I’m sure most of you have heard of the allegations of a fueler at Sea-Tac who says he was suspended from his job for raising safety concerns regarding fueling operations at the airport, including broken equipment and fuel leaks. The fueling company denies the allegations and claims the worker was suspended for other reasons.
I don’t know the truth of those allegations. The FAA has investigated and was not able to find evidence of the violations alleged – which could mean any number of things, including that the violations were cleaned up in the intervening weeks or that they never existed or a number of possibilities in between.
Regardless of the facts of that particular case, the story I’ve been following in the press reminds me of the importance of creating a safety culture in our organizations that encourages people to come forward with safety matters without fear of retribution.
Front line workers have critical information on safety matters – often they’re the only ones in an organization with that information – and they need to be encouraged to provide that information to management without concern that doing so will jeopardize their livelihoods. It is difficult to create that type of culture without a formal safety reporting program.
Just as the FAA has encouraged airline and repair station employees to report safety information without fear of FAA enforcement action or company disciplinary action through its Aviation Safety Action Program, ramp companies need to be creating similar programs to encourage safety reporting by their employees.
