1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 SAFETY AND HEALTH MANAGEMENT PROGRAMS 8 FOR MINES MEETING 9 HELD AT 10 EMBASSY SUITES SACRAMENTO-RIVERFRONT PROMENADE 11 100 Capitol Mall 12 Sacramento, CA 95814 13 Tuesday, October 12, 2010 14 9:05 a.m. 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Reported by Jennifer F. Milne, CSR No. 10894 2 1 APPEARANCES: 2 3 PANEL MEMBERS: 4 ALFRED DUCHARME 5 MARIO DISTASIO 6 PATRICIA W. SILVEY 7 KEVIN BURNS 8 GREGORY FETTY 9 RICHARD FEEHAN 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 3 1 ---o0o--- 2 SAFETY AND HEALTH MANAGEMENT PROGRAMS 3 FOR MINES MEETING 4 SACRAMENTO, CA 5 ---o0o--- 6 MS. SILVEY: Good morning. My name is Patricia 7 W. Silvey, and I am the director of the Mine Safety and 8 Health Administration Office of Standards. 9 I will be the moderator of this public meeting 10 to gather information about safety and health management 11 programs. On behalf of Assistant Secretary of Labor for 12 Mine Safety and Health, Joseph A. Maine, I want to 13 welcome all of you to this meeting today. 14 Let me introduce the members of the panel. To 15 my right is Al Ducharme, and he's representing the 16 Office of the Solicitor. 17 Next to me, Mario Distasio, is the Economist 18 from my office. 19 Kevin Burns is with the Educational Policy 20 Development Office. 21 Greg Fetty is with Coal Mine Safety and Health. 22 And Richard Feehan is with my office. 23 This is the second of three public meetings MSHA 24 is holding to gather information. And since many of you 25 know the first meeting was last Friday, 8 October, in 4 1 Rosslyn at our headquarters office. And the last 2 meeting will be October 14th in Pittsburgh. 3 We are very excited about this meeting and the 4 one that follows and view them as an important step to 5 help focus on prevention in addition to compliance. 6 This is our opportunity to find out what programs work, 7 and what results have been achieved. 8 I hope in meeting and in submitting comments we 9 also learn what has been tried and hasn't produced 10 results. We expect to learn the experience of mining 11 companies that have implemented effective program and 12 also learn what has worked outside of the mining 13 industry. 14 This is an opportunity to focus on prevention 15 efforts to anticipate and recognize potential hazards 16 and to control them before they cause injuries, 17 illnesses and deaths. 18 Some companies have implemented programs to 19 monitor the work environment, whether or not there are 20 specific regulations. They compile information about 21 employee injuries and near-misses and respond to the 22 information they are gathering with a prevention focus. 23 As you know, MSHA published a notice in the 24 Federal Register announcing the meetings and requesting 25 the mining community to provide information, which the 5 1 agency could use to develop a proposed rule. 2 The agency has also invited representatives from 3 academia, safety and health industry professionals, and 4 worker organizations, and other government agencies to 5 share their experiences and views on effective safety 6 and health management programs. 7 This rulemaking supports Secretary of Labor 8 Hilda Solis's vision of Good Jobs for Everyone. The 9 secretary's vision for achieving good jobs is through a 10 strategy of creating workplaces where employers plan, 11 prevent, and protect the safety and health of employees. 12 Plan, prevent, and protect is based on the 13 principle that employers must find and fix threats to 14 health and safety and assure compliance with regulations 15 before an inspector arrives at the workplace. 16 The plan, prevent, and protect strategy begins 17 with the premise that Congress directs mine operators to 18 achieve and sustain compliance with the law but it 19 doesn't end there. It also embodies a continuing 20 attention to the recognition and control or elimination 21 of threats to safety and health. 22 Some mining companies experience low injury and 23 illness rates and low violation rates year after year. 24 For these companies, preventing harm to their workers is 25 more than compliance with safety and health 6 1 requirements. It reflects the embodiment of a culture 2 of safety from the CEO, to the worker, to the 3 contractor. This culture of safety derives from a 4 commitment to a systematic, effective, comprehensive 5 safety and health management program implemented with 6 the full participation of all workers. 7 Several consensus standards have been developed 8 both here and abroad to address safety and health 9 management systems. These include: The American 10 National Standards Institute, ANSI; and the American 11 Industrial Hygiene Association's, AIHA, Z10-2005, 12 Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems; The 13 International Standards Organization's, ISO, 14 9001:2008(E), Quality Management Systems Requirements; 15 and the British Standards Institution, BSI, BS OHSAS 16 18001-2007, Occupational Health and Safety Assessment 17 Series. 18 As many of you know, our sister agency in the 19 Department of Labor, the Occupational Safety and Health 20 Administration, or OSHA, earlier this year held 21 stakeholder meetings as part of their rulemaking on 22 Injury and Illness Prevention Programs which they 23 refer to as I2P2. The I2P2 rulemaking is OSHA's version 24 of safety and health management programs. 25 I can assure you that MSHA and OSHA will collaborate 7 1 during the development of these proposed rules and will 2 learn from each other and from each others stakeholders. 3 Effective safety and health management programs 4 generally include: management commitment, worker 5 involvement, hazard identification, hazard prevention 6 and control, safety and health training and program 7 evaluation. 8 After all of the presentations, you will have an 9 opportunity to ask questions or present further views. 10 At this time, we will hear from our first 11 presenter. And if I could please ask you, please, 12 when you do come to make your presentation, if you would 13 speak clearly and spell your name so that the court 14 reporter will have an accurate record. I should say we 15 will have an accurate record. The court reporter is 16 doing it for us. 17 Our first speaker is Matthew Howard, Safety 18 Director of Rio Tinto. Matthew. 19 MR. HOWARD: Good morning, everyone. As you can 20 see the Rio branding, you know it's Rio Tinto. I'll 21 give you a little bit of an overview of what I'm going 22 to talk about. These are some of the items: background 23 on Rio Tinto, our performance, how we view incidents and 24 risk. I really want to delve into a little bit of that. 25 Some of the programs we have make a little bit more 8 1 sense when we get into some of the detail. Our approach 2 and our vision and our values and then what we recommend 3 and what we support. So that's an overview of what 4 we're going to look at. 5 Rio Tinto, I'm sure many of you know, we're a 6 global company. Operations all around the world. I'm 7 representing Rio Tinto Mineral’s a division of 8 Rio Tinto. We have operations in the broader company 9 around the world and representation in many countries. 10 So a big company. We're a smaller division of that, the 11 Minerals division. We're a leading supplier of borax and 12 talc. We employ about 2,500 people. Again, we have 13 global operations, about 40 facilities around the world, 14 various countries again. 15 In terms of our borax, we supply about half of 16 the world's demand for refined borax. I'm sure many of 17 you are familiar with U.S. Borax 20 Mule Team. That's 18 one of our operations, operating in Boron. That's 19 actually the largest mine in California. We have some 20 of our gentlemen from that mine here today. 21 In terms of talc, we supply about 25 percent of 22 the world's talc supply. We've got various locations 23 again in the U.S. and a larger operation in the south of 24 France. 25 I wanted to put up a little bit of background in 9 1 our performance. This is 2010’s first two quarters based 2 on ANSI statistics, top 25 metal, non-metal produced by 3 man hour. As you can see, I've blanked most of the 4 names for the sites here. The only thing I left out is 5 the Rio Tinto Group, which is, for those of you in the 6 back that may not be able to see, it's the ones to the 7 right. And then Rio Tinto Minerals, our division 8 within Rio Tinto. 9 Now the numbers, that's actually our numbers 10 for minerals are based on our internal numbers for that, 11 so there's a little bit of variance. Essentially, 12 we're right up there at the top of the curve in 13 terms of our performance. This is not a one-up 14 year performance. This is actually fairly consistent 15 for the last couple of years if you look at these same 16 graphs, these same numbers. In fact, in Minerals, we 17 haven't had any "work days lost/injury" this year in any 18 of our North American minerals operations. 19 So in terms of performance, we're -- we're very 20 proud of our performance. There's a lot of hard work 21 that goes into that. I'm going to get into some 22 specifics about that work later in the presentation. 23 In terms of Rio Tinto’s performance, this is going 24 back a few more years. As you can see our 25 trending across the group, this is where we come from, where 10 1 we're going. As you can see, again, you can see some 2 good improvements. We measure in terms of our global 3 operations on lost time injury/frequency rates, which 4 is the lower line there and also all injury frequency 5 rates, but slightly different metrics might be used from 6 an MSHA perspective but still very similar in terms of 7 the overall detail when we get there. 8 So, in terms of how we look at ourselves in our 9 over performance the last ten years or so, we've made 10 some good headway across the board at Rio Tinto 11 Group. And again, we're pleased with our performance 12 but not happy because we still have incidents. We still 13 have injuries. And our objective is to get to 14 incident-free. 15 I want to get into a little bit of a background 16 about how we view incidents. One of the ways we 17 look is we have an inherent amount of risk, certain 18 hazards that appear in our operations. And the 19 controls we have in place are represented by those 20 spinning disks. And ultimately, we want to control our 21 risk. We want to make sure we don't have any of these 22 events. As you can see by the graphic there, there's a 23 lot going on. It's kind of flashy. 24 Our controls that we have really prevent things 25 from going into that event stage where we lose control 11 1 and something actually triggers from that point on. 2 Once we get there, we're into the slot machine 3 rolling the wheels to see what happened. We don't want 4 to get into that stage. I'm sure no one wants to get 5 into that stage. We want to understand what the 6 mechanism for an incident is before we really get into 7 the detail of the program. 8 So I'm sure you've heard of the terminology "all 9 the stars aligning." It's something that people often 10 talk about, "all the stars aligned." That's kind of 11 what we're looking at here. We have an inherent risk. 12 We have some kind of controls that prevent that risk and 13 prevent the stars from aligning. 14 As you can see here, the mechanism of what would 15 then turn into a controlled or unexpected event. We 16 want to make sure that we're controlling our risk. 17 We're probably never going to get into an area where 18 we're risk-free. We understand that. We recognize 19 that. It really comes down to making good risk judgment 20 and good risk control. We have a lot of systems in 21 play, and we have a lot of behavior that make sure we 22 remain in that controlled state. We don't want to be 23 safe by accident. 24 I'll expand upon that in a little bit. The 25 terminology of risk. Basically the possibility of 12 1 meeting danger or suffering harm. So this is sort of 2 what we're looking at when it comes to risk. We're 3 looking at identification, judgment and control. Really 4 it's a continuous loop on that process. In fact, we're 5 doing this all the time, anyway. As human nature, we're 6 actually judging, assessing the control in a continuous 7 loop. The difference is, when we do it, we're often 8 working on subconscious. We're often in auto-pilot mode. 9 What we want to do is have things in play like 10 the Take Five program which make a more conscious, 11 deliberate, risk judgment. And as you can see here, a 12 gentleman by the name of Corrie Pitzer, from Safe Map 13 Max International, who we've worked with in the past, 14 suggests that most incidents occur because of risk being 15 unidentified, underestimated, not understood or probably 16 more crucial than any of those, ignored or accepted. 17 That's risk versus reward. So the judgment peak wasn't 18 quite there. So we have Take Five and MSHA has SLAM 19 Risk, and I'm sure various other companies have other 20 themes on some kind of risk assessment tool. 21 This is one that we give to our operators. We 22 encourage them to use it, force them into that conscious 23 risk judgment and having a group discussion around some 24 of the things that can go wrong. Essentially what we're 25 looking at, what can go wrong, how bad is it going to 13 1 be, what am I going to do to control it. I'm letting 2 that discussion happen at the very front end. 3 I know there's been lots of comments about our 4 task is to eliminate risk. So I won't ask for a show of 5 hands, but is a zero-risk mine site possible? I know 6 what probably the industry folks in here would say, and 7 certainly from my perspective and our perspective, we 8 don't feel that eliminating all risks in operation is 9 something that's practical or feasible. Certainly when 10 you ask how many of you live in a zero-risk home? 11 There's probably no one in here that lives in a 12 zero-risk home even though from a regulatory standpoint 13 you might have conditions and everything is to code, but 14 I can guarantee you, we're all very capable of injuring 15 ourselves or killing ourselves in a home environment, 16 but we can't eliminate all risk. So it really comes down 17 to that judgment base. That's one of the things we try 18 to encourage to use on the job, people, our operators and our 19 supervisors. How do we make that decision-making 20 process from the subconscious to the more conscious? 21 And any tools we have in play, like the Take Five, are 22 really key in driving that approach. 23 One of the comments mentioned earlier was about 24 culture and where do we see our culture and what's a 25 productive component of that culture? This is the way 14 1 we see it: We see a culture where we have shared 2 responsibility and accountability with everyone in the 3 operation. We're process or behavior focus. So we're 4 looking at what people are doing rather than just the 5 results that they actually achieve. How did they get 6 there and understanding the mechanism? We want to be 7 achievement-oriented and we want to focus on some of the 8 positive behaviors. When we see things that people are 9 doing well, we want to recognize that and encourage it 10 rather than take the approach that we just beat them up 11 when something goes wrong. We want to be fact-finding 12 rather than fault-finding. We want to make sure that 13 we, as a team, value safety. That's what -- one of the 14 things for us to keep focused about, safety is a value 15 to us. You can't switch it on and off. It doesn't filter 16 up and down the priority list. It's something that's 17 always there. It's part of our psyche. 18 This is what we see in terms of the more 19 desirable culture. Of course, it's easy to say. The 20 real issue is how do you get there? That's why we've 21 got that large arrow at the base. That's what requires 22 leadership. That's what requires everyone in our 23 operation coming together from the top, and also through 24 the operators who maintain it to drive that culture 25 forward. We may not be perfect, but that's certainly an 15 1 area we're focusing in. 2 Our approach -- again, some of you may have seen 3 this from a gentleman by the name of Scott Geller. He's 4 written several books on people-based safety, 5 behavior-based safety. Representing three portions of 6 the triangle: environment, the behavior, and the 7 person. Pretty easy for us to gravitate looking at the 8 environmental issue, the conditional things, the things 9 that aren't quite right. The guard that might not be 10 there, the housekeeping issue that's on the floor. 11 That's only one piece of the triangle. That's the key 12 point there. We're only focusing on the environment or 13 the conditions; ee're probably not going to get 14 outstanding performance. 15 Our program, in terms -- to incorporate some of 16 the more challenging things that we have in terms of why 17 people choose to do certain things, why the behavior 18 that people engage in are occurring in operation -- 19 actions of individuals, whether it's conscious or 20 subconscious, is really motivated to the consequences 21 they perceive. If people are choosing to do things that 22 don't seem right or safe, we need to understand what the 23 motivators are. Why would someone try and choose to do 24 that? There's probably a valid reason, at least in 25 their mind. 16 1 And if you think behavior is hard enough to 2 influence, really we get into the person's side and 3 that's where it becomes very difficult. We're talking 4 about risk judgment, risk acceptance. And people in our 5 operation routinely choose to go above and beyond the 6 call of duty to help a coworker out. That's where we 7 see the utopia. That's where we see our target of 8 incident-free occurring. When each and every one of our 9 employees feels the power and authority to go and help 10 every other person in the operation, contractors, 11 visitors, you name it; we want to make sure that we have 12 that level of understanding, a level of discretion in 13 our employees. 14 We have a lot of structure as well. We're a big 15 mining company, so obviously that comes with some 16 resources and some requirements from a corporate 17 standpoint. This -- and again, it's probably hard to 18 see in the back. But this wheel, as you can see here, 19 represents the Rio Tinto management system. It's 20 something that's mandated for all Rio Tinto sites around 21 the world. It's a consistent level of playing field for 22 everyone to conform to. And for those of you who are 23 familiar with the ISO standards, you'll see a lot of 24 similarities in this process. 25 Again, some recurring theme. A foundation of 17 1 leadership commitment and resources. We recognize it. 2 Without that, a lot of this probably won't be that 3 effective. There are all kinds of things in there 4 from contract to management, management to 5 operational control where we have all of our performance 6 standards which really look into some of the details 7 around working heights, confined space, isolation. All 8 of those requirements that each operation must fulfill 9 in performing their task. 10 It's integrated in HSEQ. We see inconsistent 11 things across the board. We recognize the leadership is 12 really about leadership and good safety performance is a 13 reflection of leadership. And that's why we don't 14 separate between health, safety environment and quality. 15 We want to provide clear expectations and consistent 16 reinforcements for those behaviors. That's what we see 17 is defective, when we're inconsistent around those 18 behaviors, as you'll probably recognize from most 19 behavioral safety programs or books or whatever else you 20 might have read. Positive immediate and certain 21 reinforcements behind the behavior are the most 22 effective in driving that behavior. 23 We have some specific programs. And, again, 24 this is -- this is more detail around what we do. Just 25 picking up some points from both the management system 18 1 and an overall approach from Rio Tinto. 2 We expect all of our leaders to be skilled in 3 terms of their leadership abilities, and we have 4 something called "Safety Leadership Development." We 5 try to engage our supervisors, our managers, and to 6 an extent our employees in understanding what are some 7 of the tools and techniques that drive good team 8 performance? What are some of the good quality 9 behaviors around engagement from a team perspective? 10 What would we expect from our employees in that team? 11 A lot of leadership development. We have programs 12 around safety leadership which link back to our 13 assessment process where we try and understand what 14 behaviors people are performing from a leader standpoint 15 to make sure that they are desirable. 16 We have a robust incident management system. We 17 recognize that we have incidents. You know, we might 18 not have as many serious incidents as other people, but 19 we recognize we have incidents. We recognize we have 20 incidents that have serious potential, even without 21 people getting injured. We call them "near hits." We 22 call them "serious potential incidents," and we want to 23 do a diligent job of enforcing and investigating near 24 hits. 25 Just as an indicator, our minerals group is 19 1 running about 7.1 near hits reported to incident. 2 That's our ratio. And within incidents, we include 3 property damage, first aid, medical treatment and lost 4 time. And the vast majority are property damage 5 incidents, where we report anything that really results 6 in a paint-on-paint contact. 7 So when we talk about how many near hits we 8 report, we're talking about a lot. We have 230 or so 9 near hits reported in the month of September. And each 10 one of those is assessed, well, really how bad could 11 this have been? What's the maximum reasonable outcome 12 of this event? And what do we need to do to understand 13 how we actually make sure it doesn't happen again either 14 here or one of our other operations. And within the 15 broader range of Rio Tinto, we share those events so we 16 can actually understand and learn from each other and 17 don't have to have the same thing re-occur which may 18 result in less desirable route. 19 We use a process known as Tap Root. Again, 20 something I'm sure many people are familiar with. It's 21 a systematic approach to incident analysis and record. 22 And, again, you'll see the fact-finding versus 23 fault-finding mantra. Something that's encouraged in 24 the Tap Root process. Anyone who's looking for a 25 rigorous and systematic approach to root cause should 20 1 very much look into Tap Root area for that. 2 We feel we've got a robust risk management 3 process. We've actually leveled it out into three 4 levels. Level one risk assessment process is really the 5 Take Five. What are we doing on a day-to-day basis? 6 What are the tasks that people are performing in our 7 operation that could result in them getting hurt or 8 having some serious issue going forward? We want to 9 empower them with the knowledge of how to use and assess 10 risk but also have the power to say, "Hey, this could 11 get someone hurt. This is something that we're not 12 comfortable with. We're going to stop, and we're going 13 to do something different." All of our employees have 14 that authority, and we encourage them to use it as they 15 see fit. 16 We also encourage our contractors who will be on 17 site to get involved with our risk management approach. 18 We give them the tools -- the same tools and technique 19 and education that we give to all our employees when it 20 comes to assessing risk when it pertains to their 21 everyday job. 22 We also expect our employees to flag areas which 23 do have potential risk, serious potential risk. And 24 then we can go into some more rigorous techniques and 25 around how we look at them. I'll talk a little bit more 21 1 about quantitative risk assessment in the next slide. 2 We also have a robust contract management 3 system. We have some sites which will pre-order 4 contractors before they come on to any of our operation 5 to establish what kind of behaviors do these people 6 engage in when they're in another person's operation. 7 We want to make sure they're following the same rules we 8 have when we have ownership of their performance when 9 they run our operation. So we don't treat contractors 10 any different from any other employee on our site. 11 They're part of our team, and we want to make sure that 12 we treat them the same way. 13 Some of the systems we have that we feel are 14 world class and helping drivers to our incident-free 15 culture. Semi-quantitative risk assessment. Now, when 16 we have issues that we feel are high-potential risk, we 17 want to go into some more diligent assessment process in 18 terms of understanding those mechanisms. 19 As we saw from the spinning disk-slide, that's 20 very much a semi-quantitative risk approach. We'll 21 break down individual steps in a scenario in trying to 22 understand, how could this event occur? What would be 23 some of the things that would make this event happen and 24 what would be the steps that each of those -- safety in 25 each of those steps. 22 1 We engage our operators and maintenance people to give 2 us information about these scenarios, and we'll try to 3 assign numerical probability to each of these scenarios. 4 It's a complex and rigorous approach to risk management 5 that may not be rooted in actual numerical data, but it is 6 based on operators and maintenance people who do the 7 work to, judge the exposure. It also provides a forum for 8 them to get creative or have a solution that can help us 9 improve. It also gives us a chance to prioritize our 10 high risk, gives us a chance to look at where we see 11 some unknown events that may or may not have occurred in 12 the past that we can work without incident or harm. 13 And, finally, we feel, certainly in Minerals, 14 that we have a robust behavioral safety approach. We 15 perform interactions with our employees and our 16 employees perform interactions on each other. And the 17 whole process around behavioral observation is to go 18 out, have a contact with our employees, make sure they 19 understand what our expectations are in terms of 20 behavior, reinforce them when they're actually doing 21 safer behaviors. We see about 98 percent of our 22 behaviors across the board, a safer behavior when we 23 pass those information around. We're talking about huge 24 numbers of behaviors, 11,000, 12,000 recorded behaviors 25 a month in our division at Rio Tinto Minerals. So 23 1 that's a huge number of behaviors. We're seeing 2,000 2 recorded interactions where there's been 2,000 contacts 3 formally documented around, what are people doing in 4 their work areas? What do those behaviors look 5 like? Nine out of ten times or 9.8 out of 10 times 6 there's an opportunity to reinforce a behavior, a 7 desired behavior, and we take those opportunities. We 8 also talk about some of the less desirable behaviors. 9 We want to understand the mechanism for those and 10 understand why people might be choosing to engage in a 11 less safe behavior in operations because 12 there's always motivation. Unless we understand 13 the motivation, we're not going to correct the behavior. 14 This is straight out of the behavioral safety approach. 15 We also take the opportunity to look at their 16 risk assessment, their approach to Take Five. 17 What are some of the hazards they've identified on the 18 risk assessment? how do they control it? Again, it's 19 making that reinforcing connection and helping them 20 understand that this is a conscious and deliberate 21 process that we expect them to engage in. 22 This is a slide that comes straight out of one 23 of our training approaches to our behavior and safety 24 program. 25 MS. SILVEY: Excuse me, Matt. Did I gather that 24 1 you're coming toward the end? 2 MR. HOWARD: Yes, fairly close. 3 MS. SILVEY: Please. We have a few questions. 4 MR. HOWARD: This is our approach. We feel that 5 we want a holistic and sustainable approach. Clearly we 6 can get so far in regulation, but regulation is not 7 going to take us where we want to be. In fact, if we 8 look at the regulation -- that's where we were on that 9 red graph earlier, where we see a lot of sites that 10 aren't performing where we want to be. So we want to 11 get down and include all things including behavior and 12 sustainability. And we feel that this is an effective 13 model when we can go all the way across and look at the 14 sustainability approach where we have a holistic 15 approach to our program. 16 Given the fact that I'm almost on the last 17 slide -- sorry. We welcome any tool that helps drive 18 conscious risk judgment, Take Five, SLAM-RISK, TRACK. We 19 advocate rewarding high-performing operations. We want 20 to recognize it's an upside to performing well. We want 21 to make sure there's some positive reinforcement for 22 active operators when they are performing well and allow 23 MSHA to support poorer performing operations. 24 We don't believe the outstanding performance can 25 be achieved by punishment and penalty. The old saying, 25 1 you can't punish a way to outstanding performance. We 2 certainly believe in that. That's the approach we take 3 with our employees. 4 We support the requirement for a written 5 accident improvement plan, accident prevention plan. 6 Very similar to the way in which Cal-OSHA has it now 7 where it's required but not approved. It's something 8 that we would submit as part of our ongoing program but 9 wouldn't necessarily require MSHA to approve. 10 We recommend focusing on behaviors, 11 understanding the motivators that I've already 12 elaborated on. We feel influencing a person's risk 13 judgment really requires leadership, unless, of course, 14 they get hurt, which we try to avoid. 15 We recommend that MSHA review its risk 16 assessment process to provide qualifiers for likelihood 17 determination. We believe this will reduce citations. 18 One of the issues we have is really around understanding 19 that mechanism to determine the likelihood. 20 We welcome the engagement of mining industry 21 just in a forum like this in improving mine safety and 22 health. In fact, we're very committed to be a part of 23 that. Anything that takes us in line with our aim to be 24 incident-free, it's certainly something that we support 25 and engage in. 26 1 We do coach, however, that this is not a one 2 size fits all. Our program has been successful. But 3 our program is different in each of our sites. This is 4 not something we go, "Here's the magic box. Go and fix 5 it." You really have to understand the culture of that 6 level, understand the operation and understand what 7 methods are used. However, anything that's rooted in 8 science is more likely to have a better effect. We 9 recommend using anything that's based in behavior 10 science and some of the safety science. And we're happy 11 to commit resources to help in any initiative that will 12 help improve mine safety in the U.S. 13 That's all I have. 14 MS. SILVEY: Okay. 15 MR. HOWARD: Sorry. I overran. 16 MS. SILVEY: Yeah. I have a few comments. 17 Maybe a couple questions. 18 MR. HOWARD: Sure. 19 MS. SILVEY: I will say at the outset that was 20 an excellent presentation. And I guess one of the 21 things I get from it, looking at it with the amount of 22 principle and theory -- I would ask myself -- and with 23 the number of plants and confidence that you have 24 worldwide. When you look at that system, this approach, 25 how are you assured that at any plant of yours that the 27 1 managers of that plant are and the workers are 2 thoroughly involved in everything that you have 3 presented to us here today? If I were to go there, 4 hypothetically, and me being a person not knowing what's 5 going on there -- and, obviously, you presented this, 6 you know, wonderful program -- how could I be assured 7 that everybody is engaged? 8 MR. HOWARD: Typically, we have orders and we 9 have reviews internal within Rio Tinto, and a normal 10 approach would be to actually ask the employees. That's 11 a fairly consistent approach we have in our part of 12 normal mechanism where we actually have that dialogue 13 with our employees to understand what their concerns, 14 issues or involvement is. And we also have culture 15 surveys where we can ask some of those questions around 16 some of the issues at a site-by-site level. Involvement 17 ranges. Some sites have a very good involvement level 18 and some less so. 19 MS. SILVEY: With the ones that have less so, 20 what do you do then? What do you go about doing with 21 those? 22 MR. HOWARD: What we'll do is initially set up 23 any kind of a mechanism with a greater involvement. 24 Certainly a lot depends on ongoing labor relations 25 between management and the employees depending on how 28 1 involved they get. Much of our program is really based 2 on discretion. We invite our employees to become part 3 of the program. We can't mandate that they become part 4 of the program or get involved in formally observing 5 each other on behaviors. We encourage them to do that. 6 And we provide a lot of energy and resources in 7 educating them. So, you know, clearly, we don't have 8 100 percent involvement from our workforce on top of our 9 programs. But we do what we can to encourage that 10 discretion effort. When it comes to some of our 11 requirements, then that's a little bit different. 12 Obviously, we have standards that we expect them to 13 adhere to. 14 MS. SILVEY: That's a good segue to a third 15 question I wanted to ask you -- or a comment, I guess, I 16 wanted to make and then maybe question. 17 Some people would say that a lot of your 18 program, which -- and you highlighted based on 19 behavior-based safety. And a lot -- to some people -- 20 I'm just saying this: That is just another concept for 21 blame the worker. And how would you respond to that? 22 MR. HOWARD: Well, I wouldn't disagree in some 23 applications. Behavior-based safety has been used to 24 hold people accountable, and punishment for that -- we 25 need to recognize that punishment is actually an 29 1 appropriate consequence for a less desirable behavior. 2 Our point is really around punishment alone is probably 3 not going to drive the results we want. We want to have 4 a culture where we provide different mechanism to 5 reinforcement, positive reinforcement as well as 6 punishment, as well as negative reinforcement depending 7 on what behavior we see. 8 For us, the key is -- and I think for any 9 effective behavior safety program is if you're seeing a 10 less desirable behavior, probably the first one you want 11 to know is, what are the motivators why someone would 12 choose that? And then you might better change some of 13 the motivators initially. However, if you're seeing 14 consistent repeated behaviors which are less safe or 15 less desirable, at some stage you're going to have to 16 make the decision whether punishment is appropriate to 17 stop the behavior. Now, we have punishments, as 18 other people have punishments, but we also recognize and 19 we try to balance that with other forms of motivation 20 and recognition and also delve into the understanding of 21 what might drive that behavior so... 22 MS. SILVEY: And with respect to -- and those 23 clear -- the word graphic data and the trend, downward 24 trend, do you see your -- do you find one has the 25 improvement correlated with production in or 30 1 alternatively has it -- for lack of a better word, have 2 you run into any rifts with production? I mean are 3 there -- do you find that? 4 MR. HOWARD: I'll speak on behalf of the Rio 5 Tinto Minerals numbers because I don't have the 6 information -- 7 MS. SILVEY: Right. 8 MR. HOWARD: We haven't seen really a 9 correlation between outcome and safety performance. 10 That's not something we've typically seen. But you also 11 have to bear in mind that our numbers are relatively 12 low. So you don't have a large data to deal with, you 13 know. To give it some perspective, we try to look at 14 more of the background information so -- property damage 15 and first aid events so we can get a better data because 16 we don't have a -- per se, a lot of injuries. Like I 17 say, in our North America operations, we haven't had one 18 day loss of injury so far this year. So, it's 19 difficult for us to really provide that correlation. 20 MS. SILVEY: I just have one last thing. On one 21 of your slides on employees, you talk about employees' 22 involvement with authority. And you say employees have 23 authority with respect to risk assessment and risk 24 management. 31 1 MR. HOWARD: Yes. 2 MS. SILVEY: Could you give me an example, one 3 example, of how that actually works, an employee who 4 exercises that authority. 5 MR. HOWARD: Absolutely. As I mentioned we have 6 Take Five, which we require our employees to do. We 7 don't document them, per se. We actually just require 8 they go through the process, and we encourage it to be a 9 team-based approach. 10 When someone is assigned a task, they basically 11 review that task and say, "What are some of the things 12 that can go wrong with that particular task?" Now, if 13 they judge that risk to be something that is high, it's 14 actually documented on our process, our Take Five cards 15 that we issue to employees. But, they actually must 16 report that to the supervisor and discuss that risk with 17 that supervisor with the idea that we can formulate a 18 different plan to achieve that task. So it's 19 essentially written to our procedures, and it's a 20 requirement of an expectation of what people do in terms 21 of their risk assessment. 22 And our approach is not really "That's unsafe. 23 Don't do it." This doesn't seem like the safest way we 24 can do it. Let's get together and work out a way which 25 we can provide some output we're doing it the safe way. 32 1 So we encourage that dialogue to achieve that result. 2 MR. DISTASIO: I have one question. You 3 mentioned that you have different programs at each site. 4 Last week, in Rosslyn, one of the companies in 5 Roger's group said they try to maintain consistency 6 across the sites. They feel that some of those, one 7 site to another, they should be comfortable on how it 8 really works and how to react. It seems 9 like you're taking the exact opposite. 10 MR. HOWARD: I think we have a blend. What we 11 have is some consistencies across the whole of Rio 12 Tinto. For example, our management system is a Rio 13 Tinto management system. So all Rio Tinto sites have 14 that expectation. We have Rio Tinto standards around 15 how we perform the requirement of certain tasks, 16 confined space, isolation, various other standards 17 around what are consistent expectations. 18 Now, at a site level, yes, you do have some 19 discretion about some additional programs. Like our 20 approach to, say, behavior-based safety may be 21 subsequently different to another site in Rio Tinto in 22 Australia, for example. We try and take into account 23 local cultures. What's our existing state? What's our 24 inherent involvement from our employees? Is there a 25 good relationship between our employees or the 33 1 management team in that state? So you need to kind of 2 understand where you're at before you can really develop 3 a program to drive to where we see, outstanding 4 performance in terms of employee involvement. And, 5 routinely using that discretion or exercising the 6 discretion for the benefit of others. 7 So it's kind of a balancing act. Absolutely we 8 have consistency between many of our operations. And a 9 lot of the things we talk about are consistent across 10 the board but there are going to be some flexibility, 11 which is why I said, you can't expect to just go, 12 "Here's a magic box of tricks that's worked at Rio Tinto 13 site X. This is now going to work for everyone else in 14 the mining industry" because it really won't. It's 15 probably not going to get the results that you expect. 16 MR. DISTASIO: Thank you. 17 MS. SILVEY: Does anybody have a question of 18 Matthew? Anybody in the audience. 19 (No audible response.) 20 MS. SILVEY: Okay. Thank you, Matthew. 21 Our next presenter will be -- by the way, I may 22 not have mentioned this in the opening statement, but 23 I'll do it now. As they say, better late than never. 24 For all of you who agreed to make presentations 25 here today, and particularly the people with whom either 34 1 I spoke or someone else spoke, we appreciate it very 2 much. So I want you to know that because I don't even 3 know who you are until you come up here. 4 Douglas Larch, Luminant. 5 MR. LARCH: Thank you for the opportunity to 6 come and speak about our programs. 7 My name is Douglas Larch. I'm a member of the 8 Luminant Mining Safety Management Team. We are a coal 9 mining company from Texas. Not many people know that 10 there are coal mines in Texas. We operate nine mines in 11 Texas. We're the largest mining company in Texas. We 12 employ approximately 800 employees and 300 contractors. 13 We produce somewhere in the neighborhood of 33 million 14 tons of coal a year. And to do that, we move 327 15 million cubic yards of overburden a year. 16 To date we've mined over 900 metric tons of coal 17 and reclaimed over 66,000 acres and planted more than 18 29,000 trees at our site. 19 The slide behind me kind of shows where our 20 operations are. We're mining primarily the upper part 21 of the Wilcox Group seam in central east Texas. 22 A little bit about our history. We are one of 23 the first coal mining companies in Texas. This shows you 24 where we've been as a company. So we've been in Texas 25 since 1971 as an operator of our own mines, in 1959 as a 35 1 contractor. So there is some historical data here to 2 look at. My slide presentation kind of gets into a 3 little bit of that. 4 Let's talk about our programs. About a year 5 ago, we revamped our safety process. Our nine mines 6 before a year ago were islands under themselves. They 7 each ran their own safety business. They kind of got 8 support from Dallas with regards to standards, 9 procedures, and processes. 10 A year ago, we put together the safety 11 leadership team where we bring all the mines under one 12 umbrella. We brought all the safety reps, 13 the safety technicians and the training group 14 into support roles. So we don't work for 15 the -- for the individual mines. We actually -- they're 16 our customer. We provide them support. That was the 17 desire of senior leadership team, our vice 18 president, our EFH, the company that controls our branch 19 of the company. 20 Our goal is total compliance. And to do 21 that, we had to revamp what it was we were 22 trying to do. We had to come up with a set of 23 parameters that we were going to operate under. That 24 included changing behaviors, looking at leading 25 indicators in order to reduce the injury and accidents. 36 1 As I alluded to before, it was a really hands-on 2 approach. Training and increased safety staffing. 3 In doing so, we've had the behavior-based safety 4 process in place since about 2001. The very same 5 process that Rio Tinto is using that Dr. Geller 6 developed. We have taken that and made it our 7 own. We have central safety committee 8 meetings. We encourage employee involvement at those 9 meetings. They have a forum to come to us. If there's 10 something positive, they can bring that. If there's 11 something negative, they can bring that. 12 But those behavior-based safety programs, it's 13 no name, no blame. There is no -- we try to make sure 14 everybody understands it. 15 Our behavior-based safety process. We actually 16 have a technician that runs the process, that's a 17 non-exempt employee, that has a set of metrics that 18 they're processing. And we drive that that is no name, 19 no blame. We look at the leading indicators. That 20 information is communicated back to the management team 21 at the mine, and we look at where the potential 22 opportunities are for improvement. So we go out and we 23 base our programs on that. 24 The logo that you see behind me, those are the 25 actual logos of those individual mines. They're 37 1 behavior safety teams. Each mine has seven to ten 2 employees that are on these steering teams that drive 3 this process. The last bullet point you see is the 4 inspection part of this. When we get that information, 5 again, it's given to management. We're able to go out 6 and do inspection; do, you know, corrective action; take 7 corrective action to make sure that the recommendations 8 of the steering teams are following through. 9 Next part of what we do, we've taken the MSHA 10 SLAM program. We've made it our own. Every one of our 11 sites has a banner, like you see at the bottom, hanging 12 in the front of the mine. Before we do any job, we ask 13 employees to SLAM that job. We ask them to SLAM a job 14 in a pre-shift meeting. We'll pick somebody out of the 15 crowd, "Hey, can you SLAM that job for me?" These are 16 routine, everyday processes that they do. We ask them 17 to use the SLAM process for that. 18 In green behind me, you see the pre-job 19 briefing. What that is, any time we change a job or we 20 do something that's out of the ordinary, we ask them to 21 perform a pre-job briefing. What this is, that is very 22 in depth, it's designed to get you to ask specific 23 questions about that job. On the back of that, when 24 they take that into the field, they're able to mark down 25 any kind of problems they had with the job, any kind of 38 1 success they had with it, anything they need to change, 2 and that goes back to our planning department so the 3 next time we do that job we capture that data so we can 4 get that in the job packets. 5 The safety leadership team, what we do is we 6 have individuals that go out and we perform monthly 7 firing inspections at our sites. We check our 8 impoundments. There are some things in coal that you 9 guys don't have in metal and non-metal that we have to 10 comply with certification and some different things that 11 I'll get into in just a minute. 12 The last bullet point, we stress five S's: 13 sort, straighten, standardize, and sanitize and sustain. 14 We have a pre-job briefing and our annual refresher. So 15 everybody is very familiar with that five-S process. We 16 try to use that in our shops and in our daily operation. 17 In coal mining, on-shift examination is a big 18 part of what we do. We have certified on-shift 19 examiners that go out and have to inspect the mine prior 20 to commencing operations. 21 Part of what we do is we encourage our employees 22 when they see something that's not quite right, to 23 find and fix, to report it through recording and 24 reporting process. We pretty often trouble 25 pick a process that needs to be developed. 39 1 And then a big part of what we do -- I mentioned 2 before we have 300 contractors that we employ on our 3 sites. And they're coming in; they're doing drag line 4 outages; they're doing different outages for us on our 5 plants. And so we have five full-time contract 6 coordinators. That's all they do. They deal with the 7 contractors. They bring them on-site. They inspect 8 their equipment. They oversee their job to try to make 9 sure that we're complying with MSHA in Texas. I 10 would say only 30 percent of the citations that we 11 receive are due to contractors. So that was our answer 12 to making sure that we can drive that injury rate down 13 was to hire these contract coordinators and put them 14 under the safety umbrella and make them report directly 15 to the safety group. Again, that customer idea. So, 16 those contract coordinators have really helped us drive 17 down that injury rate. 18 As far as training, we take a bit of a different 19 approach. We operate -- let's see if all these 20 seminars -- we operate in an academy in Tyler, Texas. 21 There are 12 full-time people that work at our cabin. 22 The next slide I'll get to it. 23 They helped us develop task-training 24 initiatives. They helped us develop our annual 25 refresher. We standardized it throughout the company. 40 1 The impoundments -- refreshers that we have to do for 2 who inspect impoundments. We standardize our 3 surface certification retraining. We do 4 it right there at the Academy. Five times a year 5 there's an opportunity for a person to become an MSHA 6 instructor, given our nine sites and really the numbers 7 of people that we have to get through an annual 8 refresher. We really push this idea of people being 9 able to become an instructor so we teach them what it 10 is that we want them -- the tools that we want them to 11 have. 12 We perform management safety seminars twice a 13 year. Every manager comes to the academy, and we do an 14 eight-hour day with that inspector or that -- excuse 15 me -- that supervisor on what Luminant expects them 16 to know and how to manage safety at their 17 mine. 18 We do a four-hour annual -- this is away from an 19 annual refresher. We do a four-hour employee seminar, 20 where, again, bring the employees in away from 21 production. And we reinforce what we expect of them as 22 Luminant employees. 23 And finally, we've agreed with the International 24 Mine Safety Professional Society to host the CMSP test 25 every year at the Luminant Academy. So they're going to 41 1 come back year after year. Last year we put nine of our 2 employees through the class and all nine passed. 3 The picture behind me is a picture of one of our 4 simulators. There are five simulators, three like that 5 and then two very large like you would see a driving 6 simulator. We can simulate a drag line. We can 7 simulate a haul truck. We can simulate a coal hauler. 8 And so when we hire a new miner, he goes to 9 three weeks of training at that academy before he ever 10 sets foot in the mine. What he's getting is a new miner 11 training. He's getting -- on the bottom there, you see 12 the hands-on training that he gets. And then he also 13 gets this stimulator training, and then he goes through 14 the mine and he goes through task training, all the 15 regulatory things that he has to do. 16 It's really about a six-week process before he's 17 ever turned loose to go to work. And maybe not even six 18 weeks. It may take him longer based on our training. 19 We develop these packets, these pamphlets that they have 20 to follow. 21 As you can see, this is equipment simulation 22 training. We offer computer training there for our 23 employees that need that. Our behavior-based safety 24 training is based out of there. We do a lot of -- we 25 bring in these steering teams, and we'll do a lot of 42 1 behavior-based safety training with them just on an 2 annual -- just kind of a refresher. 3 We also at the Academy have partnered with MSHA 4 to conduct coal dust pamphlet certification, 5 methane/oxygen training. We've done stakeholder 6 meetings there and also refresher trainings for coal. 7 Again, none of this is possible -- again, this 8 is a 30,000-foot view of what we do. None of this is 9 possible without senior management support. The picture 10 you see behind me is our senior vice president of mining 11 with one of the mine managers and also our director for 12 our behavior-based safety process. They're actually at 13 a conference that we conduct every fall. We send all 14 the steering team members and all our partnered 15 companies that we have to a conference in Mt. Pleasant, 16 Texas, so they can level up with other behavior-based 17 safety programs so they can bring back ideas. And, 18 again, we drive that as no name, no blame. Often we have a 19 little bit of difficulty with it but ours is no name, no 20 blame. It's all part of HPI or Human Performance 21 Improvement. We've taken all these things. We've 22 lumped them into that umbrella, and we've called it HPI. 23 It's a set of about eight tools that we have. And 24 that's the reason for the management seminars and the 25 employee seminars so that we can level up with everybody 43 1 on HPI. That's really the umbrella of our process. 2 Any questions on how we -- I guess that was 3 quicker than I had anticipated. 4 MS. SILVEY: That's good. 5 Well, I tell you a couple of observations and 6 you know I might even have to -- it seems like Rio Tinto 7 has such a good safety record, which is excellent. But 8 I might even have to bring Matthew back later. I had 9 one other comment for him. But I'm going to say 10 something to you on that point because particularly in 11 coal, I think MSHA has consistently for years seen 12 disproportionate numbers for contractors at coal mines, 13 both in terms of injury, illness, and fatalities as well 14 as violations, you know, whether you correlate the two 15 or not. Obviously, sometimes they do and some people 16 will probably pretend that they don't. But 17 nevertheless, I think you can say for contractors you 18 probably have seen an increase with contractors on both 19 of those fronts. 20 And I am looking at what you said. You all saw 21 that and decide -- and wanted to do something about it 22 and, in fact, did something about it. I mean, that -- 23 that's sort of like, I guess, positive data. You have 24 data to show that and that's kind of good. So the 25 other -- and we are obviously always glad to see that. 44 1 Now, you sort of anticipated my comment on 2 behavior-based safety. I guess, that's going to be a 3 refrain. I'm going to hear that from a lot of people, 4 it seems like. 5 MR. LARCH: Ours is truly no name, no blame. 6 MS. SILVEY: But you said -- I'm coming back to 7 you. You said "no name, no blame." And I was going to 8 ask you, do employees really take it as that? 9 MR. LARCH: The safety leadership team and the 10 site safety reps and the safety tech that runs the 11 program, we do. We have to push that, and we have to 12 reassure them that this is no name, no blame. We're 13 not out -- we don't want your name. We just want to 14 correct the behavior. That's why that safety tech is 15 non-exempt so they're kind of like on the same level. 16 MS. SILVEY: Right. 17 MR. LARCH: They give us the leadership team, 18 the information that we can build programs accordingly. 19 MS. SILVEY: Now, I might have missed it. Did 20 you -- have you all got -- have you -- do you all have 21 concrete data that you -- you talk about -- you've seen 22 the results in your contract. 23 MR. LARCH: Yes. What we have is a dashboard 24 that rolls up; and the safety techs, they put in data 25 for BBS; and those safety coordinators, they put in data 45 1 on numbers of inspections that they've done for 2 contractors. They put in the data on accident and 3 injury, hours on the mine. That's all in that 4 dashboard. 5 MS. SILVEY: I guess what I was going to ask 6 you, if you have concrete data, and you said you do, on 7 the contractors that show where you've had improvements 8 in the metric and either for contractors are regular 9 employees, if you have that type of data, we would be 10 interested in getting that before the comment period 11 closes, which I think is December 17. 12 MR. LARCH: The one that's most glaringly 13 obvious right now is the numbers of violations that 14 Luminant and the contractors received prior to full 15 implementation of all five coordinators and where we're 16 at now. That's the biggest so far. This is a 17 relatively young program. 18 MS. SILVEY: Okay. All right. I think -- just 19 for everybody, I think, the comment period closes 20 December the 17th. If I'm wrong there, I'll correct it 21 before the end of the meeting. 22 Does anybody have a question? 23 MR. DISTASIO: I just want to follow up on the 24 challenges of the contractors reference. It seems like 25 you do a lot of training and a lot of preparation for 46 1 your own employees. But what could those safety 2 coordinators do? What could the coordinators do with 3 the contractors? 4 MR. LARCH: The coordinators, they -- before the 5 contractors come to the mine, we actually -- if the 6 contractor requests, we will send our coordinators to 7 their site, wherever that may be. A couple of months 8 ago, we sent two of our coordinators all the way to 9 Lubbock, Texas, which is about 500 miles from where the 10 mine was, to look at equipment, to look over records, to 11 help them in preparing to come to the Luminant site to 12 do their job. We see value in that. Again, it's a 13 young program so I don't have any accident or injury 14 data to show as of yet. But definitely from a citation 15 standpoint so far, it's worked fabulously. 16 MS. SILVEY: Okay. Thank you very much. 17 Can I have Jerry Glynn, safety manager for TXI. 18 MR. GLYNN: Good morning, everybody. And I want 19 to thank the panel for allowing all of us to be here 20 today. Jerry Glynn, G-l-y-n-n, with Texas Industries. 21 Before I get started, I just want to say that, 22 you know, whether or not we all agree or disagree or 23 agree to disagree, one of the great things is that we 24 have the opportunity to be here and to be heard. You're 25 not going to find this type of forum in Russia or China 47 1 or North Korea. So this is a great thing to have in our 2 country, is something that should never ever be taken 3 for granted. 4 So with that, I'm Jerry Glynn. I'm the western 5 regional financial and safety manager for expansion 6 shale and clay business unit. I'm out of Boulder, 7 Colorado. Texas Industries is headquartered in Dallas, 8 Texas. This presentation was put together by myself and 9 our safety management team. 10 Texas Industries was founded in 1951 by Ralph B. 11 Rogers. TXI is a leading supplier of cement, aggregate 12 and consumer products. Our safety and health program is 13 the best in the world. That's a big statement. But if 14 you don't believe it, then you can't achieve it. It's 15 not the perfect system, but you have to have confidence 16 in your programs. And that's what we do. 17 We have 20 MSHA-regulated plants. They're all 18 metal, non-metal. In Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, 19 Arkansas, Colorado, California with a very diversified 20 workforce in differing MSHA districts of south central, 21 Rocky Mountain and the western districts. 22 The culture and the people in Texas, totally 23 different than those in Colorado and totally different 24 than those in California. Same way with the MSHA 25 districts, different district managers with different 48 1 philosophies, different cultures, different inspectors 2 and we deal with all of those -- at least I do. I'm the 3 only safety manager that deals with all three districts. 4 Our safety and health programs are designed to 5 be flexible enough to meet the needs of the employees in 6 each business unit as established by the business unit 7 manager and our employees. What does that mean? It 8 means that we have certain safety programs, policies 9 that overlap with any business unit. But each business 10 unit and those employees' managers are empowered to 11 design programs that fit their needs. 12 Our commitment -- every person is entitled to 13 work in a safe and healthy work environment where that 14 environment has a core value shared between the 15 employers and employees at all levels of the 16 organization. Our philosophy is oriented toward 17 affirmative control and minimization of risk to the 18 greatest extent possible. If that means we achieve zero 19 incidents and accidents and fatalities, that's great. 20 But it's no guarantee. 21 We are 1900 united individuals led by our 22 president and CEO, vice presidents, administrative 23 personnel, safety managers, coordinators, plant 24 managers, supervisors, lead persons and all our plant 25 personnel who are truly the heart and soul of our 49 1 company. 2 Our employees allow us to be true innovators. 3 They help us utilize new technologies, develop new 4 products, and maintain cost efficiencies. And all of 5 this in an environment of safe production. It is our 6 vision to continue to improve our leadership in 7 developing, implementing and maintaining exemplary 8 health and safety processes and practices for our 9 employees, customers, and the public. 10 This can only be accomplished by the leadership 11 of empowered employees with empowered management 12 providing freedom, direction and support. That's why in 13 the various business units that we have, I'm going to 14 expanded shale and clay. We have an aggregate business 15 unit. We have a cement business unit. Those safety 16 managers do things. We all do things differently to 17 achieve the same goal. 18 In aggregates, our safety manager is a lot more 19 hands on. She is very -- out in the plant a lot, doing 20 inspections, training. Our cement division is probably 21 kind of that way but more centered around safety 22 committees and the employees. 23 In expanded shale and clay, our philosophy is my 24 role is to be a safety consultant. I don't go out and 25 do a lot of inspections. I don't go out and do a lot of 50 1 training. I'm a resource of what they need. Our 2 philosophy at expansion clay is that safety starts at 3 the plant at all levels. So we all do things 4 differently. But we all achieve the same goal. 5 Employees are integrated into every aspect of 6 safety within our organization. From the design, the 7 implementation, the evaluation and the continued 8 program -- the continued improvement of our programs. 9 It is our policy that an employee-led safety and 10 health be established at each facility. Employees are 11 actively and continuously involved in annual refresher 12 training, job safety analysis, task training, conducting 13 daily, weekly and monthly safety meetings in MSHA 14 inspections. 15 Our hazard identification and control. We have 16 effective workplace examinations with supervisor 17 follow-up, and sign off is a key control. We believe 18 that through proper training, employees go out; they 19 do the workplace examinations. They are not pencil 20 whipped, but they are being taken seriously and that's 21 where we catch the majority of items that need to be 22 fixed. 23 Engineering controls implemented to eliminate 24 safety hazards. In a lot of our facilities right now we 25 are redesigning our plants to eliminate the need for any 51 1 fault protection. We've also -- in our cement plants, 2 we've finalized our arc flash analysis and 3 implementation our arc flash program. That analysis is 4 being conducted in both aggregates and expansion 5 shale and clay at this time. 6 We have a Focus Zero Program which our employees 7 enjoy because they get to go out and act as inspectors 8 and perform MSHA mock inspections and cite every 9 potential hazard with corrective action to be taken. 10 They go out with basically the same type of pads and do 11 the same type of inspections that MSHA inspectors do. 12 We have extensive reporting of incidents and 13 near misses to determine root cause and corrective 14 action. Our training and retraining. We've spent a lot 15 of time on the Rules to Live By. 16 And monthly mass safety meetings are led by 17 employees, annual refresher training led by our 18 employees, task training and job safety analysis, use of 19 only qualified contractors that meet TXI safety training 20 and insurance requirements. 21 Our in-house developed ALIAS training, which is 22 A Lesson In Aggregate Safety. It's conducted by our 23 safety managers, employees, and outside speakers, such 24 as H.L. Boling, MSHA representatives, and other notable 25 safety experts. 52 1 Our program evaluation, trend analysis of 2 injuries, MSHA citations and cost, Workers' Comp claim 3 count and cost, frequency and severity rates, random 4 safety and workplace examination audits. Safety 5 committee members are regularly rotated. VPs are 6 provided monthly summary safety statistics. We have a 7 continuous means of safety improvement by employees and 8 management. And we have our annual president's safety 9 award luncheon to recognize excellence in plant safety. 10 This is one of the highlights of our year. All 11 the plants look forward to it. And there's great 12 competition among all of the plants and business units 13 to win this award. 14 Culture: Our safety culture does not define our 15 people but our people define our culture of safety. We 16 are committed to our vision and our people. We honor 17 work and live by the rules without compromising our core 18 values. We have the courage to accept our 19 responsibility and be accountable for our action. 20 Failure is not an option. 21 Worker comp claim count over the last five years 22 have seen -- since 2007 a steady decrease in the worker 23 comp claim count. A lot of this has to do with, in 24 2007, we initiated a new hire screening policy. It's a 25 phone survey that new applicants have to take, and we 53 1 probably eliminate about 40 percent of all applicants 2 which means that over the last several years we've had 3 better quality people working in our facilities. So we 4 have the right people for the right job. 5 Also, over the last couple of years, like many, 6 our workforce is down due to the economy. People that 7 we have we feel are the right people doing the right 8 jobs. 9 This is our total cost of money amount per work 10 hour. It may not mean a lot to most of you, the 11 numbers, but for Texas Industries, we have a stated goal 12 of 20 cents cost per work hour. And over the last 13 several years, you can see that we have steadily 14 decreased that cost per work hour. This year, in 2010, 15 two of the divisions, this one right here, is the 16 lowest, which I'm very proud of. 17 But our cement division has come down greatly, 18 so has our aggregate division. Sometimes you have some 19 ups and sometimes you have some downs. But on the 20 whole, we have trended very nicely downward. 21 Our frequency, severity and incident rates since 22 2007, frequency and severity have gone down well below 23 the numbers in the industry. Our incidents, it's stayed 24 about the same. But our frequency and the severity of 25 those injuries have gone down drastically. 54 1 As mentioned in the federal document, model 2 programs should be designed to prevent injuries and 3 illnesses. And MSHA has reviewed a number of guidelines 4 for safety, health and management programs including the 5 OSHA Voluntary Protection Program, ANSI, the 6 International Standards Organization, ISO; British 7 Standards Organization, Industry Safety, Health and 8 Management Systems. But no one Safety, Health and 9 Management System will prevent keep from happening or 10 existing injuries or illnesses. 11 It's quoted in Effective Occupational Safety and 12 Health Systems Integration of OSHA Standards, "The 13 safety and health program model from Oregon State, 14 Oregon OSHA does not advocate absolute safety but aims 15 to control and continually improve the level of risk." 16 Another quote is "The choice of which system to adopt 17 depends solely on the need of individual organizations." 18 What we know for sure is there is no one size 19 that fits all safety, health and management program. 20 Those closest to the source typically know what works 21 best and that's the industry. That's you and I working 22 together. 23 In concluding, industry and MSHA must seek the 24 same goal by developing win-win situations. We must 25 be -- it must be in the spirit of cooperation and 55 1 partnership. Safety first must replace enforcement 2 first. We must make available any and all of the 3 safety, health and management systems review as a set of 4 guidelines only, and not a rule to help establish or 5 improve existing safety, health management system 6 programs. We believe in targeting the offenders. Those 7 who do not have effective safety and health management 8 systems should be targeted. They should be penalized 9 because it's our common goal to protect the miners. 10 Those who fail should be penalized. But those who do a 11 good job, those who have effective safety and health 12 management should be rewarded. 13 I would like to see establishment of a safety 14 certification process to reward those safe operators. 15 Maybe similar to the ISO 9,000 or 14,000. 16 And lastly, I believe that safety is an art, 17 it is not a science and thus its interpretation lies in 18 the eye of the beholder. 19 Thank you. 20 MS. SILVEY: Thank you. I have a few comments. 21 First of all, thank you for your presentation. 22 There were a number of principles in your presentation 23 that I think all of us in the room would ascribe to. 24 But you mentioned that -- you have two things you 25 mentioned. You mentioned employee-led safety and health 56 1 committees at each facility. And you also mentioned 2 that you all do random audits, and I know you represent 3 one division so I -- and I understand your comments 4 might be just totally related to that one division. But 5 with respect to both of those, to those initiatives, the 6 audits and the employee-led safety and health committee, 7 how often do you all do those, let's say, at a 8 particular plant? 9 MR. GLYNN: First of all, the safety committees 10 are at every division. 11 MS. SILVEY: Okay. 12 MR. GLYNN: Every plant, every facility has to 13 have an employee-led safety committee. 14 MS. SILVEY: And who's on that committee? 15 MR. GLYNN: 99 percent workers and one person 16 from management. That's it. So they are led by the 17 employees. 18 MS. SILVEY: I hate to ask you one more. How 19 big would a typical -- I'm sure it would depend on the 20 size of the plant. 21 MR. GLYNN: It depends on the plant. Anywhere 22 from three to five -- 23 MS. SILVEY: Okay. 24 MR. GLYNN: -- to maybe 10 -- 25 MS. SILVEY: Okay. 57 1 MR. GLYNN: -- to 12. It just depends. The 2 cement division is our largest division. They're going 3 to have more. Typically on expansion clay it depends on 4 the plant size, but I would say on average five people. 5 Now with regard to how often the random 6 inspections are done, they're random, but I would say 7 throughout what we try to do is maybe no less than once 8 a quarter at all of the facilities and sometimes twice 9 in a quarter. It just depends on the size of the 10 organization -- of the business unit. 11 Cement does a lot more regular than we do. They 12 have the larger plants. So there's workplace 13 examination. I might say that one of the keys is our 14 follow-up on our daily workplace applications. That's 15 been one of the bigger turnarounds over the last couple 16 of years. We had a couple of the incidents when people 17 were kind of pencil whipping them, and they were 18 terminated. So we established a follow-up program and 19 it's gotten a lot better in terms of identifying our 20 hazards. 21 MR. DISTASIO: I would like to ask the same 22 question I asked Matthew before. 23 You both talked about how you try to tell the 24 differences to each business group yet I can see you 25 have a lot of common metrics. You have the common 58 1 inspection philosophies, the common safety committee 2 philosophy. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, 3 what it is exactly that you try to tailor for each 4 group? And then how that -- you obviously seem to feel 5 the value of that. It seems to be a little competition 6 between your different groups here, as you're proud to 7 point out, that your group was the best. 8 MR. GLYNN: There are definitely similarities 9 among the three different divisions with regard to 10 safety in the program. But, again, each business unit 11 is empowered to do what they feel is needed at their 12 particular plant. So at the cement plants, just for 13 example, they were the first ones to lead the charge. 14 They felt that that was something that they needed, and 15 that's what they did. We saw the benefit of that in 16 their division and we're doing it in our division. 17 Again, I think what Matt was saying and what I'm 18 trying to say is each facility, because of its size, its 19 nature, what it does, has to have a program that fits 20 that need for that plant. Certain minimum standards 21 have to be met. But after that, they can pretty much do 22 what they want to do. 23 MS. SILVEY: Do you find any pressure with 24 respect to production versus you implementing all these 25 initiatives focused on safety? 59 1 MR. GLYNN: As far as, you know, the more safety 2 we do, does it impact production? Is that the question? 3 MS. SILVEY: Yes, that's my question. 4 MR. GLYNN: No. None whatsoever. 5 MS. SILVEY: Okay. I liked your phrase "safe 6 production." I thought you were going to ask about 7 that. 8 MR. GLYNN: Texas Industry has been around a 9 long time. And this is not a culture that's been 10 developed over the last couple of years. This is a 11 50-year process. And Texas Industry is very proud of 12 their culture and their heritage and the people. We 13 have people that are celebrating their 48th or 49th or 14 50th anniversary there. Their sons and daughters work 15 there. So it's a culture that we've had for a long time. 16 17 We've always -- I can't say always. But as time 18 has developed, that concept of safety and production 19 remains with us every day. And the safer that we make 20 things, the more efficient we can be. And actually it's 21 better production that we get. 22 MS. SILVEY: Does anybody have any comments or 23 questions? 24 MR. STARK: I have a question. 25 My name is Mylon, M-y-l-o-n, Stark, S-t-a-r-k, 60 1 Associated General Contractors of South Dakota. It's 2 not specific to the program but one of the things that I 3 heard was eliminating a need for fall protection as an 4 initiative. I just want to clarify that. Is that 5 elimination of work at heights or are we talking about 6 eliminating the use of personal fall protection? 7 MR. GLYNN: Eliminating the need to use a 8 personal fall protection -- 9 MR. STARK: Thank you. 10 MR. GLYNN: -- by putting in a platform or 11 railing and things like that so we don't have to have 12 people in fall protection. 13 MR. STARK: Thank you. 14 MS. SILVEY: I appreciate that. Okay. Thank 15 you so much, sir. 16 Our next speaker will be, Len Welsh. 17 And he is with the Cal-OSHA or, as some of you 18 say, OSHA. 19 MR. WELSH: Hi, folks. I apologize for 20 getting -- 21 MS. SILVEY: They would never know if you 22 didn't -- 23 MR. WELSH: They would know. 24 MS. SILVEY: Well, they would know because some 25 people got the sheet. But if you hadn't -- anyway. 61 1 MR. WELSH: I just wanted to say a few words 2 before I do go. And thank you very much for inviting 3 me, Patricia. 4 I was at the meeting that Fed-OSHA held a few 5 weeks ago to talk about -- I do, first of all, hope that 6 whatever MSHA and OSHA adopt will be harmonious and 7 hopefully the same. I heard some, I guess, warning 8 from, I think, maybe even the first speaker this morning 9 about not making a one-size-fits-all approach to this. 10 And I guess it's a matter of semantics. But, in fact, 11 whatever is one size fits all? And the question is 12 going to be is that regulation going to be flexible 13 enough and strike the right balance between generality 14 and specificity so that people can adopt it to their own 15 special needs yet the standard will still be effective? 16 That's always the trick in adopting regulations to get 17 the right mix of specificity in a performance-oriented 18 approach. 19 I want do want to make a pitch for California. 20 Our injury and prevention program has been in place for 21 about two decades. It's worked very well. It's really 22 very simple. You can almost recite generally what the 23 principles are in one sentence. 24 You have to have a program with somebody who has 25 authority, true authority, for safety and health at the 62 1 work site. There has to be enforcement of whatever the 2 rules of the safety programs are. There has to be 3 effective communication, kind of a two-way street; 4 employees have to be able to communicate hazards 5 upstream and management has to be able to communicate 6 hazards downstream. There has to be a system for 7 identifying hazards, a system for correcting hazards, a 8 system for accident and illness investigation, and 9 procedures for training. Add to that documentation 10 requirements hopefully not too copious and that makes 11 your injury and illness prevention program in a 12 nutshell. 13 These concepts, the idea of communication, 14 hazard recognition, hazard correction, investigating 15 things that go wrong, training, these are all core. And 16 I loved hearing the presentation that came this morning. 17 It's clear to me that the companies that have really 18 thought about safety have refined these concepts way 19 beyond just what a government would put down on a piece 20 of paper have actually gotten into, "How do we make it 21 happen? How do we get through to the employees on the 22 ground who have to comply with these safety procedures? 23 And how do we have a system of accountability that will 24 hold not only the line on employee accountability but 25 management and everybody else accountable hopefully all 63 1 the way to the CEO? 2 So basically, I'm making a pitch for the Federal 3 Government not creating any new requirements for 4 California. With its rulemaking, I think the California 5 approach can serve the nation well. You know, 6 they're -- I did hear some suggestions at the Fed-OSHA 7 meeting, for example, like having periodic review of the 8 program and see if it's really working well, to see if 9 it needs improvement, a continuous improvement 10 philosophy. I think that's not bad. That would 11 not be a bad addition. Minor additions like that might 12 be helpful. And certainly, as I look at the actual 13 language in California, you find it in two places in the 14 California Labor Code. It's Section 6401.7. And you'll 15 find it in Title 8, the body of regulation Cal-OSHA 16 enforces at Section 3203. And it's not an easy read. 17 Those concepts that I recited are what you will 18 read if you take the time to read what's written in both 19 of those sections. But, the language itself could be 20 made a little bit more accessible in my own opinion. I 21 hope that whatever MSHA decides to write in terms of the 22 standard here and OSHA, whatever they choose to write, 23 they will spend some time putting it in language that is 24 accessible to everybody, doesn't have long, you know, 25 run-on sentences, that kind of thing, lots of commas to 64 1 figure out what phrases are being separated from 2 what other phrases. Keep it simple. These things can be 3 stated very simply. And there is actually quite an art 4 to writing things down in a simple fashion so that 5 people can understand what's being said. I hope some 6 time will be spent on that. I also want to second what 7 I thought I heard from some of the presenters, which was 8 that you can only get so far with enforcement. You have 9 to -- you definitely have to set a floor with 10 regulations. There's no doubt about it; especially in 11 an industry as hazardous as mining. There just has to 12 be certain bottomline, no doubt about it, requirement 13 that people are held to if they don't meet them. 14 By the same token, you can only go so far with 15 that. And if we really want the system to work, if we 16 really want to have a federally run system in place that 17 we can say is truly making workplaces more safe, there 18 has to be an element of cooperative programs working on 19 a partnership basis with the industry so that we can 20 make the time on a cooperative basis that we heard in 21 some of the presentations this morning. 22 Some of those things cannot be legislative. 23 They can be incentivized. When somebody comes up with a 24 good approach to something, they can be held up for 25 everybody to see, to set an example. There's a lot of 65 1 positive to make these things happen. We try to make 2 them a matter of a requirement for which punishment will 3 be issued if they're not met, then we really do run into 4 trouble, I think, if we go too far. 5 So I hope as this rulemaking proceeds, it will 6 be kept in mind that there's a whole other dimension 7 that needs to be grafted on top and that's going to be 8 the educational and the cooperative consultative 9 approach that must go with it in order to make it work. 10 I -- that's all I really have to say. I'm sorry 11 I had to jump in front of the line here. I did want to 12 introduce Steve Hart, principal engineer for Cal-OSHA. 13 He runs Cal-OSHA's mining and tunneling unit. And I 14 think he is a master. He's managed several very 15 high-profile investigations on the enforcement front. 16 He's also been very good with putting together 17 cooperative programs and moving industry forward in 18 California. 19 I'd like for Steve to come up here and say a few 20 words. 21 MS. SILVEY: Before he does -- 22 MR. WELSH: Any questions? Sure. 23 MS. SILVEY: I probably should know this but is 24 Cal-OSHA's program requires a written program? 66 1 MR. WELSH: Yes, it does. 2 MS. SILVEY: It is a written program? 3 MR. WELSH: Yes. 4 MS. SILVEY: And just finally known to -- what 5 Len said, I find myself saying something that I said 6 over 30 years ago. And that is, when you are doing 7 rulemaking, and there's probably been a lot of people 8 who have been seeing MSHA's rulemaking who comment one 9 way or another about it, but there are two things. You 10 know, you talk about performance oriented. For a rule 11 like this, obviously, it clearly has to be -- has to 12 have some performance-oriented nature to it because as 13 we've heard, for no other reason, but as for the diverse 14 mining work places. But on the other hand, you will 15 find people -- I heard people tell me this over 30 years 16 ago. You will find the one set of people who will say 17 "Just tell me that I have to bake a chocolate cake, I 18 will make it; simple." And then you'll find another 19 group of people who will say, "You've got to tell me 20 exactly how much flour to put in it, what kind of cocoa 21 to use. You have to tell me everything." So it's that 22 risk that you catch yourself when you regulate. What it 23 is, is it is truly striking the proper balance. And 24 part of what our goal is today is to hear from people 25 who have programs that indeed do work and to find out 67 1 from you what has worked and what has not worked and to 2 help us go forward if, in fact -- if we proceed with 3 rulemaking to strike that proper balance. 4 But, yeah, I don't disagree with you. 5 MR. WELSH: I couldn't agree more with what you 6 just said. If we're getting too performance oriented, 7 the question is, "Give us more bright lines." 8 MS. SILVEY: So anyway -- 9 MR. WELSH: We give bright lines, "Geez, could 10 you give a little more flexibility." That's just part 11 of the give and take of rulemaking. It's in the 12 delivery of enforcement work where it really counts. If 13 the enforcement is done effectively and there's the 14 proper amount of dialogue between the enforcer and the 15 person being enforced again and there's a proper amount 16 of investigation to work on a partnership basis, people 17 feel like they're being heard. People feel like the 18 enforcement is credible. The delivery of enforcement 19 that really makes all that come to life and makes people 20 see why it is we sort of have to find that balance. 21 Anyway, can I have Steve come up? 22 MS. SILVEY: Yes, please. 23 MR. HART: Thank you very much. 24 My name is Steve Hart. I'm the principal 25 engineer of the Cal-OSHA mining and tunneling program in 68 1 California. 2 And mining is on hard times in California right 3 now. When I started in 1994, there were 1100 mines. 4 Today there's 550. And the number is going south very 5 quickly. 6 Many of you in this room come to me and asks, "Why do 7 we need two sets of regulations?" 8 I say, "I really don't know." There are times 9 that we disagree with MSHA. And we feel that another 10 rule is a better way to manage safety in California. 11 But most of the time we work very hard to follow the 12 MSHA guidelines. 13 And so mining being in the straits that it is, 14 even with gold at $1600 an ounce -- can you believe 15 that? I wish I had 100 ounces from a couple of years 16 ago. But, anyway, what I see in the field with our 17 injury and illness program, the prevention program, 18 that California came up with late '80s, early '90s, 19 somewhere in there, is that we have the large companies, 20 the ones that are represented here today, you guys do a 21 fine job. You're way above our minimum standards for an 22 injury and illness prevention program. But there's a 23 lot of small mines in California. And with these small mines 24 we need to know who's in charge of safety at this plant. 25 Do they communicate and train their employees? Will you 69 1 hire this guy over here, and he doesn't speak English? 2 Do you train in his language? We find that Hispanic 3 workers have a much higher incidence of death in 4 California's mines than English-speaking people. So we 5 encourage our mines to make sure that their training 6 programs cover everything. If you hire a person that 7 speaks a different language, you're obligated to train 8 them. 9 And so we always, when we come in -- and many of 10 you have been there when I walked in or somebody like me 11 walks in -- we'll say, "Let me see your IIPP," your 12 Injury and Illness Prevention Program. Who's in charge? 13 How do you communicate? What do you do when there's 14 an accident? Do you just send three guys up there and 15 hope they come back with the results that you're looking 16 for?" 17 And so I see an Injury and Illness Prevention 18 Program as presenting a basic safety program that all 19 companies should have. Rio Tinto and Luminant, some of 20 you bigger companies have taken that way, way higher. 21 Nancy at Teichert; Bill Jackson, you've done a wonderful 22 job. But like I say, we all want to have the basics of 23 this program. It's only about seven elements. And that 24 way when I come in, I'll say, "Have you been trained in 25 fork truck safety?" You say "Yeah." I turn to the 70 1 manager of the plant, "Could I see that record that she 2 was trained." And today, I'm happy to say that they can 3 show me, yeah, she was trained on the 24th and Joe was 4 her trainer. 5 Those are the kinds of things that make a 6 complete safety program. It's management's commitment 7 to safety. And so this person's commitment is going to 8 be different than that person's commitment. It's not 9 the same program for everybody. Everybody is going to 10 do it a little bit differently, but they'll have the 11 same elements. 12 And so that's my plea for the panel here is that 13 mining is on hard times in California and we don't 14 need another rule that's vastly different from the 15 California rule that preexisted. So we ask you to take 16 a look at that and find out if our rule would be 17 sufficient for MSHA because if it would be, it would be 18 a gift to every person in the room today. 19 Thank you very much. 20 MS. SILVEY: Okay. Thank you. 21 Our next presenter, then, will be Kevin Davis, 22 Miles Sand and Gravel. 23 MR. DAVIS: Good morning. My name is Kevin 24 Davis, Miles Sand and Gravel safety coordinator. 25 I've -- it's founded in 1946, established, family owned, 71 1 operated and oriented. Oriented is very important for 2 us. It works very well. The family takes great pride 3 in all the employees and the safety of all the 4 employees. It's very important to us. 5 We operate eight active mine sites right now, 6 sand and gravel construction supply. My job is safety 7 coordinator. We discussed that a little bit when I took 8 over. I started with the company in '94 driving a 9 truck. And in late 2004, we were basically without 10 anybody doing the job. We were kind of in between 11 safety people. We had some environmental people, kind 12 of crossing over doing a little bit, weren't really very 13 proactive. I raised my hand, "Hey, I want to take this 14 on," and we discussed it a little bit. They awarded me 15 with my wishes. I've been doing it ever since. 16 In defining what I was going to be doing, 17 safety or freedom-from-danger coordinator, somebody 18 responsible for organizing diverse parts of the group, 19 making it all work, making everything work together, not 20 to dictate, not to beat safety into anybody I wanted to 21 coordinate it, work with everybody. I do that. I work 22 with the Miles family and management. I work for all 23 the employees and with the whole group. 24 The secret of our success is making sure that 25 safety is not a secret. When I started out, safety was 72 1 something you did if you had time. Safety was not top 2 of the list. So we got in there and made sure that it 3 wasn't safety versus production. Safety -- if you're 4 not busy producing, you can do a little bit of safety. 5 We made it safe production at all times. Everything we 6 did was safe. 7 Safety culture. That's what we've developed. 8 It hasn't been an easy road. I started late 2004. 9 About the middle of 2005, I had about given up. I was 10 the safety guy, 275 employees. I'm in charge of them. 11 I worry about them. I try to do everything I can for 12 them. I counsel them, but I wasn't -- I wasn't getting 13 what I wanted. So -- you know, with all the policies 14 that are required and procedures that a person has, 15 people aren't following and using them. You aren't 16 getting anything. I had about given up, and I woke up 17 one morning and realized that truthfully, as a safety 18 coordinator, I was running the biggest division or part 19 of the company there was. And it's taken off from 20 there. We've done quite well. 21 Employee requirements at Miles Sand and Gravel 22 are pretty simple. Put in a good honest day's work and 23 go home healthy each and every day. That's what I asked 24 the family: "What do you want me to do? What is my 25 job?" They said, "Make sure people don't get hurt, 73 1 Kevin." 2 The success was reached with the development and 3 continued improvement of our safety culture and measured 4 by the reduction of injuries and incidents and their 5 severity. 6 To reduce the risk, reduce the exposure, 7 all very important. Reported injuries for 8 us, we don't have many. That's a good thing. Any is 9 too many. In 2004, we had four up to five, peaked in 10 2007 with six too many. Last couple of years down to 11 two a year for all of our mine sites. Two too many but 12 we're getting towards that zero that everybody wants. 13 Five machinery; six slip-and-fall of person; 14 four powered haulage; four hands/tools non-powered; six 15 handling material; one stepping or kneeling. All of 16 them are very minor injuries. Everybody's still got 17 their fingers and their eyes and their toes and their 18 ears. Still too many. 19 Twelve no days away from work no restrictive 20 action. So we've been pretty successful there. Seven 21 days away from work and restrictive activity. Four days 22 restrictive activity only; two days away from work only; 23 and one occupational illness. 24 What does work for Miles Sand and Gravel? 25 Owner/management commitment to the workforce, and we're 74 1 fortunate enough to have that. I don't know how you put 2 that on paper with the policy or anything. It's 3 something that you have to develop. 4 Open-door policy, they use. Any employee can go 5 to the boss and say, "Hey, I have a problem. Kevin is 6 being mean to me. He's making me fix things or making 7 me go do too much training." 8 Part of the family atmosphere at Miles works 9 great. Everybody is part of the family. They treat us 10 like family. And the owners/management lead by example. 11 When they don't, I go talk to them. We had one worker 12 come to me, and say, "Hey, Kevin. Why is it I have to 13 wear my hard hat all the time and mess up my hair when 14 the owner doesn't have to wear his hard hat?" 15 "What do you mean?" 16 "Well, there was Mr. Miles without his hard 17 hat." So I went to Mr. Miles: "Why are you not wearing 18 your hard hat when that's a requirement? We require 19 everybody to do it. You're not exempt." And he hasn't 20 been seen without it since. 21 Likewise, workforce commitment to the company 22 and fellow workers. Again, in some five years we 23 continue to change and nurture it and make it grow and 24 improve on it. Safety is the highest priority one. A 25 five-gallon bucket of material is not worth any injury. 75 1 And I repeat that over and over along with seat belts 2 and SLAM and some of the other things. 3 Teamwork is very important. We stress the 4 teamwork. How do you put that in a policy? I'm not 5 sure. That's why I'm here. It worries me a little bit 6 that -- again, a policy one -- one policy guideline is 7 not going to fit everybody and there has to be some 8 wiggle room in there. Teamwork is very important. 9 Tools we use Regular scheduled safety 10 meetings I do safety meetings every two weeks for all 11 of our miners. I go to the different facilities. I do 12 most of the training. I get some vendors and 13 different people to help us out with that. 30 minutes 14 to an hour we'll have, every two weeks, kind of a 15 basics. We go by -- last round was fatal grounds, 1 to 16 15 too many. We go over those. We go over what 17 happened, what contributed to the fatalities, how they 18 could have been prevented and SLAM. A lot of SLAM, 19 SLAM, SLAM. I didn't know what it meant when I started 20 and nobody else did, and we use SLAM each and every day, 21 each and every task. It's very important. 22 Information on safety related to what we're 23 doing, right and wrong within the company and industry, 24 within the specific facilities, what had they seen, try 25 to get them to interact, you know. What are you guys 76 1 seeing out there? Where can we improve? What do we 2 need? Pre-task meetings on everything, SLAM, SLAM, 3 SLAM, SLAM, SLAM, SLAM. They hear that a lot. 4 Accident investigation and sharing results. 5 That's your near hits and paint on paint. Everything -- 6 you know, what did we do wrong? How do we improve? And 7 making it a group effort. Everybody works together to 8 come to an agreement on what we can do to make that 9 problem go away. Explaining what is right and what is 10 wrong. You know, you can't act as a safety dictator I 11 couldn't go around and just yell at them and beat them 12 with a board. Explaining to them what they're doing 13 right, "Hey, good job." Explain to them what they're 14 doing. "That's probably not the best way to do that. 15 There's better ways. Let's discuss it." 16 Positive reinforcement, always. Things we try 17 to get away from and something that was prominent when I 18 first started this. This was the finger pointing. "I 19 didn't do it. Oh, it's his fault." Well, ownership in 20 the safety program and then the safety of each and every 21 employee is very important. If one team member fails, 22 what happens? The whole team fails. 23 Holding people accountable. Not everybody's 24 favorite thing to do, but we try very hard. It's very 25 important. If somebody makes an error, if somebody 77 1 makes a bad judgment call, we need to hold them 2 accountable for that and we do. 3 We use the safety incentive program with awards 4 quarterly, and they get their name on them you know, 5 a little list. And we run that with our safety 6 committees for each division and list them, you know, 7 have ownership in that also. 8 A lot of good with safety incentive programs and 9 a lot of bad you hear. My boss came to me and said, 10 "I'm hearing a lot of flack about this safety incentive 11 program. Look around to see what other people 12 are doing. Maybe we can change to make it better." It 13 was really easy. Nobody was doing anything. This was a 14 couple of years ago. 15 Hazard recognition and elimination are very 16 important. Emphasize training on hazard recognition for 17 all employees. If they don't know it's a hazard, then 18 you've got problems. Fixing or correcting the hazards. 19 Communicating the hazards and securing them. What to do 20 if it is not corrected. It's very important. If my 21 people see a hazard, they're to fix it immediately if 22 they can or use signs or barricades, and report it to their 23 supervisor. If it's a matter of replacing a bolt or whatever, 24 they're supposed to fix it. If it's within their 25 abilities, get it reported, get it written down. Get it 78 1 repaired. If it's not repaired, I'm always available. 2 And we get pretty fast results if we need them. 3 Job one, reports of elimination of the hazard. 4 Grading ourselves. We use self audits. We 5 don't rely on MSHA to come in and tell us if we're doing 6 good or doing bad. Anybody who does that probably won't 7 get the same results we do. Our citations, our 8 violations are down per inspection. Maybe one or two, 9 too many. Shame on us. We do our own. We do them 10 fairly regular. We don't have a set time or date. I do 11 them when I'm there. I do them after safety meetings. 12 I do them after when we're doing a new installation. We 13 change things around. We involve personnel in it so 14 they understand what to look for, how to do it. We have 15 a post-audit meeting, discuss it, plan of correction if 16 it hasn't been done already and correct those 17 discrepancies. 18 Training materials, we do training every 19 two weeks. Bulletins, fatal grams is a 20 great tool. It's a tragic one but a great tool. 21 Videos, when and where we can get them. Washington 22 State has a pretty good supply. We get a lot from them. 23 Examples of safe/unsafe actions, procedures or 24 conditions. And SLAM, again. That's the greatest thing 25 MSHA has ever done in my book, giving us that tool. 79 1 What does not work? Long, drawn out and 2 complicated procedures and policies. They have those 3 spiders, JSA's that you can cover a whole wall with to 4 change a screen on a screen deck. My guys -- it must be 5 good for soaking up oil if they have some. They 6 wouldn't know what to do with them. 7 Good hands on -- you know, SLAM, short, to the 8 point, basic, works very well. Long meetings, they 9 never work. People will retain about 15 minutes and the 10 rest of the eight hours is a ring in their ears. What 11 does not work? Get 'er done. I had to throw that in 12 there. "Get 'er done. Get 'er done." I learned to 13 hate that. Get 'er done gets you in trouble. Gets 14 people hurt. 15 Again, hard-to-manage restrictive policies and 16 threats certainly do not work. Threatening the 17 workforce -- human beings don't react very well to 18 threats so we try not to do that. 19 MSHA's help. Small Mines Office, I think is 20 about done, which is horrifying to me. Small Mines I 21 think is important. They helped us out immensely. 22 Helped me to develop our program. Educational Field 23 Services, up there in -- out of the Kent field office. 24 They do a great job in helping us. 25 What we can all do better and MSHA could do to 80 1 help us is communicate better. Some new training 2 materials would be wonderful. Operate as part of the 3 team and recognize team players, which they do in some 4 ways. They do for us. It's very important when they 5 come out to inspect. The inspectors always have great 6 things to say about our team. They tell our operators 7 that. They suggest other operators contact our 8 people to share our philosophies and they've been doing 9 that and hopefully it's working in our little region, up 10 in the northwest. 11 Of course, our disclaimer, "Our management 12 philosophy and approach to safety fits us and may not be 13 appropriate for others." Pretty basic. We're pretty 14 small. I've seen great presentations today and a lot of 15 great material, but everybody has got to have their own 16 approach. 17 MS. SILVEY: You anticipated -- thank you. You 18 anticipated my first question. 19 I was going to ask you -- unless I missed it. 20 How big are you? 21 MR. DAVIS: We have eight active mine sites at 22 this time. 23 MS. SILVEY: Total employments? 24 MR. DAVIS: 275. 25 MS. SILVEY: All right. I would like to 81 1 comment, though, on -- and maybe it is the sentiment of 2 you and others in the crowd. You referenced the 3 Small Mines Office that you said we don't like that it's 4 going away. But if I'm -- I believe I'm correct in 5 stating this, that the goal, whatever happens -- and I 6 don't know what is going to really end up happening. 7 But the plan is that MSHA would not, in fact, do away 8 with assistance to Small Mines. 9 And I think now, as you bow your head, yes, 10 you're right -- but that would be -- that it would be -- 11 the assistance would be realigned, and I think MSHA 12 understands the importance of assistance to small 13 employer. So I think that was the goal. So I do want 14 to say that for everybody who may, you know, 15 sometimes -- you just told me that sometimes there's -- 16 there are more than one -- there are a lot of ways -- 17 there are a lot of ways to do something. So I think 18 that was the goal to realign. 19 I don't think I have any questions, though, any 20 other comments. 21 Does anybody? 22 MR. DISTASIO: I just have one. You mentioned 23 one should hold people accountable and threats don't 24 work. Can you sort of -- 25 MR. DAVIS: No. No threats. "If you don't do 82 1 it this way, you're done." You have to hold people 2 accountable. We have policy in place to hold people 3 accountable if we need to use it. If people do 4 something, make a poor decision, I go in and counsel 5 them. I work with them, explain to them, you know, what 6 they've done wrong, why they cannot do that and how we 7 can improve and move past that versus, you know, 8 threatening people with their jobs or their livelihood. 9 MS. SILVEY: It seems like what I'm hearing from 10 a lot of people -- our consistent theme is that when you 11 talk about accountability, you sort of -- you talk about 12 positive reinforcement. That's what -- 13 MR. DAVIS: Always. 14 MS. SILVEY: -- I seem to hear a lot of you 15 saying. 16 Any more? 17 (No audible response.) 18 MS. SILVEY: Okay. Thank you so much. 19 Next we have Nancy Moorhouse with Teichert -- by 20 the way, earlier I mentioned when the comment period was 21 closed for this information gathering session, and it is 22 indeed December the 17th. I had written that to make -- 23 come back and reiterate to you. It is December the 24 17th. 25 MS. MOORHOUSE: Good morning, everyone. There are 83 1 some familiar faces in the audience. My name is Nancy 2 Moorhouse. I'm Vice President and Director of Safety 3 and some other things at Teichert. I've been in the 4 safety department -- I started in Teichert in 1984 and 5 I've been in safety since 1990. And I see a few 6 familiar faces. But what I wanted to spend a few 7 minutes this morning talking about is kind of what 8 Teichert's evolution has been with regard to their 9 zero-injury culture. 10 Cool company. Founded in 1887 in California. 11 We primarily do operations in California. It's 12 privately held in 5th generation, looking for the 6th 13 generation to come. We're vertically integrated. So 14 not only do we do sand and gravel mining. We also do 15 precast, ready mix and heavy -- 16 THE REPORTER: I'm sorry. "Heavy" -- 17 MS. MOORHOUSE: -- highway infrastructure 18 construction. 19 THE REPORTER: Thank you. Can I just ask you to 20 slow down just a little bit. 21 MS. MOORHOUSE: Sure. 22 Teichert has 2,000 people currently. In our heyday 23 back in about 2005 when the economy was blowing and going, had 24 upwards of 4,000 people. We're heavily union-oriented. 25 So we have a lot of collective bargaining agreements, 84 1 which kind of sometimes adds a different variable in 2 working with our folks. 3 Other than a multi-generation people working in 4 our company It's a very cool place. We currently have 5 eight active MSHA regulated sites. Some of the plants 6 were closed just because of the economy but normally we 7 have about 13 sites here in California. 8 So today, our zero-injury culture overview, a 9 little bit of history about how we got to where we have. 10 I'll show you a couple of charts with our safety stats, 11 our current practices and end with some closing thoughts 12 and comments. May be a little bit controversial but 13 you've got to get them out of me. That's all I can say. 14 We established a zero-injury culture in 1998. 15 Now, it happened this way: I was sitting across from 16 our CEO, our President and Vice-President of Human 17 Resources. I got called into a small conference room in 18 Corporate Office. We've all been called to those small 19 conference rooms. It either means one of two things: 20 You're either getting promoted or your ass is getting 21 kicked out of there. 22 I sit across and they said to me, "Our safety 23 program is not as good as it should be." And I'm like 24 "Wow. That's kind of cool." They said. "Fix it." 25 And as a safety person, we can go one of two 85 1 ways. We can go and do the compliance checklist and 2 make sure everything works or you can take the path that's 3 less traveled and that's what I decided to do. 4 We wanted to develop a culture. One of the 5 things about Teichert is it's about our values and who 6 we are. So I took the path least traveled and went out 7 and decided, "Geez, there's got to be technology out 8 there that can make a difference." So we adopted a 9 zero-injury culture based on Construction Industry 10 Institute. And I'll show you some components of what 11 that is. It essentially says that "Injuries are 12 preventable." 13 And this next one is neat, "Citation-free 14 inspections are doable" because we demonstrated that 15 early on. We had two of our aggregate plants. One went 16 nine MSHA-free citation inspections and one went ten 17 MSHA-free citation inspections. You're looking four and 18 a half, five years, no citations. Talk about the number 19 one booster for our miners on the ground is when MSHA 20 comes and we get no citations. Now that means a lot. 21 And those of us in the safety profession know 22 that you can play the numbers game or do it right. And our 23 miners know that that makes a difference. 24 Folks, we've all said it. You've heard it from 25 bigger companies bigger than mine that says we're in the 86 1 people business because without those miners on the 2 ground making that rock every day, I wouldn't be up here 3 being able to present what our program is about. And it 4 really is driven from the top down, from our CEO and our 5 Presidents. 6 When I talk about zero-injury culture, I really 7 want to be clear on what that definition means. It's 8 not a goal. And I have many managers in my company 9 saying, "Zero is our goal." Time out. It's really a 10 commitment. It starts intellectually saying "We 11 shouldn't have anybody get injured" because we are in a 12 dangerous business. And if we are, what are we doing to 13 prevent that? So you internalize that "I don't want 14 anybody hurt" to "Man, I feel it in my heart because 15 every day I look at those guys in the eyes, and I want 16 them to go home to their family and kids." It's a 17 commitment that starts here in my heart. 18 As an organization, anybody getting hurt or any 19 incident, that's not acceptable. And we're going to do 20 whatever it takes to prevent that next injury from 21 occurring. Those are very, very strong, powerful words. 22 And if you go to our website and you can see this 23 demonstrated in our website. It's a shared success that 24 we can prevent these things from happening. And then 25 how do we do that? We want to demonstrate safe 87 1 production at Teichert. 2 One of the things that made a difference for us 3 is combining safety and production in saying, "Let's 4 create safe production." And why is that important? 5 Because when I walk up to the miner on the grade and I 6 say, "Are you doing safe production today?" They know 7 what that means because that's who they are. I can put 8 all these words to it, but when I talk to my miners, 9 they understand safe production because it's about them. 10 How we started -- cool company. In 1957, Henry 11 Teichert said, "We need a safety program, and we need a 12 safety director." That's pretty significant because 13 OSHA didn't come about until about 1970. MSHA and MESA 14 before that. 15 But way back when, we were ahead of the curve 16 and that's a cool place to work when you know that 17 management wants to do something for its people. 18 Went through a phase of, wow, government 19 regulations ranked OSHA's here, MSHA, who we have 20 programs; we have regulations. Kind of shifted a little 21 bit with our risk management safe where we had hazard 22 identification risk analysis. 23 Now we're trying to getting back to the basics 24 of we're in the people business. It's about our folks. 25 So let's create a culture and let's get back to our 88 1 values and let's transform through that. 2 A couple of statistics. This is for our whole 3 organization. I have two lines total injury -- total 4 injuries for the company, total lost time. Those two 5 lines at the bottom, there's a yellow and a green line 6 and it says "CII." Those are the benchmark to the 7 Construction Industry Institute. Best of the best 8 contractors. Some of them are also mining companies, 9 but it says that injuries are preventable. 10 We've got a long way to go on our transformation 11 but the best benchmark that we have is against ourselves 12 and are we improving each year against ourself, as the graph 13 shows and we are. Over 100 percent improvement since 14 we started back in '98. 15 This next slide is for our aggregates. We 16 have some glitch. Why? Because we're not working as 17 many people. And every time -- this is just a little 18 side bar -- every time we have a management change in 19 our company, my safety statistics feel that. 20 Every time I have a collective bargaining 21 agreement as far as negotiation, my safety statistics 22 feel that. You can look at your safety statistics as an 23 organization and benchmark the morale of your company. 24 What are those best management -- one of those best 25 practices with the Construction Industry Institute. And 89 1 these are what Teichert adopted: Demonstrated top 2 management commitment. The number one thing, and you've 3 heard that from the other presenters here, as well. 4 Staffing for safety. You have -- you have to 5 have what we call "boots on the ground" to make a 6 difference to those miners and safety professionals, 7 bring that objectivity to that relationship. You have 8 to plan for safety through pre-task, workplace exams, 9 etcetera. You have to train and educate people. You have 10 to get the miners involved, participation, involvement 11 whether that's safety committees, some rewards, 12 recognition. You have to manage your progress. 13 A big component of our best practices is also 14 that subcontractor management. Because even though 15 we're kind of a one-house-who-does-all, we do have 16 subcontractors that come on. We want to make sure that 17 they're following MSHA regulation and Cal-OSHA. 18 We're big in accident/incident reporting and investigation 19 and drug and alcohol testing as well. 20 I put some pictures in this slide because I always say 21 "A picture is worth a thousand words." So some basic 22 components of that umbrella that drives our program. 23 Upper left-hand corner of the slide illustrates our 24 written "Injury Prevention and Safety Program." We are 25 California-based as Steve Hart and Len 90 1 Welsh talked about. That's the umbrella for our program 2 for all of our operation. When stuff happens, we have 3 crisis management. 4 Myself, my staff, we created the "In Case Of" 5 manual because we wanted to teach our miners what to do 6 “In Case Of” something going on in the mine site. I don't 7 have an update for people for one-on-one involvement 8 with my miners who will give them the tools, some draft 9 handbooks and some other training documents. 10 The next slide illustrates those injury 11 prevention components that make up the Construction 12 Industry Institute best practices for Teichert. 13 One of the things, as I'm sure we all do in 14 California, pre-employment, post-accident drug and 15 alcohol testing. We made a shift with our employment 16 applications, which I think was a really big plus. We 17 took time in our employment application to ask about 18 safety history and their philosophy on safe production. 19 We put that in there because we have several 20 people that hire. It doesn't all come through 21 corporate, and I want that mine supervisor or that 22 construction person to actually interview the person 23 they're hiring to get out of that warm body theory when 24 you need a person on the mine site-so that creates a 25 dialogue. 91 1 We do 24-hour orientation with our employees. 2 We instituted a hard hat striping program. For those 3 that are brand new to our company, they get a green 4 stripe. They wear that for six months or until they 5 demonstrate that they're safe on the mine site. And the 6 hard hat stripe comes off. 7 If you're an apprentice, you get a red stripe so 8 that you know you're the newbie on the mine site. It's 9 been a very productive program for us, the hard hat 10 striping. 11 Personal protective equipment, annual refresher 12 and new training for our miners. We did do some health 13 monitoring, noise and dust studies, audiograms in 14 compliance with the hearing conservation program. 15 Pre-task planning, pre-job planning, tailgate topics. 16 We have safety committees that we do at each at our 17 mines. We do performance evaluations for each miner to 18 see how they're doing, not only for their job but also 19 asking one or two questions specific to our safety 20 program. 21 We have follow-up by our safety staff with their 22 boots on the ground, and we also have auditing programs 23 at least yearly as well. 24 Some more pictures as illustrated in the next slide. 25 We can't do this just with Teichert people. We have to use 92 1 other people to make this culture happen. We go out on the 2 mine site and talk. We've got our mascot Safe-T. 3 We hand out things with our mascot so that we can 4 take safety home above and beyond the workplace so we 5 can get to the families and their children. 6 The bright green book, that's the bible of MSHA 7 Part 56 and 57 regulations. We give hard hat 8 stickers out for attending various trainings, annual 9 refresher and such, on-line Material Safety Data 10 Management Sheets program; MSDS, as they're called, for 11 working with chemicals. And then we work with trade 12 associations. Teichert is very active with the National 13 Stone, Sand and Gravel Association. 14 California Construction Industry Materials 15 Association known as Cal-CIMA. Very active, both at the 16 executive level and on the safety committee. 17 We brought an outside vendor, such as Charlie 18 Morecraft, "Back at Work," so that we have some 19 ergonomic issues addressed. Savvy Fitness for total 20 functional restoration. Sometimes we hire people and we 21 haven't conditioned them in working in a mine site. An 22 outside speaker, such as Chad Hymas, and other 23 consultants. 24 I can't stress enough that when you're a safety 25 professional, if you're in management, if you're an 93 1 administrative person, we all have to demonstrate what that 2 safe production feels like. I can tell you we're not perfect 3 because we're still transforming. Each one of us really 4 has to understand it's about the person that's making us 5 some money. That's the guy that's out on the grade. 6 Regulatory compliance is a given. We understand 7 that, but we want to go above and beyond. And the 8 attitude and the behavior that we demonstrate working 9 with our people is instantly recognized by those folks. 10 They know if you're full of crap or if you're really 11 sincere. It's really what we value because we care 12 about our folks. Even our cheerfully painted green 13 pickup trucks that say "safety" on it. We let them know 14 we're about that. 15 So what's next at Teichert? 16 We're going to continue to develop a zero-injury 17 culture. 18 Have we gotten there? 19 No. 20 Will we get there? 21 Yes. Because I've been in this business 20 22 years plus. But every time I've got a new hire, we get 23 to start over and re-educate that person on our program. 24 Just when you think you arrived, you're not quite there 25 and you get to start over. 94 1 We continue to execute safe production practices 2 that our employees can use. What does that mean? Geez, 3 I now have an OSHA or MSHA regulation that I get to 4 translate into English to Spanish so the guy on the 5 ground understands the expectation. That's what I mean 6 by safe production practices. 7 And through this culture that we've developed 8 with respect and accountability, we do get that safe 9 production and the business enhancement that comes with 10 it. Although it is a little bit more difficult in California 11 because of economic conditions but we're holding out. 12 Some closing thoughts: We're in the people 13 business. And change takes time. Any new regulation 14 introduced to our environment takes time to get that 15 absorbed as to who we are. 16 Here's my editorial: One size doesn't fit all 17 because we are in California. Lovely California. 18 We've got four Federal OSHA, as Len Welsh had 19 talked about. So this proposed Injury Illness 20 Prevention Program; I have Cal-OSHA since 1996 on the 21 Injury Illness Prevention Program. And then my friend 22 John Langley and Steve Hart with the Cal-OSHA Mining and 23 Tunneling Units. They've put one of MSHA here in 24 California. And now you folks are thinking about what 25 kind of system do we want to implement. 95 1 Please take into consideration that in 2 California we've got a lot of regulatory controls and 3 then you throw in some local agencies with their 4 opinions and such. It gets kinda of fun. Kinda. 5 MSHA, two-regulated inspections per year. We 6 have strict liability for not following the 7 regulations. As you all know, we have mine sites that 8 are dynamic and changing every day. 9 So when you think about this stuff, we really do 10 want to create a “culture”, yet MSHA does need to be part 11 of the solution. 12 This next bullet point could be controversial: Is 13 more rulemaking necessary? I'm not throwing that in 14 anybody's face. But there's other systems that we as 15 industry embrace, such as guidance, documents, 16 principles and programs like the Small Mines Office. They 17 did really good for us in California. 18 Prevention approaches, partnering with MSHA. 19 One of the cool things, National Stones got an alliance 20 with MSHA that I think just got signed last week. Those 21 are good things that are happening for the industry. 22 But all in all, we're just asking be mindful of 23 additional rulemaking and keep it simple. Trust me, 24 there needs to be simplicity within complexity. Perhaps 25 reducing penalties to those mine operations that have good 96 1 health and safety programs. 2 As you develop these safety and health 3 systems, don't penalize the mine operator for an inadequate 4 system. And let's not use that rulemaking as a catchall 5 because you can't find something else to write a 6 citation against, if that makes sense. 7 Boy, I can tell you since the -- I'm being 8 unpolitical here but since the change in regime with 9 MSHA, our miners don't look forward to MSHA showing up 10 on the mine site. I'm just putting it out there only 11 because it's a new MSHA. Right or wrong; it is what it 12 is. But if MSHA can acknowledge those miners, it makes 13 for a better life. And quite frankly, the MSHA 14 inspectors are part of the solution because they're the 15 agent representing you folks out in Washington D.C. and 16 how they show up in our mine site does make a 17 difference, good, bad or indifferent. 18 As Mark Twain said over 100 years ago -- I had 19 to throw a couple of quotes in here -- "Don't let formal 20 education get in the way of learning." Or another one I 21 found, "We start school as question marks and graduate 22 as periods. And that, as in life, is why the answer is 23 not in the back of the book," and I threw in "or in a 24 regulation." 25 So with that, my safety mascot and I thank you 97 1 for your time. If I can answer any questions. 2 MS. SILVEY: Yes, I do have a few. 3 I'd like you to just -- and not long, if you 4 could do it in a couple of sentences. You said that 5 there is a new MSHA and something about the inspectors 6 coming. And if the inspectors could acknowledge the 7 miners, could you explain to me -- because I really 8 didn't understand what you mean. 9 MS. MOORHOUSE: Thank you. We've gone through a 10 phase. Again, for whatever reason -- the old -- under 11 the Lauriski years when there was alliance 12 and partnering. It was an opportunity for the 13 inspectors to comment on operations, not solve it for 14 the mine operator but to offer good insightful frame of 15 references or historical context from being on different 16 mine sites and how to correct the correction. 17 We're in a phase right now for whatever reason 18 that the inspector does his job. It's black and white 19 and limits the communication with our miners more so in 20 an opportunity to see what they don't know so that maybe 21 they can find more fault for the operator for not doing 22 an adequate job. I speak specifically to issues in the 23 Western Region because our operations in California so it's on 24 the western side. 25 MSHA has come out with different interpretations. 98 1 We've got those kind of settled now on return 2 rollers and berm scale guarding. And that's caused quite 3 an upset with the industry so much so that our trade 4 associations have taken a far more active involvement. 5 And that kind of ripples across the United States. 6 MS. SILVEY: Okay. 7 MS. MOORHOUSE: That's the difference. 8 MS. SILVEY: You're talking communication, you 9 think. That's what it seems like. 10 MS. MOORHOUSE: I'm sorry. I don't want to turn 11 this into an MSHA battle. I'm saying it's different. 12 Where I'm coming from, it's really different for our 13 miners' representative and our miners. 14 When I have a miner coming up to me saying, "I 15 don't even want to talk to MSHA because I'm afraid I'm 16 going to get in trouble," that's not what it's about. I 17 don't know what's causing that but hopefully that can be 18 turned around. 19 MS. SILVEY: I'd like to -- you mentioned 20 poignantly that the safety statistics were impacted 21 by -- I put in kind of a category of morale or 22 something. And you mentioned like the staff has changed 23 in management or a change in -- do you find that 24 production is impacted at that time or have you all 25 done -- have you done any metrics on that? And an 99 1 add-on to that, do you find that -- I'm going to ask you 2 a question that I asked some other people -- that that 3 was in relationship between improvement in safety and an 4 improvement in production? 5 MS. MOORHOUSE: We haven't done any specific 6 stats on the production impact, I mean because we're 7 looking at it in a bigger picture. But, yeah, there is 8 a difference. When we can provide that healthy safe 9 workplace and promote that, people do a good job and 10 production does increase because they're getting 11 recognized and acknowledged as such. So there is a 12 direct correlation. 13 MS. SILVEY: I'm going to ask and I'm going to 14 say this -- and I know some of you all have given us 15 very good data -- and I'm going to say everybody, even 16 people who may be here in attendance and not necessarily 17 provided comments. But if you have an opportunity to do 18 so before December the 17th, if you have data to support 19 your comments, that you send it in to us, any kind at 20 all. That would be very useful in helping us move 21 forward. And believe you me, we are quite mindful of 22 the fact that at this stage of the process, we are 23 collecting information. And at the end of this 24 collecting information phase, we have arrived to steps 25 we can take. So your information then becomes very 100 1 important, the information that you give us, the type of 2 information it is, so we encourage everybody here to do 3 that. 4 I had one more -- two more things. You 5 mentioned in staff health and safety. And I thank you. 6 You mentioned that you do have to have staff for safety. 7 So I assume that you have -- you know, you've 8 already said you never ask yes or no questions. But I'm 9 going to do it. I assume that, as you all have 10 increased staff safety, you've seen some improvement? 11 MS. MOORHOUSE: Uh-huh. There is. 12 MS. SILVEY: Finally, you mentioned the 13 subcontractors? 14 MS. MOORHOUSE: Uh-huh. 15 MS. SILVEY: Do you keep separate data on 16 subcontractors? 17 MS. MOORHOUSE: Yeah, we do. 18 MS. SILVEY: How have you seen -- as you've seen 19 your safety management system improve, have you seen 20 your contract -- how has your contractor data with 21 respect to health and safety statistics? What's 22 happened there? 23 MS. MOORHOUSE: It's gotten better. And I can 24 get you some of those stats, too. 25 MS. SILVEY: That would be very helpful. 101 1 MS. MOORHOUSE: Okay. 2 MS. SILVEY: Any data. Like I said, we 3 reiterate that if anybody has any, that would be very 4 useful to us. 5 Anything else? 6 MS. MOORHOUSE: Thank you very much. 7 MS. SILVEY: Okay. I'm told that -- mind you, I 8 said I'm told that -- we have to take a break here, 9 which means that I -- off the record. 10 (Brief recess at 11:28 a.m.) 11 MS. SILVEY: Okay. Let's get started. 12 If we can reconvene the Mine Safety and Health 13 Administration public meeting on safety and health 14 management program. 15 Our next speaker will be Dick Zampa with the 16 International Association for Ironworkers -- I was going 17 to say all the -- Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and 18 Reinforcing Ironworkers. 19 MR. ZAMPA: Thank you. Thank you for the 20 opportunity. 21 I have a brief PowerPoint presentation here this 22 morning. Again, my name is Dick Zampa, Z-a-m-p-a. 23 I'm fortunate to be a third-generation 24 union ironworker who came through the apprenticeship 25 program, went on to become journeyman, ran work in the 102 1 field, started to work with the apprentice department 2 and now I'm the director for our three-state area for 3 apprenticeship and training. 4 Our international put this PowerPoint 5 presentation together to let everybody know what we do 6 as far as MSHA training. 7 One thing they wanted everybody to know, that 8 our general secretary Walter Wise came from the mining 9 industry. So, you know, it's an extension of what we 10 do. We do -- that's Walter Wise there back in the day. 11 He's now our general secretary. 12 The International Association of Bridge, 13 Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Ironworkers. It 14 encompasses a lot of different work. Formed in 1896. A 15 little history on it. Started off with six unions. 16 Safety was the number one issue. 17 In 1911, our organization was losing one percent 18 of its membership a year to job-site fatalities. Safety 19 has always been an issue. Right now there's 174 local 20 unions and over 95,000 active ironworkers union members. 21 Safety is still the number one concern that we have. 22 2009, we had 12 fatalities. It's unacceptable. 23 Employed by thousands of contractors throughout the 24 United States and Canada. We erect structural steel. 25 Here's an example. You folks know what we do out there. 103 1 The bridges you cross, we erect. A lot of reinforcing 2 steel, a lot of rebar. You know a lot of our work is 3 covered up with concrete. It's beautiful work that the 4 ironworkers do, placing that steel, tying that steel, 5 gets covered up. It's almost a shame. 6 We do a lot of heavy machinery moving. That's 7 part of our trade. Metal siding, glass, curtainwall 8 work, the finish on buildings, that's part of our trade. 9 A wide variety of things, a metal building erection. 10 Ironworkers Management Progressive Action 11 Cooperative Trust, IMPACT, is involved in our national 12 training. And our training materials are developed, for 13 the most part, nationally handed down to the districts 14 and into the individual training centers. 15 One of the things that we've -- for several 16 years now, IMPACT has also been involved with ten-panel 17 drug testing for all our ironworkers. We have pre-hire, 18 random for cause, accelerated random. There's several 19 ways in a year that you could be tested. And you've got 20 to be clean. There's no two ways about it. We're not 21 going to have somebody on the job that's impaired by 22 drugs or alcohol. It's unacceptable whether you're on 23 MSHA site or any other job. 24 You have three regional training centers, one 25 which I help administer. They call it Oakland. We're 104 1 down in the Bay Area. We have a fabulous training 2 facility in Benicia, California. We operate a training 3 center here in Sacramento. We have them all over. 4 One of the things that we do is we have annual 5 instructors training and that's a group of folks there 6 at one of the annual instructor trainings. They've had 7 it for the past 26 years and also have training 8 throughout the year. 9 Our apprenticeship program is a three and 10 sometimes -- in some cases, in many cases, a four-year 11 program. Within the three-state area that I'm involved 12 with, California, Nevada, and Arizona, it's a four-year 13 program. The apprentices come off the job, into the 14 training centers for formal training, and that's 15 combined with their on-the-job learning out in the 16 field. 17 So every six months, they may be eligible for a 18 pay increase. Working their way up to journey status. 19 Over the four-year program, learning a little at a time, 20 at the school. And also out on the job sites. So it 21 works very well. 22 Some of the courses that we have -- all the 23 safety courses, everything that involves our trade, we 24 want to instruct our apprentices. We're getting a lot 25 of journeymen coming back, getting upgrade training. 105 1 You know, these are true professionals. They do this 2 work for a living, and they want to be at the top of 3 their game. 4 One of the things that we initiated in our 5 district council was the OSHA-30. We no longer give the 6 10. On occasion, a contractor will need an OSHA-10 7 right away for some of the journeyman-level folks. We 8 put them -- one on for them. 9 These courses are no cost to the member. And we 10 constantly encourage the folks to come in and get these 11 courses. 12 They're plugging in Local 5's training center 13 here back in D.C. It happened to be our training 14 director's brother. He's the coordinator 15 back there so he's got some photos. That training 16 center shows different aspects that they train, tie-in 17 and rebar, climbing a column, journeyman ironworkers, 18 professional attitude and skills. 19 Our international association and local unions 20 dedicate nearly 50 million dollars a year to membership 21 training. And where does this money come through? It 22 comes from the contractors. Contractors agreed through 23 collective bargaining that a percentage or a very small 24 piece of the pie goes towards training. 25 In our district council out here, 72 cents per 106 1 hour, for every hour that the ironworker works in the 2 job, goes into the training fund to train the 3 apprentices and the journeymen. That's how it works. 4 Examples of some of the work that goes on out 5 there that's work associated. Again, the work on the 6 MSHA sites is an extension of what we do anywhere else. 7 You know, there's a big overlap. Conveyors, shaft and 8 cable change out, maintenance, installation, a little 9 bit of everything. 10 We have an approved training plan. We have 83 11 local unions that have approved training plans where 12 this training is conducted, 290 ironworkers instructors 13 that have been through it. We pass this on to the 14 members as needed. Over 7,000 ironworkers have 15 completed miner training. They get a card with that. 16 Since 2000 union ironworkers have worked over 17 three and a half million man hours on mine sites. We 18 have suffered one fatality. 19 Again, nobody wants to get hurt out there. 20 Nobody gets up in the morning and says, "Hey, I want to 21 go get hurt. I want to go on Workers' Comp." 22 Unfortunately in construction, it can be hazardous at 23 times. We want to minimize any injuries, minimize 24 chances for accidents out there. 25 That's pretty graphic. I'm not sure why I put 107 1 that on there. That's actually some type of a tube. 2 Coupler scaffolding fell and it went right through him. 3 There's a spud wrench that somebody dropped down and 4 caught a man in the arm. It's pretty graphic. It was 5 right before lunch. 6 Unfortunately, you know -- unfortunately on 7 occasion, there can be fatalities on a job site. We 8 don't accept that. We want everybody going 9 home at the end of the day to their family. So we're 10 constantly working with our folks. The day they step 11 into that apprenticeship and training as a new 12 apprentice, they get safety training. 13 All the way through, as journey level, safety 14 and productivity. That's what we're all about in the 15 training department. 16 There's a difference -- a lot of talk today 17 about modifying human behavior, you know, find out 18 what's going on, train, how it works. 19 Worker attitude. You know, just in my time, as 20 an ironworker, I started my apprenticeship in 1973. 21 Things were different. Tie-off really was -- I won't 22 say it was frowned upon, but it wasn't pushed like it is 23 today. 24 Now, six-foot tie-off rule. Many jobs are 100 25 percent tie-offs. Things have definitely evolved. This 108 1 was an alliance that MSHA folks signed with the 2 ironworkers, and we've got a great partnership all the 3 way through. 4 Here's some of the folks that do the training. 5 They have to be qualified. We want to make sure that 6 everybody makes it home at the end of the day. We're 7 constantly striving to improve our training. As far as 8 I'm concerned, we're never done. We have a thirst for 9 information, and we want to send it out to the members. 10 That's an overview of what we do. Questions for 11 me? 12 MS. SILVEY: No, I don't have any. I would just 13 like to reiterate MSHA commitment to -- our goal, 14 obviously, is to improve and to make sure that every 15 miner goes home safe and healthy to his or his family at 16 night. And to do this, we recognize that this has to be 17 a commitment between management and us and we have 18 somebody -- and when other entities involved, those 19 other entities -- and what I mean by that -- what I'm 20 talking about, really in California, the state of 21 California. But it's got to be that commitment, 22 communication, and that goal between all the parties 23 involved. So I think we do understand -- I know we 24 understand that. 25 But thank you. I don't have any questions. 109 1 Does anybody have any comments? 2 (No audible response.) 3 MS. SILVEY: Thank you. The next presenters 4 will be from Newmont, and we have a panel of presenters. 5 Dave Schummer, Wes Leavitt. Dave Schummer, I should 6 say, vice president of operations; Wes Leavitt, a North 7 American operation safety director; and Dave Newman, who 8 is a miner-haul truck driver. So they will present 9 next. 10 MR. LEAVITT: Good morning, everyone. I think 11 we still have 30 seconds left in the morning. 12 My name is Wes Leavitt. I'm the regional 13 director of health and safety for Newmont Mining 14 Corporation based out of the Elko office. 15 As a company, we're a global company. We do 16 business in Peru, Indonesia, Australia, North America, 17 and we have approximately 30,000 employees worldwide. 18 So some of what I'm going to talk to is similar to what 19 Rio Tinto had with a broad approach to the global 20 system. And we'll have a little bit more detail about 21 some specific initiatives within our company. I'll 22 review some of our standards. Our internal management 23 system, we talk a bit about safety culture, and grab 24 some popcorn if you've got it. We have a little bit of 25 a video. So it's a little bit different. And then I'll 110 1 turn the time over to my colleague, Dave Schummer. He's 2 the vice president of North American operations. He's 3 going to address the topic of leadership and what 4 visible felt leadership means to him personally. Then 5 Dave Newman, a truck driver from our Carlin operation, 6 will talk about involvement or engagement. And he'll 7 provide an overview of an initiative that they asked for 8 the opportunity -- emphasize "asked for" -- the 9 opportunity to come to develop and manage with his 10 coworkers an initiative that they use to identify and 11 correct hazards in their workplace. 12 So this little pamphlet here, it's not on the 13 slide. But it's -- inside here is a list of our 14 management standards. So we recognize that we have 15 accomplished a significant reduction in our injury rate 16 by implementation of those standards. It's right on the 17 center page here. There's actually 31 of those -- 31 of 18 those standards. Address things that are known hazards 19 within the mining industry. Things like fall from 20 heights, isolation, small vehicles. The standards 21 address known hazards within our industry. These are 22 our minimum requirements globally. 23 As I've stated, we have seen a significant 24 reduction in our injury rates over the course of time 25 since those have been implemented. You can use the same 111 1 graph of the fatalities in this country. And when 2 standards were put into place, significant reduction in 3 fatalities. 4 The issue, however, is that we've sort of 5 plateaued, and we're having difficulty getting that next 6 step change in performance. So what we're proposing is 7 that the next step change in performance will come from 8 a balance of systems and behaviors. And so if you put 9 that graphically, behaviors on the Y axis, systems on 10 the X. If you focus -- and there are point of case 11 studies to support this -- but focus exclusively on 12 behaviors, you can get some good results in reduction of 13 your injuries. But we still have eliminated the 14 fatalities of serious injuries in our company or as an 15 industry. Same concept applying exclusively to systems. 16 You'll get some results. But, again, we're still having 17 fatalities in this industry. 18 So what we'd like to do is suggest -- it's a bit 19 of a balance between the behaviors and the systems. And 20 one of the key components of integration is involvement. 21 So balance -- the balancing act there comes from 22 involvement of all the areas of workforce, from the 23 board of directors to the CEO, the middle management, to 24 site management and to the front-line workforce. 25 Everybody has to have some skin in the game and be 112 1 involved in that process. 2 Another analogy to the systems versus behaviors. 3 How many of you, by show of hands, have walked across 4 the sidewalk? 5 Crosswalk? 6 You never walked -- 7 MR. MYLON: True. 8 MR. LEAVITT: Okay. We've all probably been in 9 this scenario. You walk up to the crosswalk, maybe 10 texting on your phone, talking, chatting up with your 11 buddy. And the light to cross turns green. 12 Head down, everybody marching to cross, still texting, 13 right? You may or may not be paying attention to 14 the guy who didn't see the light change or is 15 also texting on his phone. Didn't see the pot hole on 16 the road. So we're relying exclusively on the system to 17 protect us. We're not thinking. We're not engaged. 18 Conversely, you take a jaywalker. He totally 19 ignored the system. But he's pretty well aware of the 20 hazards. He's dodging in and out of the cars, like leap 21 frog, if you can remember that. So he's totally ignored 22 the system. He may get there safely, and he's relying 23 exclusively on his behavior component. 24 Again, our proposal is -- and the direction 25 we're going as a company is it's a balance. We need to 113 1 have systems. We know there are hazards. And we -- how 2 do we get people to use it? How do we get people to see 3 the benefit in following a system that is proven to 4 eliminate injuries? 5 I'll just show you -- it's about an eight-minute 6 clip. It provides an overview of a safety culture. For 7 us, we term that a safety journey. 8 (Video shown.) 9 MR. LEAVITT: So that's just a model. It's 10 similar themes to some of the other presentations today. 11 A couple of the take-home points, I guess, this is a 12 little bit non-traditional when you talk about data and 13 leading data versus lagging data. We believe we need to 14 spend more time focusing on the leading data and 15 focusing on where we want to go as opposed to where 16 we've been in the past. 17 We believe that the systems and standards have 18 gotten us a lot of reduction. We had some good 19 performance results, but they're not going to get us the 20 next step change. We believe the next step change will 21 likely come from a combination of behaviors, reinforcing 22 positive behaviors and the systems that already have a 23 proven track record. 24 And some of the key cornerstones of this process 25 are trust, respect, and collaboration. No one level of 114 1 any organization can do this alone. 2 I'd like to turn a few minutes over then to Dave 3 Schummer, again our vice president of operations for 4 North America. 5 MR. SCHUMMER: Thanks, Wes, and thanks, panel, 6 for this opportunity to speak with you today and to 7 bring the industry together. It's a true demonstration 8 of collaboration. I think -- I'm quite confident we're 9 going to have positive results. 10 Jennifer, I promise to speak reasonable. 11 Off the record. 12 (Discussion off the record.) 13 MR. SCHUMMER: Wes spoke about how improving our 14 safety performances is truly a journey. I'm going to 15 speak specifically about visible felt leadership and the 16 role that plays in progressing us in that journey. And 17 essentially it comes down to three things: It comes 18 down to personal involvement, prioritization of your 19 safety message -- of a consistent safety message and 20 execution. 21 So we just begin with personal involvement and 22 what that means to me personally. It's really getting 23 out in the field in a visible manner and engaging with 24 the workforce, and the approach we've taken in North 25 America is to allocate four or five hours every Monday 115 1 where the general managers that report through to me 2 along with the rest of our team go out to a different 3 business unit every Monday and just engage with our 4 people. 5 When we're out there engaging with our people, 6 we're asking them questions like, "Are you comfortable 7 that the risks in your environment have been assessed? 8 Do you have adequate resources? Do you have adequate 9 training? Is there anything that we can do as a 10 leadership team to provide a safer environment? Is 11 there anything that you would like to suggest that could 12 make your work environment safer?" 13 We've had some outstanding results. Just as 14 recent as a couple of months ago when we're engaging at 15 our carbon operation in the maintenance facility, we ran 16 into a young man, a mechanic named Colt Stader 17 (phonetic). When we got to the part of the discussion 18 where we were asking Colt if there was anything he felt 19 we could do to improve safety, he said, "Yes." He said, 20 "I have an idea, a concept in my mind, to improve the 21 efficiency and the safety of large hydraulic cylinder 22 change out and maintenance." We said "Okay." We 23 sketched it out. We brought it to our engineers. We 24 had it engineered appropriately through Dave Newman's 25 program. I won't -- I won't steal any of his thunder, 116 1 but it's through the Talking Safety program. The stand 2 was designed and -- David, it's nearly ready, right? 3 MR. NEWMAN: It's ready this week. 4 MR. SCHUMMER: It's designed to load a 20 X 5 safety factor. 6 MR. NEWMAN: It's actually a device used to 7 change the cylinders on 5500 -- 8 MR. SCHUMMER: The point here is not that that 9 one example will change the world. The point here is 10 that type of behavior from leadership will be impactful. 11 And if we can make that type of behavior prevalent 12 throughout the organization -- what we're really trying 13 to do is build trust with our employees to the ownership 14 and the integration pace of the safety journey when you 15 build that trust. That's when people open up to you and 16 they give you -- they give you the unknown. They give 17 you the risk that they see that they're not really 18 comfortable bringing up to you because they're not sure 19 what's going to happen when they bring it up. 20 Which brings me to just emphasizing the point 21 about visual leadership. If we all worked in the same 22 organization -- and let's just imagine for a moment that 23 I was the leader of that organization and I asked you to 24 go out on my behalf and demonstrate to the workforce 25 that I was concerned about their work environment and 117 1 about how they felt and that they went home safely. 2 Would you be able to do that on my behalf? Probably 3 not. You could do that on your behalf. But it's pretty 4 hard to delegate this visible leadership. In fact, in 5 my opinion, you can't delegate visible leadership. You 6 have to go out there as leaders of the organization. 7 You have to start somewhere. I feel it starts with me. 8 And the general managers had taken that up, and 9 they've scheduled their own engagement with employees, 10 and it's starting to reach a tipping point, in my 11 opinion, where we're starting to build that trust with 12 the organization. So in terms of prioritization, 13 what does that mean to me? That means 14 sending a clear, consistent message across the 15 organization for what the safe work expectations are. 16 And it's about articulating the vision. In our case 17 it's zero fatalities and zero injuries and every worker 18 has a right to go home safely to their families. 19 An example of how we do that as leaders. It's 20 in the strategy that we set. It's in the goals that we 21 set to support that strategy. It's in how we compensate 22 our people. It's in how we reward them, how we manage 23 their performance. That all sets a pretty clear picture 24 about safety prioritization. 25 Another way to do it is to, again, demonstrate 118 1 it visibly. As recent as a few weeks ago, Wes and I 2 went to one of our underground operations where 3 we had some processing issues in the plant that we 4 wanted to look into. We sat down with a team. They 5 knew exactly why we were there. They were very well 6 prepared as usual. And we sat down and talked to the 7 team for an hour straight about how they understood 8 their current safety environment, if there's anything we 9 could do as leaders to improve that environment, and if 10 there's any suggestions they have. An hour straight 11 before we got to the production issues. That sent a 12 powerful message to them about what was really important 13 to us and what was really on our minds. And feedback 14 from that session went throughout the region that we 15 continue to do the same thing at our other sites. 16 It's sending a very clear message about what our true 17 priorities are. 18 Which bring me to execution. Execution to me is 19 simply doing what you say you're going to do. It's the 20 purest definition of integrity. Once you set clear 21 expectations to the workforce, you have to demonstrate 22 that you're not unwilling to exhibit those same 23 behaviors. So throughout the organization, from the 24 operators to the CEO and COO of our organization, we 25 have appropriate involvement in investigations. We have 119 1 appropriate involvement in inspections. We have 2 appropriate involvement in training. We try to get 3 ourselves into the training to set an example. I'm not 4 asking people to do anything that you're not willing to 5 do as a leader. 6 There's a lot of eyes on us as leaders. As the 7 old adage goes, what's important to us often fascinates 8 those that work with us and for us. We have to 9 exhibit the same behaviors we're asking 10 other people to do. And, again, our CEO and COO are 11 involved in the investigations, and I think that's not 12 usual in the organization. They do that at the 13 appropriate level. 14 So where does that bring us? As Wes said, we 15 have a lot of success, and we don't always celebrate 16 enough. We've a lot of success with the application of 17 standards, the application of regulations around those 18 processes. But if you look at the trend of 19 our lagging indicators across the industry or across 20 most of our organization, you see a nice trend line of 21 declining profile. In my opinion, it's plateaued out. 22 I don't see increased focus in those areas; although we 23 have to maintain what we have and perhaps augment a bit. 24 I don't see increased focus bringing us to that step 25 change in the achievement of our vision of zero 120 1 fatalities. I believe it lies in continuing what we're 2 doing and innovative application of the behavioral 3 sciences, which many people have talked about today. 4 And it's about that demonstration of visible felt 5 leadership so we can really connect with our people and 6 create that trust and draw a greater level of 7 commonalities between how people act at home and what I 8 would consider a relatively uncontrolled safety 9 environment and how they act in the workplace, which is 10 a very controlled environment. If we can draw a greater 11 consistency between those and get greater consistency in 12 behaviors, I believe that's part of the solution. 13 So with that in mind, our CEO and COO have 14 formed a global safety task force that I have the honor 15 and privilege of participating on. And with that view 16 in mind, we are focusing on what we can do to develop 17 that step change and we are exploring the behavioral 18 sciences, we are exploring risk management systems 19 processes. We're looking at the whole thing. And we 20 are something said earlier, a gentleman from Rio Tinto 21 looking at more of a bottom up approach which is 22 different in the industry. 23 So I'm not able to report on our success because 24 we're not yet at the report stage, but I would like to 25 in the future and I would like to report that to all of 121 1 you. If you get a breakthrough in this industry in a 2 safety realm, we need to share it as soon as we can. 3 We'll absolutely commit to doing that. 4 So at this point, I'd like to introduce Dave 5 Newman. This is really an interesting story. Dave 6 Newman has been with us for many, many, many years as a 7 haul truck operator. And he's always been passionate 8 about safety. And about four years ago, when we weren't 9 doing so well, and we really weren't feeling very well 10 about how we're performing, about the culture, about 11 what was going on in the organization from a safety 12 standpoint, we asked our leaders to reach out to some of 13 the people in the workforce and asked if they had any 14 ideas, which we do a lot more today. We started doing 15 that in the past. 16 Well, when Dave was asked by his general 17 foreman, "Yeah, I have an idea. I have an idea where we 18 can solicit ideas from the workforce and implement those 19 ideas and put some structure around the implementation 20 of those ideas." And probably the most important part 21 of what normally breaks down in these types of program 22 that goes to the feedback loop. So getting the 23 information to people, whether their idea was a good 24 idea or an idea that probably wasn't applicable, either 25 way that information has to get back to the employees. 122 1 And once you do that, you can perpetuate the continual 2 submission of ideas. That's exactly what's 3 happened. 4 So with that, Dave, I'd like you to come in and 5 talk to us a bit about the Talking Safety program. You 6 can feel the passion from Dave. He's an outstanding 7 employee, and he's been an outstanding asset. His 8 program has really -- it's a great example if you're 9 looking for examples of employee-led programs that are 10 successful. I promise you when he gets done speaking, 11 you're going to know that this is a concept that I think 12 could be spread out throughout the industry. So with 13 that, Dave. 14 MR. NEWMAN: Thank you very much. First of all, 15 I'd like you to know that I don't wear this out of 16 disrespect. I keep my bald head warm with it, and I 17 think a lot better when I feel comfortable up here. 18 Before I talk and give you some 19 insight into Talking Safety, I've heard a lot of 20 discussion about leadership, culture, behavior, systems. 21 And I've heard it for 21 years at Newmont. I've heard 22 those over and over and over. And I know that all of 23 that is very, very, very important. It has a place. 24 We talk about safety culture. I just want to 25 throw an idea out to many of you that before you can 123 1 transform a safety culture that starts with -- that's 2 really efficient. We may have to transform the 3 management culture first. Just think about that. 4 I don't think it's coincidental that in 2006, 5 when I proposed to submit this suggestion on a safety 6 initiative, that Richard O'Brian, the president and the 7 CEO of Newmont, took over almost exactly the same time. 8 And one of the very first things that I read from him 9 was that safety -- safety is our number one priority. 10 And I said, "Wow. God. If that is true, if that only 11 proves to be true, how fantastic. How great that will 12 be." 13 The hat I've got on has "Newmont" on it. I'm 14 proud of my company, very proud. But for most of the 15 time I was there, you would never see me wearing 16 anything with Newmont on it. Now you do and there's a 17 very good reason. And I'm going to get into that here 18 in just a second. 19 Dave Schummer and Wes Leavitt are two 20 representatives of our leadership, that team that are 21 out ensuring that the priority that Mr. O'Brian has set 22 for our company is, in fact, put in place. It does 23 happen. And they are doing that. And it is real. 24 Thank God. 25 Wes showed you behavior systems, and we know 124 1 that we needed to be involved. I proposed that here's 2 how we need to look at where we were. Our company is 3 really a home. In fact, without our companies, most of 4 us probably wouldn't have a home, a real home where we 5 live, where our families are raised. It is due to this 6 home that we have that home. You can't take one away 7 from the other. They're inclusive. And in this home -- 8 take this hotel, if you will. This hotel is Newmont 9 Mining. And in this hotel today are many 10 representatives of safety. MSHA is here. We had an 11 OSHA speaker. We're all here. The work -- the 12 workforce is here. Management is here. Everybody is 13 here. We all have a room in this house. The goal of 14 this house is mutual respect, understanding. Safety is 15 our primary factor because at the end of the day, that's 16 what we all want, to go to our real home safe. 17 I would add one thing about a house, if you want 18 to put into some real true perspective, from my point of 19 view, is that we know that the management structure -- I 20 was 42 when I came to Newmont. I had many years of 21 military service. I did three tours in Vietnam. And we 22 had a lot of safety concerns there. But one of the 23 factors that was most important is when you take the 24 commanding officer and the executive and the department 25 head and you get down to where I was, I was down in the 125 1 crews' rooms swabbing the decks. I was a swabbie. 2 But you take that structure at least for safety and you 3 lay it flat. You lay it flat. Because in safety, that 4 structure is one. It involves every single one of us 5 equally. That is of utter importance to understand. 6 So Jack Hindres (phonetic) -- I work at tar and 7 surface operations in Northern Nevada. Jack Hindres is 8 my mine manager. His quote before I left was, "When we 9 involve our total workforce in safety, we win." Now we 10 do win. And I'm going to show how we win in just a 11 moment. 12 Involvement in the Talking Safety initiative. I 13 want to clarify one other thing real quick. Initiatives 14 are aspects of the programs that you have laid out. 15 Initiatives are absolutely necessary to support your 16 program. Initiatives initiate. It's real clear. That 17 means action. That's what we do for safety is the 18 action. Without action, words mean nothing. The 19 program means nothing unless we are there and we are 20 acting. We're doing what we need to do to make it safe. 21 So the safety initiative -- the Talking Safety 22 initiative is so simple. I heard someone over here say, 23 "Keep it simple." It is simple. In fact, they don't 24 get any simpler. And the simplest thing in the world. 25 Guess what; I drive a truck. I sit 16 feet off the 126 1 ground. My truck is 45 feet long, and it's 25 feet 2 wide. I drove that truck for 18 years, and I never had 3 one accident. My question is, do you think that I 4 didn't have an accident because management told me not 5 to because they told me how -- the training, all that? 6 Of course, it has a part. But what about me? What 7 about the workforce? What about them? Can't they be 8 safe. Can't we be safety leaders too? Of course, we 9 can. You have to deal with that. You have to 10 understand that, and you have to make that a part of 11 everything you do. Don't just train me and then say, 12 "Do what I tell you to do." Ask me, and I'll show you 13 why that's important. 14 Thirty months ago, we initiated Talking Safety. 15 In the last 30 months, we have received 764 16 safety suggestions. Every one of those suggestions 17 is documented and discussed. And let me say the 18 documentation comes in a form, Talking Safety Suggestion 19 Form, where anybody -- anybody in the entire workforce 20 identifies a safety concern, they write it up. And if 21 they have an idea on how to improve it or how to make it 22 better or whatever. It can be a system. It can be a 23 policy. It can be a procedure. It can be anything. 24 But it's something they perceive we can do better. We 25 can make it safer so they write it up and they submit 127 1 it. We take that safety suggestion. We put it on the 2 list. It's called a Safety Suggestion Feedback Form. 3 Once every week we meet and we discuss all the 4 items that are on that. And the nice thing about 5 that, out of 764 that we have taken in, 565 have been 6 approved. But that's not what's important. What's 7 important is 531 now have been implemented. Can you 8 imagine what effect that has on your safety, on your 9 record, on everything that we do if you've eliminated 10 531 things that were a safety concern? It's enormous. 11 So out of the 600-member workforce that I 12 worked for that are Talking Safety coverage right now -- 13 we're expanding it for a good reason. Out of our 14 600-man workforce, man -- oh, I leave women out every 15 time, and I pay for it, believe me. 16 The truth is, 350 have submitted -- individuals, 17 separate individuals have submitted safety suggestions. 18 What does that tell us? What does that tell us? Over 19 half of our workforce have jumped up and said, this, 20 this, this. In fact, I would love to take every one of 21 you on a tour where I live and show you because we 22 couldn't go over 10 feet without saying that was a 23 Talking Safety suggestion. That was a Talking Safety 24 suggestion. That's Talking Safety. That's Talking 25 Safety. They're everywhere. 530 of them. Are you 128 1 kidding me? They're everywhere. 2 I would like to share with you just a few of 3 these things. This is a flag. It's a buggy whip. It's 4 a seven-foot stick on the back of pickup. When that 5 pickup rides and goes into the pit, of course I'm in my 6 haul truck. I'm sitting 16 feet off the ground. 7 Now, one of the requirements is that the berms 8 in our pit be half as high as along -- the largest 9 height. Well, my tire is almost 13 feet. So this buggy 10 whip -- guess what; if it's on the other side of that 11 berm, what are you going to see? Just the flag. And 12 one of the operators said, "Dave, I'm submitting a 13 suggestion about that flag because I had a close call. 14 I couldn't see the top of that flag at night." He says, 15 "I suggest you put a reflective cross on that so I can 16 see it in my headlights at night." 17 We did that two years ago. Today, if you want 18 to drive in our pit, guess what; your buggy whip is 19 going to have that flag. It's now mandatory. We have 20 not had one single close call using that flag. 21 Here's another example. I heard someone talk 22 about tying off, about using a fall protection. Well, 23 that's what our operators had to do here for years and 24 years and years. And so this guy suggests that a 25 standing platform be installed on a 992G wheel loader so 129 1 he can get out and safely clean that front window 2 winter, spring, summer and fall so he can tie-off 3 without having to put that harness, without having to 4 get out there and having to hook up and then swing out 5 and clean it. We get it. Here's the thing, that both 6 of these loaders, these three loaders I mean, have been 7 there 25 years. "We've talked about that before." We 8 talked about it. Well, now, they have them. In fact, 9 every loader, every piece of equipment we come on, our 10 engineers look at and many of these pieces of equipment 11 now have platforms. 12 Here's another one. It's so simple. Here's the 13 operator. And this lady Jackie Wiscon (phonetic) says, 14 "I observed" -- "I noted that if I have a fire" -- 15 here's the engine. It's probably going to be in the 16 engine compartment and the flames are probably going to 17 be coming up here. And if I need that fire 18 extinguisher, I may have to walk through the fire. And she 19 says, "Can we do something with it?" You can see where 20 we put it. Now the operator comes out of the cab -- we 21 do have truck fires. They come out of the cab. They've 22 got that fire extinguisher. They can use it to escape 23 or they can use it to extinguish, whatever their safety 24 mind tells them to do. And they do the safest thing. 25 The last one I'm going to share with you -- this 130 1 was pretty incredible. The operator suggested that we 2 ensure that the water cannons work. Oh, well, you know, 3 that's a good idea. But what was happening was during 4 the winter, you can see right here. Here's the tank 5 that's filled with water here. The water is -- if they 6 spray it, it doesn't drain back out because there's 7 water here. So what was happening during winter, it was 8 freezing up. So you can see the new cannon -- our 9 maintenance engineer designed -- we have got one water 10 truck left to outfit with that new cannon. 11 Now, when you call a water truck to the site 12 just for safety purpose, just to actually use it to put 13 out a fire, how nice is it knowing the water can is 14 going to work in the wintertime. It's great. 15 You might be thinking, "Well, how do you reward 16 these people?" This is the entire workforce. The 17 reward is in pride, the self-esteem, the high morale, 18 the courage. How many times I've heard it brought up, 19 if the operators aren't -- they're intimidated, by 20 whatever reason, whatever reason, and they're afraid to 21 say anything, they let -- they'll let somebody else do 22 it. They just want to operate and be left alone. The 23 truth is, being proactive means being involved. You 24 can't have one without the other. The only 25 thing that any of these operators have received is a 131 1 letter from the superintendent that shows their 2 suggestion, shows the status of that suggestion, and 3 thanks them for participating. That's it. And some of 4 those people frame that letter. They really do. I've 5 had people come up and shake my hand and say this is -- 6 it's like a little bit of recognition can go an awful 7 long way. But you know what? The biggest thing of all 8 is respect. 9 Let me ask you something. How many of 10 you in this room would respect somebody if you felt 11 they didn't respect you? Probably not very 12 many. That's where I'm coming from. That's why it's so 13 important to involve everybody. 14 The actual results, you have an involved safety 15 culture. It's engaged in all these words that we use, 16 personal safety, pride. They're all there. They're all 17 there. Ownership, Talking Safety, personal, being 18 committed, trust, respect, sustainability. They're all 19 there, and it works. 20 The last thing I have to share with you today 21 is -- this is a quote. I also put out a quarterly 22 newsletter, 14 pages. In fact, this is a page from one 23 of them. Why safety is important. This has a double 24 page feature on every one of them. I'll just give you 25 one at the top right there, Marshall York, on the top 132 1 right there. He says, "I have six reasons for wanting 2 to be safe, my wife and five children." And most of 3 these people relate to their coworkers, to the 4 workforce to their families. It's almost consistent to 5 every one of them. 6 Here is what Jack Hindres, my manager of where I 7 work, stated in the last citation of the Talking Safety 8 Quarterly: "We will achieve a level of safety 9 competence that ensures sustainability through personal 10 ownership. It will be a safety culture in which working 11 safely, the right way, the safe way every day is just 12 the way we do business." So, please, involve your 13 workers. 14 Thank you very much. 15 MS. SILVEY: Thank you. 16 MR. LEAVITT: I told you he was pretty 17 passionate. These guys are all key leaders in our 18 organization, different levels of leadership, different 19 roles but still passionate leadership. 20 We want to leave you with: The whole idea of 21 the culture model, the journey is that everyone in this 22 room would be in a different place, at a different spot 23 from that journey. Everyone has different things we can 24 work on. There is no one-size-fits-all prescriptive 25 approach that will address this component. The key 133 1 cornerstones lie in trust, respect and 2 collaboration. 3 Thanks. 4 MS. SILVEY: Thank you. I would say this, you 5 know -- first I say, well, how do I follow Mr. Newman? 6 And second, that's kind of something for me to say. But 7 second I would say, somebody earlier today, and I forgot 8 who, mentioned that a picture is worth a thousand words. 9 And I think that -- I can make the analogy and you all 10 bear with me with my inartful analogy that we indeed saw 11 a picture of both management commitment and worker 12 involvement. And so -- I think which was a very 13 excellent picture and probably one that even I can say 14 here from members that we would like to see at every 15 mine workplace in the United States and the world for 16 that matter. 17 I really don't think I have any comments of 18 these gentlemen. I would say, though, you mentioned -- 19 I forgot who did -- that you clearly have seen 20 improvements at this level. And you think now you've 21 reached a plateau. And I think I probably speak for 22 everybody in here in saying that we look forward to -- 23 as you implement the next phase of your program, to any 24 kind of metrics or data that you have on further 25 improvements because I'm sure with as passionate as you 134 1 are about it, you are bound to see some kind of 2 additional improvements. 3 MR. SCHUMMER: I look forward to that day as 4 well. And I promise we'll relay that information to 5 you. 6 MS. SILVEY: Thank you. Obviously and any other 7 comments that you would like to give to us if you think 8 of anything before December 17th. 9 Anybody in the audience has any questions or 10 comments? 11 MR. DISTASIO: Just one question. We've been 12 asking a lot about what doesn't work. I think from your 13 presentation it's not that what doesn't work. It's sort 14 of getting to a spot and being satisfied is more what 15 you're describing. The participation level, I guess is 16 what you call it, you have all these metrics and 17 everything is down. So it looks real good, but you have 18 to know that's not where you want to be. I mean how did 19 you know that? 20 MR. LEAVITT: I think everybody would have a 21 different answer but CEO, for example, basically said, 22 "Fatalities and serious injuries are not going to happen 23 here. How do we get there?" The very last phase of the 24 journey talks about everybody lives in a state of 25 chronic unease. So you don't get comfortable. You're 135 1 the jaywalker. Not the jaywalker using the system 2 preferably. So you're looking out -- not only following 3 the system but looking out for those hazards. You're 4 not blindly following the system. 5 MR. NEWMAN: Can I add one other comment. We 6 talked about empowerment. The president and CEO, 7 Richard O'Brian, has empowered Dave Newman, a haul truck 8 driver, to stop operations if I deem it unsafe. Now how 9 is that? Can any of you say that you would be okay with 10 somebody, an operator, a member of your workforce, a 11 mechanic stopping the whole operation because he deemed 12 there was a safe purpose for doing so? That is -- that 13 is involvement. That is acceptance. That is proactive. 14 That is everything we need to make us safe every day. 15 MR. SCHUMMER: That is something that I would 16 reward personally. I saw a lot of the heads nodding 17 because the industry is changing, isn't it? There's a 18 lot more empowerment to stop operations, and I applaud 19 that. That's something personally I would reward. 20 MS. SILVEY: But what I think I heard you say 21 is -- and that's what I was trying to -- that despite 22 the very good message you've seen, you think you may 23 have leveled off. So you've come up with this new 24 initiative and you think you can even go further. And I 25 think I heard that from Ms. Nancy Moorhouse that that 136 1 further down, driving downward is to -- actually, a lot 2 of people may not -- you know, that's probably a little 3 bit of tension there. Downward toward the real zero 4 fatalities, zero injuries and illnesses. That is 5 achievable and I think most likely -- I mean maybe while 6 there probably is a tension between the zero injuries 7 and illness and maybe the theory of fault that you may 8 tidal wave down some risk that you tolerate. Okay. You 9 do that in your daily life. However, if we probably -- 10 and I'll say this for everybody, including us -- if you 11 don't buy into the theory and have the confidence that 12 they are -- that the zero injuries and illnesses and 13 fatalities, that that is achievable; that's what you're 14 striving for. 15 MR. SCHUMMER: I agree wholeheartedly. 16 MS. SILVEY: That's what I understood. Thank 17 you. 18 MR. SCHUMMER: Thank you. Thanks for the 19 opportunity again. 20 MS. SILVEY: Next on our -- we have Robert 21 Stegall. 22 MR. STEGALL: I don't mean any disrespect for 23 having my back to most of you. But most of my 24 presentation is going to be addressed to the panel. 25 The reason I'm doing that is -- my name is 137 1 Robert Stegall. I'm a PSP. I retired one month ago 2 from one of the major companies that has presented here 3 today. I have a strong passion for safety. Forty-two 4 years environmental health and safety and emergency 5 response. 6 I'm very pleased that you're opening the floor 7 to get input from people on what it would take to have 8 injury-free work sites. And thank you for that, and I 9 thank those who presented so many success stories. 10 And many of the success stories, if we had those 11 operations, you probably wouldn't have a need to be here 12 today. But the fact is: in the U.S. that hasn't been the 13 success story with many operations. We have fatalities. 14 We lost public confidence, both the mining industry and 15 the regulators have lost public confidence. Can we 16 really manage our business? And as you work to put 17 together a rule, I would just like to share a few 18 thoughts with you. 19 And the first thing is, I was so pleased to see 20 you identified four of the really main things in my 42 21 years I had found really drives strong safety 22 performance: the management leadership and employee 23 involvement, the work site analysis, the hazard 24 prevention and control, the safety and health training. 25 Key components. And almost all industries view as 138 1 safety. But I heard the question asked a couple of 2 times. Maybe I just sort of anticipated that question. 3 If that's the case, what kind of things aren't 4 working? As you struggle with deciding how do you write 5 a rule that addresses large multi-national companies, 6 small privately owned sites, sites with 2,000 people and 7 outstanding safety department, sites with very few 8 people and no safety resources, sites that have many 9 contractors performing work, sites that never see a 10 contractor, how do you write that? What are some of the 11 things to consider? 12 Now earlier we saw a slide that had a triangle, 13 and we've heard several references to environmental 14 conditions, the person's behavior. And what I found 15 over the last many years, there are things you can look 16 at in each of those categories that will tell you that 17 these things are happening, you're having a problem 18 here. This is what is contributing to some of the 19 injuries. Obviously in my mind, a site that is a pig pen 20 is a pretty strong indicator that there's not a lot of 21 leadership, there's not a lot of pride, there's not a 22 lot of commitment. So I think the rules you try to have 23 on housekeeping, really kind of address that issue. The 24 unsafe equipment and inadequate mine facilities, rules, 25 procedures and things that are cumbersome. We've heard 139 1 really outstanding testimony today. 2 Some of those things really do not drive the 3 behavior that we're all expected to produce. But we've 4 also kind of entered into the other realm that MSHA has 5 not delved in very much in the past and that is more of 6 the people-based safety, the person and the behaviors. 7 I wanted to leave some thoughts for you. I just felt 8 people would be so proud of what they've done with their 9 workers, and we've heard that emotion and their pride. 10 And so what are some of the things that happen that 11 prevent that good behavior? Well, number one, right 12 off, if you can't agree on what the practice is, there's 13 confusion. That certainly affects how that person is 14 approaching the job. Lack of self-worth, lack of 15 relationship, lack of communication and interaction 16 skills, lack of coachability. I haven't heard it 17 mentioned in here. But one of the things I'm struck by in 18 this industry is we have a lot of macho people. And 19 many times that interferes with the ability to be 20 coachable. "It can't happen to me. I can get this 21 done." 22 Those are things that are barriers to the 23 performance you're looking for. And under the behavior, 24 I've heard some questions from you about consequence 25 management. But actually I would like to suggest to you 140 1 that the problem is, we have few consequences for less 2 safe behavior, but we also don't have many consequences 3 for safety behavior or safer behavior. We just don't 4 seem to have any consequences. And I think consequence 5 management is a very important part and goes back to my 6 core back in the late '60s. Antecedent behavior 7 consequence management that's still been going on now 8 for 40 years is understanding how do you write something 9 that addresses consequence management? And then the 10 other one is emphasizing outcomes over the process where 11 we've become so focused on production or so focused on 12 getting something done or we've become so focused on 13 chasing metrics that we lose sight of what's going on. 14 Management systems that become so overly complex and 15 unreliable. And then measurement and recognition 16 systems that reward undesirable behaviors. It would be 17 very easy to refer to what's happened in the news over 18 the last years for which we've looked at all industries 19 that's had explosions. We can just go through there, 20 and I won't do that. 21 We've also had a discussion about culture and 22 where we would like to see culture. Now DuPont, I 23 think, put up a great slide, and it's pushed us for a 24 number of years. It's called the Bradley Curve. It 25 divides cultures work sites into three areas. It's 141 1 the natural instinct, the survival. They refer to it as 2 the dependent where it's very, very strong supervision. 3 Very, very strong work rules, very strong consequences 4 for not following those work rules. And we found in the 5 industry, not only in the mining industry, but in the 6 general industry that you can get a level of behavior. 7 And we've also seen some movement forth to where we 8 start having people have self-worth and they start 9 looking out and taking care of themselves and that 10 improves it. Then we've heard other about 11 interdependent team. 12 So what I'd like to do is take -- I only have a 13 couple of minutes left, but I'm going to talk. I want 14 to just mention to you as you're looking -- trying to 15 decide what to do, there is already a successful 16 program. This is the Voluntary Protection Program. You 17 mentioned it in your invitation to talk and present 18 information. It's an outstanding program that reaches 19 from contractors to small sites across many kinds of 20 industries. It's worked within the government. It's 21 worked at NASA. So across the board there is such a program. 22 And then it lists right out of their guidelines six 23 principles that are required. They just mirror what 24 you've talked about. 25 So what I want to do is ask you to take off 142 1 blinders. There is legislative underpinning in the 2 Department of Labor for a program that will work with 3 the folks like in here who haven't got outstanding 4 programs that can be used as pilot programs, as cutting 5 edge locations to do testing and define things. So when 6 you're writing one rule, consider the fact that your 7 sister agency, OSHA, already has something that 8 addresses the cutting edge, people who want to be on the 9 very forefront and want to share that passion with you. 10 It's there. I've heard the comments back, "Well, we're 11 a different standard. We're a strict liability," all 12 these reasons why we can't do things, but I believe that 13 the worker deserves the very best that we can give him. 14 And within the Department of Labor, it is already that 15 motto. And it forces the employee involvement. We're 16 all about people. At the end of the day, it's that 17 worker at the site of the work that we're trying to keep 18 from getting hurt. So anything you write that involves 19 employee, I believe will be an improvement. 20 So the last slide I have -- I promise you I'll 21 make this short. As you finish writing and deciding 22 what you're going to do, some traits that I would ask 23 you to consider and ask yourself, will this rule do 24 this? Will it encourage safer behaviors, identify 25 critical behaviors of examples of active caring or 143 1 desired behaviors? Does it help improve communication of 2 trends and issues to people? Does it help develop 3 awareness and skills in people and coaching? And does 4 it involve the workers in removing barriers to those 5 desired critical behaviors? I would just ask you to 6 consider those. 7 MS. SILVEY: Thank you. 8 Our next speaker is Mylon Stark. 9 Does he still -- is he here? 10 MR. STARK: I have more of a statement more than 11 anything else. 12 First of all, thank you for the opportunity. I 13 think this is a great gathering. My name is Mylon 14 Stark, as I said earlier. And I'm the director of 15 safety and training for Associated General Contractors 16 of South Dakota. We have approximately 300 member firms 17 that are a part of our group, and we have a separate 18 group within the group that we call the MSHA Alliance. 19 And all that means is that it's an allied group of 20 surface miners in the aggregate industry. 21 I'm speaking on behalf of that alliance and also 22 our organization. The concept of a standard for written 23 safety management programming is noble, and it's needed. 24 I think this is something that's been long overdue. 25 It's essential for MSHA to embrace a 144 1 partnership. I know that's been referenced today, and I 2 think it needs to continue to be referenced. We can't 3 let up on that. There needs to be a solid partnership 4 between the agency and with the stakeholders, including 5 the employers and their people. I'm a former regulator 6 myself with the Department of Labor, and I can speak to 7 that, that the most effective insights had as a 8 regulator was when I was aligned with and partnering 9 with the stakeholders of the agency. 10 The standard, whatever form it's going to take, 11 needs to establish roles and responsibilities at all 12 levels of manager and non-manager positions. That's 13 been very clearly stated today by several speakers. And 14 the standard I think that is -- or the aspect that's 15 really critical, and why I think where MSHA really needs 16 to go with how they're doing -- with what they're doing 17 is ensuring that we focus on the intent of the law and 18 not on the letter of the law and that we're genuinely 19 focusing on how do we protect miners, not how we do 20 something because the I's are dotted or the T's are 21 crossed. 22 I am pleased to see reference to both the 23 regulatory and consensus standards versus starting at 24 square one because there's a lot of stuff out there. 25 The last speaker, I think, nailed it as it relates to 145 1 VPP. I think that that's an absolute rock solid 2 foundation from which the standards can be built. 3 A concern that our organization has that relates 4 to this standard that will be developed is interface of 5 the program requirements within enforcement actions of 6 MSHA. So that the program is not a default failure. A 7 concern that we have is with the rules seemingly 8 changing if we go forward with yet another standard 9 that, in fact, people will build a program or refine a 10 program but during the course of what they're trying to 11 accomplish, the rules will change. Not formally but 12 informally. And that adds frustration and challenge to 13 the mine owners, operators and to their employees. 14 And a comment very simply -- as an affirming 15 comment -- AGC of South Dakota, even though we're part 16 of a national organization, our organization in South 17 Dakota, because we are so acutely and severely touched 18 by MSHA's activity, we're actually working with our 19 South Dakota congressional delegations as it relates to 20 mining in our state. All senators, one representative 21 because we're not a very popular state. 22 We're willing to actively participate in the 23 creation and implementation of a fair and effective 24 Safety and Health Management Program Standard. We will 25 do whatever we can with the resources we have to help 146 1 make this thing happen in a fair and equitable and 2 effective way. 3 MS. SILVEY: Thank you. Our last speaker we 4 have, hopefully, is -- 5 MR. LEAHY: John Leahy, L-e-a-h-y. I presently 6 work for Cal-OSHA, but that's not been the majority of 7 my career. I'm going to talk a little bit about 8 Cal-OSHA. 9 I agree that that VPP is probably a good basis, 10 but I suspect the IIPP of California Cal-OSHA, most of 11 our regulations are slightly rehashed or copied from 12 Federals because they have to be equal to or greater 13 than. So the Cal-OSHA IIPP may be a good basis. 14 I've given a copy to the chairman. Of course, I think 15 it could be modified, but I would like to be the only 16 one who can modify it. But it's a pretty good core 17 basis. 18 The rest of this is on my experience as a mining 19 management person. I've been everything from a surveyor 20 to president and chief operating officer. I've worked 21 with a manager of mine that have 12 or up to 3,300 22 people. 23 Safety can't come ahead of production. These 24 are just my views, not OSHA's views. Safety can't come 25 ahead of production because the safest thing to do is 147 1 not produce. And I liked Nancy's phrase. I used to say 2 they had to equal, but I'll steal Nancy's phrase, with 3 permission, I hope. Safe production is what's 4 important. 5 You were asking does safety have an effect on 6 production? This stuff has been around a long time 7 except the group doesn't talk about it. I, at one time, 8 was running 170-ton haul trucks -- a little smaller than 9 what we just heard -- downhill loaded and on 11, 12 10 percent grade. And we're having so many problems. I 11 put down a speed limit of 15 miles an hour per downhill 12 loading trucks. 13 To the normal mine management, to almost all 14 mine management, a speed limit on haul trucks is just 15 the wrong way to go. It's crazy. I don't have the 16 numbers exactly in my head anymore, but I'll be within 5 17 percent. I just have to tell you memory is not the 18 first thing that goes. 19 But truck availability went from around 58 up to 20 66. Tons had about a 12 percent increase. The cost per 21 ton dropped from 91 or 92 to 84. All based just on 22 decreasing speed limit. 23 Nancy was talking about morale in safety and 24 production. I say all three go together. If your 25 production is down, your morale and your safety are 148 1 down. I have graphed those. After I found out about 2 the change, I went back to a five-year period and 3 graphed incident rate, cost per ton and total tons 4 moved. They weren't exact but amazingly parallel. 5 Another comment I have is -- you'll think I 6 don't like corporate safety people. And that's probably 7 right by in large. But if you don't get safety and 8 production together, when they're separate and 9 production people have no safety responsibility, you 10 will not have a safety program. 11 I went to a mine specifically for the safety 12 purposes. They had not gone a quarter without a loss by 13 an accident for like six years. We turned it around in 14 six months by making the managers responsible for safety 15 and each worker responsible for himself and his partner. 16 Stop program said to stop, look, and listen for you and 17 I say stop, look and listen for you and your partner. 18 But we have -- I went up in weekly safely meetings. 19 People raised their hands, show me. What are you 20 looking for? Cuts and Band-Aids. 21 Before the supervisor went home, any injury, 22 smashed fingers had to have a written report on my desk. 23 The guy got disciplined for not giving that that day. 24 Merit raises, who knows what those are anymore. 25 The average is supposed to be eight percent. The guys 149 1 who had the most number of miner injuries, they got 2 five. The guys who got clean records, they got ten. 3 I'm saying the general manager is a lot better 4 safety person than a person who doesn't know how the job 5 goes. But he needs direction. He needs help from the 6 safety personnel. But the employees, they're not going 7 to listen to somebody that doesn't know how to drive a 8 truck. They'll listen, but -- they'll be polite, but 9 when you go out and do your site visit, jump up the 10 truck and show me how to drive this sucker or do you 11 want me to drive a couple of trips? The conversation 12 you get there is just amazing. 13 That's all I have. 14 MS. SILVEY: All right. Thank you. 15 Does anybody else here right now wish to make a 16 presentation? 17 (No audible response.) 18 MS. SILVEY: If nobody else wishes to make a 19 presentation, then, I want to say on behalf of the Mine 20 Safety and Health Administration that, again, we 21 appreciate your participation in this meeting. And I 22 want to reiterate that the comments on this rulemaking 23 initiative are due to MSHA by midnight December 17. 24 And, again, for those of you who may have 25 attended today and did not make presentation and you 150 1 heard the nature of the discussion, if you would like to 2 inform this rulemaking process, feel free to do so. 3 Again, we ask you for any data that you might have to 4 support your rationale. If you make suggestions to us, 5 data and rationale to support your suggestion. 6 When you know that the -- final meeting that we 7 have scheduled is in Pittsburgh on Thursday, October 8 14th. And at this point, this public meeting on safety 9 and Health and Safety Management Program is concluded. 10 Thank you very much. 11 (Hearing concluded at 1:06 p.m.) 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 151 1 CERTIFICATE OF CERTIFIED SHORTHAND REPORTER 2 3 I, JENNIFER F. MILNE, a Certified Shorthand 4 Reporter, licensed by the State of California, being 5 empowered to administer oaths and affirmations pursuant 6 to section 2093(b) of the Code of Civil procedure, do 7 hereby certify: 8 That the foregoing transcript constitutes a full, 9 true, and correct report of the proceedings which then 10 and there took place; 11 That I am a disinterested person to the said 12 action; 13 In witness whereof, I have hereunto subscribed my 14 signature on this 21st day of October, 2010. 15 16 17 ___________________________________ 18 JENNIFER F. MILNE 19 Certified Shorthand Reporter 20 California License #10894 21 22 23 24 25