Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Potlatch Bradley Unit To Receive Safety Awards

Potlatch Corporation's Bradley Unit in Warren was recently recognized for its outstanding safety record by receiving the Southern Wood Products Division award for best overall safety record and the award for most improved safety record, according to Dick Bullard, Potlatch Southern Wood Products Division vice president.

Both awards were presented during the division's fifth annual Safety Conference held at DeGray Lake State Park Lodge.

The Bradley Unit was presented with a wood plaque and each employee at the unit will receive jackets along with the rest of the division for their accomplishment.

In addition, the Bradley unit employees will receive a special gift recognizing their truly amazing accomplishment.

The Bradley Unit finished 1997 with a safety rating of zero incidents. Safety records for Potlatch operating units are determined by the job related injury incident rate, frequency rate and severity rate giving each unit a rating for overall safety. The Bradley Unit improved their safety rating 100 percent from 1996 to 1997.

The Southern Wood Products Division again had the lowest division incident rate in the company and also the lowest a division has ever achieved and was recognized by Penn Siegel, Potlatch president and chief operating officer, who presented the division with a special Potlatch President's Award Recognizing Significant Safety Improvement.

By achieving a 2.88 incident rate, the Southern Division also exceeded its 1997 goal of 3.0.

Each employee at the Southern Division will receive a jacket of their choice for their part in this performance.

"We are very proud of our employee's individual and team efforts in improving safety," Bullard said. "Their consistent performance made this accomplishment possible. While we have seen a 30 percent improvement in our incident rate from 1996 to 1997, there is still room for progress to be made toward our goal of a zero incident rate. Our real goal is that every person who comes to work in the morning will be able to go home incident-free when they've finished their work every day. Safety is the number one priority at Potlatch and the Southern Wood Products Division."

Bullard also commended and congratulated the division's employee-directed safety programs and safety teams. "The Southern Unit's P.I.N.E. (Preventing Injuries Never Ends) Process, Ozan Units' F.I.R.S.T. (Formal Involvement Reinforces Safe Thinking) process, and Bradley Unit's DuPont Keep Yourself Safe program, along with self-audit groups, safety teams and employee participation, are all key to the excellent progress of our improved safety record," Bullard said.

In addition to these safety programs, the Southern Division has a no tolerance policy for willful violations of the lockout-tag-test policy.

The fifth annual Safety Con-ference was attended by more than 140 employees. The annual conference stressed the importance of safety at work and home and was attended by employees from the Southern Wood Products Division; Bullard, Siegel; Tom Smrekar, Wood Products Group vice president; and guests from other Potlatch operations who are involved with safety.

Arkansas Labor Department director James Salkeld; Labor Department safety director Clark Thomas; Arkansas Worker's Compensation commissioners Pat West Humphrey and Mike Wilson; and Arkansas Worker's Compensation chairman Elton F. Coffman also attended the conference.

Within the Southern Division, there are several departments that have reached safety milestones with no accidents, including the Bradley Hardwood stacker and takedown which have had no incidents in three years. The Southern Retail Yard has been incident free since 1981; Warren and Saline River Railroad has been incident free since 1984, and the Prescott and Northwestern Railroad has been incident free since 1989. In addition, several Southern unit departments have been incident free, including purchasing and stores since 1974; garage since 1981; and shipping since 1988.

Potlatch owns and manages about 500,000 acres of Arkansas timberland and employs approximately 1,000 people at its operations in Warren, Prescott and McGehee.