United States Steel: A Corporation with a SoulCotter, Arundel
History
United States Steel: A Corporation with a Soul
Cotter, Arundel
United States Steel Corporation
It goes without saying that to get the best results in any campaign,
efficient organization is essential. The Corporation has organized
a central Safety Committee under whose charge the general work
of prevention of accidents falls. Each subsidiary company has
its own Committee on Safety, and there are further sub-divisions
into sub-committees at each mill or mine. It is the duty of the
sub-committees to see that all safety rules are obeyed, and to make
suggestions for furthering the cause of accident prevention, while the
main committees receive and act upon these suggestions and attend to
the financial and other aspects of the campaign. For the prevention
of accidents costs a good deal of money, the Corporation having
expended, from 1906 to 1919, about $11,000,000 in this work alone.
But the necessary funds are never stinted. Judge Gary’s promise that
the Finance Committee would recognize any practical step undertaken
for reducing the risk of injury to the workmen, and would vote the
wherewithal to pay for it, has been scrupulously kept.
So as to bring home to every worker the safety idea, the personnel
of the sub- or mill-committees is constantly changed with the view
that each worker will sooner or later take part in the promulgation
of safety. Figures already quoted show that 101 inspectors spend
their entire time on this work, 25,948 employees have served on safety
committees, and 5,500 were thus serving at the end of 1919. This
practice of changing the members of the mill committees, more than
anything else, educates the men to think safety for themselves and for
others.
Installation of devices designed to make accidents impossible, or
at least extremely improbable, on machines that had previously been
prolific causes of injuries to workmen, was naturally the first work
of the Safety Committee. It was the obvious step. The educational
campaign came later, as it became evident to those engaged in the
work that the saving of the worker from injury lay largely in his
own hands. Once this was recognized, the educational work was taken
up enthusiastically, and to-day forms the most important side of the
“boost-for-safety” campaign.
Print and paint are used liberally to keep the idea of caution before
the mind of the worker at all times. Safety warnings are painted here
and there in conspicuous places in the mills and mines, and at the
entrance to many plants there are big display signs, electrically
illuminated at night, on which changing mottoes serve constantly to
impress the idea on all and sundry. Blank walls, pay envelopes, and all
available spaces that may be printed or painted on are impressed into
the work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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