YOu dont have to go to Africa to see that kind of stuff. I am currently on a job in Nigeria, but I just came from Mexico and witnessed some of the same type of issues. When I mentioned the saftey attitude of one on the Mexican National supervisors and stated that a few lawsuits from injured worker might change the companies attitudes, I was informed that in Mexico if a worker is killed even due to negligence by the contractor, they are only required to pay a maximum of $10,000 and that is PESOS not dollars. When I was there it was 10 pesos to the dollar. Do you think American companiese would be as safety conscience if they could kill a worker thru negligence and only be liable for 1000 USD. Personally I wouldnt want to limit them to that and work for one to find out. Now that we have been exposed to safe work sites, I dont think any of us would even think about working with the type of hazards that you see, but these 3rd World nationals dont know any better so they continue to use what ever they can scrounge and put together to do the job, like welding with a pair of dark safety glasses. There was a 20 page ?discussion here recently about whether or not to use a HF autodarkening hood. That welder having to use the safety glasses would likely kill for one of those and yet folks here were worrying about whether or not it darkened at 1/100,000 of a second or 1/99,000 of a second.
Oddly enough, most of those hazards that we see and would not work around, these guys do it every day and rarely get hurt because they are aware of the dangers and seem to keep their mind on what they are doing. IF they get hurt, there is no workmans comp for them and no big payoff to the widow, just a lot of pain and suffering.
