The low LME and high electricity prices have forced many plants to
either close or cutback on the workforce across the globe. This uncertainty of
a plant’s future brings about a level of stress that can have a negative effect
on plant safety. We’ve chosen to omit the company name and location in this
story because the Aluminium Plant Safety Blog has seen this situation
reproduced many times before and we feel that it would serve no purpose to name
the company nor location. Here is a recent story.
Uncertainty over the future of an aluminium smelter apparently
led to an increase in accidents at the facility in recent months.
“(The smelter) did see far too high a number of incidences in
May and June versus their history and versus our expectations,” company CEO told
analysts during a conference call recently. The CEO said the higher number of
accidents are “evidence to me at the stress of our people in this uncertain
situation.”
The smelter had been pegged for closure because of high
electricity costs. But, last month a new power agreement will keep the plant
open at least through next year, but at reduced capacity that cost hundreds of workers
their jobs late last year.
The CEO did not go into detail about the accidents, and the
plant’s manager, could not be reached for comment. The safety issues were not
present at the aluminium companies other plants the CEO said.
“It’s important to remember that all our plants continued to
perform significantly better than industry norms, but as you see we did lose a
little bit of momentum in a couple of key places,” The CEO said of the
company’s recent safety record. “We remain committed to an environment of zero
serious injuries in the company, and, thus, we’re continuing to invest in this
most important area.”
Production has improved at the smelter since the first of the
year, the CEO said, with workers overcoming some of the instability seen in the
months after the layoffs and shutdown of one of the plant’s two pot lines.
“You can see that’s been corrected, so excellent work there,” he
said.
We commend the aluminium company management, and plant personnel for
acknowledging that the uncertainty of the long term future could be a factor in
the increase of incidents this past summer. We cannot underestimate the stress
that the workers, plant management, and nearby communities are dealing with at
this time. We pray that the market conditions change that will allow this as
well as many other smelters to stay open.
We pray that all of the workers concentrate on putting aside those
worries while they are performing their tasks. All too often incidents arise
when a worker is not concentrating solely on the task at hand. Then the worker
either skips steps, makes assumptions or forget to follow their training resulting
in an injury or fatality to themselves or worse to a coworker. Why is worse if
a coworker is injured or killed? Because the guilt associated with that never
ends. Workers have told us about their guilt for either causing an incident or
not preventing an incident. Their guilt if not treated with counseling can
overtime become unbearable. That is why we tell workers that worse than
themselves become injured or killed is if they injure or kill a coworker.
Because that guilt never ends. We normally end the presentation then leaving
that thought in the worker’s minds.
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