Document 6wwenbyLRZDw973K2DYpeo6Qm

THE INDUSTRIAL SAFETY MOVEMENT The tradition that there should be no secrets in safety, no denial of help to a competitor in life'saving, is one of the great elements of strength in the safety movement Good tctU Like any new movement in industry, safety started with very little capital in the form of good will Industrial leaders are constantly bom barded by proposals for action--proposals which always involve the expenditure of money. A large part of the executive's job is to say "No" to unrealistic or unproved proposals No small part of the safety man's capita] today is the prestige and good will built up for safety proposals and expenditures over the years Where the pioneers had to battle and wheedle every step of die budgetary way, safety men today have a far more receptive hearing from management The human capital One of safety's great est resources today--a corps of trained and dedicated specialists in safety work--was almost totally lacking before 1010 Today the American Society of Safety Engineers has a membership of more than 7,700 qualified professionals who have met the high standards of the Society. With their background of training and experi ence, the ASSE members devote all or a major portion of their activities to the conservation of life, health, and property In addition to the ASSE members, there are many other qualified safety profession als, as well as thousands of safety special ists and technicians and junior-grade work ers The human capital thus numbers many thousands of {lessons employed directly m industrial safety work for companies, gov ernment agencies, insurance firms, and safety organizations The term "safety man" is almost as broad as the term "accident prevention work " A safety man may be primarily an engineer, or he may be an inspector, a teacher, a propagandist, or an organizer In most cases in industry today, he prob ably serves, to some extent, in all those capacities The ASSE has worked manfully to es tablish higher standards of training for those who bear the title "safety engineer" It has stimulated professional pnde, ad vanced safety research, and generally en riched the life of members of the profession There is no single path of entrance into safety work--perhaps there never will be. Many men enter the field with degrees in engineering or the sciences, whereas other equally competent safety specialists hold nontechnical degrees Others come ofi the shop floor, from supervisory jobs, from office work, or from nomndustnal pursuits. It is not the purpose of the safety move ment to encourage the establishment of specialized undergraduate training leading to a bachelor's degree in safety engineering Instead, the ASSE and other safety organ izations believe that die safety engineer should have a good basic engineering course and take the specialized safety courses after graduation. A few universities offer courses which lead to degrees in safety engineering, and others offer courses as part of another degree program (see Chapter 12) The National Safety Council has, in the postwar years, conducted a very useful senes of training courses for professional safety men at both the beginning and ad vanced levels Most safety training is, however, of a more informal type Man-to-man instruc tion on the job, attendance at safety con gresses and conferences, formal and infor mal meetings with fellow professionals-- these are the main channels through which safety training is earned on Much remains to be done to strengthen and improve the education of professional safety workers both before and after they begin their careers Much remains to be done to stimulate able young people to enter this field These facts, however, do not detract from the tremendous significance of the work of the present corps of people in safety They represent one of the major forms of safety capital Summary of achievements The safety movement has helped save many thousands of lives It is saving industry and Us employees billions of dollars a year. It faces the future in possession of great resources for eliminating accidents In die future--resources in know-how, teamwork, good will, and trained and dedicated safety workers It has, therefore, done much to meet the double challenge presented to it to deal US