The Oriental Health Safety Abomination: OSHA East

To be honest, I've never considered myself much of a safety nut. I mean, sure, I'm afraid of heights, so ramps without handrails make me queasy, and yeah, I did injure myself at work seven years ago, but that was my own stupid fault. A lot of the guys that I've worked with over the years seemed to regard safety regulations as the evil twin of Orwell's comparatively benign Big Brother. Especially when I worked for a year at a construction-related company, guys were always griping about how much easier/better/cooler things would be if we didn't always have those OSHA party poopers breathing down our necks.

What a difference a little comparison can make. Shanghai is in a constant state of construction. I can see cranes from any window I look out of, and the dulcet tones of drills and jackhammers are never far away. They're putting up an entire apartment complex and shopping center (I think) across the street from our school, and they're building a new bridge across the canal behind the school. And no matter where you are, new construction is never more than a block away.

All that exposure means that you're bound to run into a few things that are different. Now, I'm no expert, but there are some . . . common practices, we'll call them, that just strike me as downright crazy. I'll let it go that they build all of their scaffolding out of bamboo tied together with twine, no matter how tall the building is. I guess it must not actually collapse, and I'm sure it's light and cheap. Just seems a bit less sturdy than it might be otherwise. And while leaving huge piles of rubble everywhere rather than carting it away might not be aesthetically pleasing, it's probably not unsafe.

No, I'm talking about things like setting up said scaffolding on a building face and leaving space for people to walk into the front door underneath it. Doesn't sound dangerous? No, I didn't think so either, until the workers above me started dropping their wrenches and screwdrivers down to their mates while I was walking by. I'm talking about pushing brick-laden wheelbarrows over the bamboo slats above . . . with bricks falling off.

The real killer was the time that we saw a crew of guys cutting plywood. They had a circular saw set up on the edge of a table at the bottom of a short flight of stairs so that they could cut a few pieces and then pass it up to their comrades working at the top of the stairs. Of course, these stairs were also being used by people walking in and out of a building (including yours truly). I watched incredulously as the entire group of workers carried some wood up to the front of the building, and then sat around, chatted, and took a break. While saw was still running. Unattended. On a waist-level platform. At the bottom of a flight of stairs. Broken, uneven stairs.

All it would have taken was one misstep, and I'd have been dictating this blog post. So the next time that you see some poster urging you to work safely, don't roll your eyes. Be thankful—it beats going through life being called 'Stumpy.'

Dave