BrownCafe

In private industry, safety professionals share best practices through a number of different platforms across all types of work environments. What has surprised me is the lack of contact fire safety professionals have outside of the fire service.

One exception is former police officer and renowned safety expert Gordon Graham. Graham has succeeded in addressing police and firefighter groups. Earlier this year, when I was attending a weekend health and safety officer (HSO) class, the instructor popped in an old Gordon Graham speech I had not seen before. In the clip, Graham explained that, when he had first learned to drive, he studied something called “The Smith System,” which is a driver safety training system. He went on to explain how important systems were to reduce risk. As his talk continued, he brought up United Parcel Service (UPS) and how it also successfully used systems to manage safety. This story ended when he revealed that UPS also used “The Smith System” to train their drivers on how to prevent crashes. Let me explain just a little of what UPS’s multilayered system encompasses.

First, I would like to say that Graham had it right—UPS does have a very integrated safety system which includes a lot of reliance on the “Smith System.” So, can these best practices be exploited by the fire service? I believe they can.

Armed robbers held two UPS workers at gunpoint Monday evening in a Lakewood neighbor’s front lawn.

The robbery happened at 7:20 p.m. near Pasadena Avenue and West Shore Drive, neighbor Mark Cannon posted on Nextdoor.

The driver and his assistant had just made a delivery at Cannon’s house when two men wearing black ski masks approached them. The robbers forced the employees onto their stomachs in the front yard and pointed guns at their heads, Cannon said.

Arbitration is a strongly favored federal policy and generally can be relied on to resolve even statutory discrimination claims. This is not a novel concept in federal jurisprudence from the Supreme Court of the United States down (although California and the Obama-era National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) have and had a different view). On December 23, 2019, in United Parcel Service, No. 06-CA-143062, the NLRB reversed yet another of its many controversial Obama Board decisions—Babcock & Wilcox Construction Company, 361 NLRB 132 (2014)—that had itself overruled many decades of precedent (including Spielberg Mfg. Co., Olin Corp., and Collyer Insulated Wire). The NLRB has reverted to the time-honored tests that respect the role of arbitration in the collective bargaining process and recognizes arbitration as “the culmination of the statutory scheme that Congress empowered the Board to uphold.”

A quick decision by a UPS driver may have saved a York County man’s life. WGAL News 8’s Ed Weinstock talked to the delivery driver who was in the right place at the right time.