SMART News

Puget Sound Area Safety Summit Vendor Fair

This is the best, free vendor fair of its kind in King County, so you want to be sure your company is represented at this event. This year's safety training, education and equipment event will be held on February 13th from 9:00am-noon.

Attendance for summit meetings averages 200 for the day--What a great opportunity to have your company show what safety training, equipment and technology product/s it has to offer as well as the benefits of your services.

An added attraction for vendors this year is 5 minutes of microphone time to make consumers aware of your services and value.

Your goal and ours is to have your product and services as widely known as possible. Don't miss this free marketing and advertising opportunity.

Space is filling up quickly, so please contact JC as soon as possible to reserve your spot. All reservations must be received no later than January 23rd, 2008. Call JC at
(206) 812-3824 or email jcalabrese@smartwa.org.

See you there!

Companies Win with KOS

You win three times with Kept-on-Salary*(KOS) policies and the new $1640 medical aid deduction on injured worker claims!! How??

When you maintain a claim free experience you reduce your experience factor which results in lower workers’ compensation premiums.

What does claim free experience mean? There are three funds from which the State Fund Workers’ Compensation benefits are paid from: The Accident Fund pays wage replacement costs as well as any permanent impairment benefits – The Medical Aid Fund pays for medical aid treatment as well as vocational rehabilitation costs – The Second Injury Fund pays for cost of living increases each July 1 for those workers who are being paid time loss benefits.

If no monies are paid out of the Accident Fund against your account for three consecutive fiscal years, you qualify for a claim free experience discount (Win #1). The discount could take your experience rate as low as 0.600. While you stay in that claim free experience you receive the $1640 medical aid deduction on each claim that is within that three fiscal year period (Win #2). Keeping an injured worker on salary if they are unable to work as a result of their injury keeps wage replacement costs from being paid out from the accident fund and may enable you to maintain your claim free discount (as long as there are no permanent impairment costs resulting from the injury) (Win #3).

Even if your company does not currently have a claim free discount, you still receive the benefit of the $1640 discount for medical only claims. Any payment of time loss in a claim--even for one day--forfeits the claim free discount.

Although the $1640 discount does not apply to the Retro program, every time you KOS and prevent L&I from paying time loss, you positively impact your Retro refund and your Retro group’s refund. Remember $1 of time loss is the equivalent of almost $3 in developed losses.

For more information about KOS, contact your Approach Management Representative or call Approach Management Services at (206) 626-0846.

*Keeping your worker on salary during their recovery means that you maintain their full salary as if the injury never occurred, thereby reducing costs paid out by Labor and Industries which ultimately impacts your rates. The hours for which the injured worker is KOS do not need to be reported on your quarter L&I report as that worker was not exposed to any hazard for those hours.

Personal Protective Equipment Prevents Injuries

Are you in compliance with the PPE requirements at your work place? Consider these items when reviewing your PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) program:

• Have you conducted a work place walk-through? Look for all existing hazards and potential hazards in all employees' work spaces and work place operating procedures.
• Consider engineering, administrative and/or work practice methods to control the hazards first.
• Identify those existing/potential hazards and tasks that require PPE.
• Select the appropriate PPE to match the hazards and protect employees.
• Communicate PPE selection to each at-risk employee and provide the PPE.
• Test employees to make sure they understand the elements of the PPE training.
• Follow up to evaluate the effectiveness of PPE use, training, policies, etc. against the hazards at your work place.

Following these simple guidelines will help you develop an effective PPE program and keep your employees safe and healthy. Remember, PPE is the last method of control but when fit correctly and used properly, it can help prevent a work place injury.

OSHA 300 Recordkeeping class

Did you know that some new establishments that were covered under the old rule will not be required to keep OSHA records under the new rule and some formerly exempted establishments will now have to keep records? Or that a "significant" degree of aggravation is now required before a preexisting injury or illness becomes work-related?

Get up-to-the-minute changes to the rules in an easy to understand format explained by a professional with 30+ years of experience. Using real-life scenarios, learn:

• Compliance rules and recordkeeping requirements
• Imposed penalties for non compliance
• Updates and changes from the previous requirements
• What kind of assistance OSHA will provide
• State and OSHA exemptions
• How to determine what is recordable and what is First Aid
• Classifying injuries and calculating incident rates
• Confidential records and posting requirements

Bring your specific cases to be discussed during the question and answer period. This valuable course is designed for administrative, safety and human resource professionals.

To Register click here or call us 206.812.3824.

Hard Hat Mirrors Save Lives

Work zone backovers in Washington State have spiked in numbers over the past ten years. In response, the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries enacted legislation to address the injuries and fatalities. Nationally, construction-worker pedestrian fatalities have been the highest percentage of work zone fatalities, averaging greater than 42% of all deaths over the last 10 years. For every death there are about 200 reported injuries requiring days off of work. The total cost of these injuries is well over a billion dollars per year. Washington addressed the high number of work zone incidents with RCW 49.17.350, which was an emergency standard for flaggers in work zones no later than March 1, 2001.

This RCW was fully adopted in July 2005 in Washington State under WAC 296-155-305 and requires protection from behind and adequate warning for flaggers. This standard has been loosely enforced and Washington is still on pace for the national fatality average. The standard requires one of the following safeguards:

• Provide an observer to watch out for backing vehicles.
• Use "jersey" barriers to protect the back of the flagger.
• Use a hard hat mounted mirror.

Using an observer is expensive and still does not eliminate fatalities. Adding an observer has been proven to increase the exposure to danger. One out of eight workers killed in back-up incidents was spotting at the time.

Concrete jersey barriers are also not only expensive to transport but logistically demanding on the work site - at best, especially if the work zone is a moving area or the traffic controller is required to relocate throughout the shift.

Proximity warning systems are in the early stages of development and have been tested with little success and appear to be very expensive.

The simplest, most cost-effective of the recommended solutions is a hardhat mounted mirror. These have identical benefits to side mounted mirrors on heavy equipment and are the only safety device that addresses the language in the RCW to “ensure that flaggers have adequate visual warning of objects approaching from behind them”.

Until recently, mirrors used as personal safety devices have only been available in the sporting goods industry for uses such as bicycle riders. These mirrors, although popular for cyclists, are not very compatible with hard hats, as they have to be glued on or fastened with double-sided tape. They were not designed for hard hats but they were the only thing available at the time. Even so, the benefits of having continual front and rear vision has made them a popular piece of safety equipment with workers on foot for the past few years. The greatest disadvantage to recreational bicycle mirrors is that they fall off of the hard hat and cannot be used again.

There is now a new mirror available specifically for hardhats. Safety Spotter hardhat mirrors are industrial grade, with a larger field-of-view and a mechanical attachment rather than cycling specific ones that are round or oval and are glued on.

Since Washington State’s adoption of the emergency legislation, the financial exposure of companies ignoring this safety precaution has significantly increased. There are no excuses for not providing some means of protection to traffic in work zones at a flagger’s backside.

To order your hard hat mirrors, please contact Brent Knight at Safety and Supply at bknight@safetyandsupply.com or (206) 313-1627.

3^rd Annual Safety Fest in the Northwest offers Free Safety Training

Washington Group International will sponsor a series of free training events for the contractors in Idaho, Oregon and Washington.

The conference, while focusing on Safety and Health each year, will emphasize Construction and General Industry.

On January 14^th, the topics will include sessions of OSHA 10-hour curriculums; construction, construction (Spanish), general industry, general industry (Spanish) and highway. On January 15^th-17^th, topics will include 2-hour, 4-hour, 8-hour and 16-hour sessions of forklift training, first aid/CPR/AED (in English and Spanish), accident investigation, OSHA recordkeeping, rigging, fall protection, Hazwoper refresher, Idaho Transportation Department insights, flagger training, introduction to traffic control, fleet safety, defensive driving, DOT hazardous material awareness, arc flash, master instructor, respiratory protection, supervisor reasonable suspicion, safety and design. Also, throughout the week, there is a 30-hour OSHA Standard for General Industry (OSHA 501) in English.

For participants to register and vendors wanting to display during the Trade Show, please click here.

Changes to Unemployment Benefits
By Barrett Parks
President of Penser NorthAmerica, Inc.

Several changes have been approved, by the State of Washington, regarding unemployment benefits. These changes involve qualification for benefits as well as the benefit amount payable to the recipient. The documentation of separation with an employee will determine how these changes will ultimately impact you.

Your unemployment rates are experience rated, similar to your L&I rates, and it is very important to control your claims exposure. Your unemployment tax rate is directly impacted by your unemployment losses. The changes in the laws and rules will have an impact on how you should be documenting separations with employees. This documentation is important whether it is a quit, discharge, leave of absence, or lay off due to lack of work. Proper documentation will be the key to lowering you unemployment rates.

Most of the changes have to do with qualification for benefits. One change has to do with the benefits amount being increased from $496 a week to $515 a week.

The other changes relating to benefit eligibility will impact you. Benefits have been made available to people who quit their jobs for marital or domestic reasons. Other changes have been made pertaining to eligibility of the disabled. Changes have also been made regarding people that quit their jobs for religious or moral beliefs.

New standards for misconduct have also been established. The new standards will alter the way an employer should be documenting discharges. Changes regarding discharges for tardiness have also been put into place. These changes mean that employers should be keeping track of all warnings given to employees too.

Alterations have also been made regarding employee quits pertaining to workplace safety and illegal activities in the workplace. These changes, along with many others, will become the focal point when eligibility is being decided by Employment Security. The end result is that it is your responsibility, as an employer, to document separations.

If you have any questions regarding these changes, please contact Barrett Parks, President of Penser NorthAmerica, Inc. at (360) 455-4128. A copy of the new laws can be supplied to you. The taxable wage increase will cause most employers to experience an 8.3% increase in their annual unemployment taxes. Click here to fill out a form and fax it to (360) 455-0377 to see how you will be impacted.

New I-9 Forms are Required

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the federal agency that enforces the employment verification requirements, announced that employers must use the revised Form I-9 no later than December 26, 2007. (All employers must verify that every new employee is either a U.S. citizen or authorized to be employed in the U.S. by filling out the Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, for each new employee. The form must be filled out within three days of hire and retained for at least three years, or one year after termination of employment if that time period is longer.)

The new I-9 form has been available since early November however, employers were given a transition period during which they would not be penalized for using the old form. That transition period will end on December 26, 2007.

Five documents have been removed from List A of acceptable documents including:

One document was added to List A of the List of Acceptable Documents:

• Unexpired Employment Authorization Document (I-766)

All Employment Authorization Documents with photographs have been consolidated as one item on List A:

• I-688, I-688A, I-688B, I-766

Instructions regarding Section 1 of the Form I-9 now indicate that the employee is not obliged to provide his or her Social Security number in Section 1 of the Form I-9, unless he or she is employed by an employer who participates in E-Verify.

For your convenience, a copy of the new form I-9 marked in the lower
right hand corner of the form as “Form I-9 (Rev. 06/05/07) N,” is available at here.