Steel Safety Day Set for April 28
The World Steel Association and its members, which represent about 85 percent of the world's steel production, will carry out an industrywide safety audit.
The World Steel Association's Steel Safety Day is taking place April 28, and the organization has announced that it will include an industry-wide safety audit by member companies, which represent about 85 percent of the world’s steel production. Steel Safety Day coincides with the World Safety Day/Workers Memorial Day observed by the International Labour Organization and many other organizations each year.
The association, formerly named the International Iron and Steel Institute, has analyzed safety and health practices in its industry during the past five years and has identified the main causes of serious safety incidents. Steel Safety Day is set up to reinforce awareness of the five most common causes of safety incidents and to create a safer working environment industrywide.
"Worldsteel is requesting all its members as well as all related organizations within the steel industry to carry out a special audit on the five main causes of safety incidents in all plants around the world. This should engage both employees and service providers involving as many as four million people in total. We hope to see that every steel plant in the world has carried out the recommended audit, has identified and developed a plan or already eliminated the risks associated with the main five causes of incidents and put all mitigating measures permanently into place. At the end of this industry-wide collective effort, we can say that we have made our workplace even safer than it is today," said Edwin Basson, director general of the association.
According to the association's chart summarizing member companies’ combined lost-time injury frequency rate (the combined rate for both employees and contractors), their rate improved from 4.50 in 2007 to 1.41 in 2012.
"Nothing is more important than the safety and health of the people working in the steel industry and management is responsible and accountable for safety and health performance in their organization," Andrew Page, who chairs the association's Safety and Health Committee, said recently. "The steel industry has seen a steady and notable reduction in the rate of injuries since 2006 and the average lost time injury frequency rate has gone down by 50 percent in the last five years. But our goal remains to create an injury-free, illness-free and healthy workplace with zero incidents."