Sometimes all you have to do to see an unsafe work practice is look out the window. A week or so ago we were looking out the windows of our offices, which overlook a beautiful, scenic Lowe's parking lot. What we saw was pretty surprising: Three workers, untethered, doing some sort of work on the store roof. Since we routinely see the consequences when unsafe work practices turn into work injuries or worse, those men's careless safety practices were particularly shocking.
In fairness to Lowe's, the workers were most likely not employees; retail stores usually hire out for structural repair and maintenance. It's likely that these men were working for a subcontractor hired by Lowe's and no one in the store told them to go up work on an angled roof, 20+ feet in the air, without a safety harness or any means to prevent a fall. It's perhaps a bit of gallows humor that an OSHA approved safety harness, which none of these men had, is available for purchase on Lowe's website for $54.97. I suppose for some people $150 dollars is more valuable than three lives.
While the contractor who didn't provide proper safety equipment for his employees is the most direct offender, we'd like to know why Lowe's would hire such a negligent contractor in the first place. If Lowe's were using its own employees to do the job, I doubt they'd be up there without proper safety equipment. The subtext of Lowe's decision to hire this contractor seems to shout, "They're not our employees, so who cares if they get hurt?"
It's especially shocking that a company that is in the business of supplying contractors and "do it yourselfers," while listing almost 300 safety products for sale on its website, would be seemingly indifferent to the unsafe work practices of contractors on its roof. You would think that a company that has a page dedicated to "Focusing on Safety" on their website would try to practice what they preach on their own grounds. As the website says, "Lowe's is committed to providing a safe work environment for our employees, customers, contractors and vendors..."
I'm not making some grand indictment of the entire company, but in this particular instance this Lowe's location did not live up to the company's lofty standards. This may be the exception and not the rule, though. Incidents like these, where contractors engage in unsafe work practices on behalf of companies that champion safety, are plenty common. Even when companies escape legal liability by using subcontractors to perform more dangerous tasks, though, they don't shed their moral obligation to watch out for everyone who conducts business on their behalf.