Quote:
If you go against any of their safety policies, they and their insurance company will not pay a dime. This gives the employee a Hugh incentive to follow there safety guidelines because the bottom line is if you get hurt and you were not following there safety rules, then you will pay full medical costs. I love this policy and think it should be standard, there is nobody treating you like a child by watching over you every second, they treat you like adults and rely on your good judgment. The bad ones are weeded out very quickly.


In my experience such policies, using insurance, and the threat of nonpayment for injury, to control employees has exactly the opposite effect and profound consequences for employees.

The typical result is a very extensive rulebook which almost nobody understands, but which everyone is well documented as having read and understood. Signing the last page of the policy manual you are issued, effectively swearing you have read and understood it all, and having it files at HR is a handy way of doing this.

Then, on the job, there is a general lax attitude. And management knows that if you examine any incident closely every person near it will have broken at least one of the rules. So the insurance company pays nothing and the insurance rates stay nice and low. In effect it is a return to the good old days when there were no occupational safety rules and if a employee gets injured you turn them out on their ear and pay nothing.

The employees are placed in the bind that if they don't work fast and dirty they get fired for a 'lack of production'. But if there is an accident they don't get protection because their shoes weren't tied in the 'policy approved manner'. Everyone is a sinner so nobody gets saved; if you don't have connections.