You relocated to take a new job as a senior maintenance electrician at a mid-sized manufacturing plant. During the interview, the boss seemed great. The new city is great; your wife and kids are excited because it offers so much more to do. One of the maintenance managers is retiring in five years, and the company will even put you through school to get a BSEE or BSET at a decently ranked university that offers night classes. But in your first week, you noticed a fly in the ointment.

In your previous three jobs working electrical maintenance, lockout/tagout was taken very seriously and the programs were nearly identical at all three places. Except for cases where energization was required, nobody worked on anything until the system or equipment was properly locked out.

But at this plant, you’ve been told explicitly “not to waste time” with a formal process. Just tell the operator that the equipment is down for servicing. If you need to open a breaker, just open it. Nobody is going to close it. Operators don’t go around doing that, and the other maintenance people are busy working on their own equipment so they aren’t going to close your breaker either.

When you called your first job briefing for some busbar work that would involve three other electricians, they looked at you as if you’d lost your mind. One of them said, “Come get me when you’re ready to actually work, I have other things to do” and walked off. When you told your boss about this, his reply was, “Then don’t do those briefings.”

Given how important this job is to your future, you now feel pressured into going along with these flaky safety rules. But should you? If not, how do you handle the situation?

You could look for another job, and then quit this one. But in the meantime, you’ll be working in an unsafe place. These people have been very lucky that nobody’s been hurt or killed, but luck runs out eventually.

It is unlikely that corporate management is aware that this plant so flagrantly violates OSHA, industry standard practices, and NFPA 70E. They would appreciate knowing. But if you go behind your boss’ back to report this, you will make several enemies. Another thing to consider is that under federal law, it is the duty of those corporate managers to ensure the safety program is properly administered. It’s not your job to do their job.

You could approach your boss and hope he sees the light. Good luck with that.

Call your OSHA area or regional office and talk about the problem with staff there. They will take over from there. You can find their contact information online. Don’t say anything to anybody at work about this, and don’t complain about safety violations. Just keep doing things the right way; your situation may resolve in only a couple of days.

Is reporting the flaky safety to OSHA an act of aggression against your company? Your employer is likely to get a grace period in which to comply before fines become serious. If the company steps up before its luck runs out (and people are electrocuted), you have saved a life or three and prevented the company from incurring hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines plus a massive work interruption.