Our Sites

Opioid usage, aging workers pose a threat to safety in the shop

FMA Safety Conference tackles these societal issues that affect almost all fabricators

Metal fabricators have a hard enough time just keeping up with customer demands on any given day. Trying to meet daily shipping deadlines with employees that are high or simply too old to keep pace doesn’t make things any easier. In fact, those types of employees, if left unchecked, could pose a safety risk to themselves and those around them.

Those were two of the discussion items that generated a lot of conversation with the safety professionals who attended the Fabricators & Manufacturers Association’s Safety Conference in Lexington, Ky., April 11-12. (Attendees also were able to enjoy a dinner, where winners of the FMA Annual Safety Awards were honored, and to take a tour of Toyota’s Georgetown, Ky., assembly and engine manufacturing plant.) The opioid epidemic and the graying of the U.S. population aren’t just societal trends dominating headlines and political discussions; these trends are affecting the manufacturing workforce, and fabricators are challenged with trying to take on these issues while maintaining productivity and keeping the workplace safe.

Taking on Opioid Abuse

Darrel Shankles, health and safety manager, PlayCore, Fort Payne, Ala., and chair of the FMA Safety Council, set the stage for discussing the opioid problem by illustrating just what drug abuse in general costs U.S. businesses:

  • The National Safety Council (NSC) found that health care costs for employees who misuse or abuse prescription drugs are three times higher than for an average person.
  • Because 80 percent of drug abusers support their addiction by stealing, many employers see an increase in workplace theft when dealing with these individuals.
  • Lost productivity and absenteeism at work because of drug abuse cost employers an estimated $25.5 billion each year.

“This is doing a lot of damage,” Shankles said.

The opioid epidemic takes this discussion to another level. Opioids are killing people at an ever-increasing rate. A person is now more likely to die from an opioid overdose than from being in a car crash, according to a recent NSC report. Based on 2017 data, a U.S. resident has a 1 in 96 chance of dying from opioid abuse, most likely from the synthetic drug fentanyl; that same person has a 1 in 103 chance of dying in a motor vehicle crash.

Research indicates that the overdose death rate related to opioids may have leveled off in recent years, but that still leaves overdoses at incredibly high rates. According to the Centers for Disease Control, opioids were involved in 47,600 overdose deaths in 2017, which accounted for about 67.8 percent of all drug overdose deaths. The U.S. had only 8,048 deaths from opioids in 1999.

Shankles said that one of the biggest challenges to fighting opioid abuse is understanding that it affects anyone, not just people who may be prone to bad decision-making. People can injure themselves, and that prescription for pain relief is often the springboard for a lot of these problems.

The increase in these types of pain-reliever prescriptions over the years coincides with the increase in opioid-related deaths. In 1992 doctors wrote 79 million prescriptions for opioid pain relievers, and in 2012 they wrote 217 million prescriptions.

“You aren’t going to go anywhere [in trying to address this in the workplace] until the people in the boardroom actually get on board in realizing that this affects the bottom line,” Shankles said.

He recommended that the best way a fabricating company can address this problem is to have strong drug policies and an employee assistance program that can help the individual with the drug addiction. Drug testing is a strong tool in trying to keep the workplace free of employees who may be impaired because of their drug abuse, and manufacturers recently got some good news about that.

Opioid usage, aging workers pose a threat to safety in job shops.

Opioid usage and the aging workforce put extra pressure on metal fabricating companies looking to maintain a safe work environment.

Eric Hobbs, an attorney with the workplace safety group of the law firm Ogletree Deakins, told the conference attendees that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recently switched its stance on post-incident drug testing, which was good news for those manufacturers that relied on the testing as part of their safety programs. This was a big change from the Obama-era OSHA.

During the Obama years, agency heads issued provisions stating that blanket post-incident drug testing could be viewed as a “retaliatory” act against people and dissuade them from reporting on-the-job injuries and illnesses. Hobbs said that OSHA officials of the previous administration recommended that “reasonable suspicion” needed to exist to conduct the drug test after an accident. Needless to say, most of the industry was left shaking their heads because an accident was often seen as being the incident that causes such suspicion.

In October OSHA issued new guidance. “They believe they can reinterpret the original interpretation [from the Obama-era rulemaking],” Hobbs said.

OSHA now says that post-accident drug testing is not prohibited under its Improve Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses regulation. The agency said that as long as employers conduct post-incident drug testing to promote workplace safety and health and not to penalize an employee for reporting a work-related injury or illness, they should feel confident in using drug testing as a safety tool.

Supporting the Aging Worker

The search for workers to fill manufacturing jobs in the U.S. is well-documented. One of the ways that metal fabricators are trying to keep up with an expanding manufacturing economy without being able to hire new employees is by relying on older workers. Even when these workers reach retirement age, they aren’t automatically looking to leave work behind.

Brian Roberts, assistant vice president, workers compensation and ergonomics, CNA Insurance, said that the demographic realities in the U.S. reveal a dramatically different workforce than the one that existed in 1990, when 33.4 million workers were over 50. In 2018, 64.2 million workers were over 50, and after a slight dip around 2030, that total will reach 69.4 million in 2050. Roberts added that by 2025, 17 percent of the labor force will be 65 years old.

“How are you going to address this? You aren’t going to be able to think outside of the box to come up with a solution. You are going to have to build a new box,” he said.

Older workers still can be valuable contributors in a manufacturing setting. They simply can’t be as productive as a younger counterpart. With age comes a decline in physical capabilities, such as strength, range of motion, speed of movement, and stamina. Roberts said that a 50-year-old worker likely has half the strength he did when he was 25.

“If I have a welder who works in awkward positions and the fatigue is high, how much production is that company losing?” he asked.

One safety professional in attendance told of how his company’s welding department had been hit with a string of rotator cuff surgeries. Key contributors were going to need months to recover and undergo therapy to get where they could do the job again.

FMA Safety Conference tackles societal issues like opioid abuse that affect almost all fabricators.

Pat Simon, FMA director of member services and education; Dan Smith, general manager, Tempel Steel; Chigozie Ikere, environmental, safety, and health manager, Tempel Steel; and Roger Wilson, assistant vice president and industry leader manufacturing, CNA Insurance, take a picture with the Rusty Demeules Award for Safety Excellence. The award is presented annually by FMA, sponsored by CNA, and created by FMA’s Safety Council to recognize a company with a demonstrated safety culture. The 2019 winner of the award is Tempel Steel, Chicago. The award is named in honor of Rusty Demeules, a metal fabricator who served as the president of the FMA Safety Committee from its inception in 1989 until 1996.

Roberts agreed by saying that welders particularly suffer from strain on their deltoid, trapezius, erecta spinae, and bicep muscles. As they get older, they can’t physically maintain the same productivity levels as previously, and they get more fatigued.

“How is the aging workforce going to address their fatigue levels? Passive exoskeletons,” Roberts said.

These passive exoskeletions, which weigh about 4 to 5 lbs. and slip onto the body like a backpack, use a system of cams and pulleys to support a worker’s shoulders and arms. (Active exoskeletons are powered by electric servomotors.) It helps to distribute forces from the arms, shoulders, and back to the body’s core.

Roberts said that Toyota has been testing these devices for more than a year and determined they were worth pursuing. In January it made the announcement that anyone on the shop floor who was engaged in work that required reaching overhead would get one of these exoskeleton devices.

Roberts added that CNA has just completed a beta test in which a welder wore the exoskeleton while conducting his work. Tests revealed that the welder experienced a 20 percent decrease in muscle usage when compared to a similar time period worked without the exoskeleton.

This type of muscle support allows a worker to reduce fatigue because muscle contractions are slowed over the course of a day, Roberts said. That helps an older worker contribute at a level that would not be possible otherwise.

If you might be interested in attending the FMA Safety Conference, participating in the FMA Annual Safety Awards program, or being a part of the FMA Safety Council, contact Nancy Hatten at 815-399-8700 or nancyh@fmanet.org.

About the Author
The Fabricator

Dan Davis

Editor-in-Chief

2135 Point Blvd.

Elgin, IL 60123

815-227-8281

Dan Davis is editor-in-chief of The Fabricator, the industry's most widely circulated metal fabricating magazine, and its sister publications, The Tube & Pipe Journal and The Welder. He has been with the publications since April 2002.