I think my employer is trying to kill me.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I work in an industrial environment. Up until recently, the vast majority of the factory floor employees could wear any comfortable, non-slip, closed heel/toe shoes that we liked. Some people performing specific tasks would have to wear shoes with a steel toe cap but if you’re not changing fork-lift batteries or working in the machine shop, you could wear what you liked.

That’s changing now. It has been decreed that in the near future, all production floor staff will have to wear protective shoes. Since these protective toe cap shoes are employer mandated safety equipment, it’s their burden to pay for them and they have just announced how they’re going to do that. At jobs I’ve had with previous employers, it was very simple to be reimbursed. All we had to do was buy whatever qualifying safety shoes we liked, have them approved by the safety coordinator, turn in the receipt at HR and the money would show up on our next paycheck. Easy-peasey. This very simply and logical system is WAY too convenient for the Big Kahuna.

Apparently, it’s crucially important to management that they can spot qualifying footwear with a quick visual inspection from across the floor. To accomplish this, our facility is going to stock a few styles of safety shoes in a variety of sizes. We get a new pair every year at no cost to us. We don’t have to pay anything for these shoes and there is no hassle with reimbursement so that’s easy.

The downside is that if we don’t like the shoes they offer, tough. These are our choices, we must wear these shoes from this specific range of choices. If they’re not comfortable, if we don’t like them, if they’re utter crap and they don’t last a year, that’s just our too bad. Supposedly, we don’t even have the option of buying our own acceptable shoes at our own expense. We are to wear the shoes they give us, no argument, no debate.

When you’re working twelve hour shifts walking around on concrete floors in a high temp (>90 deg F) environment, your footwear choices are crucial. No single style of shoe is going to be comfortable or even safe for every foot.

I’m predicting a minor revolution over this issue. Considering the difficulty we’re having in attraction enough new hires to maintain staffing, I expect this policy is going to get a steel capped boot in the ass fairly soon.

2

Is your shop union? Is it a single location or are there others? Has there been recent accidents involving footwear, not only at your location, but at others (if there are other locations).

When I worked for the City, since we were unionized the only way I could get everyone to wear decent work pants was to buy them (with City funds). To prevent them from being used outside of work, my manager required that I have a stripe put down the side, like usher’s pants. Same with shoes, I couldn’t require everyone to wear decent shoes unless I could justify a need for steel toes, I couldn’t give enough reason, but if I did, it would be bought by the City as part of the uniform.

3

How many people would quit in the first 2 months this policy was in effect?

Could or would your workplace continue to function at or near current levels with the new number of employees?

4

Like the pants we wore, they were intended for work only. They were supposed to change out of their uniforms (we were security) after their shift. Same with your shoes, they’re meant to be worn during work hours, where appearance isn’t the primary concern. If they wear out (other than appearance) to the point they’re no longer up to safety standards (e.g. worn soles), I’m sure they’ll be replaced.

We were also issued two uniform shirts and since we were security and had patches, that was all we could have. If the shirt or patch wore out, we’d have to turn in the old shirt before we could get a new one. I got an extra one because I was a supervisor.

5

My company issued a mandate that steel-toed boots had to be worn anytime you were using a pallet jack to move large deliveries in the shipping/receiving area. They provided the boots and gave us a choice of a couple of different brands. I picked a pair of Zero Drags by Georgia Boot.

Here’s the thing-- between the four of us we only used the pallet jack *maybe *once or twice a month. So we just put the boots back out in the shipping area, and initially would slip them on when necessary. That lasted about three months until we decided it wasn’t worth the hassle and nobody wore them anymore. I retired last month and took the boots with me–who else was going to wear them? Anyone interested in a very-lightly used pair of size 10s?

6

I work for a major medical device manufacturer with more than 75,000 employees in dozens of facilities around the world. There were a couple of specific incidents casing minor injuries that I know of. One person dropped an empty 500 gallon plastic storage bubble six inches onto his own foot and another had their toes run over by a pallet jack. To the best of my knowledge, this shoe policy is specific to our rabidly non-union facility and I can’t comment on what may or may not have happened elsewhere.

7

Ask them to get some tamper-proof stickers. If you want to bring your own boots, take them to the safety office, show proof that the boot meets their standards, and they can apply the sticker to the boot. The visual inspection is then trivial (and even easier than just looking at the brand of boot). The tamper-proof nature means they can’t peel off and reapply the sticker to a non-conforming boot.

8

Policy seems entirely reasonable to me.

9

I have no problem wearing steel toed footwear as dictated by what I agree is a reasonable safety policy. I applaud my employer’s effort to deliver this to us at no cost to us. I’m even open to the idea of buying appropriate protective shoes at my own expense if needed.

I object strenuously to the limited selection of shoes acceptable to my employer. I have exceptionally hard to fit feet (13EEEE) and if I’m on my feet on concrete for twelve hours at a time, my shoes need to fit well. As the policy is currently written, if the provided footwear isn’t comfortable for me, I’m in serious trouble. I have foot and leg issues as is and poor shoes could make a bad situation intolerable.

10

Have your doctor write you a note that you need to wear a different footwear than the one they provide for various posture, arch support and/or spinal alignment reasons. Then either get them to re-imburse you for the shoes you are comfortable in or write the expense off your taxes next year.

11

Double-ninja’ed.

But if they can’t provide the shoes in the size you need and won’t let you get shoes that you can wear, then they have an ADA/HR problem.

12

Blame the lawyers. Your employer is looking at liability issues if they don’t provide a safe work environment. And the perception is that PPE (personal protective equipment) is an essential part of a safe work environment.

13

There’s also a possibility that OSHA visited and noticed everyone wearing different types of shoes, which may not be OSHA compliant. Rather than risking an/another OSHA fine by allowing everyone to get their own compliant shoes (which would once again vary in style/color), it was decided to make sure everyone has the same style/color shoes for easy visual verification.

14

If they’re only going to buy you one pair and they expect you to wear that pair 8-12 hours a day, 5 days a week, they better buy something to handle the funk of heavy shoes that don’t dry out more than once a week. My paper mill had a set dollar amount we could spend in the Shoe Truck annually so I got 2 pairs of cheaper slip-ons and rotated them.

15

Your employer gets the shoes and you get them from HR or they have an account with a local / regional shoe store? Find out their supplier and go there to get sized for the shoes that are allowed. Then go to HR with the size you need. I don’t think they can force you to wear the wrong sized shoes. If so, complain every night about sore feet and then after a short time go on workman’s comp for foot/back pain.

16

Just how visually distinctive are these provided boots that a quick visual inspection from across the factory floor can determine that you’re not wearing some similar footwear? Work boots in my experience all have a pretty similar profile and after they’ve been worn a bit, are some dingy shade of brown or grey regardless of what they looked like new.

17

Here’s a Google image page of “steel toe work boots”. Some are clearly different from others. I used to have a pair that looked like dress boots. People didn’t know unless I’d casually rest a heavy box on the front of them.

https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1MSIM_enUS785US785&tbm=isch&q=steel+toe+work+boots&chips=q:steel+toe+work+boots,g_1:black:vV_G08BVMNo%3D&usg=AI4_-kRCtZmE4ZYXolKGBUx7DPMH1zFofQ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZntDljtTjAhUBrp4KHbxrCkMQ4lYINSgF&biw=1280&bih=879&dpr=1.25

The abatement period to correct OSHA violations is typically no more than 30 days. How dirty/scuffed up can those boots get in that time? This is also an impetus to provide the shoes. Better to be sure everyone has them, than to have a few say…“Oh, I didn’t have a chance to get them!”.

18

I work for an international company whose also been instituting edicts about safety, even though their US operations have far fewer incidents than operations overseas. What’s concerning is the knee jerk reaction to overseas accidents without much in depth study to the effects of the knee jerk decisions. The safety committee will issue edicts based on one incident from a East Asian brainwashed slave, and assume everyone is ok dying for a shitty company for lifetime employment not relevant to the US culture. For example, we have to wear baseball hats now to help with head lacerations cause the Japanese wear baseball hats. Since wearing the baseball hat I’ve hit my head many times cause I can’t see above me. So, Just remove the hat if I’m crawling around, and if I hit my head and need to get medical attention? I’ll just walk out and make up any excuse why I had to leave. Cause reporting an injury at work is something I’d rather not deal with.

19

And which one of those results is different enough from all of the others that you could tell someone was wearing that exact boot from all the way across the factory floor?

20

This isn’t meant to be a hijack, but I thought I might mention that employers are generally NOT required to pay for your protective footwear as long as you are allowed to take them home. Under the federal rules (29 CFR 1910.132(h)), employers are not required to pay for non-specialty safety toe protective footwear, including steel-toe shoes or steel-toe boots, if they allow such items to be worn off the job-site. (Obviously, local State or municipal requirements may over-ride this in certain locations.)

This comes up quite frequently in places I work, especially when employees demand that the employer pay for the shoes. Employers DO have to pay for other PPE, but non-specialty shoes/boots are specifically exempted under an OSHA rule change in 2008.