Wyoming Aims to Decrease Workplace Fatalities

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Many years ago when Mindy Hixon started working in the family trucking business in Carbon County, Wyo., she realized safety wasn’t a top priority.

“I knew for a fact what we were doing was illegal, unsafe and not in compliance,” Hixon said.

A quick review of safety regulations prompted one employee to tell Hixon, “We’re going to jail,” she said.

But Hixon asked state and federal regulators for help anyway. At first, the regulators weren’t impressed with what they were hearing. But they quickly realized Hixon and her colleagues were worthy adversaries: They wanted to be safe. They just needed some help.

Hixon told her story to more than 200 people at the inaugural meeting of the Wyoming Oil and Gas Industry Safety Alliance. The group is the latest result of statewide efforts to address Wyoming’s worst-in-the-nation workplace fatality rate.

Oil and gas industry leaders in Wyoming say the alliance will work closely with the Wyoming Occupational Safety and Health Administration to promote better training and share “best practices,” particularly with small companies because that’s where the bulk of workplace fatalities occur.

Alliance organizer Paul Ulrich, of EnCana Oil & Gas USA, said the group wants to develop a mandatory training program for “front-line” supervisors throughout the industry in Wyoming. It will also champion two causes that Wyoming lawmakers killed during the last legislative session: raising the fine for not wearing a seat belt, and raising fines that OSHA can impose in relation to serious violations of workplace safety laws.

One measure that Ulrich and other organizers of the new safety organization continually fight against — successfully so far — is a measure to clarify a worker’s right to sue third-party oil and gas operators for their portion of negligence.

In 2009, worker advocates highlighted Wyoming’s workplace fatality problem and built support for a bill to clarify Wyoming’s “duty owed to employees.” The bill was killed, and immediately after the legislative session Gov. Dave Freudenthal formed a task force on workplace safety.

Those advocates, including lobbyist Laurie Goodman and Riverton attorney John Vincent, have said that until Wyoming workers have better access to the courts, Wyoming is not doing all it can to encourage workplace safety.

Freudenthal didn’t support the “duty owed to employees” measure.

The workplace fatality task force is mostly inactive now, but it was the genesis of the new Wyoming Oil and Gas Industry Safety Alliance.

Freudenthal addressed the group, “I was concerned about what kind of support we’d get (when forming the task force) because the Legislature was not terribly excited about workplace safety. And that can discourage people,” the governor said.

Freudenthal chastised legislators for killing the bills to raise OSHA and seat belt fines.

“They’re legislators, which is another form of childhood,” Freudenthal said. “But you don’t kill legislation that is related to the health and safety of the citizens of this state.”

Freudenthal said he is encouraged that the oil and gas industry is continuing the effort to improve Wyoming’s workplace fatality rate.

One recommendation from the task force on workplace fatalities was to hire an occupational epidemiologist who can gather data and perform scientific analysis to discover the root cause of accidents and fatalities.

Freudenthal said he didn’t need approval from the Legislature to create that job, which currently has two years worth of funding. The position is expected to be filled before the end of the month.