U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION MEETING FOR PUBLIC COMMENT ) ) 30 CFR PART 46 ) TRAINING AND RETRAINING OF ) MINERS ENGAGED IN SHELL ) DREDGING OR EMPLOYED AT ) SAND, GRAVEL, SURFACE STONE,) SURFACE CLAY, COLLOIDAL ) PHOSPHATE, OR SURFACE ) LIMESTONE MINES ) Pages: 1 through 143 Place: Denver, Colorado Date: December 9, 1998 BEFORE THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION ) MEETING FOR PUBLIC COMMENT ) ) 30 CFR PART 46 ) TRAINING AND RETRAINING OF ) MINERS ENGAGED IN SHELL ) DREDGING OR EMPLOYED AT ) SAND, GRAVEL, SURFACE STONE,) SURFACE CLAY, COLLOIDAL ) PHOSPHATE, OR SURFACE ) LIMESTONE MINES ) Valencia Room Embassy Suites Hotel 4444 N. Havana Street Denver, Colorado Wednesday, December 9, 1998 The above-entitled matter came on for hearing, pursuant to notice, at 8:00 a.m. PANEL MEMBERS: KATHY ALEJANDRO Metal and Nonmetal Mine Safety and Health Arlington, Virginia KEVIN BURNS Metal and Nonmetal Mine Safety and Health Arlington, Virginia ROSLYN FONTAINE Office of Standards Regulations and Variances ROD BRELAND Western Operations Manager Educational Field Services I N D E X SPEAKER PAGE Chairperson Alejandro 3 Rod Stewart 8 Colorado Rock Products Association Harry Tuggle 20 United Steel Workers of America Bill York-Feirn 42 Colorado Division of Minerals and Geology Mine Safety and Training Program Kelly Schafer 59 Fisher Sand & Gravel Mike Fisher 79 Fisher Sand & Gravel Tino Manzanares 85 County Technical Services Richard Brown 92 Wyoben, Inc. James Ellison 113 Rod Cody 118 Wyoming MSHA State Grants Program Greg Oster 134 Camas, Minnesota Chris Hunke 139 Paulsen, Inc. Al Quist 140 Camas, Colorado P R O C E E D I N G S CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Good morning. My name is Kathy Alejandro. And I am with the Mine Safety and Health Administration, specifically with Metal and Nonmetal Mine Safety and Health in Arlington, Virginia. And on behalf of MSHA, I would like to welcome you to the second of seven public meetings on regulations for miner safety and health training. These meetings are intended to give individuals and organizations, including miners and their representatives and mine operators, both large and small, an opportunity to present their views on the types of requirements that will result in the most effective miner safety and health training. These regulations would apply at those nonmetal surface mines where MSHA is currently prohibited from enforcing existing training requirements. I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce the other members of the MSHA panel who are here with me this morning. To my far right is Rod Breland, with the Mine Safety and Health Administration, who is Western Operations Manager of the newly formed Educational Field Services within MSHA. Kevin Burns is to my immediate right. He is also with Metal and Nonmetal Mine Safety and Health. And Roslyn Fontaine, to my left, is with the Office of Standards Regulations and Variances. Since 1979, MSHA has been guided by a rider to its appropriations. The restriction currently states, "None of the funds appropriated shall be obligated or expended to carry out Section 115 of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977, or to carry out that portion of Section 104(g)(1) of such act relating to the enforcement of any training requirements with respect to shell dredging or with respect to any sand, gravel, surface stone, surface clay, colloidal phosphate, or surface limestone mining." In the omnibus budget passed by Congress on October 21, 1998, MSHA was directed to work with the affected industries, mine operators, workers, labor organizations, and other affected and interested parties to promulgate final training regulations for the affected industries by September 30, 1999. It is understood that these regulations are to be based on a draft submitted to MSHA, by the Coalition for Effective Miner Training, no later than February 1, 1999. MSHA expects to publish a proposed regulation in the Federal Register sometime in the early spring of 1999. The regulations that MSHA will be developing must include the minimum requirements in Section 115 of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977. To summarize those requirements, Section 115 provides that every mine operator shall have a health and safety training program that is approved by the Secretary of Labor and that complies with certain minimum requirements. Section 115 specifies that surface miners are to receive no less than 24 hours of new miner training, no less than eight hours of refresher training annually, and task training for new work assignments. Section 115 also requires that the training cover specific training areas; provides the training is to be conducted during normal work hours, at normal pay; requires that miners be reimbursed for additional costs they incur incidental to this training; and provides that mine operators must maintain miners' training certificates and furnish such records to the miner. In addition to these requirements, MSHA is looking for suggestions and comments as to how best to achieve effective miner safety and health training consistent with the Mine Act, including any additional requirements that should be included in the proposed rule, and most importantly, why. A public meeting has already been held in Northbrook, Illinois. That was earlier this week. Other public meetings like this one today have been scheduled at five other locations in the coming weeks, including Albany, New York; Portland, Oregon; Ontario, California; Dallas; and Atlanta. This is designed to give as many individuals and organizations as possible an opportunity to present their views on this important subject. We intend to conduct this meeting in an informal manner. And a court reporter is making a verbatim transcript of the proceedings. I would ask that anyone who has signed up in advance to speak who wishes to speak at this meeting, do sign up on the speakers list, which is, you know, currently right here, but I will make it available to people as the meeting proceeds. As I said earlier, we also ask that everyone who is here sign up, whether or not you wish to speak, sign up on the attendance list, which is, right now, in the back of the room. You may also send us written comments after this meeting is over, if you wish. We haven't established a formal deadline for submission of written comments to MSHA, but I would encourage you to submit anything that you wish before -- on or before February 1, 1999. And this will ensure that your suggestions and input is fully considered. Although we are most interested in what you have to say to us, we will attempt to answer any questions that you may have as the meeting progresses. And we're specifically interested in comments addressing certain areas, although you certainly are strongly encouraged to comment on any issue related to miner safety and health training at currently exempt mines. The issues we're particularly interested in were outlined in the November 3 Federal Register notice that announced this schedule of these public meetings. And I will give you a short summary of those issues. Should certain terms, including new miner and experienced miner, be defined? Which subjects should be taught before a new miner is assigned work, even if the work is done under close supervision? Should training for inexperienced miners be given all at once, or over a period of time, such as several weeks or months? Should supervisors be subject to the same training requirements as miners? Should task training be required whenever a miner receives a work assignment that involves new and unfamiliar tasks? Should specific subject areas be covered during annual refresher training? If so, what subject areas should be included? Can the eight hours of annual refresher training required by the Mine Act be completed in segments of training lasting less than 30 minutes? Should the records of training be kept by the mine operator at the mine site, or can they be kept at other locations? Should there be minimum qualifications for persons who conduct miner training? If so, what type of qualifications are appropriate? I would now like to introduce the first speaker this morning. We ask that all speakers who come up to speak state and spell their names for the court reporter before beginning their presentation. Thank you very much. The first speaker that we have on the list is Ken Pike, from Montana Limestone. Mr. Pike? Okay. Yes. We'll come back to him. Rod Stewart, from Colorado Rock Products Association. Actually, could you come up, and why don't you sit at this table? I think that will work the best. I don't think that mic is hooked up, actually. MR. STEWART: Thank you. My name is Rod Stewart. I'm the Executive Director of the Colorado Rock Products Association. And that name is spelled S-T-E-W-A-R-T. In its November 3, 1998 notice in the Federal Register, announcing seven public hearings around the country, MSHA raises several questions it says it would like to have answered before it begins developing a proposed training rule for exempt industries. I would like to try to address some of those issues this morning, if I may. Under the section of definitions, should certain terms, including new miner and experienced miner, be defined? Yes. Our answer would be, yes. If so, how should these terms be defined? I'll use the term CRPA for brevity, which is the -- which is my organization, Colorado Rock Products, if I may. CRPA offers the following draft definitional language. New miner: A newly hired, inexperienced employee who has not received 24 hours of new miner training required in Section 115(a)(2) of the Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977. For experienced miner: An employee who has completed 24 hours of new miner training or who has had at least 12 months of mining experience. CRPA would also like to offer a definition of a competent person. And that definition would be: A competent person means a person designated by the operator, having abilities and experience that fully qualify him or her to perform the duty to which he or she was assigned. New miner training. Section 115 of the Mine Act lists several subjects that must be covered by training for new, inexperienced miners at surface mines, including instruction in the rights of miners and their representatives, under the Mine Act; use of self-rescue devices, where appropriate and respiratory devices, where appropriate; hazard recognition; emergency procedures; electrical hazards; first aid; a walk-around training; the health and safety aspects of the tasks to which the miner will be assigned. The next question, Which of these subjects should be taught before a new miner is assigned work, even if the work is done under close supervision? A new miner should be taught all items listed in Section 115 of the Mine Act. A possible exception is first aid, which requires a significant amount of instruction up front and for years thereafter for persons to maintain their first aid skills. First aid might best be addressed in a separate forum. The new first aid standard may be just that forum. Question: Should training for inexperienced miners be given all at once, or over a period of time, such as several weeks or months? With the exception of a short block of instruction at the beginning of employment, training should be spread out over a period of months. When MSHA proposed Part 48, in 1979, operators complained that the high turn-over rate then characteristic to the industry meant that an operator might never recoup the substantial up-front investment represented by MSHA's proposed requirement for 24 hours of instructions before a miner began work. MSHA responded by requiring eight hours of training up front, with the remaining 16 to be completed within 60 days. During the senatorial debate on the rider, Senator Williams offered an amendment of his own that would cut initial training to six hours, with the remaining 18 hours required over six months. Senator Williams was responding to operator complaints that they needed even more flexibility that what MSHA had proposed. Senator Williams' amendment was defeated. But it's important to be aware of operators' needs then and of attempts to accommodate them, for many of the circumstances present then remains the same today. CRPA expects MSHA to demonstrate as much flexibility in responding to operators' needs today as was demonstrated 20 years ago. Question: Should this decision be left to the discretion of the mine operator? The mine operator should have maximum discretion to offer the training during periods within the opening months of an inexperienced miner's employment, when training will do the most good. The optimal time to train someone is immediately before he or she needs the instruction in order to do the job. And the operator must have flexibility to assure that that's when the training occurs. Question: What are the advantages and disadvantages of spreading training over an extended period of time? Two key advantages have already been mentioned: One, to minimize an operator's loss if the employee leaves employment within the first few months of the hire; and two, to place as close together in time as possible, for maximum effectiveness, the need for knowledge and the application of that knowledge to the task at hand. The primary disadvantage is the possibility a new employee will undertake a task for which he has not yet been trained. However, this possibility can be minimized by counseling the employee against the practice and by close supervision during the early months of employment. Question: Should supervisors be subject to the same training requirements as miners? Supervisors should be taught what the miners are taught. In addition, it might also be helpful for supervisors to know how to motivate employees to work safely, evaluate task positions, plan safe procedures, and conduct safety meetings. Task training. Should training be required whenever a miner receives an assignment that involves new and unfamiliar tasks? Yes. To ensure the job is accomplished in a safe and efficient manner. Annual refresher training. Should specific subject areas be covered during annual refresher training? Yes. If so, what subject areas should be included? The subjects covered in annual refresher training should be appropriate to the tasks performed at each individual mine site. Question: Can the eight hours of annual refresher training required by the Mine Act be completed in segments of training lasting less than 30 minutes? Yes. Training should incorporate new knowledge about adult education, including the average adult's attention span and ability to retain information. Average adult attention span is less than 30 minutes, and this fact should be taken into account. A good, effective training module may only last ten minutes, or it could last longer. Operators need the flexibility to design training to meet unique and constantly changing circumstances. The worth of training is not in its length, but in its effectiveness to modify the behavior of the miner regarding health and safety. When Part 48 was proposed, in 1979, operators complained that a consecutive eight hours of annual refresher training would interrupt production. MSHA responded by allowing training in as little as half-hour segments. CRPA now asks the agency to show the same level of flexibility in not requiring a specific length at all. Training certificates. Question: Should the records of training be kept by mine operators at the mine site, or should the regulation allow records to be kept at other locations? CRPA believes that the regulation should allow the mine operator to maintain training records at locations other than the mine site. In many cases, mine operators operate multiple mine sites, and often, the smaller sites are not well suited for record maintenance, especially if records are computerized. Furthermore, centralized record management is likely to be more reliable and more cost effective than disseminated record management for many operators. Operators should be allowed to maintain records in centralized locations, so long as the records can be made available for inspection by MSHA in a reasonable amount of time. Qualifications of instructors. Question: Should there be minimum qualifications for persons who conduct miner training and, if so, what kind of qualifications are appropriate? CRPA believes that operators should be given the widest possible flexibility in crafting effective training programs that meet the needs of their miners. CRPA believes that the regulations should establish the basic content and duration of training, as provided by the statute, but that the operators should be given the discretion to determine how appropriate training should be provided and by whom. CRPA believes that the regulations should allow an operator to conduct its own training program, to participate in training programs conducted by MSHA, or to participate in training programs conducted by State or other Federal agencies, associations of mine operators, miner representatives, other mine operators, or contractors, consultants, private associations, or educational institutions. CRPA believes that the regulations should allow for training to be provided through modern, technological means, including computerized training, multimedia, web- based learning, teleconferencing, and other such methods. CRPA believes that restricting all training to a traditional classroom instruction by a limited pool of certified instructors would deprive operators of the flexibility needed to develop training programs responsive to the unique circumstances of each mining operation. Accordingly, CRPA believes that the criterion for evaluating training should not be whether the instructor is certified, but whether adequate and appropriate training has been provided. CRPA believes that a competent person, as previously defined, is fully capable of providing such training. And that concludes my comments. Thank you very much. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Mr. Stewart, I just have a couple of questions, and -- I mean, I don't want to put you on the spot, but if you can, answer them, and if you can't, say so. You had indicated that you felt that definitions were appropriate. And you, I believe, suggested a definition of an experienced miner as someone who had had either the 24 hours of initial training or had 12 months of mining experience. Assume that someone has had the requisite 12 months of mining experience. I guess that you're assuming they would have had the 24 hours of initial training, as a result of having worked on a mine site? Or if not, someone coming on to a mine site for the first time, it's unfamiliar to them, do you think it would be appropriate to require some kind of minimum orientation training or something like that, or just rely on the eight hours of annual refresher training? MR. STEWART: This is a question that's probably one of the most difficult things that our group took under consideration. Take, for example, a vendor that may be servicing a soda pop machine. This is a ludicrous example, but yet it does fall under that. I think the position of our group would be that, I think the responsibility for that kind of training should fall on the subcontractor that's involved. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. STEWART: And perhaps additional limits need to be set up that delineate these kind of superfluous operations to those that are more directly involved in the mining process itself. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. And I just have one other question, as far as providing the annual training in intervals of less than 30 minutes. We've heard at our meeting earlier, in Illinois, that a lot of operators said that this was a good idea to give the operator this kind of flexibility. However, records need to be kept of this training. Does the record keeping burden present an obstacle to that? MR. STEWART: In some situations, it might, although, I agree. I do believe that records do need to be kept. That's imperative, for both sides. I think the issue that we were raising is where those records will be housed. I'm not raising an issue with the need to keep training records. I am raising the issue that in, for instance, out here in the West, in Colorado, for example, we may have one crew that works at multiple sites, and when they're not on that site, that site might be abandoned. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. STEWART: And that's why we're requesting a centralized location for those records to be kept, because frequently there are no structures at all in the other sites, when we're not there. These are sand and gravel operations, predominantly. And due to environmental and regulatory constraints, there's usually nothing there when we're not there. So that crew might move around, and that's why we would like to see them housed at a central location, not to try to get around the need for keeping records of that training. No. We recognize that is very important. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. Does anyone -- do you have any questions? MR. BRELAND: Just to follow up on that a little bit. You talked about the short time frames or the quality of the training for any refresher. And I'd like to follow up on what Kathy asked about, the record keeping burden. If you had ten-minute segments one time or 20 minutes another, would you have a method in mind that you would keep track of the total amount of time, to get the eight hours of annual refresher? MR. STEWART: Well, I don't have a specific method in mind. Every company that I represent goes about it in probably a different way. I've never been really involved in the way they compile that. Most of them have safety officers that are responsible for keeping that log. MR. BRELAND: One other question. You had talked about the initial six-hour training, and then spread out the other 18. Did you have some time frame in mind to complete the 18 hours? MR. STEWART: It wasn't covered in the meetings that we had. I'd be happy to poll my members and get back to you on that issue, if that's appropriate. MR. BRELAND: Well, that would be an issue. MR. STEWART: I'd be happy to do that. Is there a mechanism for me to do that? CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Yes. You could actually submit something in writing. If you've got a copy of the November 3 Federal Register notice -- MR. STEWART: Yes. I do. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: -- there is the address of the Office of Standards Regulations and Variances, in Arlington. If you'd just send your comments to that address, and just, you know, identify them in some fashion, that it's related to the Part 46 training initiative. MR. STEWART: Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much. Mr. Ken Pike? Has Mr. Pike arrived? We have no other speakers who have signed up to speak. Is there anyone who has not signed up who would like to speak at this time? Mr. Tuggle? MR. TUGGLE: Yes. My name is Harry Tuggle. And I'm with the United Steel Workers of America, its International Safety and Health Department, out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. First off, we appreciate the opportunity to be here and make some comments on a long overdue set of rules here, we believe. I guess I'll approach this in the same manner in the previous commenter and speaker made, going through somewhat, answering some of the specific questions of MSHA's interest, and expanding on a little bit of some other matters. And the first question about, Should certain terms, including new miner and experienced miner, be defined? And I don't really have a problem with that, to be listed within the definitions. A segment of the rule is somewhat already explained throughout the current regulations of Part 48 there, already. But you have a new miner; you have an experienced miner. And we're also talking about a newly hired, experienced miner. So you might be talking about three definitions. And how should those terms be defined? And I really don't have a problem with the way that it was defined earlier or the way that, apparently, the similar way that National Stone Association and the coalition that they put together on approaching this proposed rule, I don't have a problem with the way, you know, the definitions are coming about. It talks about the new miners' training, and getting into the various subjects of instruction: of miners' and their representatives' rights under the Act; the use of respiratory devices and so forth, where appropriate; hazard recognition; emergency procedures; electrical hazards; first aid; walk-around; and so forth. The question becomes, which of these subjects should be taught before new miner is assigned work? And also, within Part 48, when it talks about eight hours initial training, and then the rest of it may be scattered over a period of 60 days, there's a segment of training there that most mines should be familiar with. The inspectors are certainly familiar with that. And speaking on the subject of familiarity, I have a copy of the National Stone Association's proposal to work with MSHA on the regulations. And I appreciate also, there was a cover letter with that, inviting me to attend a meeting tomorrow, in D.C., with that coalition, to see what could be added to or deleted from or modified within their current proposal for improvement. And I gracefully bowed out of the meeting, on the basis that that particular proposal, right now, is really, in our opinion, very thin. And its agenda, set by the industry, which is, to a degree, appropriate, but -- The inspectors, in getting back to the issue of familiarity, they have a Part 48 that applies to underground mining, and it's laid out in a certain segment of things. And they have the surface regulations for the surface operations or surface operations of underground mines in that segment of training. And it somewhat follows suit. And I think Part 46 should also follow suit, there, for some rhyme and reason. And you could take the Part 48 right now, and the segment that it's being drawn from, and begin to strike many items within the current regulation that would not apply to the sand, gravel, stone and the colloidal phosphate, and so forth. Obviously, the initial scope would boil down to, you're talking about these given industries. You would have certain definitions of miner or experienced miner, and that is basically already laid out there. To a degree, it may be a little bit expansive there. That could be looked at to be whittled down. It talks about, this does not include shaft and slope people. That could be stricken. Under a new scope, it simply would not apply. So as you would move through the Part 48 regs, you simply begin to take those segments out that clearly do not apply to the sand, gravel, stone industries. But as you strike, and then make any additions, per the coalition or sand, gravel, stone industries, incorporating them within, again, a particular framework that has already been established. You're not reinventing the wheel, here. With that said, back to the questions. Should training of inexperienced miners be all at once or over a period of time? And I think, in the current regulations, that's already -- I don't see the burden, here, of an eight-hours initial training, a complete, or semi-complete walk-around, getting a miner familiar with the operation, pointing out the hazardous conditions, the means of operations. And the agenda, as far as what is to be looked at, is already laid out within the regulations. And should it be carried out over a period of time? Yes. I think it's already laid out, and I think 60 days is appropriate. There should be moderation in all things. I would agree that, yes, you can't dump 24 hours of training on an individual. And a brand-new guy on a brand-new site, we're going to inundate you with information here that, you know, you're not even familiar with in the first place. And there's going to be a ton of that escape him. And I think a third of that could be accomplished, the eight-hours initial familiarity with the mining process and the few other items that is already talked about. If you talk about scattering the rest of the 16 hours over six months or a year or whatever, I think that you're leaving moderation go, at that point in time. I think 60 days to come back full circle with this individual and give him, you know, his other 16 hours, would be quite appropriate. Should this decision be left to the discretion of the mine operator? And yes. It should, to the extent that these time frames, you have eight hours and a balance of 16, and he could give them these 16, you know, whether it be once a week or a couple weeks from now, or however he wants, but it's got to be accomplished in a reasonable amount of time, not way off down the road to where it's almost forgotten about. And what are the advantages or disadvantages of spreading this over an extended period of time? And basically, as I previously mentioned, it's a matter of, you know, if all this timeliness is to the discretion of the mine operator, without a given, reasonable limit, at some point in time, and it becomes six months or a year, there's going to be training fall through the cracks, very little doubt about it. Task training. Should training be required whenever a miner receives a work assignment that involves new or unfamiliar tasks? And I think that's almost a rhetorical question. It's almost ignorance to give a guy a -- you know, there's a $150,000 loader. I know you've never seen one before, but go get on it. We need some gravel over there. It would be irresponsible, I think, for anyone to even have to wonder about that question. The annual refresher training. Should specific subjects be covered during annual refresher training? And I believe, yes. And I think they should follow suit, again, with what is already established in Part 48. It gives the issue, and it gives one brief statement thereafter, to give some guidance to what is to be discussed on that subject. So where it says, what subject areas should be included, I think they're already included. Can the eight hours be completed in segments of less than 30 minutes? And I guess, you know. Yes, it could. Is it efficient? I don't believe so. I think a minimum amount of 30 minutes, applied to new miners' training, annual refresher training, or whatever the approach might be, is something you can get a handle on. If you have a situation where it's left solely to the discretion of the mine operator -- and, at times, that boils down to sole discretion of the supervisor on the floor, how he wants to handle this situation, and he says, You're going to get five minutes at our tail-gate meeting today and, at the end of the week, here, I'm going to be giving a ten-minute talk -- My question would be to the industry -- and maybe they're prepared to answer it; I don't know -- but how do you show that this training was given, in these types of approaches and segments, other than just jotting down notes that, you know, I gave Joe, Bill, John, and so forth five minutes, and that's five minutes out of the eight hours, and I'll subtract it, and they get seven hours and 55 minutes? And industry continuously screams about record keeping. How do they assure the agency, how do they assure miners' representatives out in those various operations where there is miners' representatives, that this training is, in fact, being applied, without having mounds of five- minute and ten-minute talks, and records about those five- minute and ten-minute talks? I think it's something that really is detrimental to the purpose. And at least a minimum of 30 minutes is something that can be grasped, people can be gathered in groups on those issues, and go from there. So my answer to the question is, if it should read, Should the eight-hours annual refresher be completed in segments of less than 30 minutes, my answer would be, no, to that, that they should be a minimum of 30-minute segments. Training certificates. And I would agree, in the sand, gravel, stone industries and the other additional industries that we're talking of here, that there is some multiple sites. There is some problem about control of those records, in many cases. For immediate review by an inspector, I think it's appropriate that the last set of training certificates for any individual should be at least kept at the mine. If the other two years' worth or so forth, that the Part 48 refers to, they want to keep them somewhere else, but it would be handy, then, all of those certificates would be handy, then, within 24 hours notice or whatever, to be brought forward. And I think that would be -- 48 or whatever -- but they would be accessible. Qualifications of instructors. And I believe, yes. They should be qualified. And do they have to be qualified and certified by MSHA, or a State university, or this that or the other? That is something that we are -- steel workers are in review of, at this point in time, as to what minimum qualifications are we talking about here. Yes. There has to be minimum qualifications. And it would be -- if you just say, we've got a competent person out there that's, you know, he's run a loader, so he's doing some training on -- Right now, the industry, for those that the training regulations do apply to, is, by and large, protected. If you have an accident, or a fatality, or an injury, or whatever, and it becomes a citation issue, and it becomes a contested citation issue, and then training records are brought forward about the qualifications of this individual that had done the training, and you say, the district manager certified him, this college certified him, it was accepted and so forth. If you don't have some sort of minimum requirements, someone to say, Yes, you are an instructor, and you have these attorneys that play ball here in hearing rooms and courtrooms will get in there and beat that industry man to death on the issue of, are you -- do you think you're -- show us your qualifications. Within the regs, no. We don't ask for it. But we just want to know. Where did you get your qualifications? Well, I've been on the job for a long time, Joe. I mean, there has to be some sort of minimum standards there. Over and above that somewhat, and to reiterate, I think the initial Part 48, where it runs from 48,21 through 48,32, I believe it is -- yes -- should still be used as MSHA's own guidelines, and begin to initially strike those things, right within the segments of where their written, that does not apply to sand, gravel, stone, whatsoever. And there's many, many parts. There's not so many, many now that reduces it down to what the National Stone Association and its coalition has put together, because if you boil this down to a 30 CFR page booklet in the type print that is in 30 CFR, it may make one page of training regulations for sand, gravel, stone miners. And by and large, I think that many operators would say, In that one page is my Bible. This is what I train by, so, therefore, what else do I need? You know. So I think there's many important things here that need to be retained. MSHA already has its agenda. It should continue to follow that agenda, for consistency, for its inspectors, for its agency, for those that already understand Part 48 regs, and adjust those to where they would fit Part 46, and so forth. One other area that we're studying, also, very significantly, is in regard to these training plans and whether they should be submitted for approval. Now, there has to be some -- to say a manager is going to -- you know, you have to file this plan, and it's got to be reviewed, and then it's got to go back, and if he doesn't like it, he's going to shuffle it around. And you have to do this. And then the district manager is law and gospel on whatever comes down, as to what that training plan might be. I don't know as it should continue in that vein, under Part 48,23, that we're drawing from right here. But there has to be some rhyme and reason, something that, when you come in and ask an operator for a plan, Well, here's my plan, and no matter how frivolous it is, that is his plan, and the inspector has to buy that and accept that and eat that, if there's no regulations on an approved plan of some sort. Just to drop back a moment, on the issue of definitions. And on the definitions, it talks about normal working hours. And initially, MSHA has even -- because of Part 115, it talks about normal working hours and that training can be given, if it's a practice, outside, on sixth and seventh day, or so forth. And then, on over into the issue of normal working hours, then it talks of the compensation for the training program. And either conveniently, or inconveniently, or whatever, the Coalition of Sand, Gravel, Stone left out the issue about the training program or any compensation for training program. And they can, you know, tell a guy, You've got to stay overtime here if you want -- we've got to do this, and you're going to stay overtime. No. You don't get paid for this. You're not shoveling right now. Yes. You've got to come in on Saturday. No. It's not our practice. No. You're not going to get time-and-a-half. So it's not addressed by the association. I just want to bring to the agency's attention, this is the definition, and in the follow-up on this information, has to be retained in the standards. And I had it here. And I had mentioned, also, about the various things you could go through and chop out of 48, and so forth. And even though it goes without saying, it is a reminder, if you leave within there, you know, when MSHA begins to talk about -- finally has a proposed rule on it, and they're talking about records of training. And there's also a provision in there, just as a reminder, false certification that training was given shall be punishable under Section 110(f) of the Act. And I think that reminder should remain within that. You know, you can't treat this in a manner that -- even though it's been reduced quite a bit -- somewhat from underground miners', surface of underground miners, and so forth, even though you have quite a reduction of requirements here, falsifications can still put you in the back. With that, that, at this point in time, concludes my remarks. I'd like to also reserve any time, if there's speakers later on, and if there's some positions taken that the steel workers might would take exception to, we might like to speak back on that issue, at the end of the day, or whatever. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: That would be fine. Mr. Tuggle, I've got a couple questions, both requests and questions. You indicated that you thought that, you know, a good guideline for the agency would be to take Part 48 and go through and pick out those things that would be appropriate for this particular training regulation. It would be a great help to us, actually, if you could provide us with what you think some of those things might be, I mean, at some later time, in writing, if you could. I mean, it's not and -- obviously, you know, you don't have to if you don't want to. MR. TUGGLE: In answer to your comment on that, or question on that, it is our intent to develop a Part 46, as we believe it should read, from Part 48. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: All right. MR. TUGGLE: And we will be submitting that to you before your close on comments period. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. Great. That would be great. As far as the small increments, less than 30 minutes of training, you indicated that you didn't think that that was a good idea. Now, if, in fact, operators were to keep records of those small bits of training, even five minutes or ten minutes, would you still have a problem with it, or do you think that training of short duration like that is not effective, or subject to abuse, or -- MR. TUGGLE: I don't know as it would be a matter of being abused. It would be a matter that -- from a supervisor's perspective -- and I've never been a supervisor; I have worked in a mine for many years, but not as a supervisor. But to me, if the mine operator tells him, you know, You've got to keep these records and do this, you're going to drive this guy nuts about just maintaining five- and ten-minute records. And industry -- whether you're talking about Part 48 or any other part of the 30 CFR, continuously, industry has screamed about record keeping. It's a burden. It's eating us alive. And I think if you reduce that down to these little increments and segments, I think the supervisors that have to implement would agree with that very issue, that it's going to eat them alive, to the extent that, after a while, Jesus Christ, you know, I'm not going to do this this time or that time. Things are going to go through the cracks. If you put at least on a minimum of 30 minutes, you know, people are gathered on that issue. If you give a tail-gate meeting of five minutes here, and a tail-gate meeting of five minutes there, for various departments, various -- As each supervisor does his thing, then you've got to collect all what the supervisors have done and explain to somebody -- hopefully the agency would be asking, Where's the records that this training was given, find me eight or eight refresher, or 24 and an eight refresher, whatever it may be. And all these things, notes, scribblings, everything else, has to be gathered and make some semblance of order or sense out of it. And I think it's detrimental. Maybe the industry, you know, thinks, Well, we can get around it. We have no problem with it. I don't see it. From a common sense perspective, I just don't see it. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. You also indicated that the steel workers were in the process of reviewing what appropriate minimum qualifications might be for people who provide instruction. Is that also going to be included as part of your recommendations, sir? MR. TUGGLE: Yes, it is. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. And also, you indicated that you weren't sure that the Part 48 scheme for MSHA approval was necessarily the approach that we might take here, but are you going to make some recommendations for how that might work? MR. TUGGLE: Yes. We studying that. And again, conveniently, you know, out of the coalition's proposal, at this point in time, that whole segment is basically left out, other than maybe one sentence or so forth. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Yes. I think it says that if it complies with 115, then it would be considered to be approved. MR. TUGGLE. Right. So they're doing, basically, away with 2-1/2 pages of regulations on training plans and type of submission, filed information required, so forth. And I would agree. I think, in review of that, for this particular industry, that that approach is burdensome. At the same time, there has to be a handle on that. And we are reviewing how might be the most receptive approach to maintaining a handle about some sort of plan being there, whether it's got to have to have the rubber stamping, of, you know, the President -- well, not the President of the United States -- Secretary of Labor; we'll let him stamp it -- CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: We've have a big backlog if -- MR. TUGGLE: But, I don't know, you know. There's got to be some method here. We are reviewing a few of those, and I don't want to throw those few out to where we're grappling and may take one, and MSHA may hang its hat on another. So we're boiling some things down on that. And we hope it would be, at some point in time, acceptable to the industry. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. That's all I have. Does anyone else have any? MR. BRELAND: Just a follow-up on -- You talked earlier about maybe the last record being made available at the mining site, for training. Did you mean just the annual refresher or the past training records, or -- I'm not sure I totally understood which records you were talking about. MR. TUGGLE: Yes. If you have a new miner and he's being given his 24-hours initial training, as we propose, and as is already established, within a 60-day period, his next record will be his annual refresher training. Once he has an annual refresher training, that main record can go back to the headquarters or wherever they retain them or whatever. Once he has completed an eight- hour refresher training, and he then completes his second one, as long as that last one remains at the mine site, all the others become compiled. And then again, in some of the current regulations it says, at the point in time he leaves employment, he's privileged to a copy of all of his training records, so he could take it to another mine or whatever. MR. BRELAND: Okay. I thought that's what you meant, but I just wanted to make sure. And then, when you talked about the approval process for both the instructor and the training plans -- I think you answered it, when you talked to Kathy a minute ago -- that if there was some sort of plan or outline they followed, that might be acceptable, as long as that plan itself was. But the other was the approval for instructors. Are you saying, if the definition was appropriate for what made a qualified person or competent person, that that might be an acceptable method of designating -- MR. TUGGLE: At face value, the competent person definition and the approach to a competent person seems realistic. But at the point in time, as I explained about, when there's situations -- and they will come about -- of the agency and a given company, and possibly a given Union in the middle of it, doing battle in hearings and contested citations, based on possible injuries or fatalities, in regard to safety and health training issues. And someone says, Well, he's my designated competent person. He's, you know, run that loader for a long time. Because someone has run a loader for a long time, doesn't make him a competent trainer. They may be competent to get 11 yards in a 10-yard bucket and haul it for you, but can they train people sufficiently, in regard to safety and health on the job? And there has to be, I think, a little more than an explanation of a competent person. And it may not necessarily -- this is one of the issues that's still under review -- this may not necessarily go to the extent of saying he has to be given the royal touch of the wand by the district manager to meet this certification. But there has to be -- we're sure there's something in between that -- and even industry might have some ideas on it, of expanding more than just the competent person approach, and not going to the extent of saying, you know, it has to be blessed by MSHA, district manager, some college professor, or whatever. Hopefully I answered your question. MR. BRELAND: Yes. You did. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Essentially what you're saying is you don't think that the Part 48 approach necessarily gets you to where you want to go. MR. TUGGLE: Well, I think that, again, this is one of the items that could be, even though it would be left in its framework and context of the Part 48 that's already established, that part in regard to approval of a trainer and so forth could be narrowed down, not narrowed down yet, in our opinion, to the extent of the industry simply saying, We've got a competent person; he's our trainer. Because that very issue will eat him alive if somebody winds up dead. MR. BRELAND: It could be that they somehow have the background to show competency, but also some demonstration that they're qualified to teach, is what you're saying. MR. TUGGLE: Right. MR. BRELAND: Somehow. Some fashion. MR TUGGLE: Some form or fashion. MR. BRELAND: Okay. Thank you. MR. BURNS: Yes. On the new amount of training, is the eight hours that you talked about before that could work, is that -- do you see that to be a hard and fast number, or could that depend upon the mine and the new miner? Say, perhaps someone that's got a lot of experience in construction and comes to work at a small sand and gravel mine, would it be conceivable that that person may not require the eight hours before they could perform a task that they already know how to do? MR. TUGGLE: If you're a construction worker -- well, that might be all of them -- if you're an electrician, you can do electrical work, whether you're in a hinge factory or whether you're in a mine. But it's going to take time to familiarize that individual with that mine. I think -- so you're not going -- if you hire an electrician, you're not going to come in and teach him electrical profession. You're teaching him everything around the issues of electrical profession, and they're already spelled out within 115; and when you talk about some task training, some hazard training, some speed controls around mines, the various equipment that's being run, what to watch out for here, the process, the conveyor systems from one process into another process, a walk-around tour of most mines. And that information being fed in and even reiterated, maybe two or three times, over the period of that day, of getting into this area and, basically, having to say some of the very same things that you've said over here. In short, on your question, I think eight hours is -- should be a hard and fast rule. MR. BURNS: Okay. That's really what I wanted to know. Okay. MR. TUGGLE: Eight hours minimum. And then, again, like the regs read, the balance in a 60-day time frame, at the operator's discretion. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Does anybody else have any questions? Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Tuggle. MR. TUGGLE: Okay. Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Is Ken Pike from Montana Limestone here? All right. Is there anyone else here who has not signed up who would like to speak? MR. YORK-FEIRN: Good morning. My name is Bill York-Feirn; Y-O-R-K - F-E-I-R-N. And I'm a program administrator with the Colorado Division of Minerals and Geology, Mine Safety and Training program. And I'm wearing a couple of hats today. The first one is a comment I'd like to make on behalf of a group of small mine operators in southwest Colorado. We had some discussions, over the last few weeks. And what they wanted to put forward was, a large number of small miners -- there are a large number across the country, at least 350 small mines in Colorado, and probably more, based on our permitting records, actually. Those are MSHA figures. The work force at small operations is often very transient. Miners working for weeks or months is very common. It is onerous for them to complete an eight or even 24 hours of training before they begin work on an assigned task. They simply find themselves not doing it. And that, in fact, is going to be more of a safety concern than maybe another alternative to the eight hours of initial training. This group of small miners requests that work can be assigned after either a smaller amount of training, as required, possibly site-specific hazard training and, of course, task training, before that particular miner can start work on the site. They request a provision that provides a variance or an exclusion of the eight-hour requirement for small mine operations, possibly based on the size of the operation or the number of miners employed at the operation. That's really all I had to say on that issue, for the small miner group. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: You're talking about the eight hours of initial training of the total 24 hours? You're not talking about the annual refresher training? MR. YORK-FEIRN: No. I'm talking about the initial training, when they first come on to the mine site. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. Do they -- is there any alternate suggestion? You're saying eight hours is too much. I mean, is there -- does the amount depend on the size of the operation, that would be appropriate or -- MR. YORK-FEIRN: Yes. I think it depends on the size of the operation and how, you know, their work duties are, or where they'll be working on-site. You know, they could be working at a small load- out or stockpile area, away from all of the mining activity, or they could be within the mining area, too, of that operation. But I think the concern is that they have a much reduced amount of training required, so that they can get those people to work as soon as possible. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: You're talking, reduced amount, initially. Does that mean they understand that the 24 hours of new miner training is something that is required by the Mine Act, and it would not be possible, even if we were inclined to do so, to require less than that in whatever regulation we were to come up with? MR. YORK-FEIRN: I think their dilemma is they do have people that are there for a week, two weeks. And for them to plan for 24 hours training is a concern for them. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Do these people typically stay within the mining industry and move from location to location, or do they do other -- I guess what I'm getting at is, if, in fact, there was some mechanism to keep track of the training that they received and, at some point, they would get, you know, their 24 hours and have some kind of record of that. Is that the situation, or are these people moving in and out of the mining industry? MR. YORK-FEIRN: You know, I think it's quite a variety. I think, often, there are many that go from mine to mine. I think it's also, from what they have told me, is there are a lot of people, you know, come and have to make a house payment or car payment, and they work for a few weeks, a month or something, and they're gone. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. YORK-FEIRN: So they kind of have this revolving door of employees. And admittedly, it's not the best situation, but oftentimes, that's the work force that's available. So they're having a hard time spending that time for each one of those employees, doing that training. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Is it possible for you to give us some idea of what the average number of workers is at the mines that you're speaking on behalf of? I mean, is it a handful of employees, or also, does it vary? MR. YORK-FEIRN: You know, I'd have to guess maybe around 100 or so employees. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: At each operation? MR. YORK-FEIRN: Aggregate, altogether, for these particular mining companies. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. 100 employees at 350 operations? MR. YORK-FEIRN: Right. Well, no. No. I guess I didn't understand the question. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Yes. I guess what I was looking at -- I mean, you say that you're speaking on behalf of small mine operators. And I was trying to get some sense of, you know, what the average number of people would be, working at a typical operation that you're talking about. MR. YORK-FEIRN: Oh, a typical -- CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Yes. MR. YORK-FEIRN: Statewide. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Or does it vary so much -- MR. BURNS: Or maybe even just a range. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Yes. MR. BURNS: Is a range a better question? MR. YORK-FEIRN: I think, within this group, let's say, I think it was probably anywhere from two to about 35. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. YORK-FEIRN: Statewide, you know, we've kind of used the guidelines that MSHA has, you know, the one to 49. We kind of group into the small miner category. So, yes. Between one and 50, probably. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. And again, I don't want to put you on the spot, but are any of these operators currently providing Part 48, or -- I mean maybe not strictly -- MR. YORK-FEIRN: Many are. Yes, they are. They're trying, kind of desperately, to keep up with it. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. YORK-FEIRN: And most of them are doing pretty well. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. YORK-FEIRN: But when they get these one- and two-week kind of things, I think it slips through the cracks. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. Do you have any questions? MR. BRELAND: On the proposal for variances, as Kathy talked about, there was no exception in the Act, but were you talking about for annual refresher and new hire, or these repeat employees? MR. YORK-FEIRN: Well, I think they're primarily referring to new miner training, when they come on-site. MR. BRELAND: And were they asking for the variance to mean they didn't have to train at all, or they wanted to be able to spread that out? MR. YORK-FEIRN: They were leaving it open, you know. Could it be reduced? In other words, say if they're required to have the site-specific hazard training and the work task training, that maybe they could do in an hour or two hours, or something less, that would be manageable for them. And they didn't have a lot of specific suggestions on number of hours or exactly what they wanted. They just wanted to have some kind of allowance for them, to help them meet those requirements of training, but also, you know, efficiently run their operation, too. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. Did you say you had a question? MR. BURNS: Yes. I'm trying to find where the -- I'll have to come back to it. MR. YORK-FEIRN: Okay. MR. BURNS: Thank you. MR. YORK-FEIRN: You bet. I'd also like to speak on behalf of the Colorado Division of Minerals and Geology Mine Safety and Training program. We would support the comments that the Colorado Rock Products Association presented, and would like to add to that a bit. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. YORK-FEIRN: One thing that we feel is very important is that any document, including a computer record, which, at a minimum, contains the same information as Form MSHA 5023, would be hereby approved. We feel that the paperwork burden of the 5023 forms is really onerous and outdated. We'd like to see some easier way of making sure that everybody is accounted for and their training in documented in the proper way, consistent with MSHA's requirements, but some flexibility in, you know, doing that, in sort of a group way, so that we aren't trying to find pieces of paper and file them, and losing track. I would also like to add -- and I believe these are in the coalition's proposed training regulations -- but I would like to support their requirements for comprehensive training, their definition for comprehensive, 24-hour training, and also the entire section that talks about comprehensive training that is not required for the following groups. And is it appropriate for me to read all this off, or -- CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Yes. I mean, you can make whatever comments you wish. MR. YORK-FEIRN: Okay. I haven't seen the latest draft, but we do like the way this addresses the training of independent contractors, which has always been a tough thing for operators. And we see this as a perfect opportunity to try to clear that up, and also help in terms of the flexibility for people that are not involved in the extraction, mining, or milling process. So, with that, I'll go ahead and read that section. "Comprehensive training means the 24-hour training requirements for newly hired, inexperienced employees, training requirements for newly hired, experienced employees, and the eight-hours annual refresher training requirements. "This training shall be required for all employees who are engaged in the extraction or production process, as related to mining and milling, and for employees who are employed at and normally report to work at the mine site to perform maintenance or service work on extraction or production machinery. "Independent contractors who perform extraction, mining, or milling shall provide the comprehensive training and retraining that is required for their employees." And that is a switch, in that that responsibility is moved to the contractor rather than, necessarily, to the operator. "If an independent contractor operates all or part of a mine or milling equipment, and has employees who are employed at and normally report to work at the mine site on a regular basis to service or maintain that equipment, the independent contractor shall provide comprehensive training for those affected employees." And then it goes on to say, "Comprehensive training is not required for: 1) construction workers and shaft and slope workers. "These persons shall have site-specific hazard training when first assigned to work on the construction site involved in the construction of shaft or slope workers, and must provide training that addresses the safety and health hazards of the task assigned and all other required training." Number 2 is, "Independent" -- I can't read that -- "independent contractors for" -- well, shoot, I can't read that very well -- "personnel who enter the property to service, maintain, construct mine or extraction or production or machinery, these personnel shall have site- specific hazard training when first assigned work on mine property. "It is the responsibility of the independent contractors to provide training that addresses the safety and health hazards of the tasks assigned to these workers and all other required training." Number 3, "Any delivery office or scientific worker, customer truck driver, or transport driver, or staff or administrative personnel not engaged in extraction or production activities as related to mining or milling, these persons shall receive site-specific hazard training." Number 4, "Outside vendors, visitors, office personnel, or staff personnel from company offices who do not work at the mine site on a continuing basis or who are accompanied by someone familiar with hazards specific to the mine site." And D, "Hazard training means site-specific information or instructions that are provided to warn of mine hazards such as traffic patterns, restricted areas, warning and evacuation signals, emergency procedures, and other specific safety procedures the mine operator requires for visitors, customers, contractors, vendors, office or staff personnel. "Hazard training requirements shall be satisfied by issuance of written hazard warnings, verbal information, use of signs and posted warnings, walk-around training, or by being accompanied by someone familiar with hazards specific to the mine site." CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. YORK-FEIRN: And just one other comment, also on behalf of the Mine Safety and Training program, the definition of competent person -- and kind of piggy-back on the previous fellow's comments. If a competent person can conduct training, we would request that MSHA require some kind of condensed and structured training for the competent person performing safety training on-site. Often that person is presenting the training rather than developing the training. This person may not have the broad knowledge of MSHA regulations and miners' rights necessary to teach, say, the eight-hour annual refresher training course. And therefore, we believe the definition of a competent person must be carefully thought out. We do support, however, the flexibility to use instructors other than MSHA certified instructors. And that's all I have. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. Do you have any questions? MR. BURNS: Yes. I was just going back to your previous comments about the small mines and how much training should be required before someone does the work. Under the current Part 48,25(a), it states, Provided that no less than eight hours of training shall, in all cases, be given to new miners before they are assigned to work. And it states, The following courses shall be included in the eight hours of training: introduction to work environment; hazard recognition; and health aspects of the tasks assigned to the new miner. Now, are you saying that, in some of the mines that you're talking about, it does not take eight hours to do that? MR. YORK-FEIRN: Well, yes. MR. BURNS: Okay. Versus that they just don't want to do eight hours? MR. YORK-FEIRN: No. It -- right. MR. BURNS: I mean, there's a distinction there. MR. YORK-FEIRN: Yes. There are two things. I think one is that it doesn't take them eight hours to do that, for sure. But the other is that they feel like they could cover that in a much shorter amount of time and get them to work faster. MR. BURNS: Could you ask some of the operators that you're talking about to try to put down on paper what they consider that to be, and how they would do that, just to give us a ballpark on how they come up with how much time it would take? MR. YORK-FEIRN: I could do that. MR. BURNS: Okay. MR. YORK-FEIRN: You know, request them and have them submit comments. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Are -- MR. BURNS: They can submit it through you, if you want. MR. YORK-FEIRN: Okay. Sure. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Yes. We can give you an address, if you don't already have it. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: My question was, are any of the operators that you're speaking for asking that they not be required to give any kind or any part of that initial training before the miners start to work? MR. YORK-FEIRN: Well, there was some opinion, you know, that, gee, it would be nice just to put them to work. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. YORK-FEIRN: But they do, you know, understand the need to have training, particularly the site- specific and the task training. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. YORK-FEIRN: And that's not a problem. They're not contesting that. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: But as Kevin said, I mean, the situation is that you don't -- that may not require eight hours to get through that material, for that particular operation. MR. YORK-FEIRN: Right. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. YORK-FEIRN: They're usually very small, often very simple operations that, you know, you can do fairly quickly, really. MR. BURNS: Yes. But like I said, it would be very helpful if they could put that on paper, because right now, we're just talking in abstract. MR. YORK-FEIRN: Okay. MR. BURNS: Thank you. MR. YORK-FEIRN: Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Do you have a question? MS. FONTAINE: I have one question for you. Do you ever help mine operators to develop training programs? MR. YORK-FEIRN: Yes, we do. MS. FONTAINE: Could you give me a range of costs for a small business or a large mine? MR. YORK-FEIRN: Cost to -- MS. FONTAINE: Establish the program. MR. YORK-FEIRN: The Colorado State program is -- we cannot charge for our services, so we are supported by Federal and State monies. And so our work that we do in helping the industry is for free. MS. FONTAINE: Okay. MR. BURNS: Yes. I guess her question is part of -- you know, one of the legal requirements we have for rule making is to determine how much it costs an operator to comply with the standards. Would you have any sort of estimate? I know you're funded separately, but have you guys ever come up with any kind of estimate as to what it would actually cost to do this service for a mine operator? MR. YORK-FEIRN: We could probably put something together. MR. BURNS: Okay. MR. YORK-FEIRN: I can't say we have. MR. BURNS: Okay. MR. YORK-FEIRN: And are you interested in cost to assist all miners, or small miners, or -- CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: A range, probably. MR. BURNS: I guess, are you looking at a range of a size of a mine, what it would cost to set up a program for them. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: I mean, it would be whatever you would have, you know, specific knowledge of. You know, every bit of information we can get is helpful. MR. YORK-FEIRN: Okay. And you're essentially talking about a safety program, and not necessarily doing training for them? CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Well, we are specifically talking about the training program. MR. YORK-FEIRN: Okay. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: I mean, essentially, what we're looking for is, you know, assuming certain training program requirements, you know, how much is this -- how much are these requirements, these regulations, going to cost the mining industry to comply with? So if you could give us an idea of, you know, how much it would cost, you know, an operator of a certain size to develop and implement -- if you've got that information -- a training program for miners, I mean, that kind of information would be very helpful. MR. YORK-FEIRN: Okay. We can do that. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: All right. Are there any other people who would like to speak? I would suggest -- I mean, it's about 9:30 -- that we take a 15-minute break. And then, when we get back, we can pick up with the additional speakers. (Whereupon, a short recess was taken.) CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Do we have anyone here who would like to speak? Yes? MR. SCHAFER: My name is Kelly Schafer, with Fisher Sand & Gravel. Spelling, S-C-H-A-F-E-R. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: And what was the name of your organization? MR. SCHAFER: Fisher Sand & Gravel. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Fisher Sand & Gravel. MR. SCHAFER: I guess the first thing is, we agree with most of what CRPA had proposed earlier. A few things that we'd like to address, I guess. The new miner training, as far as the 24 hours, the 16 hours of start-up is reasonable. The problem that I see, I guess, and I'm surprised that no other sand and gravel or smaller industry hasn't addressed yet, first of all, the place to provide it. Most of these people are going to hire it out, and to send a person in to get this training. Most places aren't going to want to train one person. And in the sand and gravel industry, when you hire that person, you pretty much need that person at that point. You're not going to be able to wait three weeks until someone has got a class of ten or twelve to train them. As far as that goes, I think that's going to be one of the hardest problems for us to fit to, at least, you know, the 16- or 24-hour. And then, with that, I think there should be a chance of doing a six months to finish the training, within the 24 hours. I believe if you brought the person in and could train them with the 16 hours within, say, a 30-day period, and do an introduction to hazard and job site, and having a foreman or an experienced employee overseeing that person for that period of time until you can establish a class size to make it more affordable for the company, I think that would be definitely something to consider. Also, the first aid part of it, you know, in the 24 hours part, first of all, I think, to train every employee you have on your job site in first aid and CPR is probably a little bit overboard. We look at a designated employee on the job site, at least one per shift. And I think that would be something to consider. As far as training everybody, we have a lot of people in the industry that probably aren't able to either provide the training -- I mean, not so much provide the training, but provide the service. A lot of people aren't -- as far as education, as far as the remembering part of it, a lot of people won't even address doing it. So to train everybody -- you know, to spend eight hours of training that person, to me, is an extra burden of expense. As long as you can provide a person on the job site that is willing to do it, with that training, I think to go to 24 hours is an overkill. I think, you know, if you could do an eight to a 16, I think that would be adequate, as long as you're covering the problems you have in your mine site and covering, you know, the designated training needed, as far as -- and we can follow with the Part 48, like I said. And I don't think that within six months is out of line to ask for that. You know, a prestart-up for an employee to come to work right off the bat, maybe it's going to be a two-hour approach. Maybe a person needs to learn about lock-out/tag- out, the hazards of the mine, and you know, what kind of personal protective equipment, the hazard communication. Then we should be able to turn them loose. I think overwhelming them with 24 hours of training before they even come to work, as Colorado Rock Products said earlier, the attention span -- and I don't know how many people in the classroom have ever trained a class before. But you get them going in the morning, and somewhere between an hour-and-a-half to two hours in there, you can see the glaze come over their eyes and they're thinking about something else. And so, you know, following that up, I also believe that, you know, the hazard training and giving them, you know, 30-minute or less intervals throughout the time on the site, let the person address it, as far as the problems that are on that mine site, you know, the hazard they're encountering, I think is something that should be looked at, definitely, instead of worrying about, you know, following this set guidelines of training. The next thing, I guess, is probably our biggest concern, is looking at the training for people that come on the plant side, as far as the fuel people, the sanitation people, and the landowners, State employees that are coming out to do the testing of the materials. For us to require a company that's going to provide us fuel, we'll say, on a job of 20,000 tons that we can wrap up in one week, to expect them to put their employee through 24 hours of training to give us fuel on three times, is not going to happen. The fuel companies and the sanitation companies are going to tell us we're nuts, or they're going to rack their price up so high that we're not going to be able to afford to have them come out for that short a period of time. And for us, if we could give them a 15-minute hazard training as far as what they're going to encounter on the job site, what they should look for on the job site, make sure they've got their safety protection equipment on, I don't think that's an outstanding request. To me, those are the things we should be looking at. You're never going to keep a landowner out of your site. To expect him, you know, when an MSHA guy is there, to have 24 hours of training, is just not going to happen. So I definitely think those are something that, you know, should really be looked at. You know, State employees, the same way. We are dealing with them on a regular basis. They are out on our job sites. We have a hard enough time getting them to wear hard hats, you know, and steel-toed shoes. And for us to get them to train their college students for the year 24 hours before they come out working for us is --, you know, like I said, and you're not going to keep the State employees out of your job site. So I definitely think those are something we have to address. And to require that, you know -- the difference between us and a coal mine -- and that's what they're doing -- but they can set up a bid for a whole season. And these people want their business. They can bid it. They're coming to the same location all the time. Like I said, if we're there for one week, and we're going for a price, we're not going to be able to get these guys to get their training. They could take them longer to the training than we're going to need their services. And I think that's a really -- I guess I'm not sure how to state that. But I think that's an over- assumption for something that we need. You know, maybe a person could look at something like the coal mines are doing, that if we don't have somebody in there working for five consecutive days, you know, leave that kind of loop hole in there. If you have somebody that comes in and delivers, and as long as you give them the hazard training, as long as they're not in there providing a service for five consecutive days, they wouldn't need the 24 hours of training or the eight hours of training or annual refresher. I think that's something we should look at. Let me see. I think that's all on that. Also, we have a real problem with -- well, I shouldn't say a real problem -- but we set up on the same locations where we finish crushing all the products on a plant-mix job, and a coal mine -- not a coal mine -- but a hot mix plant will come up and set in, you know, right next door and start feeding out of piles as we're producing. And also those people are going to be coming across. And those fall under OSHA. And for us to require them to do the training for MSHA -- and 90 percent of the time you're going to find that the hot mix company or the paving companies are going to be the prime and we're going to be the subcontractor. And you know, we're really going to have a hard time getting them to provide the training when we're working for them. The record keeping, as far as in a central location, right now, I think, when you're looking at portable plants in the sand and gravel industry, we're talking, you know, a few pieces of equipment, four or five guys in the plant site, you know, upward to maybe ten. They already have to provide the MSHA quarterly reports, the equipment checklists, the emergency phone numbers, the legal identity report. And then, besides that, they're looking at the Federal paperwork, the State paperwork, and worker's comp paperwork they have to already maintain. For us to maintain training documentation for our employees on the job site, I think, is excessive. We should be able to have those at a main location. And if MSHA wants to do an audit like they do on us already, all they have to do is come to the main office, or they can request the paperwork from that ID number, and that can be faxed or sent to them, without us having to maintain it on the site. Another problem we have with that is we don't keep the same employees on the same location all the time, and for us to try and chase that paperwork from one location to the other is a big burden that, first of all, all I do is see us receiving a whole lot of citations on something that can be accomplished by just making a phone call to our office and us faxing you the information. I think the biggest thing we need to look at is that the sand and gravel is nowhere close to the coal mine, for the fact that it's portable. Very few -- I guess there is a lot of commercial operations, but there is a lot more portable operations that don't stay at the same location all the time. And to give them more and more burden as far as paperwork and record maintaining and training requirements is going to be a lot harder and a lot different for the sand and gravel industry. Again, on the 30-minute meetings, as far as the way we do it right now, I provide them an outline for the whole year, for 52 weeks, and they have a set agenda, what they have the meeting on. And they also cover the hazards that's on the job site. That should be considered as part of the training, whether it falls in the 24-hour or not. To me, that is probably as good or better than hiring some guy with a couple years of college experience that grabs a book that has some training plans set up in it, and all he's doing is standing in front of the thing, putting overheads on the board and showing a couple movies and talking about what he thinks, you know, is in that book. The foreman and the employees that are doing this for a living have a much better understanding about what they're talking about, and I think they are as adequate, I mean, within looking at the person's capabilities. I mean, you're not going to take somebody that has no communication skills to do this kind of training. But for us to require them to be MSHA certified as a trainer to do different specialized training, I think is overboard. I think we can do that with looking at the person's, you know, qualifications as far as the employee. And maybe there needs to be some kind of guidelines set, but to make the person be certified, I don't think that qualifies him as a trainer, just because somebody says he took a class or he's done this. I think there needs to be some hands-on experience or that person being able to understand what he's training on. Okay. The other thing I wanted to bring up -- and maybe this isn't the place to do it -- but we have a lot of small contractors. And I guess I am kind of discouraged or a little bit -- that we don't have more representation from the mining industry here, as far as the sand and gravel. I think the reason for that is I don't think that it's probably being enforced evenly, as far as the inspections and everything. A lot of companies don't see MSHA as a problem, because they probably don't see them on a regular basis, as far as requiring the notice of mine operation -- or mine opening. When we start looking at the small mom and pop operations that have maybe four or five workers and they own their own little operation, if they're not held under the same standard, that's going to be an undue cost for us, compared to them, on bidding jobs and working with them. And the excuse that we don't want to cite them out of operation or a job or a company, to me, says that these employees aren't worth the value -- or their lives aren't worth the same value as the lives of our employees. And I think, you know, all that stuff should be across the board. And I don't know how we're going to get a lot of those places to enforce that when they're not even opening their mine sites, already. The last part, you had asked earlier for kind of a cost range on the training. And from what I've seen so far, with our training, we're probably looking at anywhere from 2- to $400, realistically, per employee, you're going to spend on training, if you're not doing it yourself. And if you are doing it yourself, I guess the cost could be even higher. The one thing you're going to have to look at is there are not going to be a whole lot of companies providing this training. And a lot of these companies are going to be too small to be able to provide the training themselves. And we start looking at the amount of travel and cost that is incorporated in the Part 48, that you have to provide, you know, the cost of travel time and the expense of getting there. Now you're looking at lodging, if you're going to have us do the 24 hours of training before the miner comes to work, plus you're going to pay more for the smaller class size. You're going to look at lodging, meals, on top of the travel time, plus the down time of that employee. You're looking at anywhere from 200 to $1,000 per employee, the cost that could be assessed, you know, to the sand and gravel operation. Plus you look at, if this person decides, three weeks down the road, that he doesn't like this kind of work, you just threw $1,000 out the window. And maybe that's not the way to say it, as far as out the window, but you're not gaining anything for that $1,000 you've just spent on that employee, because he went somewhere else. And I think I covered everything I wanted to cover. I think that's it. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Mr. Schafer, could you give us some idea of what your operation is like, you know, the number of employees in that kind of operation? MR. SCHAFER: We're looking at about 300 to 350 employees. We have 30 to 35 sites within seven states. Each of our sites move, on a regular basis through a year, anywhere from 15 to 25 times. I guess that's the biggest burden, I guess, to realize that, when you're looking at these smaller towns and these small fuel companies, and getting somebody to bring, you know, the sanitation, the portable toilets and that out to us. To require them to have to do any kind of training, other than us doing site-specific hazard training, is pretty much unlikely. I mean, you're not going to get these companies to do it. And for us to have to train those people before they come on to our sites is going to be a lot of burden on the sand and gravel industry. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: What states does your company operate in? You said there were seven states? MR. SCHAFER: North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. And one thing I didn't understand, when you were talking about being adjacent to sites where OSHA was a regulator, and employees crossing over. And I didn't understand the point you were making about, you know, training and whether your company would be required to provide entry training for an employee. If you could just maybe go over that a little bit again? MR. SCHAFER: Well, okay. Dealing with the people coming on site, as far as the visitors and the -- CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. You're talking about they're not actually working there? They just happen to be -- MR. SCHAFER: Well, what happens -- and I'm sure you've seen -- drove by the sites where you've seen a plant mix, hot mix company or a concrete company sitting beside the road. And most of the time you're going to see conveyors and crushers, because a lot of times, the sand and gravel industry and the hot mix plants or the paving plants are working on a close schedule, to where we're still producing when they come in and start paving. And you're going to get a lot of back and forth movement. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Right. MR. SCHAFER: And for us to try and train or make sure everyone on their job site is trained, from, you know, their laborers to their superintendent to their paving people to their loader operators, is not feasible, especially when we're going to be the subcontractor, more than likely, and they're the prime contractor. And for us to require them to do the training before we take the job, we're going to lose the job. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: So they're not working for you, but they're adjacent to you, and some of their employees come on to I guess what would be considered your site? MR. SCHAFER: Right. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. SCHAFER: More than likely, we've got the pit leased up and the land leased up, and they move into our site instead of on the trail. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: All right. And as far as your estimate of cost, you were talking about between 200 and $400 for training, if you do it in-house, per employee, and between 200 and 1,000, I guess, if travel is involved, and you send people off-site. Is that per employee per year, or is that initially? MR. SCHAFER: Well, depending on the 24-hour or the eight-hour. I guess, to give you a ballpark, I hire, right now, a trainer to come in and train our employees, at 6- -- I think, just about $700 a day. And I could put a class from 30 to 50 people together. But I also have to pay their travel time. What I was getting to is I do my annual training once a year. When we start bringing employees in throughout the season, which you're going to do, depending on your job -- you know, the amount of jobs you get through the year, you start hiring two or three people. Now, you're going to try and hire them in the location you're working in, or reasonably close. Now, the trainer might be living in, we'll say, Bismark, North Dakota, and the job might be in Fargo, North Dakota. Now, there's going to be 250, 300 miles that this person might have to travel to come for the training, plus the lodging, plus the smaller classes. If you have to go with the 24-hour right off the bat, or even the eight-hour, you're looking at spending probably $100 for the employee, just for the eight-hour training, for the day. Now, if you get into the 16- or 24-hour before you can bring them to work, you're looking at that times two or three. And then you're looking at the lodging; you're looking at the mileage; you're looking at the travel time. That's going to be a burden. That's going to be a heavy burden on the sand and gravel industry. VOICE: Are you including your labor for paying people while they're there? MR. SCHAFER: Yes. Well, no. I guess I wasn't even looking at the hourly wage of the employee while they're on-site. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: That would just be the cost of the training and travel, taking into account the normal -- MR. SCHAFER: Yes. And I believe pretty much the average state scale wage right now is probably anywhere along about 14, $16 an hour and higher. You know, in Montana, we're looking at 25 or better. You start adding that on top of there, you're talking a very high expense for the sand and gravel industry, for this to be happening to somebody that might only work for you for three weeks or, you know, even six months. If they're gone in six months, you've got that cost and that person is gone. Now you have to replace him, go through that same cost again, and hope he stays -- or she. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Do you have any questions? MR. BURNS: I just have, I think, just one, right now. As far as the -- you had mentioned that the training records, you could -- you talked about them faxed to the plants. Would all your -- MR. SCHAFER: Well, no. I meant faxed to the actual MSHA offices, or we have done it before where we've been asked for the training, and we went to a truck stop of some business that was closer to the town, and been able to fax what they needed right off the bat, like a quarterly report. Now, even in that instance, to me, that's kind of frivolous for the fact that we send those same quarterly reports to the MSHA offices already. And for us being required to have those on the site also is kind of a duplication of paperwork. And if we've got to do that on training, we're going to have to maintain it in the main office, plus at each site. And you know you're going to end up losing it, with the shifting of the employees, or not having it at the right time, so you're going to end up making that paperwork, you know, many times before you're covering yourself. MR. BURNS: Okay. That was really my question. I didn't think you would have fax machines at all your portable sites. MR. SCHAFER: No. Telephones are hard enough to get reaching in each area. MR. BURNS: That's -- did you have any questions, Rod? MR. BRELAND: Yes. You had talked about a 52- week outline you provide. Is that for each of your site superintendents, I take it? MR. SCHAFER: That is for each of my foremen, on anywhere from 30 to 35 sites. MR. BRELAND: Okay. And do you keep track of the people that attend their sessions? And how long are those sessions normally lasting? MR. SCHAFER: The foreman decides on the length of the session, depending on the length of the class that's provided. Like I said, most of these are five-, ten-minute reading, you know, material. And then the biggest thing we look at is that the -- address what's going on on the job site, not only for what's needed as far as production and that, but the shortcomings as far as guarding and safety and equipment maintenance and stuff like that. And to me, that should be all attained under the safety anyway, because it's all dealing with the job at hand. They have a sign-up book. Each employee that attends that meeting will assign that sheet. The foreman will write down the time, write down what the class was about, or what the training was about, and sign the bottom. And that gets sent in with their weekly paperwork, which, I'm sure every construction site -- or most every construction site maintains some kind of hourly and production rate, you know, that is turned in on a weekly basis. MR. BRELAND: So is that kept in some sort of a record? Say, if you asked for an individual's training that they had had during their employment, you could tell them how many sessions they had been at and -- MR. SCHAFER: It would be harder to do if I had -- if you brought in -- say, you need an individual's name, you know, I might have to transfer -- you know, go through and see what all plant sites he's been assigned to. But if you came in and were looking for an average for each job, I can go by foreman, you know, or by plant site ID, and I can pull up that foreman's records and show you every training that he's had on that plant site. MR. BRELAND: Okay. And I didn't expect that you would. I was just asking for clarification. One other thing you talked about. I know you do a lot of mobility in the job sites. Do you have any kind of number or percent of employees that are basically stable year-round versus the number that you're hiring, rotational type? MR. SCHAFER: I would say a 30 percent turn over is probably a pretty fair guess. MR. BRELAND: So at every job site, when you move, about a third of your employees are going to be hired local? MR. SCHAFER: Well, I wouldn't say every time you move. I guess I'm stating through the year, from one year to the next, you look at probably a 30 percent turn over. And when you start looking at training each -- you know, you might get a person to stay on for two or three jobs. You might have hired a person because you're in that location, and at the end of that job, that person decides he doesn't want to travel, which is part of this industry, and you lose that employee. Now the next job you go to, you're going to have to fill that spot, or maybe you don't even need that spot on the next job site. MR. BRELAND: Thank you. MR. SCHAFER: Mike? MR. FISHER: I have a couple of things I'd like to add. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: We need to be sure that the court reporter is able to get all this, and I don't know whether the microphone is picking you up. So if you want to make a statement, you can either come up and use the microphone over -- MR. FISHER: I'll let him do it. The overlapping of the OSHA and MSHA training. MR. SCHAFER: Oh, that's right. MR. FISHER: And one other quick thing. I'll let him get to that. MR. BRELAND: We can get you another chair up here, if you want to come up. You two work together, I think? CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Yes. Just pull up a chair. And just introduce yourself. MR. BRELAND: It will just make it very confusing for the court reporter. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Yes. And for us, when we're going over it. MR. FISHER: I'm Mike Fisher, with Fisher Sand & Gravel. As we deal with banks and insurance companies every day -- and I'm sure everybody else does, too -- to have 24 hours for anybody to step on the plant site or be there to have training is kind of crazy for them. We like to be involved with our bank. They come to our plant sites. The insurance companies come to our plant sites. You know, we are involved with them. But if they have to have 24 hours to come to that plant site, they're not going to do it. And communication is going to break down between insurance companies, bonding companies, and banks. I mean, that's just not good for anybody's business. Did you want to do the OSHA -- MR. SCHAFER: The other thing, I guess, he brought up that I forgot to talk about is, with the OSHA standards and the MSHA standards, a lot of times we get people that have been in a plant site or in another, you know -- or not a plant site -- but a shop facility or something like that, falling under OSHA. And there's a very likely possibility that person has received, you know, the lock-out/tag-out training, the hazardous communication training, and several other things that are falling in that same standard that we're going to have to apply to. The problem is getting the documentation to prove that that person has some of that so you're not duplicating that same training. It's going to be definitely a burden, as far as proof. We should be able to off, somewhat, of what the employee says, and do somewhat of a quick refresher or, you know, involved in like a task training or something like that to where that would cover us, instead of going through the whole 24-hour, or eight-, or 16-hour. When it comes to the training, like I said, in our perspective, the best thing that could happen for the sand and gravel industry -- and I have nothing against the training; in fact, we do it already, and we're doing it on an annual basis. The new employees we do hire, what we're doing is a task training, and they're getting on-the-job training, and then we do an eight-hour refresher. And every other year, we do the first aid. Now, we do that according to the person's capabilities and the number of people we have per plant site, and break it down that way. But if we could do a couple-, three-hour training before we put this person to work, and follow up with the rest of an eight-hour and some hands-on training, to make it to, maybe, the 16 hours of training within a six-month period of time, I think would be a lot more realistic for our industry than to require us to do an eight-hour training before we even put them to work. I think a hazard training or a site-specific training or an actual task-specific training would be -- would go a lot further in our industry, and I think you would find a lot more people complying with that, because that wouldn't be as burdensome and a lot easier for our industry to take on. But to look at putting this person through eight, to 16, to 24 hours of training before we can put them to work is really not realistic for our industry. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: I have a question. You mentioned difficulty in getting records of OSHA training for people that you hire who have worked at OSHA regulated sites. Have you tried to get those records and had difficulties, or are you just anticipating that that would present some problem? MR. SCHAFER: Actually, because it hasn't been addressed, as far as us having to train, with the way we've been doing it, we haven't done that. We just went ahead and trained it all over again, as a refresher. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Uh-huh. MR. SCHAFER: But that's definitely something I'm sure all the industries are going to look at because that's something we're going to want to avoid, not only doubling up on, but it's also going to save our industry some money on spending for training of those persons. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. But you haven't -- I mean, you're anticipating difficulties, but you have not encountered -- MR. SCHAFER: Well, most companies aren't going to be overly likely to, you know -- and how are you going to send -- see, I have a sign-up sheet for my class, and I have OSHA facilities also, and I do the training. And one of our employees go to a sand and gravel operation or an MSHA facility and their safety director calls me and asks me for -- Do you have any training on this person that I could -- I'm going to have a hard time giving them a list, with Social Security numbers, that everybody signed, with their names on it, and saying, Here's your documentation so you can put it in your file to cover this person. How are we going to transfer that documentation saying that, yes, this person has had that training, without doubling up a whole lot of paperwork or giving away more information than you actually want to? MR. BRELAND: Just to follow up on that a little bit -- and I meant to ask earlier -- when you talk about initial training that you do presently, if you hired somebody, do you have, like a formal outline you follow now, at a minimum, you cover certain things? MR. SCHAFER: I have an MSHA approved plan right now, under Part 48, that we follow on our annual training. When the person comes on the job site, right off the bat, we do a task training and a hazard-specific training for the employee. And we run with that throughout the year. And I guess like the guy from the Union said earlier, to expect that task training is not being done, even though documentation isn't done -- you're not going to walk up and tell a person to go run a $300,000 piece of equipment without telling them how to operate it or what you expect out of it. And to me, that's task training. You're going to tell them what the controls do, what you want them to do, and the safety features and the personal protective equipment. And that's task training. You're not going to turn a person loose in this industry, with the dollars that are sitting around on that plant site, without task training them. The documentation becomes an extra burden. And granted, that's something that should be done, as far as the hazard training and stuff like that. The task training, most of the time, that's a given, because you're not going to put a person into that job without giving them some type of actual, you know, explanation of what he's expected to do. MR. BRELAND: As a part of that now, are you keeping track of that and keeping a record of that, when you hire? MR. SCHAFER: Yes. MR. BRELAND: Okay. Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. Thank you, Mr. Schafer and Mr. Fisher. MR. MANZANARES: I have a question I'd like to direct, please. My name is Tino Manzanares, and I'm with county technical services. I'm with the a quasi-governmental agency, and I am the insurance man that shows up at the plant site, not through private industry, but strictly with the counties. But I have a question to you gentlemen. I didn't quite hear you, Mr. Schafer. MR. SCHAFER: Yes. MR. MANZANARES: I'm impressed that it appears you have a very well organized training program for your company. And you gave us the figures on what it would cost to train your employees. Do you have any figures on what it would cost you if this man was injured on the job, and he was not able to perform his job for the next couple of days, on the cost that you're bearing? I mean, the direct cost, and also the indirect cost, the fact of, who does the job when he's not there because he got injured because he lacked training, or because production superseded training. You had to get this guy to produce. Do you have any figures to show what it would cost you? MR. SCHAFER: Yes. We're breaking that down right now, to see what the annual cost is going to be, you know, for the loss of employee and what it costs as far workers' comp and all that stuff. Granted, you don't want to put an employee to work without training them and giving them some experience. But I'm also saying you've got to look at the realistic part of it, as far as the cost of what it's going to cost to actually put this person to work and lose them two to three weeks later. MR. MANZANARES: I understand that, and I understand very well. However, we see operations that come into the State of Colorado and crush for our clients, then they move on to the next site. Oftentimes, they leave injured employees that worked for them. And then we inherit them later on because it's the job of the county, so they're forced to work for us. And we have to accommodate these injured employees, because they lacked training, under the American Disability Act, and later on, under medical leave. MR. SCHAFER: But all of us fall under those same burdens. MR. MANZANARES: We find that it's so unfair to hire an employee and then not provide any training. It's almost like wanting him to fail or to be injured. MR. SCHAFER: No. I guess maybe you misunderstood what I was talking about. I never said nothing about not training. I'm saying let's train this person as he's going in the job. Let's not go stick 24 hours of training in this person before we even put him on the job site. MR. MANZANARES: And I understand that. The other thing is that we often find that, because production supersedes anything else, the employee is given a five- minute briefing on his tasks that he's going have to perform for the next eight hours, and he's not performing a task of using a shovel or a pick or doing this. He's often assigned complex areas in the sand and gravel operation, whether it be a screening plant, whether it be a pressure, whether he'll be driving a truck, or get on the loader and operate that. And we've seen people who assign employees to these tasks when they're not qualified to do that. They often do it for four or five minutes, and it's during that time that we see some injuries. MR. SCHAFER: And I understand your points. What -- I guess any company out there right now that's producing of working that thinks that they can hire a person or put a person to work without sticking some investment in them and expects to lose them evidently hasn't been in business long enough to realize that doing it the safe way instead of worrying about production all the time isn't going to make their company any money. We are going above and beyond, right now, what MSHA is asking for, before this rule is even put in place. What we're saying is there's some things we'd like to address to make it not so burdensome on us. For you to put every company in the same group, saying that we're going to do the same as some other company has, is totally ridiculous. You don't know what our training plan is or what we do. Granted, there are those companies out there, those companies who fell by the wayside. The biggest thing we're missing right here is the employee has to take some responsibility for his own actions. Common sense goes a long way. MSHA has got us under -- guarding every possible thing a person could get into. The work habits of the employee is something we cannot control. You can train. I can take a person and put them through six months of training straight and still have a person go out and injure himself. Now, is it because I failed as a trainer? I don't think so. You have to start looking at the individual employee has to have some responsibility. And just because this person had quit or decided he has a back injury, or maybe he came to work for our company with an injury and needed a place to get some more money. I'm not saying that's always the issue. But you have to look at every situation. And to put every company in the same instance is not fair. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: And that's really what we're here for. And we're trying to figure out exactly what kind of requirements are going to do the most good. I mean, and obviously balancing that against, I mean, the burdens on the industry, which we, as a regulatory industry, have got to consider. Now, would you state your name and spell it for us? And would you like to come up and make a presentation and give us your recommendations for -- MR. MANZANARES: My name is Tino, T-I-N-O, Manzanares, M-A-N-Z-A-N-A-R-E-S. And I am a with County Technical Services, a quasi-governmental agency. And I compliment the man on his philosophy and his attitude. I wish we could see more of those in the work area. It's just that it bothers me that Part 48 has been around. And people are being maimed and injured throughout the year. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Well, and we are -- MR. FISHER: I guess I've got one thing to add to that. As far as hiring a laborer or shoveler, that he doesn't just do that job. That might be true later on, but that production does not supersede safety. If I hire somebody as a laborer and my dozer operator quits, and I'm still worried about production, there is no way I would ever take that laborer and put him in a D-8 because we're lacking production. He's going to cost me ten times as much money as if I shut that D-8 down and I shovel it into the trap myself. There's just no way that would ever happen. MR. MANZANARES: Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much. MR. SCHAFER: I guess maybe I came across wrong on some of the things I was stating earlier, but I did not say that I didn't want to invest any money in training this person before we even put him to work. You know, you're not going to put a person out in this type of industry -- like I said, on every side -- and I'm probably pretty much speaking for everybody -- you're looking a $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 worth of equipment you've got invested on that site right there. You're not going to take anybody without putting some investment of training in them and turn him loose in that kind of situation. I mean, it's not the same as handing a person a set of keys for a pickup that drives every day, and asking him to drive down the road and pick up parts for you. We're in a whole different situation here. And like I said, to put an hour or two or something like that before the person works and then trying to find a reasonable amount of time to get a class size together so the burden of expense and travel isn't going to be so hard on you, to me, is not asking for too much. And I definitely think that's something that we have to look at, as far as before we make this regulation, because we're not like the coal mine where they can hire somebody and, before they come in, everybody comes to this one location and they can sit down and train them. And when they hire, they're going to hire eight, ten people. When we hire, we might hire one person, and it might be 500 miles away from us. And for us to travel, or them to travel for one person, as far as the money part of it -- and let's face it, everything comes down to the money part of it -- that's not real feasible for our industry. And to not trust the foreman who you put in charge of that job site to do the training or to do some training on that individual before you put them to work -- I think that person is well qualified, because you didn't put him in charge of a couple million dollar site for no reason. You put him in charge of that site because you feel he knows what he's doing. And to me, that falls under a competent person. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. Thank you very much. We appreciate your input and suggestions. Do we have anyone else who would like to speak who hasn't signed up? Okay. Sir? MR. BROWN: My name is Richard Brown, and I am with Wyoben, Incorporated. We are a bentonite clay mining and manufacturing firm, based in Billings, Montana, with mining operations in northwestern Wyoming, in the Big Horn Basin area. There are two things that I'd like to comment on briefly. Before I do this, I'd like to explain a little bit about what the bentonite industry is and what it does, because we are a little different than the other mining industries and representatives that are being defined as those who will be covered under these new proposed regulations. The bentonite industry is composed of, primarily, five companies, here in the United States, five major companies. I believe there are representatives of three companies here today. Our operations are all surface operations, open pit contour mines, contour strip mines, typically of fairly small surface area and shallow depth. All mine sites, all active mine sites where extraction is taking place, are tied directly to specific milling sites, specific processing plants. Each processing plant may have as many as 15 or 20 mine sites attached to it, in various stages of activity, either being opened up, being stripped, sites where the mineral is being taken out, or sites that are being reclaimed in one phase or another. Depending upon the phase that these sites are in, there will be anywhere from one to six or seven people working at them, at any one point in time. Individual mine sites may be as much as 40, 50, 60 miles away from a mill site, or they could be very, very close, within a mile or two. So my first comment speaks to the concept of where training records should be kept for inspectors' access. We often have, in our specific operations, miners, people in the field, that will be at three, four, five individual mine sites during the course of one day. These individuals may be part of teams or groups that are coming and going, separating and recombining during the course of the day. So it becomes very, very problematic for us to attempt to keep records at the individual mine sites for inspectors. I should add that the individual sites, even when they are being actively opened, seldom have any physical structures on-site. The mining equipment and, perhaps, a trailer with supplies and lubricants, things of that nature in them, is all that is actually there. So it's not convenient or something that would lend itself easily to storage of records, even if the personnel were pretty constant at that site for any period of time. The time frames for these various activities at the various mine sites vary from a matter of a few hours for an individual, during the extraction phase or reclamation phase, upwards to perhaps as much as a month for the active mining phase. So for our particular operations, I do not see an easy way to maintain records for individuals' training for inspectors' access at the mine site. I do see, if the requirement were made that we had to do this, something that would almost certainly cause us to be in violation frequently because of the difficulty in ensuring that current records were on-site. Because all of the mine sites are tied directly to plant sites, it seems to me that, for our industry, at least, it would be a most suitable and workable situation to have the records be kept at the plant sites. Those are the focus of everything that is done in our industry, anyhow, and that is where all other records tend to be kept. It seems to me that the issue here, generally, not just for our industry, is one of inspector access to the records, ready access, and therefore, it is a time sensitive thing, not a geography sensitive issue. And as long as the records could be provided to the inspector within a reasonable period of time, whether that's 12 hours, 24 hours after actual on-site inspection, or a couple of hours, that would suffice. The need to have the records physically on-site at the time an inspector appears there, though, does not appear to me to be the primary objective -- or should be the primary objective. So I would ask that consideration be given to looking at a time dependent criteria rather than a geography dependent criteria here. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Do you have any suggestion for what that time might be? MR. BROWN: Given the way things are going with information exchange and electronic format now, I can see, down the road, that being almost instantaneous. I would say, from our standpoint, we could probably do it within a matter of two or three hours, because we do not have a long distance to go from any one our mine sites to the plant site. And typically, the inspectors come back in to the plant sites anyhow, after they do the field inspections. Others, in other industries, might have a different perspective on that, but my guess is, sometime within 24 hours would be easily met by most people. And even that kind of time frame should meet the objective of allowing the inspector to verify that proper training has been received by all people that were working at a particular mine site, which I believe is the real objective here. The second comment I'd like to make is concerning the less than 30-minute training sessions. It's my belief that less than 30-minute training sessions should be allowed, simply because that gives the individual operator the flexibility to have some sessions that would not be 30 minutes in length, whether it's five minutes, 18 minutes, 25 minutes, it doesn't make any difference. There are many topics that are covered in training sessions that do not need to be covered in excess of 30 minutes. If there was a 30-minute minimum mandated, you're going to find training sessions being stretched out for no valid purpose. Now, it's been mentioned that there will be an increased record keeping burden placed upon operators who are attempting to keep records of training sessions that last only a few minutes. I think that's correct. And I think that is one of the limiting things that will cause operators not to want to do training sessions of a few minutes. But that's something that should be left up to the operator. If they can handle the record keeping burden of showing the training sessions of five minutes in length have been conducted, and they want to continue doing that, I don't see anything inherently wrong with that, as long as information that is useful and necessary is being given out to the worker. Flexibility for the operator is really a big thing. As soon as you start requiring training sessions of a certain length, you start tying the operator's hands. We all know, from having conducted training sessions in industry, that the workers do start to lose their attention at about 30 minutes. The information you're giving no longer really hits the target. They get tired; they get bored. And so I know, in our company, we try and work on 30-minute segments, knowing that this is the case. People are fresher when they hear things in 30-minute increments. That's not to say that we bring people in for only 30 minutes and then cut them loose and let them go someplace else. But we may train for 30 minutes, let them go out, do something for a short period of time, half-an-hour, hour, come back, do more, just so that they are fresh mentally when they hear the information we're talking about. But I know that we often have things that take less than 30 minutes to get the information across. So I would ask that consideration be given for allowing less than 30-minute training sessions, so that we, as operators, have the flexibility of determining the actual length that meets the circumstance, and not be mandated to have longer sessions that must be filled with inconsequential material. That's all I have to say at this point in time. I'm sure that we will have more written comments, down the line. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to entertain them. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: I don't have any questions. Do you have any? MR. BRELAND: No, I don't. Thank you very much. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much, Mr. Brown. MR. SCHAFER: I'd like to just add one comment, as far as our annual training. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Could you just identify yourself, for the record? MR. SCHAFER: I'm Kelly Schafer, of Fisher Sand & Gravel, again. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you. MR. SCHAFER: Our annual training, when you started adding up what we're paying our employees to be on- site, what we're paying for hotel rooms and meals and training, on an annual basis, we probably spend somewhere between 20- and $25,000 a year on this training. And when it comes to our traveling to our specific -- you know, sometimes we bring them all to one location, and sometimes we travel to different locations, and that's pretty much a ballpark. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: And that's total, for all employees? MR. SCHAFER: Yes. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: And how many employees, again, are we talking about? MR. SCHAFER: We're training anywhere from 200 to about 250 in a year. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: In a year? Okay. And so the -- I'm sorry -- so the 20- to 25,000 includes everything? MR. SCHAFER: Yes. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: And does that also include the normal compensation for miners? MR. SCHAFER: Yes. For anywhere from a one- to two-day period. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. So that would be an all-inclusive figure, then? MR. SCHAFER: Yes. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. All right. Thank you. Is Ken Pike here, by any chance? Do you have another comment, Mr. Schafer? MR. SCHAFER: The last thing -- the main reason that seems a lot cheaper is because you're looking at a quantity, you know, a larger quantity of people. So when you start looking at before you put them to work, that price is going to be substantially higher, because, you know, you're not going to get the lodging discounts; you're not going to get the meals discount; you're not going to get the group discount in the training part. And we do have our people carpool and get up there to where it's not an individual, one person at one time, training cost. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. Thank you. Is there anyone else who has not spoken who would like to speak at this time, or is there anyone who has already spoken who is ready to share comments that they would like to make, things that have been raised since they made their remarks? Mr. Tuggle? MR. TUGGLE: Yes. It's Harry Tuggle, T-U-G-G-L-E, with United Steel Workers. And I guess a lot of the comments I've heard since I talked earlier are very interesting. And yes. There is a number of operations that are unique unto themselves. And sand, gravel, stone is not like coal mining. But neither is sand, gravel like stone. If you talk about a sand, gravel pit or a quarry, or a mom/pop operation, or a roadside portable operation, versus a stone quarry in Vermont that's -- you're talking 500-feet deep quarries, giant derricks, explosives, heavy equipment, one thing and another. So all of this is trying to be meshed into a nutshell, based on the mandate here by Congress on the issue. I can sympathize with a number of things that's been said, and even from the last speaker, Mr. Brown, and his concern about the crew members moving from one operation to another, with the situation that an employee might even lose his own training records. You know, in some areas, the individuals are required to have them in their hip pocket, in their billfold. There is a headquarters record keeping area, but if an inspector walks on site and says, Has this guy been trained, and the guy, without even the supervisor, you know, Here's my training record and here's the signatures. At the same time, there can be situations of that individual losing it, and all of a sudden he doesn't have the records on-hand now, and there is no room for the 24- hour flexibility area written into the standards on the issues, it would present some problems. Also, back on some of the earlier comments, when you talk about the records being kept by computer systems and so forth -- and I can certainly appreciate that, with all the new technologies coming down the pike. Matter of fact, if you're into the computer system and someone says, Well, we want to use a form developed by us versus a 5023 form, and if you're into computer systems, you can download the 5023 form and fill it in. It's on the Internet by MSHA itself. If it complies quite a bit with the information needed on the 5023, I don't have a problem with that one way or the other. The problem I have with computer data, unless it's been scanned or can be verified in some form or fashion, that's a picture of an individual's signature. I mean, it's not a record with the individual's signature on it. And I appreciate that these are on file and can be drawn on and say, Yes. This is what the original looks like. And that original is also maintained in a bank somewhere else -- and that is somewhat duplicate record keeping, but that signed certification of training has to be somewhere, because then the miner is to be given copies of that, should he leave the operation and so forth. I certainly appreciate the remarks made by the insurance person here, Tino, I'll call him. But there's some things in this whole realm, as we're talking -- all the way up from mom and pop operations all the way up to big granite quarries or whatever we might be talking about -- but there's something, to me, getting lost. People are concerned about an insurance company guy coming on the property, or a bank person coming on the property, or a guy delivering fuel on to property, or dropping off some porta-potties, and worried that they're going to have to have eight or 24 hours of miners' training. And I don't know anywhere where that's done. It's not practiced. I don't see the concern. If I go on a mine property, which I do quite often, I'm led around by someone that is familiar with that mine. I'm not given training, unless I go underground and need refresher training on self-rescue or something like that. And that's, you know, five minutes, and you stay with this guy all the time, and whatever he says do, you do it. Here's a picture of our operation. Here's what we do here. You stay with him. And by and large, a number of these vendors that come on the property, we shouldn't even be concerned about, unless I'm wrong and MSHA is somewhere saying that these people have to be trained eight and 24 hours, as though they're a production miner. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: I don't think so. I mean, I'm not as familiar with the Part 48 policy as I probably ought to be, but I would agree with you that there are lines to be drawn as far as what type of training is appropriate. And coming on to the mine property doesn't necessarily mean that you get a 24 hours. It really is going to depend on what it is that you're doing. MR. TUGGLE: Okay. Just a couple of other comments. And I also appreciate, I think it was raised by Mr. Schafer, about the -- someone doing the teaching or training that has hands-on experience. Those guys are the experts. I would agree. The guys in the front and so forth. As much as you can stay away from a college or professionals or whatever, or you can get the State to do it for free, or whatever, to do some training. But if you have a competent person with teaching capabilities with hands-on experience, it's a lot better approach than some of the other means that's available that runs up exorbitant that were being quoted earlier. But also, in talking about the first aid issue, Mr. Schafer was saying it was somewhat overkill there. And I think that's a bad term to use on that issue. But I guess, being a member -- and there may be some of you that have been members of home safety associations, where I have been a member for the last 20 years, and there's guys on there that's been on there for 30 years plus and so forth. And that's part and parcel of the home safety associations' philosophy, MSHA's philosophy, and so it's not just for that miner. You've taken on a family when you hire me or a woman. That particular training that you give to him, he can take home with him. That may be his kids, his wife, his neighbors, or whatever it might be, that he might use that information. One other thing that I want to touch on, because of the broad range of the types of industries that we're talking about within this group of mining entities. And it's been talked about, you know, that eight hours should be at least the initial time spent on the job, and no less than 30 minutes by some, and others, at the operator's discretion, and so forth. Some believe it's six hours, and then I'll put them on the job and filter the other in, all the way down to two hours and filter the rest of the training in, and so forth. I believe we should come up with a reasonable figure. I believe a reasonable figure is already established, as I've stated before, within Part 48. There's already an approach and an entity for change to that. And I think maybe it could be referred out within Part 46, on petitions for modification, that if you have a given operation where you've got people at five or six mine sites, or you have an operation where you have 30 percent turn over, or you have an operation that's unique, getting into bentonite or phosphates and a number of different ores or materials you would be talking about, is somewhat of a burden on MSHA, as an administrator on the metal/nonmetal side. But coal does this constantly. Every week, you see ten and 15 petitions for modification on standards in coal, all the time. I don't know how they keep up with them. But I think for certain segments of mining that eight hours would not fit the bill, that immediate particular circumstances, that 30-minute increments is unreasonable for these particular operations or whatever, those operators could apply for a petition for modification and show by record, Look, this is our last two-years record, three-years record, or whatever. We have a 30 percent turn over that's beating us to death, it's costing us money left and right. We've got to spend a little less time with the individual, except site-specific. We don't want to get into first aid right away. We don't want to get into -- in many of the sand, gravel, you're not into explosives there, so you're talking about just hazard and site-specific. And you could be asking those things, I think, in a petition for modification, where you need some sort of variance from the actual rule that the others should be living by. We can't have a super-weak standard for a super mom/pop operation and try to apply that in granite or limestone quarries where you've got depths of, as I said, 5- and 600 feet and you've got derricks all over the place, explosives, flame burners that cut the stone versus a shovel that digs sand. So, as I said earlier, there's got to be some moderation in all things. And I think that we continue to pursue this. And where you have those problems, and where those hearings occur, as long as those keep coming forward, every one of them is good points, good food for thought, needs to be addressed. And some of these things that's been said already -- and we'll be looking at the whole record before our final comments, and state a position as to why we think this should be here for this particular commodity and this should be maybe treated differently for this particular commodity, on the basis of a potential for a petition for modification. With that, I have no other comments. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Do you have any questions? MR. BRELAND: No. Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much, Mr. Tuggle. MR. BURNS: I've just got one. I guess, on the contractors, you feel that should be something that we should try to clear up, in this role, as to what types of people need to have the 24 hours and which don't? MR. TUGGLE: Oh, absolutely. MR. BURNS: Just to clear up a lot of the confusion that's out there. Because this is -- MR. TUGGLE: Unless I misunderstood one of the earlier speakers, he was talking about this shaft and slope mining. To me, if you have an operation that, all of a sudden, you get into shaft and slope -- and I'm not thinking a slope of a hill, a slope of a mine and a shaft of a mine -- you've now jumped from Part 46 back into Part 48. So that entity itself, in my opinion, needs to be stricken. You don't even need to discuss it. It's already covered. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Are you intending, in your final written remarks, are you planning to address the issue of different categories of employees? I mean, if you could, I mean, we would appreciate it, I mean as far as who gets the 24 hours and the eight hours, depending on the contractors that are coming on property, and the banker or the insurance salesman, or some middle category besides that. If you could address that in your written remarks -- MR. TUGGLE: Yes. And it's going to be quite simple and, I think, straightforward, on the basis that, if you have individuals on there -- And if you've got a potato chip delivery guy and he comes on a mine every day, just because he's on a mine every day, and he does not extract materials, does not run machinery or conveyor systems or involved in the process, other than filling a potato chip machine, this guy doesn't need training, in my opinion. Nothing to do with the 24, except that that guy has to be advised as to the area he's going to, or if there's another area, be escorted to another area to fill his potato chip machine, or whatever. The operator should not be burdened with even the thought of eight and 24, or whatever. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. Thank you very much. MR. TUGGLE: Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Mr. Schafer? MR. SCHAFER: Yes. I just want to clarify one thing. I guess he was talking about I said that the eight hours of training for the first aid/CPR. He said I said it was overkill or, you know, not worthwhile. If you have ever trained a first aid/CPR class, where you have a certified trainer -- and I didn't want to get into this, because I guess it didn't need to be brought up in here -- but how many employees that are older in your companies that don't need it? You know, maybe that are heavy smokers or their hands are so thick and fat that they can't bend over to do the compressions, or they can't breathe for themselves and somebody else, they can't read the text books to go through the training. You're spending a lot of extra time going through this with this person, and they might not comprehend it. Second of all, you've got a lot of people, when they come in to my classes, say, I don't want to do this. I don't want to be embarrassed because I can't do it in front of the rest of the people that are in the class, and I'm not ever going to help anybody else. So you're spending eight hours of training on this employee, and he's probably going to be out here looking somewhere else, and he's disturbing the rest of the class. Or maybe the person is fine and is watching. But if you're going to spend the time training, let's have the people that are going to take the ball and fix the problem or help in the situation at the time. I'm not saying it's a waste of training. We train the family members. I bring the wives in during the training, and I offer choking for infants and basic CPR, and basic stuff like that. We provide that for them. I'm not saying that I don't care about the families. What I'm saying is let's spend the money where it needs to be spent. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. Thank you very much. Mr. Tuggle? MR. TUGGLE: One other comment. And maybe we don't need to continue to elaborate on this. But I came from underground mining, hard rock mining, and we had the same situation of a number of -- I mean, big-hearted rock miners, their hands look like baseball mitts compared to mine. Took on two concepts. And we had people that could not read. We didn't have anybody that couldn't count, from either one to five or one to 15. So it left one option, either attempt to provide this training to all of these individuals, or have a situation occur in front of this individual and he said, I stood there and did nothing because I didn't know what to do. Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much. All right. Again I'll ask. Is there anyone who has not spoken who would like to speak, or anyone who has already spoken who has additional remarks? Yes? This gentleman over here. MR. ELLISON: My name is James Ellison; E-L-L-I-S-O-N. I'm the safety supervisor of the Fort Collins plant of Whole Land, Incorporated. We're a manufacturer of Portland cement. We have 112 employees at our plant. Twelve of those employees are involved in extraction work. The other 100 employees are involved in the manufacturing of converting the limestone extracted from our in-plant quarry into Portland cement. Typical of all cement plants, we have a very, very large outlay in capital to produce our product. We have very expensive heavy equipment. We don't run small equipment. We run big equipment. We're very training conscious. We're very proud of our training record. We do new miner, both inexperienced and experienced; we do annual refresher; we do first aid and CPR. We keep 2/3 of our employee base certified in both CPR and first aid, even though the Poudre Valley Fire Authority Station Number 7 is less than a mile away from our plant. Training budget, I can document $40,000 a year, for the past two years, in training costs, of all types of training, and that does not include any salary or wages. That's what we've paid to bring people in or send our people someplace else to be trained. Some of our best training is by manufacturers' representatives. These people are not necessarily MSHA qualified as instructors. Recently, we brought a manufacturer's rep in from Victor Torch Company and, even though we have many welders and maintenance people that carry a list of welding certifications as long as your arms, they admittedly learned many, many new and important things from this non-MSHA certified instructor. Even with all the training and our belief in training, we have problems with training once or twice a year. Cement plants are very dependent upon the kiln. That's the heart of the plant. That's where the conversion takes place, the chemical reaction from limestone into cement clinker. We call it a burning process. And the limestone is actually turned into a molten state to drive off the impurities and cause the reactivity that is necessary in Portland cement. When the kiln goes down, the entire plant goes down. Extraction work ceases. And typically, we bring in many, many contractors that are on-site for specific jobs. Some of them may be on- site for environmental equipment such as dust collectors or byge houses; some may be specialists in refractory lining for the kiln; some may be iron workers; we bring in some conveyor people; equipment; field surface. We use all kinds of contractors during this period of time. They are not involved in any kind of extraction work whatsoever. There is no extraction work going on during these periods. Those contractors have no need of eight hours of new miner training; they have no need of 12 hours or 24 hours. What they do have need of is site-specific hazard training in the site, the area of the plant, that they're in. And this may take one or two hours to alert them of what is in that area that may cause an injury. They don't want to be miners. They're experts at what they're doing. And there is no reason that we should ever give them an hour of ground control or 15 minutes of ground control or self-rescuer training, because they're not going to be involved in any of these. They're not going to be exposed to any of those hazards. The training of the contractors, whether it's done by the miner, which is a burden imposed on the miner, the mine operator, for these short periods of time, or whether it's done by the contractor, needs to only be site- specific hazards that they will encounter while they're on our mine site. That's all I have to say. Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Anybody have any questions? MR. BRELAND: No. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much, Mr Ellison. Is there anyone else? All right. I would like to thank you all for attending, and particularly those speakers who made presentations. We're going to be closing here in a few minutes, but before we do, I'd like to give you a short summary of what we expect our schedule is going to be on this project. As I said in my earlier remarks, we're intending to publish a proposed rule in the Federal Register, sometime in the early spring. And at that point, then we go into what's called a comment period. And that includes a lot of people to submit written comments on the proposed rule. And also, generally, we will schedule at least a couple of public hearings, which are going to be similar in format to the public meetings that we're having right now, where people can come in and give specific comments on the proposed rule. We take those comments, the hearing comments and the written comments, and then we are intending to then publish a final rule before the final deadline of September 30 of 1999. I would like to encourage people who have already spoken and have additional remarks that they would like to make, or people who maybe did not feel prepared or ready to make remarks today, to submit written comments to MSHA. Again, I encourage you to send those in before February 1, 1999. The address would be the Office of Standards Regulations and Variances for MSHA, which is in the November 3 notice of meeting. If you don't have that address, please come up to the front, and we can give you the address, if you want to know where to send those. And finally, if you are here and have not signed up on the attendance list in the back, I would ask you to do so. And I know that there are a couple of people who asked us earlier for a copy of the attendance sheet. And if you want to come up, we'll try and get you copies if we can find a copy machine in the hotel somewhere. But again, thank you -- oh. Yes? MR. CODY: There was a pretty quick transition between, Do we have any other speakers, and your closing remarks. I really did feel as though I wanted to make a couple of comments. Is it too late? CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Oh, no. Absolutely not. Come on up. MR. CODY: Feel free to shut me down if this gets too far out from where it should be. My name is Rod Cody, and I'm with the Wyoming MSHA State Grants program. I'm the Director there. First off, I want to say that I've been in and around the industry for some 30 years, and that includes underground, surface mining, sand and gravel. I've been around a good long time. Construction, as well. What I've seen, coming from the old days, if you will, is that our greatest danger, in whatever industry we're in, is a lack of training. Now, it sounds to me like everybody that's been up here and talking pretty much has the same thing to say, We are providing the training. So if the training is being provided, number one, I don't see where the problem is with mandated training. I do see some problems with the 24 hour situation. I feel as though everybody should have that 24 hours, but I also feel that they shouldn't be mandated to do it right away. I think they should have to do the minimum of eight, and then the additional 16 within 60 days, strictly because there are certain things that go on on given job sites that obviously need to be covered. Now, by mandating 24-hour training, that doesn't necessarily say that Company X or Company Y has to pay for that training. In my area of the state, you basically don't do anything if you don't have the 24-hour training. For instance, over the weekend, I had to get training for my wife. She has no intention of working on mine sites, but she had to have the 24-hour training, just due to the area we live in. By mandating this training, that doesn't mean that all of these companies have to pay for that training. Once again, what happens in my area is it's considered to be a big plus if you come to apply for a job and you already have that training. Most employment companies ask you, right out of the gate, Do you have that training? Chances are, they don't want to talk to you if you don't have that training. So, bottom line, these folks that think that possibly they're not going to have the employees to do their job because they're requiring training, I think they're in error. I can see why they think that, but this would essentially be the tools of the trade. That would be a more valuable individual if he had that training. So I don't think there's going to be a problem there at all. Initial training, I pretty much already covered. But in that first eight hours, I'm thinking that you need to do hazard training, transportation and communication, electrical hazards, and certainly escape-way. And maybe that's not all of it but, certainly, I feel as though those topics should be covered. First aid. I'm one of those that I believe everybody should know first aid and CPR. It's been stated that some individuals are not capable of learning CPR, for instance. I guess I could agree with that. But first aid, in itself, is simple. It's just simply, as you folks know, basically taking the white stuff and putting it on the red stuff. You know, if an individual is bleeding, you need to control the bleeding. First aid is, essentially, simple. But that could still be a secondary issue that could come sometime in their 16-hour training, if you have an individual on that site that already has advanced first aid. And I mean, I can see where first aid could become a secondary issue. But you at least need that eight hours of training. By not providing that training, you're essentially saying that production is our main goal. You want to give everybody the same opportunity to come to that job site and give you a good day's work for a fair dollar, and do the same thing tomorrow. So I think the training is very, very important. The training topics covered, I believe that Part 48 has pretty much covered what needs to be covered for anybody that becomes included in the training auspice. Certainly, some of that would have to vary. For sand and gravel -- one of the comments was, for instance -- geez, I can't think of what Section it is -- but in Part 48, it's self-rescue and respiratory devices. Well, obviously, somebody that's working in a sand and gravel yard does not need a self-rescue, nor the training on. But respiratory devices is certainly also respirators, and they do need that training. So that is a relevant topic for them. Training plans. I think a training plan is important from the standpoint that, if you're the trainer today -- now, that's whether or not you're a certified trainer. And personally, I believe that if they don't require certified trainers, they should at least require the individual to go through a training course so that he knows, within himself, that that material is being presented correctly. But the training plan itself, I think it's fair to assume that, if you have a training plan on-site, or at your main office, or wherever it's kept, that at least, if somebody else comes in to that training, i.e., the supervisor, he has something to look at to know pretty much what training is supposed to be presented and at least some idea as to how it's supposed to be presented. Now, obviously, the supervisors are pretty much the experts on most of these jobs. There's no question about it. Generally, supervisors become supervisors because they've got a great deal of training at those jobs. That doesn't imply, to me, that, because they have a great deal of expertise in, for instance, loading a hole, or to keep it even simpler, expertise in wiring the round in and timing an explosion, that doesn't tell me that this individual knows that you need to check the burning rate of fuse. You know, there's just some things that are over and above, maybe, what you've done for a lot of years. Being in a trade for a lot of years tends to bring about complacency. And that doesn't necessarily imply that the individual wants to do that, I just think it's human nature. You become narrow-sighted. You're looking from Point A to Point B, and you're maybe not thinking about the what-ifs that are going along beside you. From that standpoint, I think that you do need to involve trainers. Let's see. The time frame for training, I agree with every one of these folks that said that it should be up to the operators. If they want to do one minute or five minutes or 30 minutes, or whatever they want to do, as long as that training is being completed, I think they should be entitled to do. Now, when I was a safety director in the past, I actually tried that training where you break it down into -- it's 30-minute, at this point, in Part 48 -- but now, we broke it down into 30 minutes, and we had 165 employees, and I had -- for lack of a better word here -- one hell of a time keeping everybody trained, due to vacations, being sick, being away at training, you name it. It was just a nightmare. So from that standpoint, I would recommend the eight hours annual, but I still think it should be left up to the operator how they want to do the training, as long as they're doing the training. Instructor. I touched on that a little bit. I do think the supervisors and a lot of the office folks and that sort of thing have a great deal of information to provide in training. There's a great deal of knowledge there. They should be able to stand there and talk their subject as long as they want to talk it. But I still believe that there should be, beyond a competent person, a person that has been through instructor's training, once again, so that they know what has to be done within the law and they know it's being done correctly. You know, it's very, very important to get the information out. But it's very much more important to make damn sure that the information is understood. And that may be where that instructor comes in, even if he doesn't become certified, if he goes through the course. And that would be that individual that actually wanted to be there. And that's -- well, one more thing I wanted to touch on, on the training plan. We hear about the costs of training plan. Now, our program, in Wyoming, we actually do charge for training. But now, training plans, if somebody calls in and said, Well, you know, we want to put together a training plan. What do we need to do? I generally tell them, Come on in to the office when you have some time; or I can come to your office; or we'll meet downtown and have a cup of coffee. And I bring a generic training plan and tell them, you know, This is how you go about this thing. And there's no cost to it at all. The biggest pain with that is actually sitting down and doing one for your company and getting off in the mail, all of that sort of thing. But there shouldn't be a great cost for that. I've seen -- in fact, my neighbor across the street is an owner of a plumbing outfit. Now, you don't think of plumbers as people who would have their own training plan. He certainly does. He believes in this Part 48. And I suppose it doesn't hurt at all, all the mining around. He's more apt to be able to work on those mine sites because he's got the training. But he tells me he believes in this training. And that's all I wanted to say. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Do you have any questions? MR. BRELAND: I just had one. When you say that if they weren't designated as approved instructors, you think they should have an instructor training course, are you referring to the present MSHA three-day certified course for instructors, or what? MR. CODY: That is, indeed, the course that I'm referring to, though maybe there could be some modifications on that. I'm not necessarily recommending that. But now, at this point in time, we do seminars all over our state. And we are actually doing a modified instructor kind of a training thing, even though there's no certification to it or anything. We tell them, at the end of this, that if they're interested in this thing and they need -- they feel as though they want to become an instructor, then they need to come by and actually go through the three-day course. But we offer a modified thing already. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: How long is that, the modified? MR. CODY: Well, I have to be honest and say that's varied. There's been a great deal of interest in it, but we try to do it for, like, an hour. And that just touches on the highlights, if you will. And then, if they're interested, like I say, we tell them, Come on down. We'll put you through the training. I don't -- I've been a certified instructor for many years, and I've always been proud of that fact. But from the standpoint of sand and gravel and all the other various mining entities that are facing these new rules, I can see where maybe they feel that they don't need to be certified. But once again, I would recommend, at minimum, they be required to go through, at least, the course. If they don't want the card, so be it, but at least they've got the training behind them to get the information out correctly or see to it that it is getting out correctly. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: When you say that they go through the course, are you talking about the three-day course? MR. CODY: Yes, I am. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. BRELAND: Are you talking about all people that do training, or the designated person in charge of training? MR. CODY: I'm talking about a designated person within their company. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Who would be a coordinator of maybe other people who provide instruction in specific areas? MR. CODY: Somebody to steer the ship. Somebody to make sure that it's going the right course, whatever his title might be, or her title. MS. FONTAINE: Okay. You said that a company can get a generic training plan? MR. CODY: Here about a week-and-a-half ago -- now, this wasn't for a training plan -- but a week-and-a- half ago, I sent one of my instructors to Texas. And the reason was that they had planned on coming to Wyoming for some training, and it was better for them if they could acquire the training right there. So I sent one of my instructors to Texas. Of course, two of their people couldn't make it, so they came to the training in Gilette, anyway. But for training, I believe you need to go and do what you need to do to get the training out there. Once again, as I said when I began talking, our biggest danger today, and very likely, as always, is a lack of information. Those people might be the best in the world at whatever their trade is, but if they don't have that safety training up front, if they don't have that knowledge up front, they're a walking, talking accident. They're ready to be hurt, through no fault of their own. MS. FONTAINE: Could you give me a range of costs for small mine, if you would go to a small mine to put on training for them? MR. CODY: The cost? Now, I have to say, if it's a small mine -- we have a standard cost, for various reasons. First off, new miner training, being the most expensive, is $81 through our facility. And the reason for that is because there's a credit-and-a-half college credit towards mining technology included in that. Other costs, for instance, annual refresher, that's 30 bucks. But that cost -- even though the cost of the individual won't vary -- most people come to us, okay? But if we go out to the mine site, it may be a situation where they've got enough people to pay for our instructor to come out there, that we -- and realizing they're a very small company -- we've cut the costs. We're looking at cutting the overall cost as of the first of next month. But we have cut cost, for certain companies, from our standard or our customary cost, the reason being, the training is important. But you have to pay for the instructor, so you have to get some money out of the deal to pay for these instructors. But even at our customary cost, we talked about -- or it was mentioned that the one outfit had eight employees on-site and there was quite a bit of money spent a year on training those individuals, and that's a good deal. If the company is going to spend that kind of money training that few of employees, I applaud them. But just annual refresher for those individuals, if you're talking eight of them, you're talking 240 bucks. I don't think 240 bucks is too much money to spend on a group of employees to make sure that it's reiterated. After you do the 24-hour training, or the eight/16 method, or however it is, you're going to, if your company's worth its salt at all, you're going to do toolbox meetings or safety meetings, or whatever their term for it is. You're going to do that throughout the year, and you're going to talk about relative subjects that's going on in your company today, you will. Within those, you're very likely -- you should be, anyway -- reiterating what you talked about in your initial training. But to think that you're spending too much money covering initial training and too much money for annual refresher, to me, is ludicrous. I see it as a big savings, over a period of time, because you're going to have less accidents; you're going to have employees that -- well, it's comparable to, if I think I'm working in a pigpen, I very likely am. If I think that the company doesn't care about my welfare, I'm very likely not going to stay there. You see what I'm saying? If you're showing your employees that you do care about their welfare, they're more likely to stay there and do you a good job, a good, safe, productive job. You're going to save money. MS. FONTAINE: Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much, Mr. Cody. MR. CODY: Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Yes. Would you like to speak, sir? MR. MANZANARES: Once again, my name is Tino Manzanares. I'm with County Technical Services. I promised myself that I would just sit there and I would not make any comments, I would just listen. But I found it extremely difficult to just be quiet. And I do want to extend my congratulations to the gentleman who spoke last. I whole-heartedly endorse what he has said. Within the last few years, we have trained over 5- to 6,000 surface miners, sand and gravel operations, everything from a hole in the ground, to a screening plant, to a sand and gravel operation, to a batch plant, hot plant, in the pit. I am whole-heartedly an endorser of training. I asked the gentleman earlier, you know, Have you put any price on how much it costs when an employee is injured and he's not able to do his job and you have to hire somebody else? I was recently contracted, requested to do some training for a company, if I could do it in Spanish. I said yes. I agreed to do a 16-hour class in Spanish, although I had to translate everything that I -- the approved mine certified training program under MSHA -- I had to translate that and do that in Spanish. I was elated to find out that, when I did the training, the employees, who not only did not speak English, but they couldn't read or write English or Spanish. Therefore, at the end of the class, I was surprised at the amount of information that was retained by these employees. Everybody is trainable. There are certain limits to some and certain limits to others. Management must be held accountable for the actions of their employees. Of the employee doesn't want to attend class, that's why he only got to the third grade. He played hooky for the rest of the time. But since he is the property of the employer, management must be held accountable. Every time there is an injury, in my opinion, there is a failure in management. Getting back to thing that I said. Yes. People are trainable. They will learn, everything from the very basic first aid and CPR to a person who has never seen a picture of a lung, when you teach silica training or you teach respirators. All of these people are trainable. A great percentage of our employees are illiterate. And how do we train those, unless we provide training in a formal manner? Yes. I am a whole-hearted endorser of the ten- minute toolbox talks. We do an extensive amount of it. We have over 400 videos that we can use, and many of those are five-minute videos. I can teach a front-line supervisor, provide a topic with him, to go along with that five-minute video, and he can do it in ten minutes, very effective training. It's easier to move one trainer to visit a site than it is to move 25 people to a hotel in town and provide all of those facilities. I provided training individual mine sites in my van, where I only had three people in the van at a time. So training is essential, if we are to prevent and reduce the injuries to the employees. Thank you. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much. Yes, sir? MR. OSTER: I'm Greg Oster, O-S-T-E-R, from Camas. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: From -- excuse me? MR. OSTER: Camas, C-A-M-A-S, Minnesota. I really wasn't going to say anything, because I'm pretty much in agreement with the Part 46, with the National Stone, and the coalition there. But I think it's interesting, as I listen to all the comments today. And a good share of the people that spoke here today are really people making money off our industry. And I think that we need to keep in mind -- and I'm not disagreeing with anybody. In fact, our company, we exceed all the training that's being required. I mean, we've never let off. And good companies haven't done that. They continue to do good training and all that. But I think one of the problems I hear here today is that, you know, for example, Tino and his insurance company and his accidents and all that type of thing that he's talking about, none of us want accidents. There isn't a person in this room that wants an accident. And there's not a person here that's ever been to a fatality that wants to go back there again. And so, you know, sure, it makes sense to have training. And I know Harry very well, personally. And Harry talks from his side, from the Union side, as he wants training, he wants the best training for his group of people. But what I think we're really saying here is that, when this all done and the new law is published, there's only one group of people that are going to be held responsible, and it's going to be the operators of these operations. And when you all come in and the people who are doing the eight-hour training from the grants programs, they come in, and they spend two days in the operation or one day, and they do their training and they leave, we're still there operating and we're still trying to figure out how we're going to do this so we don't have any trouble at MSHA. And I think good companies ought to be saying that MSHA regulations should be minimum requirements. You know, today we've talked like it's the only thing we should be doing. And I think, long-term, if you look at Part 46, and what National Stone and their coalition is really saying, is that we want to do training, we want to do good, effective training. And I think what happens when you get in these groups is we get all worked up on how we're going to effectively do this, legally, so we don't have legal problems after the new regulation is put in place. But I think the key here is that we want to have effective training for our employees, and not just what we're talking about here today, but maybe we're going to have to exceed it if we're going to stay in business. A good share of companies that are in our industry nowadays, compared to 20 years ago when this law was in effect, are self-insured. They don't have a $5, or $50, or $100, or $1,000, or even a $5,000 deductible anymore. They have quarter-million-dollar deductibles and half-million-dollar deductible per accident. So I think what I'm trying to say here is that the operators are the ones that virtually end up with this regulation. And when you look at it -- I was involved in it when it was Part 48, back in the late '70s. And one of the reasons I think it never really flew is it never fit this industry properly and nobody felt that it did. It wasn't that people didn't want to do the training. And I think, if you look in our industry, I'll bet there's a good share, 80 percent of the companies that are involved in this industry, may have done training, or more. I don't know what the number would be. But I never run into very many people that aren't doing training. And they didn't have to do it, but it's good business. And when you have high deductibles or no insurance, you can't afford to have accidents, or you're not going to be in business. You're going to be getting sold. And we buy those kind of companies every day, companies, all the time, that haven't kept up with safety, haven't kept up with environmental, have high accidents. They can't stay in business. So I think the training is important. And I think that the main thing with these regulations is that we have to get all the details worked out and how we're going to all do it. But I think the real important thing is that we get effective training for our employees and our managers. You know, we tend to talk about employees, but the supervisors need it just as well. And we need to be able to figure out how we're going to do that in a way that's cost effective and -- you know, our training costs for coming out and doing a training from, for example, the grants program, is cheap. It's the labor that costs the money. For example, in our company, we're going to do 33 days of training for about $20,000 for an instructor. And labor is going to run over $300,000 for the employees. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: You're talking about that normal compensation of the miners that are being trained? MR. OSTER: Of the employees, while they're being trained, and the managers, and things like that. So you have to pay them and you have to rent rooms, and all that. That's good money spent, if it's a good, effective safety training. But if it goes back to when it was in effect like in '78 and '79, when you're doing statutory rights and you're training on things that just, you know, year after year, if you took a look at that, and it that had stayed in place and we hadn't modified it, you're doing training on things that are not helping reduce accidents. You're just kind of being repetitive. So we need to have the flexibility to do good, effective safety training. So when we're dealing with the type of accidents we're having and the types -- every operation might be different, in a company itself. And that's what you need to deal with so you don't have any accidents. So we are paying Tino's company too much money, at the end of the year. So he had some profits. Good for you. That's all I wanted to say. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. Any questions? Thank you very much, Mr. Oster. MR. HUNKE: My name is Chris Hunke, H-U-N-K-E. And we're a sand and gravel producer in central and western Nebraska. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: What's the name of your company? MR. HUNKE: Paulsen, Incorporated, P-A-U-L-S-E-N. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Okay. MR. HUNKE: And the only comment I have is that I think that if industry and MSHA works on this as partners, that I think it will become a reality. Our greatest fear is that it's another avenue for MSHA for write citations. And there are people -- there are MSHA inspectors out there that that is the way they're going to look at it. And if MSHA will focus on the same way industry is, as far as trying to protect our workers, make it a better, safer, work place, I think this will all work. That's the only comment I have. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much. MR. QUIST: My name is Al Quist. I work for Camas, Colorado. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Could you spell your last name? MR. QUIST: Q-U-I-S-T. This last gentleman hit a note. And you know, working together is, I think, what we have to accomplish out of all of this. And it took that rash of fatalities to get a walk-and-talk session, where the inspectors came out to our mine sites and got down in the trenches with our people, either on a one-to-one basis, or I know, in my company, I had a little advanced information that they were going to be doing that. So I called MSHA and I said, Well, we're going to have safety meetings. Can we schedule your inspector to be at our safety meeting, and I'll do my thing, and then you step up and you, you know, talk heart-to-heart to the guys, to what's going on in our industry. And I felt that's the first time, and it's been the only time, that we've really had the inspectors who see the aftermath of a fatality or they see the aftermath of a very serious accident or the potential accidents, to look at our employees from, you know, a regulatory view, and say, Guys, we really have problems out there, and this is what I see. And they related some very graphic stories that just put people back on their heels. And I think it did more good by having the inspectors come out and talk to our people, and I invite that, anytime, anyplace, within our organization, if they come out and talk to our people, and not just be the traffic cop writing the tickets. And I know that's what they're there to do. And I understand it, and all our employees understand it. And when we're in violation, we get a citation, and we live with it. And that's the way it is. But I feel that working with us is also important. And I know the Rocky Mountain district has had annual training sessions where we would send our people to, and we appreciate that, and we try to send as many people as we can from our operations to get information from MSHA, because it doesn't happen that often. It happens once a year. We'd like to see it more often. But we'd also like to invite -- at least, I would -- inspectors to participate in the safety meeting, because they have a lot of information, they see a lot of things, and they give feedback as to what they have seen at our operations. And it's a working together relationship that we would like to see more of. That's all I have to say. CHAIRPERSON ALEJANDRO: Thank you very much. Anyone else? Okay. I would again like to thank you all for coming. And I look to forward to working with you in the coming months, as we try to pull something together on this. Again, if you're one of the people who needs an attendance list, we'll see whether we can get you a copy. Thank you. (Whereupon, at 11:45 a.m., the meeting was concluded.) // // // // // // // // // // REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE DOCKET NO.: N/A CASE TITLE: Meeting for Public Comment HEARING DATE: December 9, 1998 LOCATION: Denver, Colorado I hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence are contained fully and accurately on the tapes and notes reported by me at the hearing in the above case before the United States Department of Labor. Date: December 9, 1998 Helene S. Hershey Official Reporter Heritage Reporting Corporation Suite 600 1220 L Street, N. W. Washington, D. C. 20005