Jul 7, 2026 · 48 min · 12 segments
Floyd & Eric Representing Utah Occupational Safety and Utah Labor Commission
Eric OlsonGuestFloydGuest
John WojciechowskiHostAll right, well, we are here to talk about safety and all things that Eric and Floyd are doing for the state of Utah to help the mission of keeping people safe at work at home and all the places.
Why does safety matter now? Like what is your role in And U-WASH, because a lot of people think that U-WASH is like the safety police, right? All you guys do all day every day is run around harassing employers and writing safety tickets, but that is not the case.
Maybe explain to us why safety matters now and what U-WASH and what Floyd is doing to help keep people safe from workplace injuries and illnesses and fatalities in the workplace.
I think the best way to put it is safety is important because it affects us all.
It affects families, it affects our way of life, it affects every aspect of our lives.
When someone gets injured at work, it may seem like a small thing, even if it's just a tip of a finger that might be amputated or something.
If you just take two seconds and think about you're right-handed, you lose the tip of your right pointer finger.
How different is life going to be for you? Even though it's a small thing, seemingly, you're going to have to adjust a lot of things that you probably don't consider all the time.
Then you go to the bigger things and bigger accidents, and it just has a ripple effect.
And so I would say that the bottom line is we're all just trying to make a living.
We're all just trying to support our families.
We're all just trying to live life.
And doing it safely at work, doing work safely, prevents us from having those kinds of struggles at home.
So Floyd, he organizes a board, an advisory board of different people in the state of Utah, stakeholders per se.
And Floyd, every quarter, he'll have him come to the UOSH office and he'll relay stats how people are getting hurt on the workplace, and where the fatalities are happening, and just overall the state of safety in the state of Utah.
And the Utah Safety Council's had a seat on this board for a long time, and I was surprised to learn that one of the most dangerous places to work is in a hospital.
or these medical or social services type of operations, because there's just so many ways to die.
Like when you're visiting a loved one in one of these places, I mean, everybody needs to be aware of what's happening around them.
And like Floyd, why are hospitals for, not to pick on hospitals, but you can get hurt there, whether you're a patient or an employee or just a visitor.
Yeah, so healthcare facilities, even ones where people are just, you know, they live there or whatever, it's a dangerous environment for a lot of reasons.
There could be biohazards we're dealing with, but the main cause of accidents there are... people who are patients or family of patients getting into altercations with the nurses and the staff that are there to help them.
Not always because the person that's helping them is being one way or the other.
People are stressed out.
All right, well, we are here to talk about safety and all things that Eric and Floyd are doing for the state of Utah to help the mission of keeping people safe at work at home and all the places.
Why does safety matter now? Like what is your role in And U-WASH, because a lot of people think that U-WASH is like the safety police, right? All you guys do all day every day is run around harassing employers and writing safety tickets, but that is not the case.
Maybe explain to us why safety matters now and what U-WASH and what Floyd is doing to help keep people safe from workplace injuries and illnesses and fatalities in the workplace.
I think the best way to put it is safety is important because it affects us all.
It affects families, it affects our way of life, it affects every aspect of our lives.
When someone gets injured at work, it may seem like a small thing, even if it's just a tip of a finger that might be amputated or something.
If you just take two seconds and think about you're right-handed, you lose the tip of your right pointer finger.
How different is life going to be for you? Even though it's a small thing, seemingly, you're going to have to adjust a lot of things that you probably don't consider all the time.
Then you go to the bigger things and bigger accidents, and it just has a ripple effect.
And so I would say that the bottom line is we're all just trying to make a living.
We're all just trying to support our families.
We're all just trying to live life.
And doing it safely at work, doing work safely, prevents us from having those kinds of struggles at home.
So Floyd, he organizes a board, an advisory board of different people in the state of Utah, stakeholders per se.
And Floyd, every quarter, he'll have him come to the UOSH office and he'll relay stats how people are getting hurt on the workplace, and where the fatalities are happening, and just overall the state of safety in the state of Utah.
And the Utah Safety Council's had a seat on this board for a long time, and I was surprised to learn that one of the most dangerous places to work is in a hospital.
or these medical or social services type of operations, because there's just so many ways to die.
Like when you're visiting a loved one in one of these places, I mean, everybody needs to be aware of what's happening around them.
And like Floyd, why are hospitals for, not to pick on hospitals, but you can get hurt there, whether you're a patient or an employee or just a visitor.
Yeah, so healthcare facilities, even ones where people are just, you know, they live there or whatever, it's a dangerous environment for a lot of reasons.
There could be biohazards we're dealing with, but the main cause of accidents there are... people who are patients or family of patients getting into altercations with the nurses and the staff that are there to help them.
Not always because the person that's helping them is being one way or the other.
People are stressed out.
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