[ledhedsymbols]

In my opinion, the major breakdown is something I have been trying to address since I came on-board. There are almost no written procedures for this equipment. By not having a series of steps spelled out with appropriate safe work practices for this and other operations we are being asked to do things that we don't fully understand.

Another major issue in my opinion is the lack of safety circuit on the equipment itself. The other wing riveters are all from a different manufacturer. They have a dead man switch for the hydraulics on the maintenance platform. That also could have prevented the accident.

Another problem, related to the first, is that there are only a handful of people with knowledge of the equipment. In some cases, it appears to me that they are trying to keep it to themselves so that if and when layoffs come they will be indispensable. The unfortunate result is what happened last night.

One of the first things I asked is when I was going to school or being trained on the equipment. If one has never worked in this particular industry in this particular type of process, there is no way that you could have experience with these machines. I have never understood why we didn't spend the first couple of weeks going over exactly how the system works.

In the end, I just hope that some good comes out of it and gives us what we need to do the job safely. My co-worker was simply trying to do whatever he could think of to get the machine running again to build the airplanes. Their machines are going to be down an awful lot until they get some of us trained, because I'm for damn sure not putting my hands in anything I don't know to operate.

Additionally, the culture with the "old-timers" is that lock-out/Tag-out is a joke. I got into it my first week with one supervisor who told me he didn't want to deal with my LOTO paperwork. I told him if he tried it again, I would file a grievance. My reasoning at that time was simply that I wasn't going to fail to follow the proper procedure and put myself at administrative risk, but in reality that's the least of my worries!