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Company recognized for plant safety effort

By FOSS FARRAR
Traveler Staff Writer

OSHA plant visits tend to make bosses and workers nervous. Not so on Thursday at the GE Aviation Services plant at Strother Field.

That day, everyone celebrated.

The area director of the U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety & Health Administration came to congratulate, not to censure. GE's two plants in Arkansas City and Winfield had become members of an elite group of plant sites that practice a rigorous safety program.

It is called VPP -- Voluntary Protection Program.

"VPP is an OSHA program that recognizes employers who go beyond OSHA requirements," said Judy A. Freeman, the OSHA area director out of Wichita.

The local GE plants are two of about 1,700 OSHA sites nationwide that have earned VPP status, Freeman said. That may not seem like such a big deal except that there are about eight million workplaces that OSHA regulates.

The two local plants are among only 18 VPP sites in Kansas, she said.

"OSHA often has to take a tough stand with employers that don't do enough to protect their employees, have poor safety records, and have high injury and illness rates," Freeman said. "(But) there is another side of OSHA: compliance assistance, cooperative programs."

The two local GE plants have worked off and on for about a decade to become a VPP site, said Tami Norwood, environmental health and safety manager in Winfield and Arkansas City.

"To us it means a commitment both of management and salaried personnel to work as one team for safety," Norwood said Thursday at a lunch celebration at the Strother Field plant.

"And we're bringing safety not just to the workplace, but employees are taking it home to their families," she said. "Once you get a safety culture at work you take it with you."

OSHA expects all the sites it visits to be compliant with all regulations, Norwood said. But to be a VPP site, a plant must "have a very robust safety and health program in place."

A VPP plant must have a low injury and illness rate. The local GE plants have achieved this with a 1.1 injury rate. That means one worker out of 100 is injured significantly enough to have medication or stitches.

"Last year we had 12 injuries," she said.

Freeman addressed hundreds of GE workers from both the Ark City and Winfield plants at the lunch. They ate hamburgers, hot dogs, chips, pop, watermelon and ice cream.

They also donated money to four charities.

GE workers voted to give $2,500 apiece to: the Jodi Sanderholm Scholarship Fund at Cowley College; the Ark City Salvation Army food pantry; Victory in the Valley, a Wichita organization that helps cancer survivors, and Feed the Families, a project organized by local GE worker volunteers to provide turkey dinners and gifts for children, to needy families at Christmas.

As workers lined up for lunch, a music video was played, showing celebratory plant activities that had taken place earlier in the week. For instance, on one day workers drove their vintage cars to the plant. On another, they wore their favorite sports apparel.

The lunch was repeated that night and early Friday for second and third shift workers. The two plants combined employ 950 workers.

The party is over now, but work on safety and health continues, Norwood said.

"In three years, OSHA will come back on our site to do a recertification inspection," she said. "They raise the bar on you and inspect even harder to make sure you are striving to improve health and safety programs."

Above: GE Aviation Services plant workers show a banner proclaiming the Strother Field plant a "Star Worksite" for its health and safety programs. The GE plant in Winfield also won the award. Shown are jet engine mechanics and inspectors, all members of the IUE-CWA Local 1004, from left, Eric Befort, Wayne Bradshaw, Danny Beard, Mike Kendall, Chad Gressel, Dale Luce and Randy Deiter.