Posts Tagged ‘towers’

OSHA: No More Falling Workers

Tuesday, February 25th, 2014

In May 2012, we posted about the excellent Frontline – Pro Publica documentary report on on cell tower worker deaths: The high price for fast phones: Cell tower deaths. Since that time, the issue has gotten worse, not better. In 2013, there were 13 cell tower-related fatalities. In the first two months of 2014, there have already been 4 fatalities related to cell towers.
In response to these deaths, The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration is collaborating with the National Association of Tower Erectors and other industry stakeholders to ensure that every communication tower employer understands their responsibility to protect workers performing this high-hazard work. Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health David Michaels has issued a warning letter to Communication Tower Industry Employers reiterating these responsibilities.
In addition, OSHA has launched resources to focus on protecting cell tower employees in its No More Falling Workers initiative. It has created a new Web page – Communication Towers – targeting the issues surrounding communication tower work.
Education is great in as far as it goes, which isn’t all that far. The problems that plague the industry and the related deaths revolve around the unrelenting deadlines to complete towers to meet demand and the complex network of contractors and subcontractors that allow the tower owner to shrug off responsibility for any deaths.
Travis Crum of the Charleson Gazette echoes the problems found in the Frontline-Pro Publica report in his reporting about three West Virgina tower-related fatalities earlier this month: Company that owns collapsed Clarksburg cell towers had fatalities before

“These incidents seem likely to continue as cell companies push contractors and their employees to meet rising demand for 4G and 4GLTE data networks, said Randy Gray, a former OSHA inspector from Kentucky.”

“Gray said cellphone companies are racing to replace older 3G networks with 4G, or fourth-generation, networks. This rapid expansion places cell tower climbers at risk, Gray said, who now does private consulting on accidents and fatalities at cell tower sites.”

He also explains why it’s so difficult to hold the cell tower owners/networks responsible:

To make matters worse, Gray said, it’s difficult for OSHA to hold companies such as SBA responsible, because there’s a web of contractors and sub-contractors who often shield them from scrutiny.

OSHA investigators must prove several elements before citing a company, Gray said, one of them being knowledge of potential hazards.

“With the owner of the cell tower not being present at the time of the fatality, it’s hard to prove they had knowledge about what the employees were signing off on,” he said. “So these companies start layering themselves between the people who work on the ground, and this layering, in my opinion, protects them from possibly being cited by OSHA or being involved in OSHA inspections.”

So while it’s great that OSHA is warning employers and putting an emphasis on tower worker safety, it will serious accountability to drive the change.
Related:
Wireless Estimator tracks U.S. tower-related fatalities
13 Cell Tower Maintenance Workers Died on the Job in 2013
Cell tower worker fatalities continue: More than a dozen deaths since 2012
OSHA Urges Tower Employers to Protect Workers After Recent Spate of Fatalities
Cell Tower Deaths Get OSHA’s Attention
West Virginia Firefighter Killed in Secondary Collapse at Cell Phone Tower Rescue, Two Workers Also Dead

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Safety & Health | No Comments »

Fall protection at 1776 feet: One World Trade Center

Friday, July 26th, 2013

Acrohphobes, take note: this post is about working at extreme heights!

We spotted a jaw dropping video in our Twitter feed the other day — an engineer climbing the spire at the top of the One World Trade Center, a dizzying 1,776 feet. It’s a promotional video for a fall protection firm called Rigid Lifelines. It led us to more dramatic video footage of the tower completion and an interesting case history behind the safety engineering challenge that the tower construction posed, which is depicted in a dedicated website, Safe at 1776.

“A symbolic reference to the year America signed the Declaration of Independence. With its spire attached, the new World Trade Center became the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, and the third tallest building in the world. The 104-story super-scraper stands on the northwest corner of the 16-acre World Trade Center site, occupying the location of what used to be the original 6 World Trade Center.”

“To ensure the safety of workers who will perform routine maintenance atop the massive tower, builders, engineers, and the Port Authority partnered with Rigid Lifelines to design and supply 1,975 linear feet of total fall protection track, and the highest self-retracting lanyards in an occupied building. Rigid Lifelines designed two systems for the One World Trade Center building–a horizontal system for the rings and a vertical system for the spire. Each system was specifically designed to ensure that workers have 100 percent fall protection from the moment they leave the top floor to the moment they touch the flashing beacon light.”

 

We’re heartened to see this commitment to worker safety – see our prior entry You Think Your Job is Tough, which includes footage of a worker “free climbing” a 1,768 foot Antenna Tower. And on a related note, The high price for fast phones: Cell tower deaths, a Frontline and Pro Publica investigative video about cell tower worker deaths in a small industry with a death rate that is about 10 times the rate of construction. Accountability is hindered by the complex web of subcontractors on these jobs, allowing large network sponsors to deflect responsibility for fatalities.

These prior posts may also may be of interest:

 

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Safety & Health | No Comments »

The high price for fast phones: Cell tower deaths

Tuesday, May 29th, 2012

The boom in cell phones has spawned a huge demand for the building and maintenance of radio towers and that demand accelerated with the introduction of iPhones. The good news was that work proliferated – but under brutal, highly aggressive schedules. Now, with carriers gearing up for 4G networks, the anticipated building boom raises alarm in many seasoned workers – who see a proliferation of less trained, less experienced workers, working under more pressure for less pay – a recipe that points to the potential for more fatalities.

Frontline and Pro Publica focus on cell tower worker deaths, a small industry with a death rate that is about 10 times the rate of construction. Free climbing – climbing completely untethered without any safety gear – was involved in about half the deaths. (See our prior post with a gut-wrenching free climbing video clip: You think your job is tough? It remains one of this blog’s most visited posts.)

Tower work is carried out by a complex web of subcontractors – an arrangement that makes good sense on many levels, but that allows large carriers to deflect responsibility for on-the-job work practices – and for any workplace deaths. These networks are like like the Russian nesting dolls: layer after layer of progressively smaller employers. Tower owners are carriers like AT&T that hire firms such as Bechtel and General Dynamics to manage and complete tower projects. The industry jargon for these firms is “turf vendors.” The turf vendors then hire contracting firms, who in turn hire subcontractors. The end result: less money, less experienced workers, less training, less focus on safety and more deaths. This layering makes OSHA enforcement almost impossible. The lowest rung on the ladder is the one responsible for safety – and enforcement becomes what some industry observers call a game of “whack a mole.” Safety experts say that the responsibility for safety has to lie up the line, probably with the turf vendors.

Contract work and subcontracting is the new normal. The old contract between the employer and the employee is fraying, the concept of lifetime employment is increasingly a quaint tale of yesteryear. How this new normal will play out in terms of employee safety and employee protections should be of great interest to workers as this pattern proliferates in other industries. Even aside from politics, one has to wonder if the very concepts of workers compensation and OSHA — and other worker protections — would come into existence in a fragmented work environment like the current one.

Additional articles from the series
Transcript of a live chat with reporters and project manager for the Tower Climber Protection project. We note that the project manager is Wally Reardon, who commented on our prior post, linked above.)
Jordan Barab discusses OSHA limitations
How Subcontracting Affects Worker Safety

Tags: , ,
Posted in Safety & Health, Videos | Comments Off on The high price for fast phones: Cell tower deaths