OROVILLE — The Sierra Pacific Industries sawmill has exceeded workplace health and safety standards earning the local business an elite recognition from the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
“This Sierra Pacific Industries sawmill is only one of 68 companies in California to receive Star Voluntary Protection Program status and the only saw mill ever in the program,” said Mike Vinum, plant manager. “This, in my mind, is a recognition of my crew’s efforts. It’s their achievement. To get this recognition you have to have a culture, a buy in by the crew to do the work to be successful. It’s the crew who deserves the credit for this great achievement.”
The mill was designated as a Cal OSHA Star VPP site on April 25. The star status is reserved for recognizing employers and employees who “demonstrate exemplary achievement in the prevention and control of occupational safety and health hazards (as well as) the development, implementation and continuous improvement of their safety and health management system,” according to OSHA’s website.
Achieving the current designation took eight years of work which included extensive employee training and physical work environment changes and improvements. Through that process, the mill attained continuously higher levels of safety recognition leading to the current Star VPP status which Vinum calls the “gold standard.”
“Basically we were already operating at Cal OSHA standards which are some of the strictest. This program recognizes us for going over and above the standards,” said Mark Luster, SPI community relations manager. “We conducted on-going worksite health and safety analysis for ways to continue to improve, to fine tune beyond the standards and made certain employees were trained at the highest levels. We are always working on improvements.”
To acknowledge those who helped the company achieve Star Status, SPI is hosting a barbeque lunch for sawmill employees and local dignitaries on June 20 in its new 10,000-square-foot Truck Division Shop.
The shop was completed in March and can host up to 30 trucks, primarily logging trucks. The addition of the truck facility will increase efficiency at the Oroville plant due to its close proximity to SPI timberlands, said Vinum.
The SPI Oroville sawmill, which primarily manufactures fencing, was built in 2002 and employs 140 people. There is also a decorative bark plant at the same location
SPI is a third-generation, family-owned forest products company based in Anderson, California. The company owns and manages more than 2.4 million acres of timberland in California, Oregon and Washington and is one of the largest U.S. lumber manufacturers.
Related Articles
Medical debt could vanish from credit reports. What to do now
Bye-bye cubicles and corner offices: Reserving a desk for the day is new work trend
Downplaying AI’s existential risks is a fatal error, some say
California has No. 1 US wage gap between haves and have-nots
Is debt settlement a good idea?
+ There are no comments
Add yours