The U.S. petrochemical industry has disputed the findings in a John Gray Institute study that criticized safety and health training for direct hire and contractors' workers at plants.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration commissioned the study following a November 1989 Phillips 66 Co. plant explosion near Houston. The report recommended sweeping improvements in safety training (OGJ, Aug. 12, p. 95).
Gerard Scannell, OSHA administrator, told a House government operations subcommittee hearing the agency plans to issue a final rule on its process safety management standard early in 1992.
He said OSHA has increased petrochemical industry enforcement, investigating six plants and opening an off ice in the Houston area. And before the end of the year, OSHA will propose a rule requiring plant-wide recordkeeping.
Scannell said, "The injury and illness rates for the petrochemical industry have traditionally been lower than the general industry average.
"One possible reason for this is that petrochemical employers keep records only for their direct hire employees, while statistics for contract employees are kept by each contracting firm. This has resulted in an inaccurate measure of the severity and frequency of injuries and illnesses in individual plants and in the industry."
LABOR'S VIEW
Robert Wages, president of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union, charged the petrochemical industry obstructed the study so much it is "an absolute miracle" that this report was able to reach the conclusions it did.
Wages said, "Contracting is far more prevalent than the Gray report lets on. The most serious shortcoming of the study is its failure to come right out and say that the contract work system is inherently inferior when it comes to safety. It goes all around this point without nailing it ... They were right that labor relations are lousy and that they are an obstacle to the resolution of the contractor safety issue."
INDUSTRY'S RESPONSE
The Chemical Manufacturers Association complained about the methodology and analysis in the report.
"For example," CMA said, "the study failed to establish-despite assertions to the contrary-any link between the use of contractors and major process accidents or show any direct relationship between the use of contractors and process safety performance. Yet, in no small way, the report makes a number of recommendations for solving problems it did not substantiate."
CMA said two Gray Institute conclusions are untrue: that the use of contract workers has grown significantly and that the direct hire workforce has declined.
"We strongly disagree with the notion that plant employees and contract workers must receive identical or uniform safety and skills training, regardless of the jobs they perform."
Eugene McBrayer, Exxon Chemical Co. president, said, "We have analyzed our incident data and find no linkage between the use of contractors and the cause of incidents. In addition, Exxon Chemical data show no increasing trend in the use of contractors relative to direct hires the past 15 years."
Brown & Root Industrial Services Inc. Pres. Lawrence Pope, claiming the study failed to link accidents with increasing use of contract employees, said, "Despite these limitations, the authors proposed numerous sweeping reforms on the apparent premise that contract employers, as a class, are incapable of providing adequate safety training to their employees. To paint all contractors with such a broad brush is unjustified."
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