A New Spate of Deaths In the Wireless Industry 247
onehitwonder writes "The race to build out advanced cellphone networks in the U.S. has contributed to a spike in deaths among tower workers, making this one of the industry's deadliest years and drawing fresh scrutiny from federal regulators, according to The Wall Street Journal. At least 10 workers have died in falls from communication towers so far this year, and three more were seriously injured. The accidents, nine of which were related to cellphone network work, come during one of the biggest building booms in years, as Sprint Corp. and T-Mobile US Inc. ramp up major network upgrades in an attempt to catch up with Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc."
And the carriers duck responsibility... (Score:5, Interesting)
A Frontline documentary [pbs.org] last year noted that tower work is done by small contracting companies that allow the big carriers to duck all responsibility, while pushing the firms to build so fast that safety gets shortcutted. Worth watching.
Safety harness... (Score:5, Interesting)
...there for a reason.
From TFA: "Constantly attaching and reattaching a safety harness as climbers move about the tower can cut into speed." and "One project manager said crews are working 12- or 16-hour days and, when they get tired, forget to clip on safety lines or clip them on improperly."
So then the important question is whether the company is inducing this, or are the workers bringing on themselves? What I mean is, what are the comapnies policies? Are they good policies? Are they being ignored by workers trying to get more hours (for a bigger paycheck)? Do the companies even adress such things as maximum hours worked for fear of fatigue/safety? Is there pressure from the company to work more hours with fewer people?
I bring up the workers cause at my company there are people who wouldn't hesitate to work 16 hours days for the bigger check, and have actively fought agaisnt hiring more people because it would cut into their overtime as it is. luckily fatigue here isnt really going to be fatal; just cuts into profits.
Personally, if it's my life on the line, I got no interest in meeting the big guy this early in my existence. My debts arent so bad that I need to risk my life to pay them off. And when I interviewed for a job working on wind turbines (that I ended up turning down the offer for when it came) one of my first questions was about their safety policies, along the lines of the questions i posed above.
Re:We're from OSHA (Score:5, Interesting)
From what I understand, the problem is that OSHA cannot easily enforce existing safety standards because of the way the business of Cell phone tower work is structured.
The parent company, say AT&T, hires a contracting house to oversee all tower related projects which, in turn, hires hundreds of small contractors, many of which are less than 10 employees, to do the actual tower climbing.
The small companies are often the lowest bidders and, as a result, operate with a very thin profit margin and cut corners on safety in order to maximize profit. Couple this with the heavy pressure to complete projects in a very fast time frame and you have a recipe for disaster that regulators cannot really get a handle on.
Sure, OSHA can shut down any number of the small contractors, but they will just be replaced. AT&T, at the same time, can pay lip service to safety all they want but their hands are clean since they can just point to the contracting agency they hired to oversee their towers.
Obviously, there needs to be some more political will to regulate things closer to the top of the chain, I just wonder how many people need to die in order to generate that will.
Why federal regulators? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why not state regulators? Not everything is a federal responsibility.
Re:That's why you should use wired networks (Score:5, Interesting)
How many people have died crashing into a telephone pole?
I think more then 10.
Re:We're from OSHA (Score:5, Interesting)
You're on the money, but it is worst than that.
These jobs used to be all in house (at AT&T and Verizon anyway). Too many people fell and died, and they paid out too much money. They laid off everyone doing this sort of work, and turned to outsourcers for the reasons you stated. Some of the contractors submitted proposals with references to safety standards and were told to take them out of the proposals, that was their problem and AT&T wanted to know nothing about it.
This problem is also wider than cell phone tower deaths. AT&T in particular outsources many of it's jobs to small contracting companies, making sure none of them are more than 10-20 people. Why? They don't pay overtime. They are hourly positions with no time and a half. The small contracting companies can't force that in their contracts with AT&T, but have to do what they are told if they want the business. Several have been sued by their employees and gone under. Mean time AT&T moves on to other contractors. It's effectively an easy way for AT&T to insure they never pay overtime to hourly workers by burning up small companies.
Re:Safety harness... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a ham, so I spend a lot of time climbing my own towers. (You couldn't pay me enough to do it for a living.) In my experience, when planning a job, I figure anything that takes one hour on the ground takes four hours in the air, at least for me. I also am careful to "do the same thing the same way every time". for example, when repositioning my work positioning belt, I use my right hand to unclip and move the left belt clip. Repeating a motion drives it into muscle memory so that mistakes are less likely to happen. I can tell you that I still goof once in a while (there are certain operations, like moving my positing belt, that I always double check.) Occasionally, I work with another man on the tower, which would be common for pros. The added distraction of having another person with you can cause you to forget steps. If you add some time pressure, its easy to forget to double check steps.
I've met pro tower riggers. I hire pros for work that is outside my comfort zone. They free climb much more than I would, but I'm a chicken and rig a 100% contact lifeline for most jobs. I suspect most accidents don't come from the free climbing phase of the work, because there your mind is focused on just climbing. I'd guess that accidents happen when you think you are solidly positioned with work belt, and actually are mis-rigged. I always lean into a work belt before letting go with my hands just to make sure there isn't any surprise slack. Sometimes there is....
So, nobody is perfect -- everybody forgets steps for things they've done many times. Tell me you've never started your coffee maker without coffee in it, at least once. That's a good rule to remember in the air, especially if there are any distractions or unusual circumstances. Time pressure works against doing all those double checks.
One tool I have that I've never seen a pro use is a temporary life line. I have a line that I rig to the top of the tower on the first trip up, and tie off at the bottom. A trailing clutch grip that follows me up, but requires being gripped to slide down is always attached. Once in that rig, I'm never disconnected from the tower. It's not good for work positioning, and if I ever slip I'm still a yo-yo swinging on a 3 foot string, so I'll collect a nice set of bruises from banging into the tower, but the trip to the ground will be deferred. The pros that have seen that usually comment to the effect that it must slow me down a lot. I. Don't. Care.
Reminds me of a video (Score:5, Interesting)