kind of not to fancy, maybe you could improve on that. But, it tells an instructor what he or she is allowed to instruct, and I think that's a reasonably good basic rule. We have seen in California in general industry anybody be allowed to administer training, any company person, any supervisor, and there is certainly no guarantee that those people are going to be qualified in the first place, interesting enough to keep the trainees awake in the second place, or if the adhere to the subject matter that's pertinent in the third place. Some minimum qualification for instructors, whether they be company instructors, state grant instructors like we are, MSHA instructors, or private consultants should be met. That you want to change the qualifications, make them more pertinent or whatever that may be applicable, I don't know, but know minimum standard should be met. The instructor's certificate is as good as any. As I understand it here, Mr. Tobin (ph), I've worked with him, we've given quite a few instructor preparatory training courses in the past year and he evaluates I believe on the two factors that I mentioned; mine experience or mine education or mine training and instructional experience. I think both are necessary. I've gone through all kinds of instructional experience, my people have and I've taught it myself in the last three years. A certain amount of that is necessary. You need a good instructor. In fact this whole thing is really meaningless if you don't get people who convey the message, inspire the trainees, keep them awake so that they can get all that together, and get feedback. Otherwise the entire requirement is, means nothing at all. And so in general in closing, I'd say that we believe that a structure is necessary for the fundamentals. The fundamentals should be communicated, at least a certain portion of them, before a new miner is allowed to work. That refresher training should be exactly that. It should cover the important things that a miner needs to know to stay alive. And that especially the people who administer this kind of training should be some how certificated or judged worthy or educated or meet some minimum requirement or minimum judgement that they can first of all cover the subject matter, and secondly, do it in a meaningful matter. Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Mr. Niesen, I have a couple of follow up questions and other members of the panel may also have a couple of questions. Earlier in your remarks you made some reference to the fact that, you know, there's this push for site specific training and you indicated some concern with the idea that, I mean, as miners may move from one to site to other, if you get too mine specific then they may be ill prepared for the hazards at their new mine site. Could you expand on that a little bit and particularly what impact that concern should have on any requirements that we may put in, in part 46? MR. NIESEN: Okay. I think in the mining industry and in all industries as I said before a basic orientation or training in the basic subject matter where the main hazards, however you'd like to phrase it, is necessary. In addition to that, as I said that's a starting point. In addition to that site specific or mine specific or task specific training should be given and that's an ongoing thing I think. It is under the administration of CAL OSHA's training requirements and that has to be done mine by mine. I think the basic subject matter in part 48 with which I'm most familiar is a transferable knowledge. Mine specific training is not going to be. So that the basic building blocks that go along which is a certificate are going to be generally applicable in a lot of areas, a lot of mine sites. And so that should be retained. The mine specifics portion of it which is required now by part 48 but I hope that's a very basic starting point is an ongoing thing. And when a miner transfer that is going to have to be started again or redone at the new mine site even between companies. Every mine site is different. In fact every mine site changes from one month to the next as we all know. And so that is going to have to be somehow addressed when a miner changes jobs, I think now there is a requirement in part 48 for an experienced, a person who transfers, the training requirements are less, supposedly he already had his basic training done but he's going to get new training at a new site. I think that's perfectly good concept. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: But you're not saying that for the 24 hours of new miner training that's required that, I mean, site specific training cannot be used in part to satisfy that 24 hour requirement? MR. NIESEN: No, that should be included in that 24 hour -- CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. NIESEN: -- requirement. Yeah, I think it is now and I think it is a valuable thing. Yeah. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. Okay. And one other thing that you said. You referenced that the approval process of training plans, approval by MSHA, and you indicated, I wasn't really quite sure what you were saying about the, you know, the current approval process under part 48 and what your recommendations might be for our new training regulation. MR. NIESEN: Okay, as I understand it now each mine has to submit a training plan to be approved by the local MSHA office -- CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. NIESEN: -- specific office. I've not found that to be, first of all carried out, and secondly, very effective. CAL OSHA has a performance oriented thing that you have to have a training plan devised for your particular operation. I think it would be a good idea maybe, well, or acceptable I guess, to give a little bit more room there for individual operators to develop their own training plans which include the basic building blocks again but necessarily have them approved specifically. They're there, they should be on the site for an inspector. Certainly they can be challenged or modified by, by whatever it is necessary. But to check in with MSHA every time you change, or change instructors and I believe that's being changed now. I'm not sure. I think it's superfluous. I think it's not done - - CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: So you, I mean your experience has been that MSHA approval so to speak hasn't really added much value to the process? MR. NIESEN: Not specific. The frame work is there. If they meet the frame during an inspection I think that should be adequate. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Is that because the people who are doing the reviewing of the plans maybe don't have the expertise or the experience to really give good feedback to an operator or you think that, you know, mine operators should have the ability to devise their plans and if they're grossly inadequate, I mean, an inspector could make that determination during a regular inspection? MR. NIESEN: Yeah, I have no doubt about the expertise of the people who review the plans but then you're reviewing a plan, you're not reviewing the whole situation. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: The implementation of the plan? MR. NIESEN: Probably a mine operator and I'll certainly say that mine operators and mine employees know their business best and if they have certain guidelines which are already there, to develop a plan that fits their site and be open to inspection, I wouldn't think that anymore would be necessary. I don't mean to imply that MSHA reviewers don't know a good plan when they see it, but a plan is only a plan -- CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. NIESEN: -- when it's on paper. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. Do you have -- MR. BRELAND: Mr. Niesen, just to follow up on a couple things and make sure I understood what you were suggesting. When you talked about the basic requirements being covered, some of the issues that have been brought up to us before like the requirement to teach explosives for example in sand and gravel, some of those things of that nature that might not apply certainly to that particular mine site; are you saying that you still think that should be a basic requirement because they may go to a mine that could have that? MR. NIESEN: I'm sorry, my, explosive, did use -- MR. BRELAND: Well you said the minimum subjects. MR. NIESEN: Okay. MR. BRELAND: That are in the present Part 48, you know, carrying it, I think is what I understood you to say and then you talked some about the training plans being more flexible and site specific. So I guess I just want to make sure I understood what you were, you were suggesting. MR. NIESEN: Okay, that's a good example because I also regulate explosive licensing in California so I'm familiar with the subject matter and it's not always used. You're right. It takes very little time to include that or mention it at least or mention that there is such an animal. What the local requirements are under general hazard training. If an explosive operation becomes part of your mine operation, at a mine you're working at; certainly you need more. There are certain subject matters which I think can be minimized and I think there's room in the nomenclature at least of part 48 for a lot of flexibility. Hazards training may or may not included explosives. If it's not used there, then not much time should be spent on it. Certainly we don't teach self rescuer for service operations. I think, as I read it, and I'm an old bureaucrat, forgive me, there's a lot of room in there for interpretation so long as the enforcement doesn't get picky. Now I've heard that think, too, for 25 years. MR. BRELAND: Uh-huh. MR. NIESEN: Against me, too. Hard to believe I know, but -- And so the enforcement makes the rule also. But I think there's enough room in there for mine operators to include some of the basic things that, that kill mines and tailor them to their operation. It certainly is with 3203. I think there's enough room in there in part 48. I don't believe, I think the subject matter should be mentioned. I think there should be certain orientations, I'm aware that it's communicated that these things exist because the transferability of the specific. At some sand and gravel mines in California do use explosives and where that, the basic orientation to a new miner should include a certain amount because of this universal applicability of the training proof. How much is going to depend I think on the operators' judgment and the conditions at a particular mine. But certain subject matters I believe still should be covered, and maybe minimally but at least covered. MR. BRELAND: Now, well to follow up on that one problem could be that the person if you have certified to instruct at a mine site may not have the expertise in some of those, that type of subject material that would, couldn't do much more than an overview of some general stuff, so that might have been provided by somebody, you know. So I guess again the issue is when we're looking at list of basic subjects, should there be a caveats for a subject that doesn't apply to a mine operator or a mine specific operation? MR. NIESEN: I don't see any harm in giving them some room -- MR. BRELAND: Okay. MR. NIESEN: -- if that's what you're looking for. Yeah, because that's, that's going to be true all, no single instructor, no single course is going to cover everything anyway. MR. BRELAND: Okay. MR. NIESEN: That's -- MR. BRELAND: One other thing you talked about was it sounded it you believed the minimum of eight hours and preferably 16 hours was that prior to actual starting on the assigned work and the other to follow up with that do you have some sort of time limit you think is reasonable to complete a 24 hours for a new miner? MR. NIESEN: I think that, in my personal opinion, 16 hours for service new miner is enough, not too much. I think that should be given fairly soon. I'm, I am not for having it wait six months because that miner is out there exposed to the entire mine site, perhaps a few days. If this training is necessary at all, why wait. The miner is exposed to hazard, if he's not prepared to deal with the hazard then he's going to be at risk. And so really don't think that a long period is wise. MR. BRELAND: Okay. And I want to make sure I really understood on the record keeping, you're suggesting that all records of training for annual refresher, new miner, and such be kept at the mine site, somewhere at the mine site? MR. NIESEN: That's what I believe. Maybe I'm totally in the dark here, I don't see that they're big. The records that I've seen for CAL OSHA, that's one of the comments or one of the problems there, can be fit in a very small book. They don't have to be huge. From what I've seen at mine sites the records of initial training and refresher training and the certificates are evidence certainly for, outward evidence at least, copies of those things really don't take up much room. I know it's another record keeping requirement but the alternative is to keep them somewhere else and an inspector shows up and says okay show me the training on this person who's involved in this accident, they're not there, they have to be gotten somewhere, the mine operator's time is wasted, the inspector's time is wasted. Sometimes there are misunderstandings. The citation gets issued because they're not there. It ends up in some sort of litigation. I've been through literally dozens of these things with CAL OSHA. It's counterproductive. And so if the records are there on site and they're pertinent, it's over and done with right there and you're on. And for that reason alone I think they should be kept on the site. MR. BRELAND: Okay. Thank you. And then on the certification of instructors, you were suggesting that there be a development of minimum standards for qualifications. Would that be, you talked some about a training plan having a basic outline and that it should be at mine site, mine specific? Were you also proposing that there be a like a list of things that would be required for minimal background and experience and education for instructors? MR. NIESEN: Well this is more less MSHA's training requirement and MSHA has a standard of sort at least now. I think and I guess it's really not codified and maybe it doesn't have to be. But there should be some investigation into a trainer's basic knowledge which is his mining instruction or experience, and whether or not he has any kind of experience or training in how to deliver that knowledge. And I think it's done now, perhaps what we have is adequate. The certificate is issued as I understand it and I have one, after an evaluation of these particular subject areas, one good thing about the, I guess the broad parameters of that particular thing is that anybody can become an instructor. If you've got a good miner who can handle it, who wants to do it, and is properly grounded in experience and had been given a few pointers on how to deliver instructional sessions, that miner can become an instructor now. I see no problem with that. I don't think that you have to go to school to be an instructor, in fact that may even restrict your ability. But there should be a system by which you are qualified or certified or whatever word you would like to put it, based on what you know and how you can deliver it. Now maybe the one we have, the system we've got now is perfectly adequate. I'm not suggesting any new parameters be put on that. MR. BRELAND: Okay, thank you. I just wanted to make sure I understood. Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Do you have a question? MR. BURNS: Yeah, I do. Did you state that OSHA or CAL OSHA has training requirements, is that correct? MR. NIESEN: I can only speak for CAL OSHA and that's in California, that's what's enforced. Yeah, we do. MR. BURNS: And do you evaluate that training or do you, I mean, do you, is there an enforcement mechanism that, in the statute? MR. NIESEN: Yeah. California Code of Regulations are what's called the California Safety Orders and section 3203(a)7 is a training requirement and it is a performance oriented standard. And this came into effect in its present form in 1991. That any employer must have a written training program. It doesn't have to be approved by anybody in advance, but it must be written and in place at anyplace of employment whether or not you've got one or more employees. And, that training program as we normally refer to as a training program, must address the hazards encountered by employees at that particular business or job site. That there be certain training given at certain intervals and the training is not always, training intervals of the subject matter is not dictated, it's left up to the individual industry because it's a very broad standard. And, that records of that training must be kept. Now there are certain exceptions for small employers about record keeping, but in general those are the requirements of the California training regulation. MR. BURNS: So you would, your inspectors would be in the mines and evaluating those training records, is that correct? MR. NIESEN: My safety unit which also inspects mines as does MSHA now, does at least by policy inspect each employer including mines for an adequate training policy. Now if the mine operator has chosen to do MSHA's Part 48 training, certificated, and so forth like that; we accept that as satisfying CAL OSHA's training requirement at mine sites. MR. BURNS: What about, what about for the industries present here today? MR. NIESEN: I'm sorry, I'm -- MR. BURNS: What about for the industries present here today that may not follow Part 48 but they're doing other training, how do you evaluate that? MR. NIESEN: We would probably look at that as we do in any other industry, however, we might look at it a little bit more closely because they are in the mining community, we have another standard which although it's not enforced is still law. Let me say this that I know quite a few, what I call progressive sand and gravel operators who exceed part 48 but if the training program addresses the hazards to which the employees are exposed is in written structured form and is faithfully administered then they are in compliance. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: How, you indicated that, you know, a paper review of a program is not going to tell you very much or if anything about how good it is in its implementation. Do you all do some kind of evaluation of how well those training programs are administered, and if so, I mean, how would you go about looking at that? MR. NIESEN: The basic regulation for training program which is 3203 has seven parts. Each part of that thing must be in writing in general. There are a couple of exceptions. It addresses who is in charge of the training or the safety effort by name and position, what system there is for self-inspection and the uncovering of hazards on any job site, a system of correction of those hazards, and in-house investigation, accident investigation procedure, a way to convey information to and from employees about safety and health matters and, how it is enforced internally, and the training requirement. I think that's seven. We look for the form of any employers' IPP we call it, injury and illness prevention program. We weren't satisfied with safety program we had to add more syllables in there. In general for that structure and its applicability. Normally, or a lot of times we'll get involved in this with accident investigations. We will look into the circumstances surrounding the accident and we will go immediately to the training records to find out if that employee was properly and thoroughly trained in the operation. If it's not it is going to result in a citation probably for the accident and for the lack of training program. This has been the most, single most cited safety order in CAL OSHA's history, especially since 1991, its inception, a lot of controversy. To me, personally, and I've been around a long time, it is the single or it could be the single most effective regulation for the safety and health of workers period, if properly administered and that's a big if. And the same thing with mine training, if it's not properly administered, faithfully administered, it is of no value. But we do rugously enforce it. We look for structure, it's only dictated by those broad seven performance oriented parameters. But we look at it in detail in almost every inspection we make in the mining industry and out. MR. BURNS: Could you, could you give me the full cite for that standard? I have 3203 but -- MR. NIESEN: I'll give you a copy of it if you've got a copy machine. It's CCR -- 8 CCR Title 8 California Code of Regulations 3203. MR. BURNS: I should be able to get that off the Internet. MR. NIESEN: I've got one. You can get it off the Internet, I've got on here in my, I'll give it to you for free. MR. BURNS: Okay. I'll accept that. MR. NIESEN: But, yeah it's been in effect since July 1st, 1991, and I say it's one of the most controversial, one of the most cited section, but I think also one of the most effective in the long run. MR. BURNS: Okay. I can get a copy out here at the desk, I appreciate it. Did you also indicate that, you gave the example of the logging industry and they provide anywhere from one hour to two days of training before they start work depending upon the operation, is that correct? MR. NIESEN: Yeah. Now this training requirement in 3203(a)7 does not specify any particular time -- MR. BURNS: Okay. MR. NIESEN: -- nor subject matter. But, it is enforced and I've had 25 years of enforcement with CAL OSHA in all industries. Logging and construction were my specialties. That the training length is going to vary according to the hazard of the industry, the complexity of the industry, and so forth. And the problem with not, a non-specification standard, performance standard from an enforcement perceptive is that your opinion as an inspector may differ from the employer's perceptive, especially if it comes down to a fatality or something like that. It gives rise to a lot of citation which are not always upheld and a lot of litigation at the Appeals level, that is necessary I guess with a performance oriented broadly applied standard. But we look at the industry, we look at the hazards, look at the situation, and then we look at the amount and subject matter of training; and make a judgment on whether or not the standard was complied with or not. MR. BURNS: Okay. The other question I had for you, this comes up a lot of the other meetings, the standard gravel and aggregates industry in a lot of cases they are very integrated companies. They have, they go right up through the construction area. But you also have workers go back and forth between construction and aggregates. Does, do you take that into account, I mean, if you have someone coming from the construction industry into the mining industry and they have, perhaps says he's got, he or she has 20 years of experience working around bulldozers, all kinds of equipment; it seems that that person may not need as much training as some person right out of high school or college that has no experience. Is that taken into account in your performance -- MR. NIESEN: That's a good point. If you have a person who's a heavy equipment operator, and has had evidence of training somewhere, experience and I hate to say this because I'm old and I've got a lot of it, it's not necessarily a good trainer. MR. BURNS: Yeah, might not be good experience. MR. NIESEN: That's right. I've talked to a lot of people who had all their fingers and toes and eyes as matter of luck or a lot of angels, whatever way you like to go. And so, some habits learned from experience are bad. I've got two. I'm not even going to tell you what they are. But, I don't know, that's a hard question to answer. If you have had certain basic training in heavy equipment which is used at another site, certainly you don't need to be put to sleep by starting at the bottom. I'm not a good enough administrator to figure out exactly how to word that in a rule. But, yeah, there could be some exceptions to that especially among industries that trade people or among like I say large industries who have sand and gravel operations and construction. I know of several, and the ones I know of, Granite, Tikert (ph); a lot of those operators have a pretty good internal program for taking care of that. How to codify it, I'm not sure. MR. BURNS: Yeah, I appreciate that. I'm trying to figure out how to codify that too. MR. NIESEN: Better you than me. MR. BURNS: That's all the questions I have for you. I don't know if Roz has anything. MS. FONTAINE: No. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much, Mr. Niesen. MR. NIESEN: Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: The next speaker that we have on our list is Tony Serpas from Granite Rock Company. STATEMENT OF MR. TONY SERPAS MR. SERPAS: Good morning. My name is Tony Serpas, spelled, T-O-N-Y, S-E-R-P-A-S. I'm manager for Safety and Health Services for Granite Rock Company. Our main office is located in Wattsonville, California; approximately 100 miles south of San Francisco. We very much appreciate the opportunity to speak on this very important matter. Granite Rock is a medium sized business, family owned, supplying building materials to the south bay region. We have a crushed granite operation that's been in continuance operation since before 1900. Currently owned by the company since it was incorporated February 14th, 1900. At this mine site we employee approximately 65 to 75 people throughout the year. We also have two additional sand mines, one sand and gravel pit, and one portable crushing operation. Each of these mines, additional mines employee anywhere from two to eight people. Our philosophy as defined in our nine corporate objectives requires safety above all else and constant improvement. Granite Rock has won the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award and also California's equivalent the Golden Award. At Granite Rock we have provided part 48 training for all of our miners. I'd like to address the points as Mr. Niesen did as were requested in the Federal Register announcement. But I'd like to say first that the views that I'm going to express are primarily those of myself and Granite Rock. The first issue that was listed was under definitions of new miner and experienced miner. In our particular situation, it's my experience at least as safety and health manager for Granite Rock for nine years, that the majority of our people come to us either from construction or another industry. So therefore all of our people are new miners to us. But to answer your question, yes. I think we need to have definitions defined clearly so that we understand how they should be applied. And I would suggest that the definition of a new miner is a person that has not received the required new miner MSHA acceptable training as defined in section 152 subparagraph (a) sub-2 of the Federal Mine and Safety Health Act of 1977 and mine site work experience of less than one year. Of course, an experienced miner would be a person that has received the training as stated and has had more than one year of experience. In addition thought I would suggest that any experienced miner that is not current with his eight hour annual refresher training as required in section 115(a)3 of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977 and any appropriate task training for the task to be performed that he was hired for, should receive the appropriate task training before performing work and receive an eight hour annual refresher training within 30 days from the date the individual starts work at this new mine site. You also asked under new miner training, which training subjects should be taught before a new miner is assigned work even if the work is done under close supervision. And again with the exception of first aid training as spoken to by Mr. Niesen, I believe that all subjects listed in section 115(a)2 of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act should be taught before a new miner is assigned work. Currently Granite Rock trains every miner in basic first aid and CPR. This training is conducted by a vendor who provides a certified Red Cross instructor for basic first aid and CPR. Should training for inexperienced miners be given all at once or over a period of time such as several weeks or months. Now we believe that ideally as soon as the required training can be accomplished the better. However, we believe that at least at a minimum a block of six to eight hours should be completed before any work is started with the remainder of the required training accomplished within 60 days. Should this decision, referring to when and how to train a new miner, be left to the discretion of the mine operator. Well, again, we feel it's best to perform the training before a person starts to work but we believe also that there needs to be some type of flexibility to determine the best way to accomplish this training for the individual within the time limitations as listed above. That is within the 60 days. This is because today's technology provides many forms of acceptable training platforms whether it be now in the new computer/electronic age, videos, one on one training, or some other form. We believe that we're in the best position really to determine the most effective type of training and method that would suit each of our individual operations. As I said we have a portable plant that has five people. Their office is a pickup truck of the supervisor going around to different locations. Of course, at our larger mining site we have more opportunity to do other things. You also asked what are the advantages and disadvantages of spreading training over an extended period of time. Well I believe first of all one advantage is to allow the miner to absorb the training a little bit at a time to let the individual comprehend what he's doing. Also it gives flexibility to the operator to be able to accomplish this training. The big disadvantage to that, of course, is that a new miner may encounter a hazard that he has not been trained for or not completing the training as required. It was asked should supervisors be subject to the same training requirements as miners. Of course. Supervisors should receive the training as well as other safety related topics such as how to conduct effective safety meetings, how to make individual safety evaluations, and how to motivate people to work safely among other items. Should training be required whenever a miner receives a work assignment that involves a new and unfamiliar task. I think that goes without saying. Again any new task, the individual should be aware of the hazards associated with that new task. Task training, should specific subject areas be covered during annual refresher training, if so what subject areas should be included. I agree with Mr. Niesen, that the required subject areas should be designed to provide hazard recognition and safe working procedures that are appropriate to the task to be performed in individual mine sites, particular to that mine site. In reference to annual refresher training, can the eight hours of annual refresher training required by the Mine Act be complete in segments of training less than 30 minutes. Yes, I believe that there are some topics that in fact can be trained in less than 30 minutes, but it depends on the topic and the method of instruction. Again whether it's a video presentation, a computer interactive media, a one on one training by a trainer; but whatever the training method is used it must be effective to educate and modify the individual's behavior regarding health and safety. In regard to the training certificates, should the records of training be kept by the mine operated mine site or should the regulation allow records to be kept at other locations. In our operation we have small operations and large operations. And I personally would like to have flexibility to maintain the records at our main office facility. I understand what Mr. Niesen was saying about having them available, but particularly with our new electronic age all of our locations are tied in with one another. It doesn't take very long to get a, the required information to an inspector at such time of the requirement. Again, if the mine office is a pickup, even though you might have current training records, how far and how much information can you keep in the pickup. But I believe that the response is that if the operator can produce the records in a timely manner to an authorized representative or to an associate safety engineer, really there shouldn't be any reason why they can't maintained at another location other than at the mine site although we do that currently. The qualification of instructors, should there be a minimum qualification for persons to conduct miner training, if so what kind of qualifications are appropriate. Again, I agree with Mr. Niesen that the most important part of training programs, of trainers is that they need to be effective to provide all the required information, to instruct and motivate the individual to understand all health and safety concerns of the individual task and individual mine site. One of the largest factors in that of course is the instructor. And again I'm not sure how you quantify or regulate, what makes that instructor a competent person. Whether it be experience. Whether it be going to a class. I think I agree a lot with California's standpoint, that the performance aspect is really more important than the paper qualifications that a person may have. As I stated earlier there are now many training platforms available including the state funded programs, contract vendors. I do my own part 48 training. I have been certified as a MSHA instructor, gone through the program. And I believe that the mine operator really is in, probably, the best position to establish the quality of that training. At least he should be in a position to make sure that that's training, that's for his best interest as well as the interest of his people. Another point I think that needs to be addressed is that even though we might have a training program with certain designated people as certified instructors of training, I know that even though I might have been involved or I have been involved in mine training for about 12 years and in safety training in different forms for over 30 years, that there are some specific jobs at the mine site that I'm not really an expert at. I have a good basic understanding of the hazards there but I do have at most of my mine sites some people that have as many as 20 to 30 years doing a particular job and if that individual is motivated and has a desire to share some of that experience. I think it could be a lot better received by the new miner than somebody like myself standing up there and trying to tell them something that I'm really not an expert on. And that's basically my comments. And, again, we appreciate the time and the ability to, to give our input. We think it's very important particularly that the, since the programs and the concept is going to start to be enforced that we understand what is going to be required and how we have to, or what we have to do to meet the requirements of the law for an enforcement standpoint. Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Mr. Serpas, I have a couple of follow-ups and others may as well. You, one of the last things that you said was the fact that you've got people at your operations who have got expertise and experience and, you know, specific areas and although you are the MSHA approved trainer, I mean, there's other people who have got much, you know, greater in depth knowledge of topics that you may want to cover as part of your training. Do you have any recommendations or suggestions as far as how we might handle that? I mean, are you saying that those people should be under different kinds of requirements as far as approval of instructor or do you have any recommendations as to how that might be handled? MR. SERPAS: Again, that's a difficult point to codify. I think first of all it has to be done on an individual aspect because, just because I might have an electrician that has 30 years of experience if he doesn't want to do the training he's not going to be an effective trainer. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. SERPAS: You know, so it almost particularly people that I would use incidentally in my training program I think have to be taken on a case by case basis. And I don't think it's necessarily important for that person to go through a 40 hour instructor training course to be able to impart some of that valuable knowledge and experience that he's had or she has had -- CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Uh-huh. MR. SERPAS: -- to impart that to the new miners. But I think the attitude of the individual, his demonstrated concern for safety performance, and safety record really establish his ability to be able to do that. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Uh-huh. MR. SERPAS: And I best can do that by knowing the individual, by talking to the individual, and by really knowing if, you know, let him do it once and see how he does and then go from there. And again I don't know how you codify that. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. As far as record keeping, you advocated some flexibility as far as where those records might be kept and you indicated that, you know, centralized location might work if, and that you would be able to produce records -- MR. SERPAS: That's right. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: -- fairly quickly upon request. I mean, we've heard comments along these lines as we've worked our way across the country that, you know, I mean, a lot of people have gone to computerized record keeping, et cetera. If in fact we were to do something like that, I mean require records to be kept centrally but require that they be presented or made available within a certain minimum period of time, I mean, how quickly at your operation, I mean, if someone were to ask for those records could they be made available? MR. SERPAS: With exception of our portable operation and one of our newer mine sites, all of our mine sites are networked to the main office. And it would be just a matter of minutes -- CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: By computer? MR. SERPAS: -- to e-mail a file. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. And then finally you didn't touch on this but, and if you, you know, I don't want to put you on the spot, but as far as training program approval, I mean as you may know section 115 requires that a training program be approved by the Secretary of Labor and I just wanted to get your feelings on how that might, I mean, what a good approach to that approval process might be. MR. SERPAS: Well, I think that there has to be a starting point and that starting point could be providing a written plan to the MSHA for review. But, again, I think that the employer needs the flexibility to be able to modify and change that plan as mine site conditions change, as operation change within the mine site. So I think that there has to be an ability to have both. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: So, you're, I mean, you're saying subsequent revisions, I mean, we need to be a little bit more flexibility on what process there is -- MR. SERPAS: That's my opinion -- CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: -- as the training plan needs to be changed? MR. SERPAS: Right. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. Rod? MR. BRELAND: Yeah, I had a couple of things. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Or Kevin? MR. BRELAND: Just a follow-up on that line of thought with the training plan. If you were, you talked about having the records kept at a main office, would you propose the same thing with the training plan? Any why I'm asking is it's an issue everybody is going to need to deal with but if somebody was to go to the mine site and look and see if your training plan for the specific mine site was relevant for that mine site, would you want to have one of those at the mine? MR. SERPAS: Well, I would but again right now that's almost a moot point because I am the MSHA trainer. MR. BRELAND: Uh-huh. MR. SERPAS: And I do our part 48 training for all of our mine sites. So, of course I have that with me and I have it for each, each mine site. MR. BRELAND: That was another question I was going to ask. It sounds like you have probably approximately 100 employees all together. MR. SERPAS: Well, right now we're probably between all of our six actual locations, about 135. MR. BRELAND: Okay. And, but you're the only person certified as an instructor. MR. SERPAS: At the current time. MR. BRELAND: Would you envision, you mentioned some people at the sites and it would be understandable that it would have specific skills and abilities to teach, but would be thinking that under a proposed regulation maybe you should have somebody at each site certified or would that be what you would want to do? MR. SERPAS: We've talked about that's a possibility. Again it's a determinant on the people at the mine site. First of all their interest and their desire to want to do this and then getting them qualified. MR. BRELAND: Yeah. And then the issue on competent instructors is going to be a big one, I'm sure qualified however you would want to define that. But also an issue of if this person is well experienced and qualified at least by the background and training, again people are talking about may not make them a good trainer. Do you have any suggestions on remedies for that if it's found they can't demonstrate that they're not good trainers? MR. SERPAS: Well probably in that situation they'd fall back to plan A and that I'd be doing it till we could find somebody else. MR. BRELAND: Or they would have to have to some sort of follow up training or -- MR. SERPAS: Absolutely. I mean, again I think Mr, Niesen really has the key that that could best demonstrated by the performance and sitting in on their classes and -- MR. BRELAND: Okay. MR. SERPAS: -- each one our training sessions are evaluated individually by the participants in our class and their comments and suggestions and how they rate the instructor as well. MR. BRELAND: Okay, that's a good idea. And then one other issue on the record keeping, you said that you thought the less than 30 minutes time frame for some would be good. Were you talking about annual refresher or the type of training that might need to be tracked for record keeping purposes and if so who would you propose doing that? MR. SERPAS: I think that can be established in a simple database. MR. BRELAND: Okay. That's all I have. Thank you. MR. BURNS: I guess you currently do use other people that aren't necessarily qualified based on the, I guess, either they're doing it with your supervision or your -- MR. SERPAS: Right now the only other people that -- MR. BURNS: You're familiar with their abilities I guess? MR. SERPAS: Not at the current time. The only other people that we use to do training would be somebody from CAL OSHA's Mine and Tunnelling Training Unit to do our part 48 training. MR. BURNS: I mean, that's been suggested at other meetings that certainly there are very good people like what you talked about that you're not just going to turn them loose but that they certainly be able to comment and provide some effective training on something they have, you know, first hand -- MR. SERPAS: Right. MR. BURNS: -- knowledge on. MR. SERPAS: First aid is probably the other exception that we do now, we use someone else and again we train all of our people first aid and CPR. MR. BURNS: Do you, does the amount of training that you provide to a new miner vary from, from say your two person sand and gravel to your big quarry? MR. SERPAS: No. MR. BURNS: It's the same -- MR. SERPAS: Well they all essentially receive that minimum. There might be some people that need a little bit extra, if they're not an experienced in their task, then their task training might go longer, but all of them receive the minimum of 24 hours. MR. BURNS: No, but I mean, that the, you had mentioned six to eight hours of training before they start some type of work. MR. SERPAS: No, I'm proposing that if you had a regulation or standard -- MR. BURNS: Oh. MR. SERPAS: -- that it be directed that way. Normally we try to block out, to start with either an eight or 16 hour to start with and then augment it with the task training. MR. BURNS: Okay. That's all the questions I have. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: I think Roz has got a couple of questions. MS. FONTAINE: Yes. The agency is responsible for developing a regulatory flexibility analysis to determine the costs and benefits of the proposed rule. Based on your experience could be give me a ballpark figure of what it cost to train your employees at the small mines versus your larger mines? MR. SERPAS: Gosh. I'm not sure I can do that now off the top of my head -- MS. FONTAINE: Okay. MR. SERPAS: -- because a lot of it goes into the time that I've developed in putting my training together and the resources that I use in all of our operations. Plus the time, you know, the hourly figure of the individual themselves or herself. MS. FONTAINE: Okay. Would you be willing to submit it at a later date? MR. SERPAS: Sure. MS. FONTAINE: Okay. MR. SERPAS: Give me a card and I'll try to put that together -- MS. FONTAINE: I will. MR. SERPAS: -- and send it to you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much, Mr. Serpas. MR. SERPAS: Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: We don't have anyone else signed up to speak but is there anyone out there who would like to -- okay, I think what we're going to do is take a short break and when we come back we'll pick up. One other thing that we will do before we finish is give you short of a short summary of some of the other comments that we've gotten at some of the other meetings just to give you some idea of what, what subjects have been touched on. So why don't we take 15 minutes? (Whereupon, a short recess was taken.) CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay we're going to get started here in a minute or two if you could take your seats. (Pause.) CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: The next speaker that we have on our list is Malcome Driggs from the Operating Engineers Training Trust. STATEMENT OF MR. MALCOLME DRIGGS MR. DRIGGS: Well, good morning, MSHA. I'd like, this will be very brief but I'd like to thank you for this opportunity. One thing I'd like to say I'm in total and complete support of every that Mr. Niesen presented but I do have one, only one suggestion. First of all as you said my name is Malcome Driggs and I'm, have been curriculum coordinator for the International Union of Operating Engineer, the Operating Engineers Training Trust, and served on the CAL OSHA advisory board for many years. One thing seemed to be unanswered and that is how to evaluate these instructors. I think, this is just a small recommendation, but the local community colleges in this area have issued packets for a number of years to evaluate the instructors. And this is done by instructions that are on the packets itself which could be issued by MSHA and it outlines a proxy that is or a person in the class room that is designated by the instructor. And that instructor or that individual then passes these evaluation forms to each individual in the classroom and then that process is evaluated on each one of these forms, put back in the packet and then signed by this individual across the seal and then that in turn would be turned back into MSHA. I personally don't know any better way after my 30 years of experience that I've seen performed where you get a more accurate sense of what is happening and of the knowledge that is being imparted and/or the way that that information is being imparted to the students whether they be tradesmen or in any other fashion. Of course, the Operating Engineers Training Trust trains both people in mining, tunnelling, general construction, heavy equipment operations; but we have used this process for some time and find it very, very useful. And then an evaluation is done by the community college and letters sent back to the instructor which gives him an idea of where he can improve. So, I just thought I'd bring that to, to your attention and since Mr. Niesen did such a great job as he usually does for the mining and tunnelling unit here in the State of California, I would again say that I'm in total and complete support of each and everything he said and each and every element he covered. Thank you very much. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Mr. Driggs, I have a follow- up question. You indicated that this feedback would go back to the, goes back to the instructor I guess and the idea is that it lets him know areas where he might improve or things that he might change as far as how he goes about giving this training. Do you recommend that more than that should happen if appropriate? I mean, if in fact you've got an instructor who, I mean, it's not a question of you need to tighten up here or, you know, adjust this a little bit but someone who maybe is falling way short of where he or she needs to be, should that information be used for other purposes such -- MR. DRIGGS: Well it should also, of course, also be a determining factor in whether or not this person is qualified or should even being teaching at all. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. DRIGGS: Granted that is the ultimate judgment involved here but -- CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Does it work like that now ever? MR. DRIGGS: Absolutely. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. DRIGGS: Absolutely. But I think that the more often, much more often is winds up being a positive thing rather than a negative thing because remember you already had pre-qualifications in the present standards. So I think some degree of training, like I said, I was in total and complete approval of what Mr. Niesen was saying and that as he said also required some judgement as to whether or not the person was qualified before they ever began. But, all instructors have their high points and their low points. Not, not excluding their high points and low points as the instruction for each class is concerned but also in each element of instruction. So it seems to help in both ways involving that. But I think a good instructor is really a main point whenever teaching a subject matter. Just to have instruction for instruction sake not being done well, many people in this industry sat there and listened to someone who had no ability in instructing and fell asleep and the safety instruction had absolutely no value whatsoever. So it's important and if we're going to move ahead and do something in the interest of safety that's going to work and we're requiring some training then it better be training that works or don't do it at all. And, that can only be done on an ongoing basis rather than a short term basis. And this process seems to have very positive long term affects on instructions and the individual improvement of the instructor. MR. BRELAND: The only question I'd have is on the feedback that did the short term sessions like 30 minutes or less, are you talking about an evaluation form every, every session? Is that what you would be recommending? MR. DRIGGS: Well, I'm going to commit myself on this, this question but I personally think if it's less than an hour why do it. MR. BRELAND: That's fine. MR. DRIGGS: The, the information whether it be lock out, tag out, whether it be conveyer safety, classifier safety; there are a lot of elements here that need to be covered in the interest of safety of the employee and, and if you can't give anymore than or an hour devotion to it I think you're really MR. BRELAND: The only question I'd have is on the feedback if they did the short term sessions, like 30 minutes or less, are you talking about an evaluation form for every session? Is that what you would be recommending? MR. DRIGGS: Well, I'm going to commit myself on this question, but I personally thing if it's less than an hour, why do it? MR. BRELAND: That's fine. MR. DRIGGS: The information, whether it be lock- out, tag-out, whether it be conveyor safety, classifier safety, there are a lot of elements here that need to be covered in the interest of safety of the employee and if you can't give any more than an hour devotion to it, I think you're really on the light end. It -- you need to put more work into your curriculum. MR. BRELAND: Okay. MR. DRIGGS: That's my own viewpoint. MR. BRELAND: Okay, thank you. MR. DRIGGS: Thank you. MR. BRELAND: I have no other questions. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much, Mr. Driggs. The next speaker on our list is Peter Ward from Hanson Aggregates. STATEMENT OF MR. PETER WARD MR. WARD: Good morning, I'm Peter Ward. I'm with Hanson Aggregates. That's P-e-t-e-r, W-a-r-d. In spite of the teasing from Kevin I am in fact an American and have a $95.00 receipt to prove it. Just to let you know why I think we have a voice to listen to on this subject, this year we will accumulate in the region of 15 million work hours. We have 200 locations and 8,000 employees. We produce in excess of 100 million tons. We take training seriously. Our group total case incident rate is around 2.8 and our LTI, I think, is about 1.3. I haven't got prepared notes, but I wanted to address some of the questions that had come up earlier. I find myself pretty well in agreement with Duane Niesen. I think he had some excellent points and the thing about this meeting is there is no contention. Whatever we have is good and we're trying to work a way to make it better. I'm on the various NSA committees and clearly NSA is part of SEMA, but standing outside that for a minute and speaking as a larger producer, I don't care whether we have Part 46 or 48, we're in compliance either way. Would I prefer a more focused training? Yes, but most of the larger producers are already well in excess of either requirement. Training is the crux of the problem. Whether it's part 46 or Part 48, the same organizations will either be in compliance or they'll be out of compliance. MSHA, to a large extent is responsible through in fact the dual standards of inspection and enforcement between the larger and the smaller operators and that's a point we bring up many times and it's relevant to bring it up now. We typically have 30 to 40 documented hours, 5023. It's appropriate training and it's documented. Qualifications of the trainee is a significant point. The general training, I think, needs to be done by a certified instructor because typically they'll have the communication skill. What I would say is if it was necessary for me to take 80 hours to get my blue card, and I come away worried with how little I know, I think is wrong but MSHA will sanction one-day training sessions to get a blue card. I mean, that's outrageous and it devalues the certification process. Task training may be best carried out by a competent person who may or may not be a certified instructor but in any event, that training should be documented and it should be able to form part of a 5023. Record keeping just to address one that came up, if we had two or three companies it wouldn't really matter but we have over 200 coast to coast. I think that the training records should be on site. We can say you electronically have them at a corporate office. The training, the records, the information should be resident on the site. I think they should be seen as a water tight cohesive unit with the training records available for inspection. We would -- we, in fact, submit our mine training plans. East of the Mississippi they tend to keep them. I understand in California they tend to send them back, but we've got them. If you have a fatality, you're going to have to have the documents. We just assume that it's in force and in fact, we wouldn't care as a corporation whether there was a process of voluntary compliance that you come around and inspect. Once again, it goes back to the dual standards. The smaller operators will always -- not always, will be the ones probably out of compliance but they know it doesn't matter because they'll get cut slack in the event of an inspection. The cost of training was brought up. There is no cost of training. There's a high cost of not training. Our labor burden has been brought down by 40 cents an hour since we have had an aggressive training program. When our TCI was nine, our cost per ton -- cost per hour, beg your pardon, was 55 cents. It's currently less than 12 cents. So we say that an aggressive training plan is a competitive edge, not a cost and we have the documents and we do share them at NSA meetings or anywhere else. And these are four-year progressive records that we're glad to share with anyone that wants to talk about the cost of training. In terms of definitions, close supervision needs to be, I think defined. Is close constant supervision, constant attendance? Duane was right, that a lot of these citations are fought on technicalities and definitions, I think, need to be, you know, clearly spelled out. 48 doesn't do a bad job anyway, but if we're going to introduce new ones, I think they need to be understood. I wish I had come better prepared for that but I just wanted to address some questions that had been raised. If I could go off on a slight tangent for one minute to address Duane Niesen's comment on silica. We have in the last 18 months spent $150,000.00 testing all our locations with outside certified industrial hygienist. We have only found one location out of compliance and that was in a testing lab in Oregon. I believe our industry has a bigger problem proving compliance than it has, in fact, in complying. So I would urge people that haven't actually got into testing yet to get in. The water isn't as cold as you think and the problem isn't as severe as some people would have us believe. And I'll answer any questions. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Do you have questions? MR. BRELAND: Yeah. Peter on the issue of the certification, I want to make sure I understood what you were talking about. You said you took 80 hours to become certified and you were opposed to some short circuit one-day session to certify future people. MR. WARD: I am. I think the one-day sessions may be good if they are for refresher but people go to the one- day refreshers and come away with a blue card and you know, I don't claim kin to Einstein but it took me 80 hours to realize how little I knew. If somebody can walk away in one day with a blue card and feel competent to instruct, they're a whole lot brighter than me. MR. BRELAND: I think the present MSHA instructor's course varies I've heard from three days to five days. Does that sound right? Is that what you're talking about? MR. WARD: But there are one day -- Kevin, you and I had this discussion. There are one-day courses where people will walk away with a card. MR. BRELAND: Okay. MR. WARD: And if you want to stamp it out, count on my vote. MR. BRELAND: No, I just wanted to make sure I understood what you were about because there are a lot of, I believe, around the country and it was discussed earlier this morning, some are submitting, you know, resume type background applications for certification and some have been given at least provisional approvals based on that. MR. WARD: Well, the resume type doesn't let you know whether the person has communication skills and I think that should be part of the test. MR. BRELAND: Yeah, I'm not disagreeing with you. Actually, we're just trying to get it out so that it's all considered. MR. WARD: I just feel that if we're going to have certified instructors there ought to be a clear level of what constitutes and what is on that agenda and it goes beyond pure product knowledge. There has to be the ability to deliver that knowledge, impart that knowledge, and that's not always given. MR. BRELAND: Do you think there should be a different level for requirement for those that might have the approval authority to certify others than obviously, those that are just doing some instruction? MR. WARD: Well, that's a good question. Really, if MSHA is going to pass the -- certify the instructors, then I don't think I ought to suggest how MSHA runs its house, but if that was the question. MR. BRELAND: Well, presently we use a lot of -- in the country there's a lot of state organizations that do a good job of instructor training and they do some certification in some areas and there are some others around. I guess if you stop and think all of a sudden if we have eight or 10,000 operations that come into some training requirements, there's going to be a definite need for some method of certifying, if that's the requirement, instructors. And I was just asking if you have some ideas on that. MR. WARD: I'd rather come back in writing than just shoot from the hip on that but training is such a serious issue, I'd rather not just give you a knee jerk. If you wish I'll give you some suggestions in writing at a later date. MR. BRELAND: That would be good if you would do that. MR. WARD: And I'll, in fact, go to our 20 safety directors and ask them what they would expect because they are the folks that have to suffer from good or bad, you know, certification levels. MR. BRELAND: Okay. MR. WARD: Give me 60 days, I'll have an answer from our safety directors. MR. BRELAND: Okay, I think Kathy is going to go over our schedules a little but probably the sooner the better on the comments. MR. WARD: Well, I'll be at the Dallas meeting, sir. I'm going to keep turning up like a bad penny, so I'll have something for you then. MR. BRELAND: Okay, thank you. MR. BURNS: I have maybe one long question for you. Your lost time injury rate went from 1.3 to 9.0. They you have some costs. MR. WARD: It went the other way. MR. BURNS: Correct, sorry about that. Sorry about that. How much of that -- because I know that you've done a lot of supervisor training at the same time. MR. WARD: Yeah. MR. BURNS: How much of that reduction, if you can, do you account to the supervisor training? MR. WARD: When I was switched from engineering to the safety I found that most people were blissfully unaware of the laws that govern their trade and they were genuinely offended when MSHA gave them a citation 30 CFR 14.100 that have found that brakes have to work. So instead of sending from the bottom up, we took every superintendent east of the Mississippi, put them on a 40-hour course and had them certified as MSHA instructors. They weren't necessarily equipped with the skills to impart, but at least they knew what was expected. The second year we took the foremen and the next level and each year we cut down through the ranks. And we used primarily North Carolina Department of Labor, which is a federally funded program, probably the best in the country and that's borne out by the fact that 16 states were represented there over the last two years and each state that came in had their own state programs. So North Carolina does have probably the Cadillac program and I'll just run that commercial for Carolina. I mean, it was a good program. It kind of spoiled us for some of the others. But the certification has to be from the top down. Our philosophy has been that we teach the employees the laws that govern their trade and then we hold them accountable. The training, when I say it cut down through the ranks, that's a non-judgmental statement, but in terms of skill levels and education levels, each year we go deeper. We have not yet found a level where Part 5648 training has not been valuable. In fact, the lower we went down through the ranks the more rewarding some of that training has been and that has been a surprise to some. You modify the training, you might break it into smaller sessions. Some of those people haven't sat in a classroom in 30 years, and therefore, I think you can break it down into, you know, 30 minute sessions, a smoke break, come back in, just modify it for the audience but there is no level where it isn't valuable. MR. BURNS: Would you be able to submit some of those cost numbers that you talked about? MR. WARD: I'm sure the board will approve it and I will be glad to do that, yes. MR. BURNS: Okay, thanks. That's all the questions I have. I'll probably think of some more for Dallas. MR. WARD: I'll be there. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much, Mr. Ward. MR. WARD: Thank you CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: The next speaker on our list is Danny Lowe from Kaiser Cement. STATEMENT OF MR. DANNY LOWE MR. LOWE: Good morning. My name is Danny Lowe, l-o-w-e, common spelling of Danny, D-a-n-n-y. I appreciate the opportunity to be before this committee to have some input on the proposed Part 46 regulations. Some of my concerns are from my facility, my industry which is one of the ones that, I hate to use the word exempt, because we have never been exempt from the Part 48 regulations. MSHA, however, has been prohibited from enforcing those regulations. Now, I've been at our site for a year and a half, been in the mining industry for about 10 years. I came out of the gold mining industry from Nevada over to California about 18 months ago into an industry that basically took the attitude if MSHA couldn't enforce the regulations, we're not going to do it in its entirety. To my advantage, I have an administration that is very proactive in safety and very supportive from the vice president of operations or the president of our company to our on-site VP of operations to my boss and we set forth to be very aggressive in meeting Part 48 regulations. My concern is when MSHA has announced that they were going to lift the budget rider on enforcement. Some of my areas of concern are for our contractors that come on site during major shut-downs to do maintenance work. They'll be coming onto a mine site and when the budget rider is lifted and MSHA has enforcement, we had these temporary people to be on site for up to 30 days, during the shutdown, doing work, maintenance work. If by chance an MSHA inspector were to come to a site to do an inspection during that time and had the authority to enforce the training regulation, where do these contractors, outside contractors obtain training? Now granted here in the State of California, Duane Niesen's group, which we use heavily to train our own people, can only do so much and in certain situations we have contractors from Texas, from Montana coming onto a mine site to do work that are very specialized in certain types of operations. Now, if they're going to have to meet Part 48 training regulations, where are they going to get this training? They don't normally work on a mine site. They're very competent, very proficient and very professional at what they do, but an MSHA inspector says, "Let me see your 5023 training form or your new miner or annual refresher training", and they can't produce it, then citations are going to be written. Also, at our facility in Cupratino, California, we probably have somewhere in the neighborhood of 6100 trucks coming in and out of our facility, in our rock plant, in our cement operation, picking up our product, delivering to our customers. In accordance with Part 48, they are there on a regular basis. They come, they go to one specific point. More often than not, they never get out of their truck except to go get a weigh ticket or something of that nature. They're not actively involved in the mining process other than the receiving of product. Here again, if this rider is lifted, MSHA inspectors are giving enforcement for training and stop a truck driver and want to see this documentation, another citation is going to be written. And I would like to see some language pointed towards, you know, if we do specific hazard training for these type of people coming in that only have one place to go in and out of the facility, on a regular basis, then they would meet the intent of the regulation. Now, we do a very, very good job of training our own employees and we require training of our contractors that are on our property on a regular basis. And we're one of the very few in industry that do this and have been proactive in doing it, but these are some of the other concerns I have. As far as the training plan, as Peter stated and we are part of Hansen Aggregates, we are owned by them, when Leo Hayden was in the Western District Office and I came on board at Kaiser Cement, I set about to do our training plan. I called Leo and I said, "I'm going to send this over here for your approval". He said, "Don't bother, I'll send it right back", because they couldn't expend any funds for that, so it sits on my desk. As far as instructors I think we have a very competent team of 13 instructors certified by MSHA in our facility, one of which is my boss who is an instructor/trainer. And we set about getting these people certified by picking competent people throughout our facility that have good communication skills. We went through that selection process brought an outsider from the gold mining industry in to do our training. He's an instructor/training, as well, and we did it in three days and we used those to satisfy Part 48 regulations at our facility. Those were just my concerns with those kind of people coming onto our facility, not necessarily our normal employees in our work force but those that augment and our customers that come and pick up our product. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Are you done? MR. LOWE: Yes, ma'am. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Oh, okay. I've got a couple questions. MR. LOWE: Okay. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: You talk about these outside contractors who come on during down times -- MR. LOWE: Shutdown. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: -- to do maintenance. Does your company give them any kind of site specific hazard training before they come on? MR. LOWE: We do hazard training when they come on as a group. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. LOWE: We have a very good contractor handbook that we've developed and pass out to them. They sit down in my office with me for about an hour and we go over our lock- out, tag-out, general hazards, our rules and our expectations of them as a guest on our facility. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Uh-huh. MR. LOWE: That's done with every contractor during the shut-down. Then in specific areas, whether it be the quarry, the pack house, wherever they are, they'll go through a site specific hazard training. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Does the contract that you have with these contractors, does it address responsibility for safety and health training? MR. LOWE: Well, what it is, is a general proviso that they will stay in compliance with all federal and local laws. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay, okay. MR. LOWE: But here again, realistically, where do they go to get the training? CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: You're talking about the fact that the resources for providing training are not there? Is that your concern? MR. LOWE: Absolutely, other than Cal-DOSH mining and tunnelling. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay, do these contractors typically or the contractor employees typically have any kind of OSHA safety training? MR. LOWE: Some do, some don't, depending on what they do. If we get a group -- suppose we need a group of 10 dump trucks in there to haul something out of the way, that's all they're doing. A loader is loading them. They're going up, dumping. They never get out of their truck. They're never on the site. They're just driving on our property. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Uh-huh. MR. LOWE: And they're well-versed in the hazards and they know that our equipment has the right of way and that kind of stuff. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. You were talking about the truck drivers. Are those customers typically? MR. LOWE: We consider them out customers because they're coming in and picking up our product, whether it's bulk cement, sand, gravel, rock, whatever. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: And they're employed by the company who is going to be ultimately using the product? MR. LOWE: Receiving the product. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay, so they come no your site a lot of times. I mean, they don't even bother to get out of -- I mean, there's no reason for them to get out of the truck. MR. LOWE: The way our systems are automated with the bulk cement drivers, they have to get out of the truck. We have engineered, designed, developed and put in place a rack system that they crawl up under, so if they fall they have something to grab hold of to open their lids. They drive around to a bulk loading area, drive up under, they're loaded. The same thing on the way out, they go up under the lid closing rack, close it, hit the scales and they're gone. And we're in the process even now as we speak modifying our bulk load-out to where they don't even have to get out there. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Uh-huh. So those truck drivers typically wouldn't be getting any kind of hazard training from you. I mean, they just -- MR. LOWE: No. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: How long typically would they be on property at, you know -- MR. LOWE: Fifteen-minute turnaround time. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. All right. MR. LOWE: By what my concern is, if -- the way the regulations are written now, that if they're on that mine site regularly and the policy program manual I think states more than five consecutive days in an annual year, then an MSHA inspector can stop every one of those and write them a citation for not having Part 48 training. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Well, we've been getting a number of comments on the issue of categories of employees, I mean, people who are on the mine site for various reasons and what levels of training are appropriate for them. MR. LOWE: Right. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: But with respect to the outside contractors, I mean, your point is that there's no training available for these people. MR. LOWE: There is no place that they can go get training. Now, at our facility, now that we have gone through and all of our people -- our normal employees have met the requirements of Part 48, we are now using Cal-DOSH money in tunnelling instructors, we're using our facilities, our training facilities at our site and allowing contractors to come in and get this training there. We're not paying them to do it. They're having to pay their own people but it's still at a cost to our company to do this as well as the State of California and MSHA to do it. I think we're one of the most proactive companies in that regard in this industry, at least in this geographical area because there's no other outlet for them. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Uh-huh. That's all I have. Do you have -- MR. BRELAND: Just a couple. You said 6100 trucks in what time period was that? MR. LOWE: In a month. MR. BRELAND: In a month? MR. LOWE: That's both in our rock plant -- we have a rock plant operation as well as production of cement at our facility. MR. BRELAND: Are they typically regular customers, if you will? MR. LOWE: Yes, sir. MR. BRELAND: It's not like they're not familiar with coming to mine sites, a good portion of them. MR. LOWE: They don't even think that they're on a mine site in the areas they go to. MR. BRELAND: Okay, and you said you don't do anything presently. I mean, do you give them -- do they have to sign some sort of release when they come in? Are they directed to any particular place? MR. LOWE: No, sir. MR. BRELAND: They don't have to go through a gate, per se, then? MR. LOWE: They do go through a security gate and then they to go their respective load-out areas, load and go. MR. BRELAND: Okay, and that's about all the interaction they have with anybody on site. MR. LOWE: That's it. They grab a ticket and they're out the gate. MR. BRELAND: Okay. And then you talked about the contractors that come on site for varying times of maybe some significant repairs, up to 30 days or longer. MR. LOWE: Yes, sir, we have an annual shut-down. MR. BRELAND: But that you do a pretty formal kind of introduction of hazard training or whatever it takes in the areas that they're going to be going to. MR. LOWE: Yes, sir. MR. BRELAND: Is that formalized? Do you have it written? MR. LOWE: Yes, sir. MR. BRELAND: And when you have them go out on certain site areas and there might be some transfer of instruction. Like you might do the first part and then it goes to whoever they're going to be working with? MR. LOWE: It usually falls to the supervisor supervising that area during the shutdown. MR. BRELAND: Okay. That's all I have. MR. LOWE: Thank you. MR. BRELAND: Thank you. MR. BURNS: The three days of instructor training that your competent people or competent instructors receive, did that -- was that three days of how to make proper presentations or did that also include subject matter training? MR. LOWE: It was basically a three-day class in getting training across, how do I articulate to you what we need you to know? It was done -- there was some segments in the preparation of how to teach a subject as well. It was videoed and critiqued by the class as well as the instructor. MR. BURNS: Okay, and then I guess just on the truck issue, what kind of requirements for training do truck -- do the truck operators have under construction or under OSHA? Do you know? MR. LOWE: No, other than what the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Act provides, for a person to hold a commercial driver's license, I know of no other regulations, whether it's OSHA or MSHA, other than those in Part 48 and regular -- coming on to a mine site on a regular occurrence. MR. BURNS: Okay, that's all the questions I have. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much, Mr. Lowe. MR. LOWE: Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: The next speaker on the list is Phil Gaynor from Kaiser Cement. STATEMENT OF MR. PHIL GAYNOR MR. GAYNOR: Good morning. My name is Phil Gaynor. The spelling is G-a-y-n-o-r, first name is P-h-i-l, or Philip, if you will, one L to be precise. Good morning. I've been in this industry close to 25 years now. I've been in it long enough that I still remember MESA, Mine Enforcement Safety Administration which was the precursor to MSHA. Prior to that we had whatever other agencies there were. I find it most belaboring and troublesome that some 20 years after the MSHA Act comes into place we still don't know what a miner is or a new miner or an experienced miner or any kind of miner you'd like to discuss. That bothers me and if we can't define a miner how would we ever approach defining training requirements. I find it most interesting that the government says, "You must have trained people". Fine, what constitutes a trained person? If I want to go get a college degree, I get a catalog from the school and it says, "Here's the hours, the classes, the whatever you must have to get this degree". I have an agency enforcing requirements against me telling me that I must train people but they don't tell me what I must train. More importantly than that, they don't really tell me the requirements of an instructor to train the people. I'm a certified MSHA instructor. I have a couple of college degrees and whole lots of experience. That doesn't make me necessarily a great instructor. It just says I might know something. It's troublesome to me that I can't tell you when someone on my facility is trained because I don't know the requirements. So I think the agency itself should tell us what core requirements are. If I get a driver's license, that's honored from state to state to state because there's core requirements; to know where the brake is, to know how to read a speed limit sign, et cetera. The most important training I think I received after that is site specific. If I'm driving in the north, I probably know how to drive in snow and ice. If I'm driving in the southern states, I probably understand how to operate a car in the heat. There are different requirements given different conditions for where we are. I think it's very important that we should know what training requirements are. I think that's a very shortcoming of the Act. I'm probably one of the few people in the industry that it bothers a lot that we have a rider on Part 48. In fact, I think it's an indictment against us as an agency and as an industry that we don't enforce training of people within our facilities. There's a reason Part 48 is in there. It's contrary to a lot of people's belief. Training is not a cost, as you heard Peter Ward say earlier. It is a competitive advantage. We meet and exceed in all cases the training requirements at the facility I operate in in Cupratino, California. We have 225 employees, approximately 15 instructors and all of the people on site have been in training and we continue to train. We will continue to do that. Our problem now is what do we do with contractors. Contractors have no outlet for training. They come on our facility, they're expected to meet training requirements and we can't tell them what those requirements are. I've made my case on that. I would like to see us expand training through the agency, define it, so that we can go to our community junior colleges and other places, so that we can put our employees there if we so choose, or people that we want to use in our industry have an outlet to gain access to the training that's required. I'll make one other -- two other points. One, it bothers me that the agency that operates under the Act of 1977 would distinguish between what they do with an operator that's big as versus what they do with an operator that's small. If I have a siteable offense in my plant, why does that carry a larger monetary fine for me than it does a small operator? I would contend that an employee of any company that is exposed to a hazard, there is no differentiation in the price tag to that exposure. I find that an indictment against this agency, that they would say because I'm a big operator, I get to pay more because I've exposed someone to a hazard. A hazard is a hazard. And lastly, I would address trucks. It was spoken briefly a moment ago by Danny, operators coming on and off the facility. We recently expensed a large amount of money to protect drivers as they climb up on the trailers of vehicles to open lids, close lids, whatever. I find it most interesting that your kissing cousin agency, the Department of Transportation, blesses those trailers as they're manufactured with the egress up and away from those hatches without enclosed cages or whatever to protect drivers. What difference does it make if a piece of equipment is on a mine site or off of a mine site; it's either safe or it's not. If MSHA says it's not safe for those drivers to be up there, I would recommend our government agencies talk with one another and resolve that as an issue and not put it on industry in particular the mining industry. Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Mr. Gaynor, I have one question. You were making the point that you know, MSHA needs to be, I guess specific for mine operators who are going to be required to comply with these requirements as far as what a trained miner is, I mean, what exactly has to be done in order for someone to be considered to be trained. Now, one of the challenges that we're facing in coming up with a regulation for the industries where we're currently not able to enforce is coming up with requirements that will work for very, very small operations with very few employees and maybe not a, you know, institutionalized safety program but will also work for the larger operations where probably training and compliance with Part 48 is already being given. Now, in light of the fact that you think we need to be specific about what these requirements are, how -- do you have any suggestions for how we might approach that while giving the flexibility that seems to be maybe necessary given the, you know, the array of operations that we're going to be regulating? MR. GAYNOR: Again, I will talk generically to your question if I understand it right. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: All right. MR. GAYNOR: Whether I'm tall, short, heavy, not heavy, ugly, pretty, whatever, if I want a driver's license, I have to meet a certain expectation. I think the agency needs to define what they think is a core training requirement and whether I'm a large operator or a small operator, if that's the minimum requirement, then whoever you are, you must meet it. I would be happy to submit a document at some point or be part of a guiding committee to work towards those qualifications, but irrespective of size, I think it should apply to one and all, whatever that is. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: How would you go about defining what that is? I mean, are you talking in terms of, you know, specific subject areas that must be covered and certain minimum period of time that must be spent in those subject areas or should it be more performance oriented? I guess, you know, I'm just trying to -- looking for ideas as far as how we might approach something like that. MR. GAYNOR: Well, certainly it needs to be performance driven probably as a basis for whatever we're doing. I'm not so much concerned about the time as I am the content and the qualifications. If I had a precise answer, I'm sure the agency would have used it by now. We've got 20 years plus experience with MSHA and it's still not settled and I find that very troublesome. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Uh-huh. MR. GAYNOR: I don't have a specific answer to be more pointed. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay, all right. Well, I appreciate your remarks. MR. BRELAND: Just to follow up a little bit on the same issue, you had mentioned the core requirements being defined but you also gave an analogy of the icy conditions and the weathers and talked about some differences or at least I think that's what -- were you talking about the same issue of having some basic core requirements that would always be the same and some other possible things that ought to be considered? Is that what you're proposing? MR. GAYNOR: Yes. You know, if you know how to operate a front end loader, it doesn't really make too much difference where you are, you can run that front end loader. MR. BRELAND: Right. MR. GAYNOR: But now let me introduce some specific conditions from one facility to the next. I'm in a congested area, I'm on a hilly area. I'm loading open trucks, some with single trailers, some with doubles. There are several other things that become site specific in terms of doing a job function. But in terms of operating a loader, it's a very generic type of thing. So those become your core requirements, and then your site specific training is what am I going to encounter in the facility that I'm in. MR. BRELAND: Okay, you also referenced tying in possibly with if you had good definitions of core requirements with community colleges. So I would assume from that you're talking about certainly more basic, normally more basic type subjects than you would say operating a front end loader. MR. GAYNOR: Yes. MR. BRELAND: Most colleges can't do that. MR. GAYNOR: That's correct and we wouldn't expect them to. But if we wanted to teach first aid or we wanted to teach an understanding of the MSHA Act or Cal-OSHA guidelines or whatever state you might find yourself operating in, there are certain classroom type things that could be taken care of that would meet training requirements. MR. BRELAND: Okay, that's all I had but I would encourage you and as Kathy Alejandro would, that if you have some suggestions or written comments that you should submit them for those definitions. MR. GAYNOR: Be happy to. MR. BRELAND: Thank you. MR. BURNS: Would you -- I guess just from listening to you, you would distinguish between an experienced miner and a trained miner. MR. GAYNOR: I might. I'm not sure what you have as a definition, Kevin, so it makes it hard for me to say I would do that. MR. BURNS: No, that's what I'm asking because I mean, you could have someone that's very experienced but because of, you know, the bad habits they picked up, they might actually need more intensive training than somebody else. MR. GAYNOR: Yeah, let me give you, I guess maybe a little different perspective on it, Kevin, from my view. If I take someone to a driver's license clinic, they're about 16 years old and if they do well on their testing, they get a driver's license and they can operate a vehicle anywhere in this country. And I've been operating -- let's just say I've got 40 years of experience in driving a car. Now, without knowing much else, would you prefer to ride with me in the LA traffic or would you rather ride with a 16-year old that just got that license? We're both trained. MR. BURNS: Okay, I mean, that's what I was asking if you do -- it sounded to me that you were -- MR. GAYNOR: There's a tremendous difference between being trained and experienced. You can be both trained and experienced but you're not necessarily experienced. There is a difference. The agency hasn't bothered to define that for us. So I find it very troublesome that if you can't define to me what a miner is, how can you expect me to train them? MR. BURNS: Okay, and part of the difficulty with the definition of miner you see is this whole contractor issue. MR. GAYNOR: Yes. And as you draw on your experience with the National Stone Association which I'm familiar with, you have benefits of both sides of the street, if you will, and you understand the dilemma and as an operator I want not only trained employees, I want them to be experienced. I have a hard time distinguishing quite often between a competent person and an instructor. I contend that a competent person may not know how to tell me what he knows, but he's quite capable of being a good miner. MR. BURNS: Okay. That's all I have, thank you very much. MR. GAYNOR: Surely. Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you, Mr. Gaynor. The next speaker on our list is Larry Nelson from the Arizona Mine Inspector. STATEMENT OF MR. LARRY NELSON MR. NELSON: My name is Larry Nelson and I'm with the Arizona Mine Inspector's office and we are recipients of grants under MSHA and we have a little over 500 active mining operations, building operations and we train about in excess of 3500 people a year. I think we have a big investment in the training regulations and I think we're really concerned about some of the things that are going on and basically we've always felt that, you know, the training regulations is an investment in your employee and I don't think it is a cost. I think it's actually an investment where you gain, you have better production, you have better attitude of the employees. So going along with Phil Gaynor, I kind of agreement 100 percent with what the man was talking about. He understands that the people need to be trained. MSHA needs to define, in my opinion, what the requirements are and what they should be. What is a miner? What are they're training certification requirements? And I've heard a lot of comments up here about the certification of an instructor and people seem to have some problems with it. Currently, everybody that instructs or teaches under MSHA regulations does not have to be an MSHA instructor. As long as they are under the direction and the material provided is reviewed by a certified instructor and under his direction, I don't see any problem with that as it is now and I think that we need to have an MSHA certification for an instructor. I think currently what we do, we have an instructor training course and we put it on, it's a three-day course. We don't certify anyone. MSHA does. We make a recommendation. But we won't allow a person to take that course unless he gives us a resume and shows us he has a mining background to begin with, has some mining understanding, has some previous supervisory leadership type qualities. Then we will allow him to take the course and then we recommend him to MSHA as a certified instructor. The areas that haven't been covered is what I think -- like the eight-hour -- I think it should be a minimum of eight hour instructions for a new employee. I think in the aggregate business and particularly there is a problem because there is a big turnover. But I do believe they need that eight hours annual refresher, eight-hour initial training and then give the small operator that has a big turnover employment a little bit of leeway, give him 30 to 45 days to finish the initial training for non -- inexperienced miner. But again, I don't think we should go 60, 90 go beyond that point because, again, I believe it's an investment. And once you feel that that employee is going to stay with you and he's going to be there more than the end of the first 30 days, he should complete the rest of the training. The training records, I think there should be some allowance for -- if the mine operation or the individual mine site has a computer with modem and is connected to the main office where they have records or if they have a working fax and the records could be faxed immediately, should allow that, but if you don't have the other -- you know, that electronic connection with your main office and have it working, they should have to have the records on site. Again, people have brought up the fact that how is the MSHA instructor or the state inspector going to know if the men are trained or not, if they don't have some records on site. And again, the training plan, I think it should be there for review and I think on the training plan, any training plan should be reviewed by MSHA to see if it has the content. If you want to make changes, I don't think you should have to wait for review. You can mail it to the MSHA office, allow them to review it. If they have comments, they'll tell you about it. If they don't, you go on about your business with it. That's about all -- oh, the one other item was that Danny Lowe brought up about drivers and everything. In Arizona -- and I was surprised what he said about operators coming on site without any type of training. In Arizona, the Arizona Mine Inspector's office and MSHA do not allow truck drivers, vendors to go on a mine site without some training. They have to have that initial hazard recognition and 90 percent of them have a small card. They go over it with the mine operator, the vendor, the hazard that he will be exposed to when he delivers his product or he picks up a load of rock. And the route is laid out very specific to where he can go and where he can't go. He signs the card. The card file is put into the security gate and I think that's 100 percent because I do know that MSHA has issued several citations for that at mine operators for not doing that initial training and I didn't know they allowed that in California. I was very surprised. That's all the comments I have. MR. BRELAND: Larry, I had a couple that I just wanted to follow up on; one on the minimum eight hours that you were saying you thought ought to be initial irregardless, did you have an idea on the types of subjects you would expect always before they start and the others that would be allowed in that eight -- MR. NELSON: Any area that he's going to be exposed to a hazard should be covered. I think some initial hazard recognition, basic electrical if he's going to be around anything electrical, basic traffic control if he's going to be exposed to that, but initially the things that he's going to be exposed to should be covered. And it could be very generic in some respects but anything that that individual is going to be exposed to a hazard. If he's a front end loader, he should get some general information about a front end loader. If he is a mechanic or custodian, whatever he might -- I mean, custodial people, whatever he might be, some of those subjects should be covered and I think possibly some initial first aid. MR. BRELAND: Okay, thank you. And then also you talked about the records and allow some flexibility of they had the capability of getting a copy right away. Some of the issues that have come up in other meetings in discussion is what about the cross-over people that might, say occasionally be a loader operator at the batch plant who, all of a sudden, is now on a mine site under MSHA jurisdiction and their records? Those you might say they're probably going to receive the same training as others because they would be with the same company. But you could have the roving mechanic whose records might not be with them or how would you propose to handle that guy that might be visiting one of many of say 20 plants in an area? MR. NELSON: Well, I think that that individual, say if he's an experienced man, that he should have the 5023 in his possession, that he's had annual refresher and then they want to get more specific. I mean, that would be the initial thing that the inspector would want to know that at least he has some training, he has his annual refresher. If he's a new employee, he ought to have the 5023 saying he has the 24 hours. And anything beyond that, specific task, I don't think it would be difficult to get that. But I do think that individuals that are roaming or have been over -- and I don't think that if you're out of MSHA's jurisdiction and they want to assign you into an area that is, I don't think that's an excuse. You know, he has to have the training just like anybody else. A new hire has to have it. If he transfers from a hot plant or ready mix, then he needs to have the training regardless of whether he's under MSHA's jurisdiction or not at his previous employment. When he goes over there, he has to have the training, that's what I believe. MR. BRELAND: Okay. And then just one other question; on the training plan to make sure I understood what you were suggesting, that if they had a training plan that they submitted, that it should be assumed approved unless they had some feedback that it needed additional? MR. NELSON: Well, what I think would be a good way to do it was they send in a training plan for approval, the initial one. I think MSHA should look at it to see if it has the content and that's an educational thing for both parties. That individual will have known by the end of the process of approval what has to be required in the plan. And then if he wants to make additional changes as time goes by, he mails them into the location where he has the initial approval. They review that and if they have a problem with it, they'll let him know. If they don't, go on about his business. He don't have to sit and wait to see if it's -- get a letter back from MSHA to see if he can make that improvement because, you know, overnight things can change your situation and if you don't have your training plan, you really legally can't do it. So I think you could say, "Hey, here's a letter, I'm going to make this change tomorrow or next week. If you have a problem with it, you let me know about it, but I'm going to go ahead and make this change for this period of time". I think that a flexibility should be allowed and then MSHA would still have the opportunity to review it and if they have a problem with it, they'll tell him so. MR. BURNS: All right, thank you. That's all I have. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much, Mr. Nelson. MR. NELSON: All right. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: The next speaker we have on our list and forgive me if I mispronounce it, is Richard De Atley of West Coast Aggregates. STATEMENT OF MR. RICHARD DE ATLEY MR. DE ATLEY: Good morning. I'm happy to be here and discuss something that's very important to our industry and definitely I'm very much in favor of Part 46 and thoughtful removal of the Part 48 rider. By the way the last name is spelled D-e, capital A-t-l-e-y, De Atley, first name Richard. I'm going to be a little shotgun in my comments in that all these other illustrious gentlemen have addressed several of the things that I wanted to bring up. There are a couple of them that -- by the way, we're a Bay Area operation, three quarries and two sand and gravel operations. Having been in the metals mining part of our, I guess you'd call it this part of our industry, too, like the gentleman from Kaiser, I know what Part 48 training is all about and have one of those blue cards also for the convenience of training our people when I was out in what was gold mining operations. The problem that we had in the use of Part 48 when we were -- when I was in the metals end of things, was probably the time. As I recall, it's been awhile, there was a certain time put on each item and I felt in a lot of those cases it was excessive. Particularly out there was a high turnover situation and you -- as I recall underground was 48 hours and surface was 24 hours. That's a lot -- it's something we want to do and we did, but some of it was just killing time. It wasn't effective and I'm trying to say I think I'd like to see the operators, all of us operators, submit our own plans and put what we think are the proper times associated with it. Our local -- we're actually owned by a company based in Portland, Oregon, but our local operations probably have manpower of up to 10 people. And it's hard to take them as a group because you've got run the place. So some of the ideas or some of the things that I'd like to throw out here is primarily one is -- that hasn't been brought up is that any safety meetings should be applied towards that 24 hours. And that would be under -- I think the other gentleman from Kaiser, we've got quite a few gentlemen from Kaiser here today or Hansen and Kaiser, that the core issues are probably covered in safety meetings because you're talking to all the operators on the site. The other thing that again, the gentleman from Kaiser brought up was people coming on the site, they referred to subcontractors, I have it down here in my notes a big star after it as something I wanted to definitely emphasize, where I call service people, such as the guy that fixes the dozer, the loader, the whatever. They always change. Maybe with a very large operation they have a service guy dedicated to that particular company or site. Otherwise, they're new, they are right on the site and how do you handle them. It's something that I think the hazard training would cover myself, but I think it should be looked into in great depth. I did read over the proposed -- the National Aggregate and National Stone's proposed plan, proposed rule, I guess is the right way, Part 46. It's not very specific yet. I think it needs more meat to it as to how you handle servicemen, subcontractors or just the occasional visitor. As to the truckers, our policy is we have signs in several spots that say, "Don't get out of the truck", and I've always assumed this was an MSHA rule and I think it is. So we consider them encapsulated so that they don't require the training, but it's -- we very definitely enforce the don't get out of the truck rule. A couple other shotgun things; experienced as opposed to new, again, from the metals mining experience, we definitely had a lot of experienced people and you may have learned bad habits but you were experienced and that is a big, big step forward over new. I advocate certainly the eight hours, six to eight hours with new. Experience, though, I really have a problem with, and this is maybe a bad experience, but overkill with reviewing actually stuff that he knows. Site specific safety hazards are to me the most important factor. If you know how to operate a loader, you're experienced and you know how to operate a loader, but you've got to know the congestion on the site and all those sorts of things. Again, I apologize if I'm kind of all over the board here. And definitely, I'd say the records should be on site. To me it's just -- it's probably too confusing otherwise. I can see personnel records that aren't on site but the training, I think is necessary to be one site, certainly my recommendation. And I would hope and I think as I read the proposed Part 46 that the operator can submit his plan. We definitely have our own plan and it's a take- off on Part 48 because of my background. So naturally, I'm going to do what is familiar to me. But I -- the submission of our own plan and the approval by MSHA or the Department of Labor, I think you mentioned the Secretary of Labor has to put his -- if that's the route that MSHA goes, has to put their stamp of approval on, on the operator's plan. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Yeah, I mean the Act specifically says that the training plan or program has got to be approved by the Secretary of Labor. Now, you know, exactly what that is going to look like, I mean, I think that there's a variety of different approaches that we could take but you know, that is one of the minimum requirements in the Act and I mean, we're trying to figure out how to satisfy that minimum requirement. MR. DE ATLEY: And along with that is that the operator put down what he feels are the time requirements for that particular aspect of training. Again, I've only cursorily read the proposed Act and I think MSHA will tell us what they want in the program, but again, I ask that we be given the liberty of telling what we think is necessary. And that's probably about the extent of my comments. Again, most or not again but in areas other than the very large operators, sites tend to be on the small side with a 10 -- say 10 to 15 max people that need training. So I just look for any comments that you have. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Actually, Mr. De Atley, I've got one question. One of the issues you raised was a topic that we've heard a lot about as we work our way across on these meetings, you refer to them as service people but, I mean, these contractor employees who may not be, you know, directly involved in the extraction or processing process but come on to the site for various reasons, to provide services, do you have any suggestions, and this is -- I mean, this is a loaded big question, and if you don't want to answer, you don't have to, any suggestions for, you know, how we might categorize different types of employees? I mean, should it be by function and you know, after we figure out what the categories are, I mean, what kind of types of training would be appropriate? MR. DE ATLEY: I think by area they enter. You know, are they right in the pit, in the crushing area or those sorts of things. If they're going to the fuel dock area, that's a different area. I would say by area is how I would -- CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: And the hazards that they're exposed to. MR. DE ATLEY: Correct, right. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. BRELAND: Just to follow up a little bit on that same issue, I want to make sure I understood what you were suggesting on the service maintenance type worker. That the operator would be expected to do the hazard type training specific to the area they're going but you -- were you saying you didn't think that the contractor should have the other training that was say core subjects maybe provided by their own company or somewhere else? MR. DE ATLEY: Yeah, I think that's really what I am saying, that he's probably not going to be -- or he may be, this could be the case, he could maybe not be operating a loader and only doing welding, let's say or something of that nature; the hazards of the area he's in and the type of thing he's doing and that may be core. I mean, some of it is core for sure but he doesn't have to go through the whole thing I guess is what I'm -- MR. BRELAND: Well, what -- I guess I probably didn't ask it very clearly but -- MR. DE ATLEY: Oh, okay. MR. BRELAND: -- what I meant is would you expect that if you contracted and hired a service organization to send a maintenance person out or somebody out, that they would have been trained in required subjects outside of what you need to do at your own specific site that would relate to the hazards they might be exposed to? Obviously you're not going to train them to be equipment operator if you hired them to come out and operate equipment or to do some sort of maintenance. But you would expect to do hazard training, I assume for the areas they're going to be in and that they would be trained on their own somewhere else. MR. DE ATLEY: Yeah, I think I understand what you're saying. I guess I may not totally understand what you're saying. The -- one of the other gentlemen said, well, where can they be trained or where is the facility to train them? There is none at this point other than if their employer, which is a contractor who may work at mines all the time, does something about it. I'm still probably not registering with what you're saying. MR. BRELAND: Actually, I guess there's two types; those that might say service certain kinds of equipment, large manufacturer of equipment, they'll have their own people that go out at your request and do servicing of transmissions, whatever it might be, do some sort of work at the site. Those people typically are doing training, I think, now in most places and they come to the mind sites. They do their annual refresher and what have you and they get site specific when they go to mines. In a lot of cases they're doing that, maybe not so much in your areas but I know they do that in operations, gold operations where they go on site routinely. MR. DE ATLEY: Yeah, I would say that's probably more the case. I don't -- I mean, I'm thinking of like the local Caterpillar or something like that where he comes to work on the heavy equipment, I don't think he's been through any kind of mine safety training. MR. BRELAND: Okay, it probably depends on what areas they are in, but considering that, what would you propose if they were required to do training for the operations that are now exempt, how would you propose dealing with those type of routine service people? MR. DE ATLEY: You'd certainly have to, I think, pare it down as to time. Again, I keep coming back to this time issue. I don't know whether you hand out a booklet and you sit there and watch them read it, make sure they read it and then they sign a form that says they acknowledge they've read it or -- I don't probably have a genuine answer to that. MR. BRELAND: Okay, all right, thank you. MR. BURNS: I guess I just wanted to ask you a question along the lines with what Rod was talking about. I guess from the standpoint if you bring a manufacturer in or somebody to change a tire on a loader and say it's near the high wall, you'd expect to train that individual to -- concerning the hazards of the high wall and the mine itself. You wouldn't expect to have to tell them how to change the tire safely. MR. DE ATLEY: That's really I think where we're going with this, is that that's the hazard -- to me that's the hazard training, the specific site hazard training. He probably knows the danger of changing tires, which the big equipment tires are a very dangerous thing to change if you don't know what you're doing. Yeah, I'd say that's -- I still see it is just mainly specific site hazard training. MR. BURNS: And then I guess we've heard a lot about, you know, training as an investment today, so I guess from the standpoint of say the truck drivers coming on your property, your investment in training would be such so that that truck driver can go through the property, go where they have to get the material and leave the property and his -- the investment you would put in that training is to make sure that that person doesn't hurt himself or any of your employees but it shouldn't go beyond that. MR. DE ATLEY: Yeah, that the -- to me the employees, our employees are trained well enough that they don't make it dangerous for him, you know, by the operation of the loader for instance or truck or, you know, he's looking backwards or those sorts of things. Yeah, I'd say it's -- I consider, as I said before, he's encapsulated and it's up to the mine operator to make sure that while he's in that capsule that cab, that he's safe. MR. BURNS: Okay, thank you very much. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much, Mr. - - oh, sorry, Roslyn has got a couple questions. MR. DE ATLEY: Okay. MR. FOUNTAIN: I was just wondering if you could give me an estimate of what it costs you to train your employees on an annual basis? MR. DE ATLEY: The other gentleman had a per ton figure. I really don't -- I really don't have an answer to that. I don't think it's excessive. The training itself is not to me the expense. It's the time required. It's all well-spent time and necessary time but that's where the dollars are at -- add up and that's of course, what I'm supposed to be calculating but the -- any of the materials or the -- or the instructor's time is insignificant. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much, Mr. De Atley. MR. DE ATLEY: Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: We have one more person who is on the speaker's list, Gern Hallenbeck of California Portland Cement. And again, I apologize if I have mispronounced. STATEMENT OF MR. GERN HALLENBECK MR. HALLENBECK: No, you did a pretty good job with that, thank you. I want to thank you for the opportunity to come up and to speak about a few things. The first thing I'm going to do is just vent a little bit in that it seems that every time something comes out about accidents and the high rate of accidents we're the bad guys. We're the ones that are sitting out there. You can't enforce the training, so we're not doing the training. And I feel we're getting a bad rap over that. I don't feel that that's true because a majority of us in the industry are doing that training and to the extent sometimes even exceeding that training and I don't think we have a problem with doing the training because we can see the benefits from it. So it's just that sometimes every time that comes out and we hear some letters and, you know, we're having fatalities, now it's those guys that don't do the training. And I'm not saying it's not because of not doing the training but I think as a whole the industry, and I'm speaking for the cement industry, is as a whole we are in compliance in doing that training. Now, could we use some better guidance in doing that? Yeah, probably so. Anybody can use a little bit better guidance but a couple of the things that were brought into this that I was concerned with when we talk about contractor training and that's when a lot of us have a big problem with bringing in these outside contractors during major shutdowns for the biggest part, how do we really control the type of training that they have because in the regulations, it just says that they will have, quote, "comprehensive training", and it doesn't break it down any farther than that. It just says comprehensive training. It doesn't say how long, how much or really what that content is going to be, so to what extent did we require that to be done? Now, as a whole I think in our particular area down in the high desert and the cement plants in the area have really made a commitment to require them to have that comprehensive training and show us that they've had that MSHA training before they come on site or all those people that you're going to be bringing in we want to see proof that you have, in fact, had that training. And it's been a struggle over the last five years that I've been working this particular safety aspect. I've been in the cement industry for over 30 years and I've been an MSHA instructor since 1986. So I know some of the pains that I've gone through personally and in talking with others, what they have to go through to get these contractors trained and to stay on top of it. It's a full time job, especially when you have a major outage and you may have as many as three or 400 contractors on site when normally maybe your full compliment is only 100 or 150 people. So it's really a full time job in taking care of that but I think we're doing a pretty good job in that and I really don't think we're getting the credit that it takes when you have four, five, 600 people on a site and you walk away at the end of a 15 or 20-day outage and you have zero accidents. We don't get the credit for that. So that's just my venting portion of it. But in talking about training, we talked about who can and who cannot train. Well, when we talk about task training it says that a competent person is capable to task train. Well, why can't we use that same competent person to augment our other training as long as he comes under the umbrella or the auspices of that course director or which would be that head trainer because you have one person that signs that 5000 form and then that's that person who is actually an MSHA instructor himself. Can he watch and guide what that other person is doing? Well, sure he can. He's supposed to be there for the course anyway and watching everything that's going on. Well, why don't we use the resources we have in house. Use -- like in my particular situation I have three licensed blasters on site. Well, why can't I use that supervisor who is a licensed blaster to come in and teach a portion of that explosion portion of my MSHA class for new miners or even use him as a refresher. The same way with my electricians, as long as he's under my control and I'm dictating exactly what he teaches and cease that, well, then maybe we can use them in that respect. And then I won't elaborate, we've already went over quite a bit about truck drivers coming on site and having to protect them from falling of their own trucks to where it comes to the point on some sites they say, "You know, before you come on site, you open your truck. You drive on, you load up, you get off our site and close the truck". That's what it's leading to. And now simply because why is it legal in one place and not legal and we've went through all of that. So that's so much for my venting and my position on task training. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Do you have -- MR. BRELAND: Just on the -- make sure I understood on the trainers that you were talking about, some people doing task training that aren't necessarily certified and make sure I understood what you meant about allowing additional training to be done by uncertified people but that are under some supervision or guidance -- MR. HALLENBECK: Yes. MR. BRELAND: -- by like say yourself or somebody that's been certified -- MR. HALLENBECK: Yes. MR. BRELAND: -- and would that -- did you have in mind -- how would you do that monitoring? Would that be that you had to be in attendance at all classes, some random numbers or how would you police that yourself? MR. HALLENBECK: I would think that in order for you to be able to diligently monitor anybody you have to be present there. MR. BRELAND: Okay. MR. HALLENBECK: So if you're going to have him do a portion of, let's say the explosion portion of a new miner training which is going to take anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes or an hour, within that section there, and sure, you're not training them to be an explosive expert but what you're doing is you're giving them an oversight of what goes on, what takes place and the hazards involved in that blasting situation, who better to do that than the actual person that directs that. But now, in order to make sure that all his points are getting across, well, then you're there to monitor his particular portion of that class. So, yes, you have to be there for that. MR. BRELAND: Okay, I just wanted to make sure I understood that's what you meant. MR. HALLENBECK: Okay. MR. BRELAND: All right, thank you. MR. BURNS: Yeah, I just had a follow-up on that. I mean, under -- I don't really -- I kind of agree with you on that but I was also going to say, you know, there's lots of ways to learn how to do things. One of them is learning by doing it. So you see at some point in time say that blaster, at some point in time you shouldn't have to observe him. Is that correct? MR. HALLENBECK: Well, I would think that -- MR. BURNS: I mean, he could develop into a very qualified competent trainer just by doing the training all the time and learning while he's doing it. MR. HALLENBECK: I would think that -- and I think a point was made earlier, that I think that if you have those competent people, then you have a personal obligation to maybe pursue them becoming expertise in that area and maybe pursuing becoming an MSHA instructor and then at that time, you wouldn't have to monitor them. But as long as you have someone that is not an instructor and taking those courses, then I think that you have an obligation to your people to make sure that the information has come across correctly. MR. BURNS: Okay. MR. HALLENBECK: One point I would like to add, on the training session though about instructors, and there's no real provisions for it, is that the assumption is the more you teach the better you get. Well, that's not always true and there is no provisions for like instructor refreshers or anything, nothing to go to that will help us maybe just to sit down as instructors and to get together and say, "Okay, how do you do this", or, "What's some of the new things that we have to start getting information out to", because sometimes the information isn't real forthcoming. I'm sure as hard as you try the information doesn't get to mine sites as well as it should and it's interesting that even this meeting today I didn't find out about it unless it was through an organization that I belonged had sent me some information on it. I did not receive direct information to the mine site about this meeting. MR. BURNS: Just one more on the training, on the task training do you monitor that, too? MR. HALLENBECK: No, I do not monitor the task training since that is basically done by a competent person. Now, I'm at a site where I have 145 people. And so it's really fairly easy for me to get around and make sure that when I receive those task training slips from the -- usually the supervisors is doing that, that I'll have in the course of time the opportunity to observe those individuals doing their job in a normal manner. MR. BURNS: So you do some follow-up type of evaluation. MR. HALLENBECK: Yes. MR. BRELAND: Okay, thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much, Mr. Hallenbeck. We have reached the end of the list of people who have signed up to speak up but I'm going to ask is there anyone here who has not spoken who now wishes to get up and offer their remarks? All right, is there anybody here who has already spoken who would like to get up and make some additional remarks? Okay. Why I'm going to do is give you just a short summary of the issues that have been raised at the other meetings. I think probably most of them you've already heard something at this meeting, and then also give you a short summary of what we think our schedule is going to look like in the coming months as we work to get a final rule out by the deadline. We have gotten a lot of comments on the whole issue of contractors and there's kind of two issues sort of wrapped up in that. One of them is who should be responsible for insuring that contractor employees have the requisite training. We've had a number of comments that the mine operator should provide the site specific hazard training to contractors who come onto the property but that the contractors themselves should be responsible for insuring that their employees have got the comprehensive training that is required. Also, I mean, we've touched upon this issue here today, what types of training are appropriate, depending on what the individual employee may be doing at the mine site. There's you know, categories of employees, you know, delivery people such as truck drivers or other types of individuals who come onto the property for short periods of time and their exposure to hazards may be limited. Those -- some of the comments have been those employees clearly need to be treated differently than employees who are more directly exposed to mine hazards. We have gotten a lot of comments on how much initial miner training should be required before a miner is allowed to start work. A lot of people have advocated that we take the approach that's taken under Part 48 where eight hours of the initial training is given before the miner can work on the mine site; whereas we have had several people, particularly those from very small operations who have indicated that eight hours is too much for their operation. That there just is not that much to their operations. There aren't that many hazards. That there really is not a lot to cover to warrant eight hours of the initial training. We have gotten a lot of comments on the fact that annual refresher training that is offered in periods shorter than 30 minutes should be allowed and should be considered in complying with the eight-hour annual training. We have also heard and you've heard that here today that 30 minutes should be the minimum. Anything shorter than 30 minutes simply cannot be of very much use. One of the themes that has kind of run through the comments that we've gotten as we've worked our way through these meetings is that encouraging that any rule that we come up with allow flexibility to operators in formulating their training programs and reducing the necessary administrative burden as much as possible. We have gotten a lot of comment advocating that flexibility be allowed in where records are kept. I would say probably here more than at any of the other meetings we've gotten more people getting up saying that records should be kept at the mine site. I would say for the meeting leading up to this, most people have advocated allowing centralized record keeping with the record to be provided upon request to the MSHA inspector within, you know, some specified minimum period of time. One of the other issues that has been raised is how much time after a final rule is published should be allowed for the industry to come into compliance with the requirements. Now, of course, the amount of time given for compliance is going to depend to a large extent on exactly what kind of requirements are going to be in the final rule. And it's premature, obviously, for us to give anybody any idea of what this rule is going to look like, but we have had several people who advocated that at least a year should be given past the publication date for the industry to come into compliance. I believe we had one person who said that six months would be appropriate. That pretty much covers it. Did I miss anything? Okay, and as far as the schedule I would say -- as I mentioned earlier, we have got two additional meetings that are set in Atlanta and in Dallas the week of January 5th. We are expecting to get a final draft proposed rule from the coalition for effective miner training on or before February 1st of 1999. After that date, we will be working very vigorously on preparing a proposed rule for publication in the Federal Register. Once the rule goes out of MSHA, I mean, it's got to the go to the main Department of Labor for review and also go to the Office of Management and Budget for review, but we are optimistically hoping to get the rule published in the Federal Register some time in the early spring, hopefully March and at the latest April. After the proposed rule is in the Federal Register, we typically will have public hearings similar in format to the format today to allow interested people to come in and comment on what's in the proposed rule. It's not clear where these hearings are going to be or how many but if I had to predict, I'd say we're probably going to have at least two. The time factor is going to determine how many and where they're going to be. I mean, obviously, we're working on a very tight time schedule and we want to give as many people the opportunity to come in and tell us what they think about the proposed rule but on the other hand, I mean, we also have got to finish this process up fairly quickly. So I mean, I would say a minimum of two and time permitting, I mean, we would obviously like to offer more than those but a notice will go in the Federal Register announcing the dates and locations of those hearings. There will also be -- you know, the comment period will be open, I mean, if you would like to comment, but are going to be able to attend one of the public hearings, you are able to submit in writing your comments and you know, deadlines will be established for those written comments to be submitted. After the comment period is closed then we will develop a final rule and we obviously would like to get that done as quickly as possible while giving, you know, the necessary amount of time and consideration to all of the comments but we need to get that published no later than September 30th of 1999 because that is the deadline that the Congress has established for us. So having said that, I would again encourage you if there are additional things that you would like to offer, to submit written comments to us. Again, I would encourage you to make those submissions before February 1st of 1999. If you need an address, I mean, if you don't have a copy of the meeting notice, come up after we close the meeting and we can give you an address. It is the Office of Standards, Regulations and Variance with MSHA. So if you know what the address is for that office, you know where to send those comments. One other thing I'd like to add; MSHA does have a home page on the Internet. The address is www.MSHA.gov. MSHA is obviously M-S-H-A. There's a button on the home page, it's called training regulations. If you click on that, we're trying to keep -- you know, keep up to date on what's going on on here and, you know, relevant documents, et cetera, we're going to be posting on the -- on our home page. So you might want to take a look at that at regular intervals to see, you know, whether there's been any new developments. I think that's all I have to say. If anybody -- oh, somebody's got their hand raised. MR. DE ATLEY: (Inaudible) CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Sir, could you come up to the front because the Court Reporter is not going to be able to -- and I don't know what happened to the -- okay, good. MR. DE ATLEY: You were talking about developing a final rule by September 30th of '99. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: That's correct. MR. DE ATLEY: Is there going to be some kind of - - what's the wording I'm looking for, schedule of implementation? CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Well, I mean, I think I touched on that earlier. Obviously, one of the big decisions that we're going to have to make is how much time after the final rule is published do we allow for the industry to come into compliance. And so as I said, I mean, some people have advocated that assuming that the final rule is published in the Federal Register on September 30th of 1999, that we are not going to start to enforce whatever requirements are in that regulation until September 30th of the year 2000. Now, obviously that's something that we're going to have to decide how we're going to approach it, whether we have a, you know, an across the board compliance deadline or whether we, you know, fashion it depending on what particular requirements are involved, I mean, some requirements may go into effect sooner than other requirements. I mean, those are all issues that need to be addressed as we formulate this rule and obviously, I mean, if you've got some feelings about that, you know, we would like to know what your suggestions may be. I mean, you can submit that in writing if you're not prepared to address it today and again, I mean, that will certainly be an issue in the public hearings that we hold after the proposed rule is published. MR. DE ATLEY: Well, particularly if the operator is allowed to submit his plan for approval by the Secretary of Labor or whatever -- CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Right, right, I mean, we obviously -- whatever it is that operators are going to be required to do, I mean, it behooves us to set reasonable deadlines for them to meet the requirements that are established. I mean, obviously we want to get this underway as quickly as possible because we think miner safety and health training is extremely important and although a lot of people are providing training, I mean, I think there are some operators out there that are providing minimum or non- existent training. However, I mean, this is -- you know, for some people it's starting from scratch and we want to accommodate the needs of the industry as we make this work. MR. DE ATLEY: I agree. Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you. Anything else, any other comments? Okay, I would like to thank you all very much for coming and I would particularly like to thank the people who provided us with presentations. If you have any questions after the meeting, feel free to come up here. If you need addresses or other information, come and see us and again, thank you very much. (Whereupon, at 11:30 a.m. the above-entitled matter concluded.) // // REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE DOCKET NO.: N/A CASE TITLE: PUBLIC MEETING - TRAINING HEARING DATE: December 17, 1998 LOCATION: Ontario, California 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 United States Department of Labor. Date: December 17, 1998 John Hankel Official Reporter Heritage Reporting Corporation Suite 600 1220 L Street, N. W. Washington, D. C. 20005