>
> Safety experts say the Occupational Safety and
> Health Administration (OSHA) has fairly strong
> rules about working in confined spaces, but those
> rules apply only to "general service workers,"
> not construction workers.
I don't know where the AFL-CIO guy Steven Robinson is quoting got this from. For years I have been required to take OSHA-approved safety classes for confined spaces, open trenches and maintenance of traffic in order to do construction work. I even get a little laminated card I've got to carry around which tells me when I need to take a refresher class to learn the up-to-date regulations. I doubt my employer would have paid for all these rather expensive classes if they weren't required to by law. That might be a requirement by the state of Florida rather than a Federal regulation, though.
One thing I can tell you is that the rate of OSHA jobsite inspections is way the Hell down these last few years, gee I wonder how that happened.
On the plus side not only am I allowed by my employer but required - it's right there in the employee handbook - to pull my crew off a job site if someone there tells us we have to do some piece of work which violates OSHA standards, such as go down in a trench without adequate shoring and ladders, or climb into manholes without proper equipment. That's quite a change from when I first started surveying in 1978. Back then I went down manholes and even crawled through storm sewer pipes (not recommended for claustrophobes) hundreds of times with no safety equipment at all. Today you get a motorized ventilator fan and you wear a harness and cable and there's a guy up top with a hoist keeping an eye on you so if you do pass out he can crank you up out of the manhole like reeling in a fish.
Yours WDK - WKiernan at gmail.com