Major Safety and Liability Problems Faced by Coordinators
Several coordinators said that working with hosted programs and volunteers often creates "more hassle than it is worth." Budget cuts have left the Forest Service without the resources and personnel to supervise these groups. Many times coordinators have to tell the hosted groups that the district cannot work with them because they do not have the safety equipment or a supervisor for the crew. A coordinator in the Pacific Northwest Region explained how working with hosted groups and volunteers can be more costly than beneficial:
"We used to work with Job Corps. That was just too much hassle. We didn't have the time to spend with them that they needed when they came up to work. If they brought a crew boss with them that was a whole different thing, but it just didn't time wise, it wasn't beneficial for either one of us."
Another coordinator in the Pacific Northwest Region also expressed her feelings about the time and energy required to work with hosted and volunteer groups:
"So you have maybe a 6-hour day that you're holding this Forest Service person for this project, and to get somebody that can do that, that has the time to do that is really precious. You just don't get a lot of people that are doing that anymore."
Because Forest Service employees are spread thin, many members of hosted groups and volunteers become, as one coordinator stated, "the supervisor on the spot." In several districts, hosted employees supervise their own groups as well as other hosted program groups. One such group is the Federal Corrections Institute. A coordinator discussed the types of circumstances in which seniors on her district could be placed in charge of Federal Corrections Institute individuals:
"If their job has some intense labor or something, then I'm going to send some inmates along in that truck to get the laborintense work done and then the seniors will then become the driver and then they tell the inmates what to do and instruct how to do it…. If we've got a recreation area that's been closed down for 3 months for the winter season, we've got leaves to burn off. If we've got split-rope fence to replace, holes to dig, if we've got pressure washing to do, painting, scraping, sanding, I'll just give them [the seniors] a list and tell them who [FCI members] to take, name out the ones that they need to take because that clears up any confusion and then let them go."
The coordinator said that she would go and check on the workgroup when she was able to find the time. The seniors could reach her by radio at other times.
Because the Forest Service has very few seasonal crews left to complete necessary projects, youth crews are needed, especially crews from the Youth Conservation Corps. The YCC crews are also in high demand in rural areas because these districts lack the volunteer pool to maintain campgrounds and trails. One district coordinator said his YCC crew is a precious commodity that has to be shared with other coordinators to complete essential projects. Because support and resources for youth crews are limited, coordinators and communities have to take responsibility for funding. A campground project coordinator explained how one YCC project was funded and supported on his district:
"Yesterday they put [up] all the barriers, and the tabletops and the benches and now they're doing that thanks to the community [director] that convinced somebody to give them some money for these kids to work. And we give them the transportation and everything, bring them back and forth."
The same coordinator explained how low funding was forcing his district to use its maintenance man rather than a trained crew leader as a YCC supervisor: "He cuts all the boards and does everything for them and shows them how to put them up. The kids all carry them up. We've got 20 kids carrying them up, and some painting." When a maintenance man who has no training or experience in supervision is in charge of 20 people, safety and liability issues are a concern.
A bigger concern for many coordinators is the safety of volunteers who are hosting campgrounds. Because of limited resources, some campground hosts do not have telephones or any other way to contact the Forest Service or the police in an emergency. Certain districts do not have the money to pay for phone lines. Volunteers may have radio access, but the radio does not work at night when no one is at the office to answer it. One coordinator explained the situation on his district:
"I've got volunteers in the campground, the campground hosts, that are in danger…. We are hiring them, we're keeping them in the campgrounds, we're giving them a spot, but what happens at night? The host is there, the people come knocking on his door at 2 a.m., those guys are drinking and throwing rocks at each other. What's a guy going to do? He doesn't have communications. He has a radio, but there's no dispatch out here where they can call and get a cop or anything. So those guys are liable to get hurt eventually. And that's happened, they got one beat up last year. And this year we had a guy get shot at 20 times. And we use volunteers to do our work and we're not giving them the adequate support."
Volunteer campground hosts could choose to leave the campground if they felt unsafe. However, one coordinator said some of the campground hosts on his district are homeless and do not want to leave. He discussed his concern for several of the volunteers living on campgrounds in his district:
"Some of them don't have telephones at all, nothing at all. They can be killed out there and by the time somebody goes out there, you won't know nothing until the next morning.… But something is going to happen eventually and it's going to turn, that's the way the system works. Until something happens, things aren't going to change."
The coordinator said that he feels these campground hosts' lives were in danger because the Forest Service could not supply phone lines.
Every coordinator interviewed by the project team discussed the agency's increasing liability because of hosted and volunteer groups. When speaking about his experience with outside groups, one coordinator from the Southwest said, "Well, if they sign up with us…legally we've got to pay for them. Whatever happens out there, if they get hurt…we've got to pay for them." Another coordinator from the West Coast discussed his concernfor Forest Service liability in this way:
"Well, it's getting less and less clear in practice who is responsible for the safety of the employees. Obviously, this person [the coordinator] would not have been able to provide the direct supervision and observing the people working to make sure they're safe…. So he was depending on some more experienced people to pay attention to what's going on. But that is nowhere in the system of assigned responsibilities. That's an informal system that's developed to try to deal with it."
The Forest Service is responsible for enforcing its safety rules. If a Forest Service representative is not observing a work group at all times and someone is harmed, the agency is responsible for failing to enforce its own safety regulations. This is true when working with any kind of outside organization, including contract crews. The Forest Service is solely responsible for training all crewmembers, explaining Forest Service standards, and enforcing those standards. Many coordinators express major apprehension when working with volunteers and hosted groups because they cannot "watch them all of the time." One coordinator spoke about her reluctance for taking on volunteer crews due to liability:
"I don't have the people. We probably have four project managers doing the work of 15 people right now, and there's no way that they are going to come in for a group that probably isn't going to get a lot of work done anyway—sacrifice their time. And because they are signed up as volunteers, we're assuming risk for them. We're assuming liability for anyone that gets hurt. Is it worth it? They've already told me, 'No way, Jose. Not going to assume that.' …if some volunteer comes out and they are cleaning up a campsite and they are doing 2 hours worth of work and all of a sudden they get hurt and they put on a workmen's comp claim, my project is dead in the water. I'm not going to assume that. I'd rather not get the work done."
One coordinator described an incident where safety was not monitored because a Forest Service supervisor was not present:
"We had an incident that happened on the district here about 3 weeks ago where we had to fire two people. One was a YCC kid and the other was an older American. And some of the stuff that's going on is because there's not a supervisor that can actually know the rules and regulations of the Forest Service to guide these people."
In all the districts visited by the project team, too few Forest Service employees were available to oversee the work of hosted or volunteer groups. The possibility of accidents happening in volunteer and hosted workgroups increases significantly when Forest Service representatives are not present to intervene immediately to prevent unsafe working conditions and unsafe acts.
Most of the coordinators said they were not getting the support they needed from management to work effectively and safely with hosted employees and volunteers. A coordinator from the Northern Region explained one reason misunderstandings about support occur in the Forest Service chain of command:
"I think some of these things have been in labor and management forever.… Many times they don't really know what the people are having to deal with to get a job and maybe they come out and they start giving some of their observations and many times they are not quite right because they just come out for a day."
Support from management is critical when dealing with hosted and volunteer crews. "Hopefully, you have a supervisor or someone above you that will back you up," said a coordinator from the Southern Region. Many coordinators said they were feeling alienated from the Forest Service and that their supervisors were not "going to bat" for them.
The story of J.R. illustrates this problem. J.R., a Forest Service liaison, was having work ethic problems with an inner-city youth group. After discussing the issue with several of his coworkers, one coworker suggested that he and J.R. switch crews. The coworker was working with a hosted group that J.R. had worked with in the past. The coworker telling the story stated management's reaction to the plan:
"Somebody in management figured out what we were doing and called J.R. the next morning and said, 'J.R., you gotta go back up there with the crew. What are they going to think?' What that crew thought was more important than what J.R., who had worked for years, thought. Political implications that those people had driven this guy up the wall and he needed to leave was more important. J.R. was supposed to swallow his pride, swallow his work ethic and go back and accept that because a guy in the office was more concerned about the political implications. I see that a lot."
A coordinator from the Southwestern Region spoke about the problems he had filling needed positions for the new workgroups:
"We're kind of handcuffed with the certain number of positions we do have, and I don't know why that is. We still have, nobody has ever given me a straight answer. What I'm trying to do here on this district is I'm trying to build an organization that's needed to do this, to do this type of thing [work with volunteers and hosted programs], and it's difficult to do it if you don't get the support from management and everywhere else."
Another coordinator from the Southwestern Region discussed problems getting supplies and equipment for his hosted groups and volunteer workers: "I don't think that I have the support that I should have…. Why do we have all this [referring to hosted and volunteer groups] if we can't afford to do what we have to do?" He described having to tell volunteers and hosted groups that they could not have the specific items they needed because there was no money.
Inappropriate Levels of Work Expectation
Hosted programs and volunteer groups are made up of a variety of individuals with different levels of training and experience. Workers range in age from children to senior citizens. Also, most individuals participating in hosted programs are paid minimum wage or less. Because of the diversity of these crews and their pay, coordinators must organize and plan projects performed by these groups according to their individual levels of work expectation so the groups, as one coordinator put it, "are able to perform safely within the limits of their skill."
Working with very young people, such as Boy Scout troops, creates work-expectation problems for coordinators. One supervisor said the purpose of working with very young people was not production, but to maintain good community relations. The Forest Service is fully liable for all youth working on a campground or trail. Extra safety precautions have to be taken to make sure children are not injured. A coordinator from the Southwestern Region spoke about limiting groups like Boy Scouts to the simple task of picking up trash in the campgrounds. Even then the Forest Service coordinators have to make sure the younger workers do not touch glass or needles.
Work expectation for seniors is also a major safety concern. Some seniors are pushed much too hard and forced to do jobs they cannot handle. Many of these people quit because the level of work expectation is too high. A coordinator discussed this problem on his district:
"I lost five foremen with the concessionaire because they were people that were hired that were too old. One had a hernia trying to unload a barrel, so he quit. The other one had a nervous breakdown because it was too much work for him. The other one, I don't know what happened to him, but he left."
A Southwestern Region coordinator voiced her views on the safety of seniors working on projects that were too physically demanding:
"Some of our folks are well into their 70s and some of them are extremely fit and can go work on trails if they really wanted to, but others have some physical disabilities and impairments that it wouldn't be practical for them to be out on the trail. In fact, it would be dangerous and a safety hazard to have them out on the trail maintaining it, digging water bars or whatever."
Occasionally, seniors in this program are expected to do things they do not want to do or cannot do safely. They feel they need to do the tasks because they need the job. A coordinator discussed this problem. For years he had seen old men being pushed beyond their limits and being forced to quit. He had men falling asleep while driving. Some seniors do not feel comfortable driving the trucks, but they have to do it to keep the job.
Lack of Knowledge of Forest Service Safety Standards
Though members of hosted or volunteer groups may have a great deal of work experience, they are not always aware of the safety standards established by the Forest Service. A safety coordinator from the Southwestern Region discussed some of the common difficulties crew leaders have with hosted and volunteer groups who do not know Forest Service safety standards or do not have the proper training:
"You might have some senior citizens that are coming out to work and they have a lifetime of painting their house or whatever and they figure they know how to paint, but they don't know what safety standards are for painting and they may have had some very unsafe practices that have become part of their way of doing things. So it gets very complicated very fast, and that's really typical."
Another coordinator expressed how he deals with such safety issues on his district:
"Of course, chain saws, no one runs a chain saw unless they've got a card. I'm sure everywhere else in the world is just like this place—everybody's an expert with a chain saw. We get these volunteer groups coming up and they are all bummed out that they can't run the saw. And I'm one of the teachers for saw safety here so I put on a number of courses throughout the year and if they don't go through my course and get the certification, they ain't going to run a saw."
During safety training, it is difficult for Forest Service coordinators to know how detailed the information should be so these groups understand the risks and can complete projects safely.
One coordinator expressed concerns when planning safety information for a volunteer group that wanted to clean up a burned trail:
"I was writing this stuff up, these safety topics, and I put some stuff in there about hazard trees. But then I started thinking, ‘That's almost like a whole half-day training session—how to identify a hazard tree. You've got to actually look at them from the backside and you've got to walk around what you are looking at. And I'm realizing these volunteers, they may not know what I'm talking about."
Because of limited resources and the many collateral duties of coordinators in the Forest Service, some districts have used members of volunteer and hosted groups to train the rest of their group about safety and use of equipment at the work site. Coordinators pointed out that often the training was not properly directed, and the members of the group did not learn correct safety procedures. One coordinator described how someone on his district was harmed due to poor training:
"They were teaching the crew leaders how to use the tools and then relying on those crew leaders of the volunteer groups or whatever groups to teach their own folks. It turns out that didn't work very well. The crew leader wasn't a very good teacher and an individual was injured. Not seriously, you know, cut on the leg from a pulaski, but training wasn't done properly."
The coordinator told the project team that after this incident occurred, all training was relocated to the station. He said the coordinators now spend an hour to an hour and a half on the safe handling of basic tools.
Crews Working Too Close to Each Other
Many hosted and volunteer crews work out in the field. Often, these crewmembers work close to each other. Sometimes members on hosted crews do not understand or follow instructions from supervisors, creating safety hazards. One such situation involving a convict crew and Youth Conservation Corps crew was discussed by a safety coordinator in the Pacific Northwest Region:
"A YCC crew was also designated to be in the same area doing another section of the trail. Well, the YCC work ethic…is incredible, if they saw something wrong, they want to fix it. If they were walking on a trail, they'd want to fix it. Well, as they were coming through, they were supposed to walk past this Bulta County crew and go on down to another section. Well, they saw a bunch of stuff that they wanted to fix. So, all of a sudden there are two crews working in close proximity to each other and it was on a slope. So these people [YCC crew] are rolling stuff down on these people [convict crew] that are working here and the supervisor was up on the road talking with the Forest Service liaison person."
The safety coordinator said that she just happened to walk through the area. She stopped both workgroups and had a discussion with the crew leaders about the safety of their crews.
