UPS hires a company called ketter or something close to that. that comes around and asks you the same questions that OSHA will. you'll get the same old , you need to know this stuff or it's your job speech. In fact, it's stuff you really do need to know, like your emergency evocation plan, what to do if you see a package smoking. where to go for a hurricane or tornado, and how are you notified. Has the fire alarm been sounded in the last 12 months.
Keter is a subsidiary of Liberty Mutual that audits the OSHA-required safety program (see the OSHA poster posted at your workplace). At one point UPS entered into a complance settlement with OSHA, around HazMats I believe, that required 50 outside audits over a specified period of time, which have already taken place so that that requirement has expired. And there may have been some other CSAs (corporate-wide settlements), but the HazMat one is is the one referenced on every safety certification roster, even those unrelated to HazMats (hence the reference to the 49 CFR section specific to HazMat education).
So far as I know neither the certification questions or the ones Keter asks are OSHA approved nor will they be the same as those asked by OSHA, except in the most general sense. OSHA requires that (for a company of UPS' size) that the safety program be written and efffective, and Keter's job is to convince OSHA that it doesn't need to show up very often. Hence the blizzard of BS paperwork. Keter pretends to be supplying an "outside audit", but like the real property appraisers whose employment depended on hitting the number needed by the mortgage brokers who employed them rather than on reaching an accurate assessment of the real value of the properties underlying the real estate bubble, Keter's employment depends on UPS being happy with how it is portrayed in Keter's audits.
And does front-line management at UPS care about safety? Well, it's been a few years now since UPS ramped up Revenue Recovery around here, but I only recently switched from ODC to that for my first shift, and only this week was assigned to audit packages picked up by one of our centers. The work station turned out to be located at the junction of two belt segments, where a high-speed went from horizontal to sloped upwards. On the side of the belt where the auditor is to pull packages from the belt the yellow "Do Not Handle Packages in This Area" label that is supposed to warn you against handling packages within 2' of the teflon strip covering the junction...had been scraped off. 'Nuf said.
