William Atkins
Monday, 27 April 2009 21:00
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 4
I’ll concentrate on NASA and contractor personnel, but it applies, in my opinion, to all workers worldwide.
The ASAP states that NASA has a golden opportunity to weave safety into every strand of the new Project Constellation, the next generation manned program of the United States that includes the Orion space capsule and Ares rockets.
In order to weave safety into Project Constellation, and for that matter, into NASA, as a whole, it must start--I think--at the employee level.
NASA and NASA-contractor personnel do have a small say in activities at NASA. When I was working at the Johnson Space Center in the 1980s and early 1990s, employee teams were established. However, I did not observe much attention given to these teams by management at NASA and its contractor companies.
Contractor employees, for the most part, put up with problems during these decades because management just didn’t do anything about the problems. Period. (I say this from the perspective of working for the largest contractor company at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. My rationale: If it happens at this company, then it happens at others. If I observe problems, then other employees observe them, too.)
Needless to say, this is where attention should be given: at the employee level.
NASA management does have a golden opportunity to make sure safety is incorporated into every fiber of its organization. And, that golden opportunity is contained within the employees.
Thus, in my opinion, this golden opportunity must start with the ability of employees to openly state problems and concerns without risk of reprisal by management. They must be freely able to discuss problems.
In essence, management is here to coordinate activities by employees. When problems and concerns arise at the employee level, it is management’s job to solve those problems.
Look at your own circumstance. Do you complain every day at work about nagging problems that never get fixed? Do you not tell management because you are afraid you’ll get fired if you complain too much? I bet this is the case all over the world. I don’t think it is an isolated problem.
Even though it is a very natural thing to start safety at the employee level, it doesn’t usually start there because employees, for the most part, do not always bring up problems and concerns to management because of fears of being labeled a whistle-blower, a complainer, and a “non-team player.”
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