Rather it is being digitized here and now.
I have been slow to catch on. Six months ago I didn’t know a tweet from a twit. Then I learned a bit about Twitter and thought tweeters are twits. Now I tweet every day. To go from writing 1200-word editorials to 140-character tweets has been a paradigm change. That’s OK, we’re all in for a paradigm change.
For a long time I thought Facebook was a teenage wasteland. Now I send Facebook news updates every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I believed LinkedIn was for self-promoters. Of course it is. So what? Now I’m caught up in the numbers game — how many contacts can I add to my network?
It’s a brave new world, these social “nets.” Especially if you’re over 45 years old. According to “Twitter Usage in America: 2010,” the Edison Research/Arbitron Internet and Multimedia Study, 35 percent of 45-54-year-olds currently have a personal profile page on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn or any other social networking web site. That compares to 77 percent of 18-24-year-olds, 65 percent of those between 25-34 years old, and 51 percent of the 35-44 crowd.
For safety and health professionals, so many of them baby boomers in the 45+ demographic, to use social nets is to venture where few of their peers have gone before. Most safety and health pros, cautious and conservative by nature (hallmarks of being safety conscious, after all), have not exactly jumped at the chance to “join the conversation,” as social nets love to advertise.
Free to choose
On our website is an open invitation to “join the conversation” and provide feedback, comments, opinions to my blogging and the news of the day. Consider this response:
“Oh gawd Dave... you've imbibed the millennial Kool-Aid. I have been fighting the rope pulling me into Facebook and so far have maintained my freedom. Social networking can be a ‘cancer’ in that it spreads rapidly and there is no real cure other than amputating the PC/laptop from the clutches of the fingertips.
“Don't let the new age rule your life. As Chloe said in the final seconds of "24," ‘SHUT IT DOWN.’
“Smell the coffee, hug the kids and wife and go walk the dog and breathe the polluted Philly air. THAT is what really matters.”
Now that is excellent blog material. Too bad he’s “fighting the rope.”
I also received this response:
“I keep getting requests to join associates’ groups etc., have done that, but have found few who actually utilize the network to any extent. Most say something like, ‘everyone else is in so I got in!’ I too must get better acquainted with the tools available. Thanks for giving us all (or at least those who are uninitiated to date) a little push.”
Consider this column a nudge.
“Inherit the future”
At least keep an open mind. Philosopher and one-time longshoreman Eric Hoffer: "In times of great change, it is the learners who inherit the future."
And to quote another philosopher, Bob Dylan, “The times, they are a-changin’.” Newspapers across the nation are folding faster than beach umbrellas before a storm. Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, Rolling Stone are pathetically thin. Evening newscasts are hanging on to the AARP crowd. Every other commercial is for a prescription med.
Dylan again: “Something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?”
Mr. Jones, with “his pencil in his hand” is a reporter. How prophetic. Many so-called “Mainstream Media” journalists stubbornly scorn social nets. The Babel of bloggers and blowhards.
Yet… in 2009, social net usage spiked to 57.6 percent of the total U.S. Internet population to 127 million users, according to projections from eMarketer. By 2014, social nets will reel in 65.6 percent of all Internet users, 164 million people.
Something is happening when Deepwater Horizon Response has 28,323 fans on Facebook. The official site of the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command has embraced social nets like a teenager, not a bunch of bureaucrats: Breaking news is sent via Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, Technorati, StumbleUpon, email and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds.
“There’s something happening here…”
Something is happening when, just on LinkedIn alone:
● The American Industrial Hygiene Association networking group has 1,491 members;
● EHSQ Elite has 12,108 members;
● The American Society of Safety Engineers has 3,787 members;
● The Society of Corporate Compliance & Ethics has 2,640 members;
● The Environment Health & Safety Professionals group has 9,127 members;
● The Safety Training group has 1,016 members;
● The Green group has 84,090 members.
Something is happening when the Green group discussion on “Is global warming finally being exposed for what it is?” elicits 3,949 comments.
To be sure, the overwhelming majority of discussion group members consist of a vast tribe called the “lurkers.” Lurkers passively follow and read the updates of others without contributing updates or comments of their own. This is no different than the audience at any professional conference. In a room of say, 500 people, how many walk to a mic stand to ask a question or offer a comment during the Q&A? We are a silent majority of lurkers. The social nets merely reflect human nature.
Come out of your silo
Maybe you have nothing to contribute to the conversation. But don’t miss out on the conversations occuring on the social nets. It is here that you learn what’s on the minds of your peers. What the issues of the day are. You’ll relate to some of the gripes and complaints. You’ll find some comments self-aborbed, specious, ridiculous.
That’s no excuse for dismissing the revolution in communication. This isn’t a fad. There’s no turning back. According to the Arbitron study: Eighty-four percent of the U.S. population has Internet access. Six in seven homes with Internet access have broadband connections. Dial-up is so 20th century. More than six in ten homes with Internet access have a wireless (Wi-Fi) network set up. In 2008, 24 percent of the populations had a personal profile page on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, et al. In 2010, 48 percent have some type of profile page.
There’s a novelty effect here, no doubt. But folks by the millions are not going to wake up one morning bored with social nets, re-up their newspaper and magazine subscriptions and throw a life preserver to Katie Couric. It’s about the day-to-day pace. The times they are a-movin’ fast. We want to know what’s going on, right now, on demand, not tomorrow morning or next week.
So as you check in with ISHN’s daily Twitter updates, Facebook and LinkedIn updates, and daily e-news posts and blog accounts on our website, look at it this way: We’re not trying to ‘rope you in;’ we’re reflecting the revolution. And overturning paradigms is not for lurkers. Engage. Write a comment. Far too many blog posts show goose eggs in the comment column. The story is not just the facts of who, what, where, when and why. It includes how people react to the news. How they form communities. Hello Tea Party. Combustible Dust Policy Institute Group. Travel Media Pros. Writing Mafia. Find your niche. Be part of the story. Who wants to be Mr. Jones?
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Summer of discontent
President Obama’s approval rating as the summer got underway: 46 percent were in favor of how he was directing affairs, 45 percent were not, according to Gallup. We are conflicted about the man. But approval of his leadership is trending definitely down. At one point in the past year, 61 percent were positive about the President.
“Conflicted” is being diplomatic to describe how many Americans feel about leadership in general these days. It’s been a sour attitude a long time festering. In the past few years we’ve endured the worst recession in 80 years. Wall Street’s embarrassment of riches. The BP debacle, the country’s worst environmental disaster and a human tragedy. Afghanistan, now the nation’s longest-ever war.
Dr. Martin Seligman, the guru of positive psychology, is perhaps the only person smiling.
Gloomy Gallup reports
Gallup reported in early summer that “slightly more” Americans believe good, quality jobs are for the taking. That’s generous. Gallup's June finding: a whopping 85 percent of Americans believe it is a "bad time" to find a "quality job." Overall, reported Gallup, “the total lack of optimism about the prospects of finding a quality job in June 2010 is consistent across ages, incomes, genders, and regions of the country.”
A “total lack of optimism.” Then there are other recent Gallup surveys: “Worry, Sadness, Stress Increase With Length of Unemployment.” “Fewer Americans Feeling Better About Their Financial Situation.” “Many Americans Say Gulf Beaches, Wildlife Will Never Recover.”
Wicked collision
Under these dark clouds Democrats on Capitol Hill have launched the most concerted effort in 40 years to reform federal occupational safety and health laws. If enacted, OSHA and MSHA fines will increase. Criminal penalties will be stiffer, enticing more attorneys to prosecute members of management, including EHS professionals for willful negligence causing serious employee injuries or deaths.. Meanwhile, over at the Department of Labor, OSHA chief Dr. David Michaels and deputy Jordan Barab are leading: 1) the biggest surge in agency enforcement since the 1970s, with record-setting fines; 2) the most ambitious standards-setting agenda since the ‘70s; and 3) development of perhaps the most sweeping single regulation in agency history, the so-called I2P2, the injury and illness prevention standard.
The irresistible political force coming out of Washington is slamming into an immovable wall of discontent. It’s a wicked collision.
“We are determined to put sharper teeth in our workplace safety laws and to step up federal enforcement,” said Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat and chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.
“Sharper teeth in our workplace safety laws and stepped up federal enforcement as Harkin states, WILL NOT improve safety and health management. People will do everything they can to avoid being penalized,” writes longtime safety and health consultant Ted Ingalls in an email.
“Bad actors have put profits before people,” blogs the AFL-CIO.
“I am not willing to trust the OSHA political appointees with the power” that would be granted the agency with the I2P2 standard, says safety consultant Tom Lawrence.
Where’s the trust?
Speaking of trust, that essential leadership element, what black hole did it get sucked into? The Tea Party grassroots insurrection, or whatever the mainstream media is calling it, has been created and is flourishing in a void of trust.
Too many businesses can’t be trusted, according to those who want a stronger OSHA and MSHA. “We have seen too many accidents over the last few months in workplaces across the country,” said Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) in a statement supporting the need for OSHA and MSHA reforms.
OSHA’s Dr. Michaels doesn’t trust the accuracy of industry’s injury and illness recordkeeping across the board. “In too many cases in this country, workplace safety incentive programs are doing more harm than good by creating incentives to conceal worker injuries,” he told the American Society of Safety Engineers’ national meeting in June.
Of course the oil industry isn’t deemed trustworthy after the BP catastrophe and a series of plant explosions. Here is OSHA’s Barab addressing the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association’s National Safety Conference in May: “Bluntly speaking: Your workers are dying on the job and it has to stop.”
Anything but empathy
In the absence of trust, you get bluntness, blame, anger, anything but empathy. You get current national dialog. Glen Beck. Hilda Solis’s “new sheriff in town.” The “small people” along the Gulf. Broken Promises. A general and his aides blabbing to Rolling Stone.
You get deep division over OSHA actions: I2P2 as the best move OSHA ever made or a Trojan Horse for an ergo rule. OSHA is fighting for the working man and woman or it is a police state.
It was 15 years ago, in 1995, that Daniel Goleman’s book, “Emotional Intelligence,” was wildly popular. “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” Stephen R. Covey’s book that has sold 15 million copies in 38 languages, dates back to 1989. Remember interdependence? Wrote Covey: “People who do not have the maturity to think and act interdependently may be good individual producers, but they won't be good leaders or team players.”
What planet did those books come from? That idealism seems of a different century, which of course it was. Pre-9/11. Before the housing, auto industry, 401K meltdowns.
Pre-occupied with self-esteem
“Empathetic Communication in High-Stress Situations” is the title of Dr. Peter Sandman’s timely web post from earlier this summer (www.psandman.com/col/empathy2.htm). “I think it’s unusually hard for my clients to sit still for empathy training,” wrote Sandman, the internationally-known risk communications expert.
And the problem is? Leadership’s pre-occupation with self-esteem, writes Sandman. Think General McChrystal. Tony Hayward. LeBron James. Our cultural obsession with being liked, more than respected.
In an interview this summer with the London newspaper, The Guardian, Judith Hackitt, chair of the United Kingdom’s Health and Safety Executive (think of a publicly-funded, apolitical OSHA) comes across as the definition of an occupational safety and health professional. Self-esteem takes a backseat to personal convictions. “Certainly, the belief and strength of purpose that Hackitt brings to the job is evident,” writes The Guardian. “She also admits to having ‘difficulty’ with negativity. ‘I’m not terribly sympathetic to the all-too-difficult brigade,’ she says firmly.”
“There are no flies on Judith,” says one colleague in the article. That’s a British compliment. A sign of leadership.
The flies are out in force this summer. All over the likes of McChrystal, Hayward, “King” James. How many are on you?
“Conflicted” is being diplomatic to describe how many Americans feel about leadership in general these days. It’s been a sour attitude a long time festering. In the past few years we’ve endured the worst recession in 80 years. Wall Street’s embarrassment of riches. The BP debacle, the country’s worst environmental disaster and a human tragedy. Afghanistan, now the nation’s longest-ever war.
Dr. Martin Seligman, the guru of positive psychology, is perhaps the only person smiling.
Gloomy Gallup reports
Gallup reported in early summer that “slightly more” Americans believe good, quality jobs are for the taking. That’s generous. Gallup's June finding: a whopping 85 percent of Americans believe it is a "bad time" to find a "quality job." Overall, reported Gallup, “the total lack of optimism about the prospects of finding a quality job in June 2010 is consistent across ages, incomes, genders, and regions of the country.”
A “total lack of optimism.” Then there are other recent Gallup surveys: “Worry, Sadness, Stress Increase With Length of Unemployment.” “Fewer Americans Feeling Better About Their Financial Situation.” “Many Americans Say Gulf Beaches, Wildlife Will Never Recover.”
Wicked collision
Under these dark clouds Democrats on Capitol Hill have launched the most concerted effort in 40 years to reform federal occupational safety and health laws. If enacted, OSHA and MSHA fines will increase. Criminal penalties will be stiffer, enticing more attorneys to prosecute members of management, including EHS professionals for willful negligence causing serious employee injuries or deaths.. Meanwhile, over at the Department of Labor, OSHA chief Dr. David Michaels and deputy Jordan Barab are leading: 1) the biggest surge in agency enforcement since the 1970s, with record-setting fines; 2) the most ambitious standards-setting agenda since the ‘70s; and 3) development of perhaps the most sweeping single regulation in agency history, the so-called I2P2, the injury and illness prevention standard.
The irresistible political force coming out of Washington is slamming into an immovable wall of discontent. It’s a wicked collision.
“We are determined to put sharper teeth in our workplace safety laws and to step up federal enforcement,” said Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat and chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.
“Sharper teeth in our workplace safety laws and stepped up federal enforcement as Harkin states, WILL NOT improve safety and health management. People will do everything they can to avoid being penalized,” writes longtime safety and health consultant Ted Ingalls in an email.
“Bad actors have put profits before people,” blogs the AFL-CIO.
“I am not willing to trust the OSHA political appointees with the power” that would be granted the agency with the I2P2 standard, says safety consultant Tom Lawrence.
Where’s the trust?
Speaking of trust, that essential leadership element, what black hole did it get sucked into? The Tea Party grassroots insurrection, or whatever the mainstream media is calling it, has been created and is flourishing in a void of trust.
Too many businesses can’t be trusted, according to those who want a stronger OSHA and MSHA. “We have seen too many accidents over the last few months in workplaces across the country,” said Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) in a statement supporting the need for OSHA and MSHA reforms.
OSHA’s Dr. Michaels doesn’t trust the accuracy of industry’s injury and illness recordkeeping across the board. “In too many cases in this country, workplace safety incentive programs are doing more harm than good by creating incentives to conceal worker injuries,” he told the American Society of Safety Engineers’ national meeting in June.
Of course the oil industry isn’t deemed trustworthy after the BP catastrophe and a series of plant explosions. Here is OSHA’s Barab addressing the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association’s National Safety Conference in May: “Bluntly speaking: Your workers are dying on the job and it has to stop.”
Anything but empathy
In the absence of trust, you get bluntness, blame, anger, anything but empathy. You get current national dialog. Glen Beck. Hilda Solis’s “new sheriff in town.” The “small people” along the Gulf. Broken Promises. A general and his aides blabbing to Rolling Stone.
You get deep division over OSHA actions: I2P2 as the best move OSHA ever made or a Trojan Horse for an ergo rule. OSHA is fighting for the working man and woman or it is a police state.
It was 15 years ago, in 1995, that Daniel Goleman’s book, “Emotional Intelligence,” was wildly popular. “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” Stephen R. Covey’s book that has sold 15 million copies in 38 languages, dates back to 1989. Remember interdependence? Wrote Covey: “People who do not have the maturity to think and act interdependently may be good individual producers, but they won't be good leaders or team players.”
What planet did those books come from? That idealism seems of a different century, which of course it was. Pre-9/11. Before the housing, auto industry, 401K meltdowns.
Pre-occupied with self-esteem
“Empathetic Communication in High-Stress Situations” is the title of Dr. Peter Sandman’s timely web post from earlier this summer (www.psandman.com/col/empathy2.htm). “I think it’s unusually hard for my clients to sit still for empathy training,” wrote Sandman, the internationally-known risk communications expert.
And the problem is? Leadership’s pre-occupation with self-esteem, writes Sandman. Think General McChrystal. Tony Hayward. LeBron James. Our cultural obsession with being liked, more than respected.
In an interview this summer with the London newspaper, The Guardian, Judith Hackitt, chair of the United Kingdom’s Health and Safety Executive (think of a publicly-funded, apolitical OSHA) comes across as the definition of an occupational safety and health professional. Self-esteem takes a backseat to personal convictions. “Certainly, the belief and strength of purpose that Hackitt brings to the job is evident,” writes The Guardian. “She also admits to having ‘difficulty’ with negativity. ‘I’m not terribly sympathetic to the all-too-difficult brigade,’ she says firmly.”
“There are no flies on Judith,” says one colleague in the article. That’s a British compliment. A sign of leadership.
The flies are out in force this summer. All over the likes of McChrystal, Hayward, “King” James. How many are on you?
Summer of discontent
President Obama’s approval rating as the summer got underway: 46 percent were in favor of how he was directing affairs, 45 percent were not, according to Gallup. We are conflicted about the man. But approval of his leadership is trending definitely down. At one point in the past year, 61 percent were positive about the President.
“Conflicted” is being diplomatic to describe how many Americans feel about leadership in general these days. It’s been a sour attitude a long time festering. In the past few years we’ve endured the worst recession in 80 years. Wall Street’s embarrassment of riches. The BP debacle, the country’s worst environmental disaster and a human tragedy. Afghanistan, now the nation’s longest-ever war.
Dr. Martin Seligman, the guru of positive psychology, is perhaps the only person smiling.
Gloomy Gallup reports
Gallup reported in early summer that “slightly more” Americans believe good, quality jobs are for the taking. That’s generous. Gallup's June finding: a whopping 85 percent of Americans believe it is a "bad time" to find a "quality job." Overall, reported Gallup, “the total lack of optimism about the prospects of finding a quality job in June 2010 is consistent across ages, incomes, genders, and regions of the country.”
A “total lack of optimism.” Then there are other recent Gallup surveys: “Worry, Sadness, Stress Increase With Length of Unemployment.” “Fewer Americans Feeling Better About Their Financial Situation.” “Many Americans Say Gulf Beaches, Wildlife Will Never Recover.”
Wicked collision
Under these dark clouds Democrats on Capitol Hill have launched the most concerted effort in 40 years to reform federal occupational safety and health laws. If enacted, OSHA and MSHA fines will increase. Criminal penalties will be stiffer, enticing more attorneys to prosecute members of management, including EHS professionals for willful negligence causing serious employee injuries or deaths.. Meanwhile, over at the Department of Labor, OSHA chief Dr. David Michaels and deputy Jordan Barab are leading: 1) the biggest surge in agency enforcement since the 1970s, with record-setting fines; 2) the most ambitious standards-setting agenda since the ‘70s; and 3) development of perhaps the most sweeping single regulation in agency history, the so-called I2P2, the injury and illness prevention standard.
The irresistible political force coming out of Washington is slamming into an immovable wall of discontent. It’s a wicked collision.
“We are determined to put sharper teeth in our workplace safety laws and to step up federal enforcement,” said Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat and chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.
“Sharper teeth in our workplace safety laws and stepped up federal enforcement as Harkin states, WILL NOT improve safety and health management. People will do everything they can to avoid being penalized,” writes longtime safety and health consultant Ted Ingalls in an email.
“Bad actors have put profits before people,” blogs the AFL-CIO.
“I am not willing to trust the OSHA political appointees with the power” that would be granted the agency with the I2P2 standard, says safety consultant Tom Lawrence.
Where’s the trust?
Speaking of trust, that essential leadership element, what black hole did it get sucked into? The Tea Party grassroots insurrection, or whatever the mainstream media is calling it, has been created and is flourishing in a void of trust.
Too many businesses can’t be trusted, according to those who want a stronger OSHA and MSHA. “We have seen too many accidents over the last few months in workplaces across the country,” said Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) in a statement supporting the need for OSHA and MSHA reforms.
OSHA’s Dr. Michaels doesn’t trust the accuracy of industry’s injury and illness recordkeeping across the board. “In too many cases in this country, workplace safety incentive programs are doing more harm than good by creating incentives to conceal worker injuries,” he told the American Society of Safety Engineers’ national meeting in June.
Of course the oil industry isn’t deemed trustworthy after the BP catastrophe and a series of plant explosions. Here is OSHA’s Barab addressing the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association’s National Safety Conference in May: “Bluntly speaking: Your workers are dying on the job and it has to stop.”
Anything but empathy
In the absence of trust, you get bluntness, blame, anger, anything but empathy. You get current national dialog. Glen Beck. Hilda Solis’s “new sheriff in town.” The “small people” along the Gulf. Broken Promises. A general and his aides blabbing to Rolling Stone.
You get deep division over OSHA actions: I2P2 as the best move OSHA ever made or a Trojan Horse for an ergo rule. OSHA is fighting for the working man and woman or it is a police state.
It was 15 years ago, in 1995, that Daniel Goleman’s book, “Emotional Intelligence,” was wildly popular. “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” Stephen R. Covey’s book that has sold 15 million copies in 38 languages, dates back to 1989. Remember interdependence? Wrote Covey: “People who do not have the maturity to think and act interdependently may be good individual producers, but they won't be good leaders or team players.”
What planet did those books come from? That idealism seems of a different century, which of course it was. Pre-9/11. Before the housing, auto industry, 401K meltdowns.
Pre-occupied with self-esteem
“Empathetic Communication in High-Stress Situations” is the title of Dr. Peter Sandman’s timely web post from earlier this summer (www.psandman.com/col/empathy2.htm). “I think it’s unusually hard for my clients to sit still for empathy training,” wrote Sandman, the internationally-known risk communications expert.
And the problem is? Leadership’s pre-occupation with self-esteem, writes Sandman. Think General McChrystal. Tony Hayward. LeBron James. Our cultural obsession with being liked, more than respected.
In an interview this summer with the London newspaper, The Guardian, Judith Hackitt, chair of the United Kingdom’s Health and Safety Executive (think of a publicly-funded, apolitical OSHA) comes across as the definition of an occupational safety and health professional. Self-esteem takes a backseat to personal convictions. “Certainly, the belief and strength of purpose that Hackitt brings to the job is evident,” writes The Guardian. “She also admits to having ‘difficulty’ with negativity. ‘I’m not terribly sympathetic to the all-too-difficult brigade,’ she says firmly.”
“There are no flies on Judith,” says one colleague in the article. That’s a British compliment. A sign of leadership.
The flies are out in force this summer. All over the likes of McChrystal, Hayward, “King” James. How many are on you?
“Conflicted” is being diplomatic to describe how many Americans feel about leadership in general these days. It’s been a sour attitude a long time festering. In the past few years we’ve endured the worst recession in 80 years. Wall Street’s embarrassment of riches. The BP debacle, the country’s worst environmental disaster and a human tragedy. Afghanistan, now the nation’s longest-ever war.
Dr. Martin Seligman, the guru of positive psychology, is perhaps the only person smiling.
Gloomy Gallup reports
Gallup reported in early summer that “slightly more” Americans believe good, quality jobs are for the taking. That’s generous. Gallup's June finding: a whopping 85 percent of Americans believe it is a "bad time" to find a "quality job." Overall, reported Gallup, “the total lack of optimism about the prospects of finding a quality job in June 2010 is consistent across ages, incomes, genders, and regions of the country.”
A “total lack of optimism.” Then there are other recent Gallup surveys: “Worry, Sadness, Stress Increase With Length of Unemployment.” “Fewer Americans Feeling Better About Their Financial Situation.” “Many Americans Say Gulf Beaches, Wildlife Will Never Recover.”
Wicked collision
Under these dark clouds Democrats on Capitol Hill have launched the most concerted effort in 40 years to reform federal occupational safety and health laws. If enacted, OSHA and MSHA fines will increase. Criminal penalties will be stiffer, enticing more attorneys to prosecute members of management, including EHS professionals for willful negligence causing serious employee injuries or deaths.. Meanwhile, over at the Department of Labor, OSHA chief Dr. David Michaels and deputy Jordan Barab are leading: 1) the biggest surge in agency enforcement since the 1970s, with record-setting fines; 2) the most ambitious standards-setting agenda since the ‘70s; and 3) development of perhaps the most sweeping single regulation in agency history, the so-called I2P2, the injury and illness prevention standard.
The irresistible political force coming out of Washington is slamming into an immovable wall of discontent. It’s a wicked collision.
“We are determined to put sharper teeth in our workplace safety laws and to step up federal enforcement,” said Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat and chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.
“Sharper teeth in our workplace safety laws and stepped up federal enforcement as Harkin states, WILL NOT improve safety and health management. People will do everything they can to avoid being penalized,” writes longtime safety and health consultant Ted Ingalls in an email.
“Bad actors have put profits before people,” blogs the AFL-CIO.
“I am not willing to trust the OSHA political appointees with the power” that would be granted the agency with the I2P2 standard, says safety consultant Tom Lawrence.
Where’s the trust?
Speaking of trust, that essential leadership element, what black hole did it get sucked into? The Tea Party grassroots insurrection, or whatever the mainstream media is calling it, has been created and is flourishing in a void of trust.
Too many businesses can’t be trusted, according to those who want a stronger OSHA and MSHA. “We have seen too many accidents over the last few months in workplaces across the country,” said Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) in a statement supporting the need for OSHA and MSHA reforms.
OSHA’s Dr. Michaels doesn’t trust the accuracy of industry’s injury and illness recordkeeping across the board. “In too many cases in this country, workplace safety incentive programs are doing more harm than good by creating incentives to conceal worker injuries,” he told the American Society of Safety Engineers’ national meeting in June.
Of course the oil industry isn’t deemed trustworthy after the BP catastrophe and a series of plant explosions. Here is OSHA’s Barab addressing the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association’s National Safety Conference in May: “Bluntly speaking: Your workers are dying on the job and it has to stop.”
Anything but empathy
In the absence of trust, you get bluntness, blame, anger, anything but empathy. You get current national dialog. Glen Beck. Hilda Solis’s “new sheriff in town.” The “small people” along the Gulf. Broken Promises. A general and his aides blabbing to Rolling Stone.
You get deep division over OSHA actions: I2P2 as the best move OSHA ever made or a Trojan Horse for an ergo rule. OSHA is fighting for the working man and woman or it is a police state.
It was 15 years ago, in 1995, that Daniel Goleman’s book, “Emotional Intelligence,” was wildly popular. “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” Stephen R. Covey’s book that has sold 15 million copies in 38 languages, dates back to 1989. Remember interdependence? Wrote Covey: “People who do not have the maturity to think and act interdependently may be good individual producers, but they won't be good leaders or team players.”
What planet did those books come from? That idealism seems of a different century, which of course it was. Pre-9/11. Before the housing, auto industry, 401K meltdowns.
Pre-occupied with self-esteem
“Empathetic Communication in High-Stress Situations” is the title of Dr. Peter Sandman’s timely web post from earlier this summer (www.psandman.com/col/empathy2.htm). “I think it’s unusually hard for my clients to sit still for empathy training,” wrote Sandman, the internationally-known risk communications expert.
And the problem is? Leadership’s pre-occupation with self-esteem, writes Sandman. Think General McChrystal. Tony Hayward. LeBron James. Our cultural obsession with being liked, more than respected.
In an interview this summer with the London newspaper, The Guardian, Judith Hackitt, chair of the United Kingdom’s Health and Safety Executive (think of a publicly-funded, apolitical OSHA) comes across as the definition of an occupational safety and health professional. Self-esteem takes a backseat to personal convictions. “Certainly, the belief and strength of purpose that Hackitt brings to the job is evident,” writes The Guardian. “She also admits to having ‘difficulty’ with negativity. ‘I’m not terribly sympathetic to the all-too-difficult brigade,’ she says firmly.”
“There are no flies on Judith,” says one colleague in the article. That’s a British compliment. A sign of leadership.
The flies are out in force this summer. All over the likes of McChrystal, Hayward, “King” James. How many are on you?
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