MARYSVILLE – The green chain. For generations, it’s been the place where the Northwest’s young men started their sawmill careers, learning the business as they pulled cut fresh-cut planks from a conveyor belt and stacked them according to quality.
It’s also a place where many young men injured their bodies, twisting their backs or straining their arms as they lifted the heavy lumber off the line.
Historically, the Welco Lumber Co. mill averaged 15 strains or sprains a year, safety and human resources manager Vern Marschall said.
Then a couple of years ago, the company started a new safety program.
Workers started stretching out, like athletes, before their shifts started. The company installed new rollers on the green chain, so workers didn’t have to lift the planks, but just slide them.
Welco also instituted new safety training procedures, including written tests, and hired a few more workers so they could spell the others.
The result: In the past 21/2 years, Welco has not had a single injury among its green chain crew, Marschall said.
Similar new safety procedures in other parts of the mill allowed the company to slash its workers’ compensation costs – and increase productivity too.
All in all, safety is good business, said Greg Baker, Welco’s business manager in Marysville.
“It’s having my workers comp as low as it is,” he said. “It’s having my people safe.”
Welco’s Marysville sawmill is one of the safest mills in the state. It’s one of only nine manufacturers statewide to receive a “star” designation from the Department of Labor and Industry’s Voluntary Protection Program, the department’s top honor for safety.
Overall, Welco’s one of the safest companies in America, said Kenneth Werenko, who runs the Voluntary Protection Program for the state. All three of the company’s mills – in Marysville, Shelton and Naples, Idaho – have received star designation through the program, which is administered by the 50 states on behalf of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Werenko said he doesn’t know of any other company in the country – out of almost 6.7 million manufacturers – that has had all of its facilities receive that safety designation.
Welco, he said, is “a unique company.”
The forest products industry traditionally has been a high-risk place to work. The saws that slice huge logs into boards will easily rip through a human. The logs themselves can crush someone.
Just last week, Labor and Industries fined a Skagit County forest company almost $77,000 for safety violations following the September 2004 death of a worker who was dragged into a debarking machine, which strips bark from logs.
Baker has worked at the mill 21 years, starting as a sweeper. He’s now an advocate of the benefits of heightened workplace safety.
But “You wouldn’t have convinced me of it 10 years ago,” he acknowledged.
The old-school thinking was that “safety will put me out of business,” Werenko said. Replacing unsafe equipment and instituting safety procedures was seen as too costly and too time-consuming.
Baker agreed. “WISHA (the state’s industrial safety inspectors) and OSHA, you’d think of them as the bad guys,” he said. “They’re going to come in and mess with you.”
But the truth is, Werenko said, “safety is really a profit center.”
State workers compensation premiums are set based on a company’s safety record. Before Welco launched its companywide safety effort, it was paying $431,000 a year in workers comp costs, Werenko said. That’s now dropped to $33,000.
Besides those direct savings, there are indirect savings too, he said. Companies have fewer delays filling orders, and they spent less money on sick leave, damaged equipment and training for new workers to fill in for the injured.
Those indirect savings can easily add up to equal the direct savings, Werenko said. “Plus, it’s the right thing to do.”
The Marysville mill has seen productivity increase 28 percent since it implemented its safety programs, Marschall said.
One of the basic changes the mill made was encouraging workers to just grab a broom and sweep up when they get a few minutes of downtime, he said. That cuts down on the sawdust and wood debris underfoot, so there’s less risk of slipping or tripping.
“We haven’t had a trip,” Marschall said, leaning over to knock on a cedar plank, “in two years. When we started the program, it went away.”
That’s big, Baker said. “When the mill’s cleaner and more organized, you have less people getting hurt, so you don’t have your good people gone.”
And it makes maintenance easier, he said. “The guys can see if things are wearing out, so you have more up time.”
The Marysville mill’s cut its equipment downtime to 3 percent, he said – largely by taking steps to improve safety for its people.
Welco has made changes all through the mill. It’s spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on new equipment and safety gear.
It’s changed procedures too. It now pays workers for 15 minutes of overtime every day so they can do their stretching and warm-up exercises before each shift. Managers check with each employee – daily – to see how they’re feeling. Baker shuts down the plant for an hour each month to bring everyone together to discuss safety issues on company time.
But the changes have meant that Welco is able to produce more cedar fencing and unprocessed cedar lumber, and produce it more safely, Marschall said.
The work force has embraced those changes, and that’s why it works, Baker added. “It’s them looking out for each other,” he said. “It’s a really good team effort.”
Reporter Bryan Corliss: 425-339-3454 or corliss@heraldnet.com.
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