OSHA: Trainers may be skimping on requirements

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has received complaints that some Springfield-based safety training consultants may be cutting corners to cash in on a state law that takes effect in August.

Chuck Adkins, OSHA's regional administrator in Kansas City, said his office has received complaints about local instructors allegedly scaling back 10-hour OSHA safety training courses to just a few hours and then sending trainees on their way with bogus certification cards.

The incentive for abuse is a law that, beginning Aug. 28, requires all construction employees working on taxpayer-funded projects in Missouri to complete the 10-hour OSHA course. In the Springfield market, some contractors already have obtained their 10-hour certifications in hopes of capitalizing on publicly funded construction work keeping the industry afloat right now.

"I think what's happening is we've got some people out there trained as trainers, and they're looking at this as a profit center," said David Mann, a Flintco Inc. project manager and chairman of the Springfield Contractors Association Safety, Health & OSHA Committee.

Adkins, who has oversight of the Springfield region, expressed similar concerns.

"(That law is) new, and that's going to require a lot of people to get that training - and that's going to bring out some deadbeats to give it to them," he said. "We may have gone too far by opening it up to anybody and everybody."

Undercover efforts

While OSHA hasn't yet substantiated allegations of local instructors offering abbreviated safety courses, Adkins said evidence of such impropriety would bring swift disciplinary action.

"If we find people that are doing that, we will remove their authorization to teach those classes," he said, adding that policing trainers does present some challenges. "There have been places where the Labor Department has had people go in and take the training as if they were a construction worker."

In perhaps the most extreme case, a New York City instructor delivered the 10-hour OSHA course in just two hours over beers at a bar in the Bronx. An undercover New York Daily News reporter exposed the scam in February.

Adkins would not identify which Springfield instructors or firms may be skirting training requirements, but he did say OSHA is following up on the complaints. Finding trainees willing to turn in bad-acting instructors hasn't been easy, he added.

"In Springfield, there seems to be a loyal following," Adkins said. "If you ask somebody and they had a two-hour class, they'll tell you it was a 10-hour course."

Construction workers who haven't received the full training or failed to report unscrupulous trainers are putting themselves and their fellow employees in danger, Mann said. He implored trainees to speak up before a serious injury or fatality occurs on a job site.

"It all boils down to being responsible to the people you work for and with, and who work for you," Mann said.

Under the new law - House Bill 1549, signed last year by then-Gov. Matt Blunt largely to rein in illegal immigration - contractors and subcontractors working on publicly funded projects that haven't completed the required OSHA training in its entirety face a $2,500 fine plus $100 a day for each untrained employee. Once the law takes effect, the Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations Division of Labor Standards will handle complaints about inadequately trained contractors and dishonest trainers, said DOLIR spokeswoman Wanda Seeney.

Red flags

Mann said he has no qualms about reporting local firms and instructors conducting the training in fewer than 10 hours, which he said should be a red flag to contractors. Some instructors may even be selling the certification cards to trainees with "zero training," he said.

"It's a travesty for them to be selling OSHA 10-hour cards," Mann said. "It's fraud."

In most cases, 10-hour OSHA courses - with lunch and bathroom breaks - should run longer than 11 hours, said Mann.

"To get a 10-hour card, you have to have 10 hours of training," he said. "That 10 hours of training doesn't mean an hour off for lunch and two or three or four 15-minute breaks. It means 10 hours of training."

Springfield-based Brittney Inc. is one safety consulting company that advertises the OSHA training in 10 hours flat. According to the company's fliers and Web site, www.brittneyinc.com, its 10-hour training begins at 7 a.m. and ends at 5 p.m., and that includes a short bathroom break, said President Marty Fulbright, whose interpretation of the OSHA training requirements differed from those of Adkins and Mann.

"You have to complete at least 80 percent of it to qualify for a 10-hour (card). ... A minimum of eight hours must be completed to turn it in," he said. "Now, if you continually do those (courses) in eight hours, you'll probably lose your accreditation. You can do it once in a great while, but you don't want to make a common diet out of it."

Brittney, which has been in business 19 years, requires a minimum of seven attendees for a class and charges $150 per person. The company also will train up to 20 employees on-site for $1,000 plus travel expenses.

Fulbright said Brittney's seven training consultants are following OSHA guidelines for the 10-hour courses, which are divided into four hours of mandatory material, two hours of elective material and four hours of optional material, which can cover general industry hazards or devote additional time to mandatory or elective topics. Fulbright said some clients choose to spread out the required training over two days, which OSHA permits.

The new law has indeed led to an increased demand for the training, Fulbright said, adding that Brittney has consistently held a class at its 2237 E. Kearney St. office the third Friday of each month. The next one is May 15.