The Baker Panel Report - ABSA

Survey responses substantiate that a somewhat heightened degree of skepticism exists among certain employee groups at Texas City, Toledo,and Whiting, but not at Carson and Cherry Point. One relevant survey item stated: “After a process-related incident, accident, or near miss,management is more concerned with correcting the hazard than assigning blame or issuing discipline.” As shown in the table below, thenegative response rates for operators and maintenance/craft technicians ranged from 44 percent to 60 percent at Texas City and Toledo andfrom 21 percent to 25 percent at Whiting. Several other employee groups and contractors at these refineries, however, responded morepositively. Moreover, all Carson and Cherry Point respondents tended to provide positive responses, as reflected by the low negative responserates below.Table 6Percentages of Disagree/Tend to Disagree Responses to Survey Item:“After a process-related incident, accident, or near miss, management is more concerned withcorrecting hazards than assigning blame or issuing discipline.”Category Carson Cherry Point Texas City Toledo WhitingOperators 16 7 46 50 25Maintenance/Craft Technicians 18 5 44 60 ‡ 21Full-Time HSSE Employees 3 0 27 5 ‡ 10Engineering Professionals 5 0 15 15 0Operations Management 5 0 17 5 7Maintenance Management 4 ‡ 0 ‡ 24 * 9Contractors 12 8 15 6 14* Survey data are not available because of the small number (fewer than 15) of potential respondents.‡ Fewer than 25 respondents were in this group.Two additional survey items addressed whether workers could challenge decisions that their supervisor or refinery management made withoutfear of negative consequences when a process safety issue was involved. Consistent with the survey data, Toledo and Texas City employees andcontractors were more likely than their counterparts at other refineries to respond negatively to the two items. Nonetheless, as indicated by thelow negative response rates in Table 7 below, at all U.S. refineries several groups tended to respond positively to the item addressing ability tochallenge supervisors’ decisions without fear of negative consequences.In general, percentages of respondents who indicated they could not challenge refinery management’s decisions were higher than thepercentages of respondents indicating they could not challenge a superior’s decisions. For example, at Toledo, more than half (52 percent) ofoperators and half of maintenance/craft technicians conveyed that they did not believe they could challenge refinery management’s decisionswithout fear of negative consequences. In contrast, only a quarter of those groups indicated they could not challenge their supervisors’decisions without fear of negative consequences. Similarly, while 38 percent of contractors across all U.S. refineries conveyed that they did notbelieve they could challenge refinery management’s decisions, only 11 percent indicated they could not challenge their supervisors’ decisions.Tables 7 and 8 below contain negative response rates for contractors and for employees in six process safety functional groups.Corporate Safety Culture C 77