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UNION SAFETY EFFECT

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Union reverses car plant’s unsafe route

A General Motors plant that had one of the group’s worst accident rates achieved a dramatic safety turnaround thanks to union know-how.

Dr Phillip J Franklin, plant medical director at the General Motors' Saturn assembly plant in Wilmington, Delaware, told a safety summit at Georgetown University that the plant always had a high rate of recordable injuries.

"In fact, we had one of the worst recordable injury rates among General Motors assembly plants," he said.

Franklin said when he arrived at the company in 1999, injured workers were just referred for medical attention and advice. This changed in June 2001, when two members of the autoworkers’ union UAW, one with training in ergonomics and the other in safety, were added to the evaluation team.

Under the new system, employees seeking medical treatment were also interviewed by the UAW accident team. "It was a real eye opening process that not only fixed the issues, but also helped us to understand them," Franklin said. "It helped us to get ahead of the curve, to fix the problems once and for all, instead of a Band-Aid approach that 'fixed' the problem temporarily."

The injury rate dropped from 19 to 3.5 per 100,000 person hours worked in less than a year. Franklin estimates the plant is saving as much as $500,000 (£318,400) per year in medical and production costs.

Risks 102, 19 April 2003