Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP) participants establish and maintain excellent safety and health programs in their workplaces that are recognized by OSHA as models for their industries. Cooperative interaction with OSHA gives companies the opportunity to provide OSHA with input on safety and health matters and to provide industry with models of effective means for accomplishing workplace safety and health objectives. While it certainly is necessary to maintain compliance activity, resources used to promote the Voluntary Protection Programs will benefit both the worker and the bottom line. When a compliance officer cites a worksite for unguarded machinery, the company pays the fine and provides appropriate guards. When a worksite institutes the elements necessary for membership in the VPP, every person entering the worksite is protected from occupational safety and health hazards, and the other improvements follow.

Participants are not subject to routine OSHA inspections, because OSHA's VPP onsite reviews ensure that their safety and health programs provide superior protection. Establishing and maintaining safety and health programs on the VPP model are reflected in substantially lower than average worker injury rates at VPP worksites.

Injury Incidence Rates: In 1994, of the 178 companies in the program, 9 sites had no injuries at all. Overall, the sites had only 45% of the injuries expected, or were 55% below the expected average for similar industries.

Lost Workday Injury Rates: In 1994, of the 178 companies in the program, 31 had no lost workday injuries. Overall, the sites had only 49% of the lost workdays expected, or were 51% below the expected average for similar industries.

While protecting workers from occupational safety and health hazards, companies following the management guidelines mandated for VPP membership also experience decreased costs in workmen's compensation and lost worktime, and often experience increased production and improved employee morale. Documentation of these assertions come from testimony given by safety and health managers during OSHA hearings on the Safety and Health Program Management Guidelines, from triennial reports of member sites, and from the literature cited below.

The lost workday case rate at Thrall Car Manufacturing Company in Winder, Georgia decreased from 17.9 in 1989 when the facility began implementing a VPP quality safety and health program to 4.6 in 1992 when the plant was ready to qualify for the Star Program. In 1994 the rate was 0.6.

At Monsanto Chemical Company's Pensacola, Florida Plant, which employs 1600 workers, the Lost Workday Case Rates have steadily declined during the period the worksite was implementing effective safety and health programs and in the four years since approval to the VPP. The rates fell from 2.7 in 1986 to 0.1 in 1994.

Mr Robert Brant testified to the following experience for Mobil Chemical Company on August 30, 1988. Between 1983 and 1987, Mobil Chemical Company brought all of its then existing plants (plastics production and chemical plants) into the VPP. During this period, recordable injuries for the company were reduced 32 per cent. Lost workday cases were reduced 39 per cent. The severity of cases was reduced by 24 per cent. In subsequent years through 1994, recordable injuries and lost workday cases continued at the low rates experienced at all these Mobil Chemical Company plants.

Mobil Oil Company's Joliet, Illinois refinery experienced a reduction in its Lost Workday Case Rate from 3.8 in 1987, the year before it began implementing VPP quality safety and health programs, to 0.2 in 1994, three years after approval to the Star Program.

Occidental Chemical Company determined that as their Safety Process Systems Implementation percentage increased company-wide their Injury/ Illness rate decreased from 6.84 in 1987 to 1.84 in 1993, a 73 % decline.

Further testimony from Ron Amerson at Georgia Power provided this information. In the construction industry, Georgia Power Company brought two large power plant construction sites into the VPP in 1983 and 1984. By 1986, one site had reduced its total recordables by 24 per cent and its lost workday cases by a third. The other site reduced recordables by 56 per cent and its lost workday cases by 62 per cent.

All of these rates are verified by OSHA.

Reductions in injury rates lead to reduced costs.

From 1989 when Thrall Car's Winder, Georgia plant began implementing its programs to qualify for the VPP and 1992, workers' compensation costs dramatically declined by 85%, from $1,376,000 to $204,000.

Mobil Chemical Company reduced its workers' compensation costs by 70 per cent, or more than $1.6 million, from 1983 to 1986, during the years it was qualifying its plants for the VPP. This reduction has been sustained through 1993.

At Georgia Power's two power plant construction sites, the direct cost savings from accidents prevented at one site was $4.14 million and was $.5 million at the other for 1986 alone.

Mobil Oil Company's Joliet, Illinois refinery experienced a drop of 89 percent in its workers' compensation costs between 1987 and 1993.

Introduction and maintenance of a quality worksite safety and health program often leads to improvements in employee morale, in productivity, and in product quality.

During three years in the VPP, the Ford New Holland Plant noted a 13 per cent increase in productivity and a 16 per cent decrease in scrapped product that had to be reworked.

During a recent evaluation of the Kerr-McGee Chemical Corporation Mobile, Alabama plant in July 1991, the VPP team found that at the same time work related injuries continued to decline, production hit an all time high that exceeded the goal by 35 percent.

One Mobil Chemical Company plant manager has testified that the adoption of a single work practice change at his 44-employee chemical plant during the first three years of VPP participation resulted in increased volume of product and a savings of $265,000 per year.

In the three years since its approval to the VPP, Mobil Oil Company's Joliet refinery reports a 25 percent decrease in absenteeism and the highest employee morale ever experienced; in the same period productivity and quality remained high.

Additionally, OSHA has received considerable information on improvements in morale, productivity, and product quality. Although anecdotal in nature, these improvements are referred to frequently enough by participants in the VPP to indicate that there is a good possibility of a direct relationship between improved management of safety and health protection and these benefits.

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