Tag Archives: workplace safety

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NFL Admits Game’s Link to Concussion Risk

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football

After years of denying that the game of football could have caused degenerative brain disease in some players, the National Football League has finally admitted there is a link connecting the game to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). According to the New York Times:

Representative Jan Schakowsky, Democrat of Illinois, asked during a round-table discussion about concussions whether “there is a link between football and degenerative brain disorders like CTE,”

Jeff Miller, the NFL’s senior vice president for health and safety policy, said, “The answer to that is certainly, yes.” His response signaled a stunning about-face for the league, which has been accused by former players and independent experts of hiding the dangers of head injuries for decades.

Miller’s comments were backed the next day by league spokesperson Brian McCarthy. Miller’s answer may actually help the NFL, as “It could make it harder in the future for a player to accuse the league of concealing the dangers of the sport,” the Times said.

“Strategically, the NFL’s admission makes a world of sense,” Jeffrey A. Standen, dean of the Chase College of Law at Northern Kentucky University, told the Times. “The league has paid a settlement to close all the claims previous to 2015. For future sufferers, the NFL has now effectively put them on notice that their decision to play professional football comes with the acknowledged risk of degenerative brain disease.”

While CTE has been found in former players, the NFL has for decades denied the danger, even after researchers with Boston University announced in 2014 that, in autopsies of 79 brains of former NFL players, 76 tested positive for CTE. A report in 2003 by the Center for the Study of Retired Athletes at the University of North Carolina found a connection between concussions and depression among former professional football players.

According to a 2007 UNC study, Recurrent Concussion and Risk of Depression in Retired Professional Football Players:

Our observed threefold prevalence ratio for retired players with three or more concussions is daunting, given that depression is typically characterized by sadness, loss of interest in activities, decreased energy, and loss of confidence and self-esteem. These findings call into question how effectively retired professional football players with a history of three or more concussions are able to meet the mental and physical demands of life after playing professional football.

The NFL has directed millions of dollars to research of CTE and head trauma and it gave $45 million to USA Football to promote safe tackling and reassure parents that football’s risks can be mitigated through on-field techniques and awareness, the Times said.

New York City Mandates Bathroom Access Consistent with Gender Identity

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transgender bathroom accessThis week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio signed an executive order requiring city agencies to ensure all employees and members of the public can use the restrooms or locker rooms consistent with their gender identity, protecting transgender and gender non-conforming individuals from discrimination in public facilities.

“Every New Yorker should feel safe and welcome in our city—and this starts with our city buildings,” de Blasio said. “Access to bathrooms and other single-sex facilities is a fundamental human right that should not be restricted or denied to anyone. New York City is proud to enforce one of the strongest human rights laws in the country, which protects the rights of transgender and gender non-conforming individuals to live freely and with respect.”

Under the new measure, effective immediately, individuals will not have to provide identification or other proof in order to access bathrooms at any city-owned building, including city offices, public parks, playgrounds, pools, recreation centers and certain museums. It does not require agencies to build single-stall restrooms or locker rooms, though as OSHA noted over the summer in its guidelines on provisions for transgender employees, access to single-occupancy gender-neutral facilities is a safe, easy way to ensure compliance with workplace safety and nondiscrimination policies.

Ensuring a safe and compliant workplace for transgender employees is an increasingly urgent concern for risk managers of public entities and private enterprise alike. The OSHA guidelines, executive orders issued by President Barack Obama, and other emerging guidance from labor-related agencies make clear that federal and state governments are issuing more protections for transgender individuals, and the enforcement actions and reputational damage pose significant risk.

As I reported in the September issue of Risk Management, the president’s April executive order banned federal contractors who do more than $10,000 a year in federal business from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Such federal contractors employ more than 20% of the American workforce—28 million workers. The Office of Personnel Management has issued a comprehensive guide for these entities to best ensure that they are compliant and treating all employees with dignity and respect while preventing discrimination in the workplace.

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OPM also called for all federal agencies to review their anti-discrimination policies as well.

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In addition to restroom access, other issues addressed—and likely to face increasing scrutiny—include employment practices such as hiring and promotion, and the consistent use of preferred pronouns, the subject of a recent EEOC ruling against the Department of the Army.

“One of the encouraging things we’re seeing is that people are not waiting for the laws to change,” said Victoria Nolan, risk and benefits manager at Clean Water Services, who draws upon both her professional background and personal experience to offer private consulting services on transgender and diversity issues in the workplace. “There are companies that are being proactive. In some cases, for example, companies that are functioning in multiple states realize that it is extremely difficult to have a variety of offices and just comply with state law, so they are starting to look at the probable end results and move in that direction now.”

While many issues regarding transgender rights continue to spark controversy in legislatures across the country, almost all of the nation’s 20 largest cities have state or local laws allowing transgender people to use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity. As CBS reported, Houston voters debated—though ultimately defeated—an ordinance that would have established nondiscrimination protections for gay and transgender people, while just last week, South Dakota’s governor vetoed a bill that would have made the state the first in the U.S. to approve a law requiring transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that match their sex at birth rather than their gender identification.

Following our previous coverage, “Developing a Strategy for Transgender Workers,” there will also be a hot topic session of the same name at the upcoming RIMS Annual Conference and Exhibition in San Diego. Led by Victoria Nolan and employment attorney Liani Reeves, the session will take place on Monday, April 11.

NYC Crane Collapse Part of a Troubling Trend

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NYC Crane Collapse

Last week’s crane collapse in Lower Manhattan, which killed one person and injured three others, has heightened focus on crane safety, resulting in stricter rules for operators. The 565-foot crane toppled as it was being secured against high winds as a safety precaution.

More than 140 firefighters responded to the disaster in addition to police officers and utility workers who were there in case of gas leaks or other damage caused by the impact.

Mayor Bill de Blasio called for an investigation and instituted new safety policies effective immediately, while ordering that 376 other crawler cranes and 53 larger tower cranes currently operating in the city also be secured. The new rules require crawler cranes to cease operations and go into safety mode when there is a forecast for steady wind speeds of at least 20 miles per hour, or gusts of at least 30 m.p.h. Previously, cranes were allowed to operate until measured wind speeds reached 30 m.p.h. or gusts increased to 40 m.p.h.

“I want people to hear me loud and clear: We’ve had some construction site incidents that are very troubling,” de Blasio said at a news conference. “We have more and more inspectors who are going to get on top of that. We’re going to be very tough on those companies.”

He added, “We’ll send advisories to crane engineers when wind conditions warrant it, and engineers will be required to certify that they will indeed cease operations. If we don’t receive this certification, we will be issuing violations and we will raise the base penalty for failure to safeguard a site from the current $4,800 to $10,000.”

While construction in the city has increased over the past two years, the New York Times reported that the rise in deaths and injuries has exceeded the rate of new construction, that supervision at building sites was often lacking, and that preventative safety steps were not being taken.

Indeed, the list of incidents involving cranes has grown to eight since 2008, according to ABC News and the Associated Press.

— March 2008: A nearly 200-foot-tall crane fell as it was being lengthened in a neighborhood near the U.N. headquarters, demolishing a townhouse and killing six construction workers and a tourist. The crane rigger was tried and acquitted of manslaughter. An inspector accused of falsely saying he had checked the crane days before it toppled was acquitted of charges related to the collapse but convicted of falsifying inspection records related to other cranes.

— May 2008: A tower crane snapped, fell apart and crashed into a Manhattan apartment building, killing the crane operator and a construction worker on the ground. The crane owner was acquitted of manslaughter. A mechanic pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide. Together, the 2008 collapses prompted the resignation of the city buildings commissioner and a bribery case in which the city’s chief crane inspector pleaded guilty to taking payoffs to fake inspection and licensing exam results. The collapses also led to new safety measures, including hiring more inspectors and expanding training requirements and inspection checklists.

However, Comptroller Scott Stringer said in a 2014 audit that the city Department of Buildings hadn’t fully implemented safety recommendations on cranes and other issues, and Stringer reiterated his concerns Friday. The Department of Buildings disputed some of the audit’s conclusions, but spokesman Joe Soldevere said the agency had implemented many of the comptroller’s recommendations and “there is more oversight of cranes in place than ever before.”

— October 2012: A crane’s boom nearly snapped off and dangled precariously over a block near Carnegie Hall during Superstorm Sandy, as winds gusted to an estimated 80 to 100 mph. No one was injured, but people in a nearby hotel and other neighboring buildings had to flee in the midst of the storm as engineers scaled 74 stories to make sure the crane wasn’t in danger of falling.

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— April 2012: A mobile crane’s boom fell and broke apart while hauling rebar at a subway station construction site, killing a worker. The site was exempt from most city construction safety rules because it belonged to a state transit authority.

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— January 2013: A crane’s 170-foot-long boom fell and pulled down part of the wooden framework of an apartment tower under construction in Queens, injuring seven workers. Three workers had to be extricated from beneath fallen machinery.

— April 2015: Hydraulics malfunctioned on a small crane mounted on a truck while a worker was inspecting it in Manhattan, causing the boom to collapse and fall on him, killing him. The device wasn’t subject to the same regulations and inspections as larger cranes.

— May 2015: A mobile crane dropped a 13-ton air conditioning unit being placed atop a Manhattan office building. The air conditioning equipment fell 28 stories into the middle of an avenue. Ten people were injured by debris, and part of the building facade was shattered.

Another Reminder About Emergency Planning for an Active Shooter

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Washington Post shooting calendarYesterday, Dec. 2, 2015, marked the 336th day of the year and 355th mass shooting, according to the Mass Shooting Tracker, which logs incidents in which four or more people are shot. Indeed, there were two mass shootings yesterday: a smaller incident in Georgia in which a woman was killed and three men injured, and the slaughter of at least 14 people and injury of 17 at an office holiday party at San Bernadino’s Inland Regional Center, which provides social services to residents with developmental disabilities. No motive has been found thus far, but two shooters have been identified as a county employee who had attended the party and his wife.

As I wrote in the November issue of Risk Management magazine, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health and Northeastern University found that the rate of mass shootings has tripled since 2011. According to a study released last year by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, active shooter incidents, where police arrive to a shooting in progress, are also on the rise. The FBI found that 160 of these incidents had taken place in the United States between 2000 and 2013, 70% of which occurred in either a business or educational environment. An average of 11.4 incidents occurred annually, averaging 6.4 in the first seven years studied, and 16.4 in the last seven years.

With the growing frequency and ever-increasing fatalities, risk managers clearly cannot afford to become so inured to these incidents. Rather, much like they do for other forms of crisis, from fires to tornadoes, they need to be acting now to train employees, develop emergency plans, and ensure business continuity provisions are in place.

“You have smart people leading organizations who know they need to do something, but you see them fall into a pattern of planning to have a plan, and they confuse that with taking action on the issue,” said Jay Hart, director of the Force Training Institute. “Planning to have a plan is not a plan. They need to understand that this is a leadership issue, because it is about protecting the people in the company.”

For tips on preparing for an active shooter incident, check out the Q&A with Hart from the December issue of Risk Management, and “Preparing for an Active Shooter Incident,” from the November issue. When developing a plan to respond to an active shooter crisis, make sure to:RM11.15_ff_shoot_side.630