We feel that logging injury prevention must focus on unsafe action as well as unsafe conditions, since unsafe actions probably account for 80 percent of the problem. Safety standards, enforcement activity, and safety training aimed only at the correction of unsafe conditions cannot be expected to make significant progress toward injury reduction in our industry.

We feel that the path to improvement lies in making safety the business of management-and by management, I mean the owner through to the line supervisor in larger organizations and with respect to logging the owner/line supervisor, since in the majority of cases in our business these functions reside in the same man. We feel it is not realistic to say that "safety is everybody's business" because "What everybody's business is nobody's business." You tend to get a "Let George do it" attitude and George is always out to lunch.

In Maine and Michigan two organizations of small logging operators are showing what can be done by management. These are selfinsurance groups which pool their worker's compensation premium, set injury reduction goals, and employ their own safety field man to police the program. It's working because the cost of coverage has been reduced to 60 percent of the State worker's compensation rate. Management has the responsibility and management can do the job! Thank you very much.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Rolston.

It is refreshing to have your attitudes here and to have your view of the obvious benefit that you see the law and the regulations of occupational safety and health, and its administration bringing to your industry.

Your philosophy is somewhat different than Mr. Wheaton's who preceded you. He does not subscribe to this necessary tension between Government and management.

It is interesting.

But I would say that the law recognizes that that happy millenium of total management dedication to safety in the workplace is not yet here and therefore there cannot be and you cannot expect there to be this happy day of consultation and cooperation, and everybody doing their business without some apprehension of threat of penalty if they do not.

Mr. ROLSTON. Russia is the only place I've seen where you do not have a conflict between government and industry and labor, because there is not any difference. It is all one big company.

The CHAIRMAN. This has been very, very helpful.

In this case, the consensus standards seem to be working well. In other areas where consensus standards are too broad

Mr. ROLSTON. Or too cosmetic.

The CHAIRMAN. They do not work as well and therefore they have to be streamlined down to focus on the particular activity.

In your industry, they were prepared just prior to OSHA, and were directed specifically to logging.

Mr. ROLSTON. Thank you very much.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Excellent.

We will have to recess for 10 minutes. I hate to do this to our friends from the American Cast Metals Federation.

The CHAIRMAN. We will turn to the American Cast Metals Federation.

STATEMENT OF CHARLES T. SHEEHAN, VICE PRESIDENT, GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS, CAST METALS FEDERATION, WESTCHESTER, ILL., AND ARTHUR K. MANN, VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER, RIVERSIDE FOUNDRY DIVISION, DONSCO, INC., WRIGHTSVILLE, PA.

Mr. SHEEHAN. My name is Charles T. Sheehan.

I am vice president of the Cast Metals Federation, which is an organization comprised of five trade associations representing segments of the foundry industry.

Accompanying me is Arthur Mann, vice president-general manager, Riverside Foundry Division of Donsco, Inc., in Wrightsville, Pa.

Mr. Mann is a member of the federation's OSHA Committee.

We welcome and appreciate this opportunity to appear before the subcommittee this morning to express our concerns about present OSHA programs and to offer recommendations for improving these programs to give the American worker more efficient and effective safety and health programs.

We have submitted a detailed statement representing the federation's position.

I will give you a summary of that statement now. The summary is a little longer than I would like it because I do not want to cut into the time that Mr. Mann would have to give his remarks or comments, so possibly I will capsulize the summary.

A profile of the foundry industry appears in our formal statement. To capsulize, the industry includes 4,400 units. I'm a little different than Mr. Wheaton, I have many bosses, so I have to be careful about what I have to say.

But like Mr. Wheaton, we will discuss the problem of what we consider harassment, but on an industry basis rather than individual company basis.

The industry produces 18 million tons of castings annually with a value of more than $20 billion and employs 400,000 workers.

Basically, it is a business of small industry with 80 percent of American foundries employing less than 100 persons.

We feel that no responsible person can take issue with, or object to, the objectives of regulatory safety and health programs. The concern of many employers and employees with OSHA is that it is ineffective based on its own record, very costly, without results, and therefore inflationary.

I have seen figures which indicate that it has cost $11 billion to administer OSHA, and industry has spent to date $25 billion to comply with OSHA standards.

Yet without proven results. OSHA's adversary enforcement policies have widened the division between citizens and their Government. At a meeting of the Cast Metals Federation early this year where

approximately 200 foundrymen were represented, Mr. Basil Whiting of OSHA asked how many foundrymen had been inspected by OSHA

once.

Everybody in the room raised their hand. About 60 percent had been inspected twice and 40 percent three times. Some foundrymen volunteered that they had been inspected four or five times.

The foundry industry has felt the impact of OSHA through inspections, penalties, fines, and extensive expenditures for abatement or compliance. At the same time there has been little reduction in the injury or severity frequency rate for this industry which could be directly attributable to the efforts of OSHA. Results from the health or hygiene area are more difficult to assess at this early stage. Generally, however, it is the industry view that OSHA ignores cost and energy effectiveness in establishing health standards, some of which are based on questionable data.

OSHA also insists an engineering approach to meeting these standards to the point of requiring expensive and extensive litigation before giving way to the argument of economic infeasibility. If there is one common attitude within our industry, it is that of scrubbing the present OSHA and all of its programs and starting over. This will be said to be impractical and a waste of money and time, but when one considers the money and time being spent now in an attempt to make an unworkable concept viable, this idea of starting from the beginning merits consideration.

In starting over we suggest that OSHA's timetable to establish regulations and standards be restated in the form of goals and objectives. That is, the directive to OSHA would be one of achieving a gradual reduction in accident and injury rates over a period of years along with similar incremental improvements in hygiene or health levels; that such be accomplished with the primary emphasis on consultation and education with the major motivating factors in the form of incentives for both employers and employees.

Of necessity, there would have to be standards and regulations, but such would be adopted after thorough study and analysis, including energy and economic cost-effective studies. Fines and penalties would be assessed only for willful violation of standards and not for technical violations, which is the policy prevalent today.

Examples of such incentive programs are included with our formal statement. They require dedication. They illustrate what can be accomplished when companies stop spending time, money, and effort in preparing plants for an OSHA inspection and concentrate on working with and through their employees to improve their safety records and workplace conditions.

In November 1975, foundries were named as the object of OSHA's first national emphasis program [NEP].

Our formal statement contains a blow-by-blow description of this ill-conceived program.

According to reports from OSHA the national emphasis program has been dropped, although OSHA will continue to inspect about 30 foundries per month. OSHA also says the nature of its inspections will be modified, but from what we have been hearing, foundry inspections are still of the "wall-to-wall" variety.

A critical objection of the foundry industry regarding OSHA inspections, whether of the NEP variety or not, has been the inconsistency or uneveness of the inspections. Some are conducted in a professional manner, with a commonsense approach. Others are conducted in a punitive "nitpicking" mode with as many violations as possible found-and with as many of these rated as "serious" violations as the book allows.

The degree of overzealousness will vary depending on the attitude of the particular area director and, in some cases, on the attitude of individual inspectors. The decision to eliminate 1,100 nonrelevant OSHA standards does not deal with the basically unworkable problem of attempting to base a safety and health program primarily on enforcement of standards.

Effective workplace safety and health is good business. But the businessman must consider cost aspects of all phases of his business. Foundries have been spending 20 percent of total capital expenditures for OSHA required equipment. With OSHA's recent emphasis on health standards, substantial additional expenditures will be required.

We are not equating human life with costs. We are simply recognizing economic facts of life hoping to better utilize funds expended to attain safer workplace environments.

Our industry's alternative suggestion to the current OSHA approach would be to place responsibility for employee safety and health on the employer with the Federal Government providing positive incentives and assuming a supportive, educational, and research role rather than an adversary role. Here is how such an approach might work:

First: Require each employer within a reasonable period to establish a current and specific risk analysis of his workplace and all jobs involved by investigations designed to determine specific causes of each illness and injury.

Second: Each employer could then develop a tailored occupational safety and health program expressed in terms of objective criteria such as specific injury or illness reductions to be achieved in a stated time period and with specific programs to be implemented subject to regional OSHA office review, comment and approval.

Third: The employer would also submit the program to OSHA for acceptance. A review board composed of safety and health professionals and industry and labor representatives would be empowered to adjudicate any conflicts. Once accepted, the program would be reviewed periodically for its effectiveness in reducing incidence rates.

Fourth: The program would essentially contain comprehensive training for hourly and supervisory personnel involving job safety analyses, stipulating standard job procedures, and specifying potential hazards to be avoided. Investigations to determine specific causes, reporting, and recordkeeping, and implementation procedures—all internal-for corrective measures would be required.

Fifth: Upon acceptance of an employer's program-and if semiannual or annual reports to OSHA demonstrated satistifactory performance the continued acceptance of the plan would follow without need for compliance inspections so long as an annually

improving trend was demonstrated or the employer remained in the upper quarter with respect to incidence rates for his industry and size of business.

Sixth: Employers with poor safety and health records in the lowest-worst-quarter or bottom half compared with similar organizations would receive OSHA inspections and consultation-not citations or fines-and would be required to amend their program where analysis of specific causes or poor implementation showed such a need. Fatalities, hospitalization of five or more employees, or employee complaints would require a visit by an OSHA compliance official. Willful failure to perform in accordance with the accepted program would result in fines or appropriate legal action to cause compliance.

This procedure would eliminate the manpower, time, and cost of compliance investigations except for those establishments specifically identified as substandard.

Costs to public and private sectors would be tremendously reduced because useless and wasteful activities and expenditures now addressed to meeting often meaningless standards would not be required. For industry, a results-oriented program with cooperation and help, not a grim adversary enforcement program sterile of useful results, would be achieved.

For labor, an effective, dynamic, progressive results-oriented program that improves with time would result.

For Government, it would provide a manageable program harnessing the best voluntary effort and expertise of industry directed toward improved safety and health performance.

That completes this suggested program and recommendations of the Cast Metals Federation.

Our one concern over this approach, is that it might get into the bureaucratic area with forms being required for different types of programs introduced, but a commonsense approach, we feel, is a much superior alternative to what we now have.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I would turn to Mr. Mann for his comments before we get to questions.

The CHAIRMAN. We appreciate your statement very much, Mr. Sheehan. It shows a lot of thought. It is very constructive and very creative.

We will discuss it a little bit further if time permits.

Mr. MANN. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, my name is Art Mann.

I thank you for the opportunity to speak. Some of my comments. may overlap Mr. Sheehan's.

I am vice president and general manager of the Foundry Division. of Donsco, Inc., of Wrightsville, Pa. We employ 450 people in four separate plants. We are in the business of casting and machining iron and aluminum parts for valves, engines, pumps, outdoor lights, electrical fittings, machine tools, hardware, electrical motors, gears, and gear boxes.

You and I agree on the aim of OSHA, that the American worker should have a safe and healthy place in which to work. We disagree on how to accomplish it. After 7 years OSHA has created confusion, resentment, and resistance while producing mediocre results at best.