Liberal Forum

*GHETTOBLASTER » 43 minutes ago » wrote: ↑

43 minutes ago

I'll bet OSHA has lowered the risks nowadays, but I've seen recent "in action video" of what it's like to work on an oil rig and it still looks very hot, heavy and hectic.

OSHA has made it MUCH, MUCH safer - and bully for OSHA, I say. 

I ran a division of a trucking company in the Bakken oil boom during the Obama years. Many of my drivers chaffed at the sometimes silly safety rules OSHA and DOT imposed. I would tell them a story about my roughnecking days. My angel had whispered to me that I must buy a new pair of dot graphite gloves EVERY day. The other guys were buying every three, wearing them down. My buddies loved that I gave them my day-olds. They didn't have to buy gloves. 

We were breaking down the blowout preventers on a rig that SHOULD have been producing, to run expensive tests. The production company was mad as hell, and someone at HQ threw a hissy fit and sent every company man within so many hundred to miles to the rig to "get to the bottom of this ****." So there were nine company men (high dollar contract consultants) on location, and every one of them had the power to fire. So we're up on the "tree" (the substructure of the rig) with hammer wrenches - enormous wrenches for loosening and tightening enormous nuts on enormous bolts. One guy holds the wrench taut with a string attached to the end while the other guy slams it with a ten pound sledge. Takes a lot of bounces to break it loose.

I'm on the sledge, pounding away, one foot in air and one holding the end of a bolt above my head. I'm putting my whole *** into breaking loose this nut, and my foot slips. I'm hanging by my left hand, dangling in the air over upward-pointing valves that would impale me if I fell the thirty feet to the ground. What no one knew was that I could not have released my grip if I tried. Those brand new graphite dots had burned in and I was powerless to let go my grip. The beautiful thing is that I realized I was out of danger before I even realized I was IN danger, so I had immediate clarity. 

I SHOULD have been tied off - we all should have been. But there were nine company men glaring at us and we knew better than to waste time on safety. OSHA existed at that time, but it had little power, and it was entirely unfelt by our industry. Anyway, I deliberately took my time dangling there, still holding the sledge, appearing to be in danger of a gruesome death but in fact as safe as a babe in arms. I let those old **** sweat whether their tantrum had killed a young man. After looking down, looking around, and looking at them, I casually stepped one foot back onto ferrous firma and asked calmly, "Would any of you gentlemen mind if I take a minute to tie off?"

The top dog - an old oilfield legend with a name only slightly less famous than Red Adair - took his hard hat off. The other eight followed suit. He said, "You take your time and tie off, son. All you men tie off." Speaking to the others, he said, "Let's go back to the trailer before we get someone killed."

That could NEVER happen today. TODAY, every sumbitch who didn't tie off would be fired and ineligible for rehire. DONE.

A lotta kids grew up without a dad in my town. Their dads died at work. Their dads died in car wrecks. OSHA and the DOT have closed **** orphanages. You would need all the fingers and toes in your whole family to count the orphanages that have NOT been built, thanks to safety regulations in the work place and on automobiles. 

And as I told my younger guys: The government isn't God. It cannot get it perfect. It's gonna be TOO dangerous, or it's gonna be TOO safe. I've seen both. I like this way better, because it's only annoying. It's gonna piss me off - not bury me. The older guys heartily cosigned my take on OSHA's silly rules.