The Baker Panel Report - ABSA

Hourly workers interviewed largely believed that maintenance was “run by the numbers,” with machinery and equipment not gettingrepaired or replaced because of budgetary constraints, and some managers shared that belief. Many hourly workers and managers interviewed expressed the belief that incident investigations were flawed, superficial, andtended to blame workers as the root cause of incidents. Many interviewees also complained of outdated procedures, inadequate training, and a general lack of accountability for safety.Many of the Toledo managers interviewed acknowledged the beliefs of the hourly workforce, but in many instances they claimed that the hourlyworkers were simply wrong. For example, management interviewees generally recognized the hourly worker perception that maintenance waspoorly performed and limited by budgetary constraints, but they asserted that the maintenance function was well performed, properly handled,and has had ever-increasing budgets since 2002. These widely divergent perceptions highlight the poor communication and lack of trustbetween management and the hourly workers in the refinery. Based upon the Panel’s interviews, it is apparent that the hourly workers generallyhave low morale, distrust management, and do not believe that safety is a high priority.The low morale that most of the hourly workers in Toledo reported—whether because of management turnover, workforce-management tension,understaffing, perceived unfair incident investigations, poor maintenance, or uncertainty about BP’s commitment to the refinery—wasgenerally reflected in the process safety culture survey data from Toledo. Responses from Toledo were frequently less positive than responsesfrom the other refineries. Indeed, on 56 of the 65 survey items, Toledo’s nine process safety functional groups yielded positive response ratesthat were lower than the average positive response rate for BP’s five U.S. refineries. For 18 of those items, the positive response rate for Toledo’snine process safety functional groups was at least 10 percentage points lower than the refinery-wide average.Toledo survey respondents were particularly likely to express negative perspectives regarding process safety reporting, commitment to processsafety, and worker professionalism and empowerment. As the tables below demonstrate, operators and maintenance/craft technicians tendedto express the most negative perceptions of these cultural aspects, whereas operations management tended to express the most positiveperceptions. 57 This response trend suggests a disconnect at Toledo between hourly workers and management.The following table captures negative response rates from the identified employee groups and contractors regarding various aspects of processsafety reporting at the Toledo refinery. As indicated, there were some high negative response rates.Corporate Safety Culture C 115