ustxtxb_obs_1963_03_07_50_00014-00000_000.pdf

kinds of malfunctions on different cracking units. THIS WAS TOUGH testimony to walk into, as Yancy has foreseen, but spokesmen for the safety association uniformly opposed the safety legislation. No businessman appeared in support of it. The lead-off witness was B. B. Turney, safety expert for Texas Instruments in Dallas. Industry already has enough incentives for preventing accidentskeeping workmen’s compensation premiums low, avoiding hidden costs of accidents, better employee morale, and higher productivity, he said. Furthermore, Turney said, a state board making rules would not improve job safety. “By far the greater percentage of accidents are caused by the human factor,” he said. “This is not to say we are blaming all the people who are having the accidents. 14 The Texas Observer . . . But you cannot send an inspector into the plant and anticipate” an accident, he contended. Turney questioned whether statistics prove anything about such accidents in Texas. He said the national safety council has found Texas has a job accident rate slightly below the national average.’ Some states with safety laws have higher accident rates than Texas, and some without such laws have lower rates, he said. \(Questioned, he allowed that “possibly an equal number” of states with safety laws have accident rates lower than are more frequent than work accidents, Turney also pointed out.’ “I feel industry is doing a good job,” said C. P. Shirey, manager of training and safety for Gulf States Electric and Gas Co. of Beaumont, whose excellent safety record Shirey cited. “You wouldn’t want anyone coming into your home and looking in your home and cupboard, seeing what will happen,” he said. “Well, plants don’t want people coming in.” Shirey, too, questioned statistics on the subject. He noted that deaths in Texas on jobs covered by workmen’s compensation decreased from a reported 562 in 1950, when the population was 7,000,000, to 436 in 1960, when it was 9,500,000. L. P. Williams of Jefferson Chemical Co. in Port Neches said the estimate of 1,000 deaths -a year does not jibe with the 450-death figure from the workmen’s comp statistics and the 700-death figure from the national safety council; he guessed the actual Texas deaths-per-year total fell between 450 and 700. Like other witnesses for the association, Williams said inspectors for the state could not be experts in the many changing technologies of industry. “I feel we’ll be harassed by quibbling over details,” he said. A WalshHealey inspector once “wasted a whole day of my time,” he said. “Each problem is separate and has to be solved on a local basis by a man who knows the situation.” Williams felt that a safety board not only would not reduce accidents “It will have an opposite effect.” Wrapping up the argument for the association, its attorney, Joe Shelton, said he had never heard a safety engineer advocate a state safety code. “These codes simply become rigid, stereotyped operations,” unresponsive to changing technology and methods, he said. N AN ANGRY MOOD, Eckhardt closed. Three-fourths of the industrial states have such regulatory laws, he said; California, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Ohio have had them for 50 years or more. “If the acts had not been helpful, they would have been repealed.” “I am for free enterprise but I’m not for anarchy,” he said. Figures at the industrial accident board showed 200,000 reported accidents a year and 650 deaths; “We’re running into more fatal explosions. Clearly the state has got some right to some type of inspection under some circumstances. . . . When Butler announced his subcommittee Adams, Clayton, Simpson, Hughes, Macatee, not a liberal among thema conservative who had been listening from his desk over by the brass rail at the far side of the House said simply, “It’s dead.” The Senate remains to be heard from; so also does the subcommittee. AMERICAN INCOME LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY OF INDIANA Underwriters of the American Income Labor Disability Policy Executive Offices: P. 0. Box 208 Waco, Texas Bernard Rapoport, President