OSHA's Latest SHIPS Advises Shipyard Employers How To Provide Better Protection Against Rigging Hazards
The Occupational Safety & Health Administration recently released a new guidesheet with information and advice for shipyard employers whose workforce includes all-important riggers.
Riggers prepare ships' equipment and related items for lifting by cranes, hoists, and other machinery. Given the many heavy items routinely lifted and moved in the maritime shipyard environment, it's critical that riggers perform their job in a way that avoids exposing themselves and others to potentially life-threatening hazards. Improper lifts and rigging failures have injured maritime workers and cost lives.
As noted in the SHIPS, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act requires that employers meet safety and health standards and regulations issued by OSHA or by a state that has an OSHA-approved state plan. Employers also have a general duty to provide employees with a workplace free from recognized hazards likely to cause death or serious physical harm.
Thus, OSHA's new guidesheet emphasizes safe work practices while offering information to help keep riggers and their co-workers out of harm's way.
The SHIPS addresses in detail rigging hazards and best practices in the rigging process; discusses a variety of hazards specific to riggers and their co-workers, such as falls, electrical shocks, and several types of traumatic/acute injury; and reviews case histories as examples of what can go wrong in the rigging process, with analysis of each case, pictures illustrating unsafe practices, and recommended preventive measures that can help employers and their riggers avoid repeating others' injury-causing mistakes.
The SHIPS also provides links to computer-animated videos depicting shipyard accidents and identifying errors along the way. Employers also can find links to a variety of mini-posters for placement at jobsites, each highlighting a rigger safety practice as an important reminder to employees who work in the hazardous maritime shipyard environment.
The maritime personal injury attorneys at Arnold & Itkin LLP encourage shipyard employers to review the new SHIPS guidesheet in light of their current practices, and to work with their riggers to ensure that they are fully educated about the safety risks they face daily.
For a free consultation on a possible maritime injury claim, call our maritime accident lawyers toll free at (877) 632-8168 or contact us online. Our maritime injury attorneys can advise you on all aspects of maritime law, including the Jones Act, the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act, the principle of maintenance and cure and the Death on the High Seas Act.
We are skilled maritime accident trial lawyers and aggressive offshore injury attorneys for injured shipyard workers. We represent maritime victims in accident, injury and wrongful death claims. Our law firm secured more than $100 million in verdicts or settlements for our clients in 2009.
