On Sat, 30 Jan 2016 16:35:18 +1100, Jon Anderson
wrote:

On 30/01/2016 10:59 AM, Ed Huntress wrote:

Now that you've been there for a while, what do you think of the
regulatory regime in the US versus Australia? I'm referring to such
things as safety regulations at work and the food-safety issues you're
dealing with.

Well, worked 3 years at NASA Ames, high school and college work exp,
almost 2 years at Spectra Physics, and almost 2 years at Varian. All the
rest of my work was for small shops where safety was, shall we say, up
to us, and insisting on it could cost one promotions, if not one's job
(under some other pretext). Yeah, a few **** job shops.

Obviously, the three mentioned above had well established safety
programs, and that was about the extent of my exposure to regulations.
Then there was 20 years working out of my garage. I did more than a few
things I would never have let an employee do. Paperwork was held to the
absolute minimum.

So, I hired in the same week the sale to our corporate owners was
finalized. Outgoing fitter, in one of the few bits of serious advice I
got from him, told me to "watch my back because nobody else will, and
there are things here that'll kill ya quick".

That had a lot to do with my joining the safety committee, were I got a
2 day class in WHS. And that really didn't come near fully touching all
the regulations. We're implementing programs and controls fast as we
can, but still have a ways to go. Some of it I think is over the top
nanny statism. But it's all geared to keeping us safe. Because getting
hurt costs the corporation money, and lost productivity. Hey, might as
well be up front about it. They do care about us, but the class weighed
in heavily on the long term costs to the company for injuries. And they
are substantial! We're still working on issues of small town people that
have never been expose to anything like the corporate world, and seem
more concerned about getting ****ed on the weekend (drunk) than worrying
about things like safety. But making progress, finally went a month with
no lost time injuries, something not seen in a long long time.

I've heard tales of companies with controls so strict, one had to fill
out paperwork to change a friggin light bulb. Heaven help you if you
gotta go weld on something. And an accident on the railroad apparently
earns one a day or two of paperwork.

Since my exposure to regulations in the States is decades old, hard to
compare. Things are different now I'm sure. But I'd say while AU is
something of a nanny state, a lot of things Americans take as normal,
are less common here.

On food safety, well, no training in that, and not needed for my work.
I do see the issues QA raises, some of them seem annoyingly minor. But,
when Safeway comes through to inspect, if things aren't up to their
standards, you don't get the contract. So we're having to come up to US
standards in that area. Seems to be less issues with food safety in
terms of contamination, etc here compared to the states, so that seems a
bit odd. but then, the whole dang country has a smaller population than
California, so I'd expect less total incidents.

My attitude is, I'm getting paid by the hour, and paid well. They want
me to fill out paperwork, I'll fill out paperwork!

As for the promotion, I'm 59 in a few months. Spent today replacing wear
plates, screen and hammers in a hammer mill. Big heavy stuff.
A desk job in a heated/cooled office is looking real good these days!

Jon

ps: pm coming

It sounds like you're enjoying it overall, and it must be interesting.
Regarding food safety: Every big e. coli or listeria contamination now
gets nationwide attention here, so it appears that resistance to
food-safety issues has dwindled in recent years. I remember when the
loony-tune fringe of the libertarians (actually, neo-anarchists, some
of which are still on misc.survivalist.nutjobs) were bitching about
regulations in food and pharmaceuticals, saying that it was expensive
and that anyone who was UNsafe would quickly go out of business, so
there was nothing to regulate.

They're pretty quiet now.

--
Ed Huntress