The 225 employee owners at Westfield Tanning Company face a challenging manufacturing process every day. Their plant produces tanned leather for the shoe, belt, glove and harness industries, so heavy lifting, wet surfaces, confined spaces, above-ground work and cutting equipment pose constant safety and health dangers.

In 1991, Westfield Tannery paid over $500,000 in annual workers compensation premiums. Today, the same plant with the same number of employees and a greater volume of production has cut the annual premium payment to less than $200,000. The dramatic drop in incurred losses (actual costs of injury), from $550,000 in 1991 to under $25,000 in 1995, reflects the sharp decline in pain and suffering of worker owners. A combination of vigilant committee work, extensive training, a shift to employee ownership, emphasis on product quality and a unique incentive program changed the culture from one of carelessness to one of caring -- about each other and about the company's bottom line.

"We decided we just couldn't afford it anymore," says Pat Clark, Safety Director at Westfield. A committee, composed of one volunteer from each department, was formed and began meeting once every two weeks to make decisions about safety problems and solutions, safety investments, training, policies, and related issues. A monthly newsletter kept all members of the firm informed about what the Safety Committee was doing.

Each committee member was given two hours per week to inspect his or her own department for health and safety hazards. They were given authority to write work orders and even shut down the line if a serious hazard was identified. Within the department, work orders were prioritized in terms of mortality threat, injury threat, and exposure threat.

Accident and "near miss" investigations guide committee activities. "We have an area where people stand on a beam five feet above the ground hanging leather for drying. One guy fell and, through luck, the foreman caught him," Clark said. "But a fall like that can be fatal. The Safety Committee immediately focused on that area and devised a way to eliminate that danger. We have not had a single accident or near miss in that area since then."

In the second year of operations, the Safety Committee received extensive training to achieve the status of a "State Certi-fied Safety Committee," a designation of the Pennsylvania Bureau of Workers' Compensation that provides an immediate rebate ($32,000 for Westfield) and annual premium reductions. The training covered safety management approaches, state and OSHA regulations, and injury and claims management techniques. For the first time, Westfield Tanning Company is developing written safety policies for all departments. The policies are based on OSHA standards, but sometimes are stricter, and are tailored to specific conditions within the tannery.

Members of the Safety Committee had a rough time at first. Calling it a "thankless job," Clark recounted incidents of individuals or whole departments that resisted the good intentions of the safety committee person. "People felt the extra time spent in putting on a safety harness or safety glasses slowed their work and productivity, and they resented it."

The safety committee overcame resistance through simple stubbornness. The first two years were really hard. "This whole process has been about changing attitudes," Clark says. Depart-ments where there had been accidents were resistant. "We just kept at them. They finally realized that we weren't going away."

Three other factors helped. One was Westfield’s quality focus. While workers resisted the safety focus because it slowed productivity, Westfield Tanning, as one of the few remaining non-toxic or 'vegetable' tanneries, places priority on product quality. The emphasis on quality was linked to safety. "Short-cuts can hurt people and hurt product quality," said Clark. "People understand that."

The second factor was employee ownership. Since becoming majority employee-owned, employee owners were given financials and could, for the first time, view the impact of the workers compensation bills on the bottom line. Since the company's bottom line now belonged to them, they could understand the monetary value of safety measures.

Third, bottom line savings were shared with all employees. For each six months that the firm went without a lost-time accident, all received $100 (now it's up to $150). The company went 898 days - two and a half years - with no lost-time accidents. Members of departments free of major accidents for one year receive an all-expense-paid dinner for two at a local restaurant of their choice.

"These things [concern about quality, profit, and financial incentives] may have started the ball rolling," said Clark, "But the result was that people began caring more about each other, watching out for each other. It really took five years to turn the whole company around on safety, but it was worth it. We just had our first lost time claim in almost two years. With this manufacturing process, it is hard to be perfect -- but we have to keep trying."