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Health & Safety













Our commitment to employee and contractor safety is our highest company value, and leadership and employee involvement has been the foundation of our success in improving performance over the last decade. From our senior leadership to our front-line supervisors, visible, consistent commitment to safety has made a significant impact. Our leaders hold themselves and others accountable for demonstrating caring, safe behaviors and correcting hazardous situations. Our employees are fully engaged and have taken on increased responsibility and accountability in safety. Our journey to an injury-free Weyerhaeuser is well under way.

HEALTH AND SAFETY STRATEGY

Our companywide strategy, "Safe from the Start: Our Journey to Injury-Free," defines five basic elements of the company's approach to managing safety:

  • Demonstrate caring leadership
  • Be employee-driven
  • Do the basics well
  • Focus on the greatest potential improvements
  • Recognize and manage risk

Key companywide tools that support this approach include:

  • Annual companywide performance objectives
  • A standard process to report and investigate incidents
  • A database to manage incident data
  • An audit process to assess regulatory compliance and continuous improvement
  • Online training available to all employees
  • Robust communications

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SAFETY PERFORMANCE

One measure we use to monitor our safety performance is the recordable incident rate. We achieved our goal of a less-than-one RIR, and have demonstrated this performance is sustainable. In fact, in 2010, 76 percent of our facilities operated injury-free. Our results show that we are placing the correct level of attention on employee and contractor safety and have the right processes, training, tools, communications, activities and behaviors in place.

Key Safety Performance Metrics

Safety incidents and fatalities1
  2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
United States and Canada  
Employee RIR2 1.46 1.20 1.00 0.86 0.82
Contractor RIR3 1.40 1.52 1.07 1.03 1.16
Days-away case rate (employees) 0.38 0.33 0.42 0.33 0.28
Days-away rate (employees) 22.29 14.24 21.15 16.93 8.94
 
Fatalities worldwide  
Employees 0 0 1 0 1
Contractors 2 3 0 0 1
  1. Data reflects performance of Weyerhaeuser’s current portfolio of operations. In March 2007, Weyerhaeuser’s fine paper business and related assets were combined with Domtar Inc. to create a new fine paper company, Domtar Corporation. In August 2008, Weyerhaeuser’s containerboard, packaging and recycling business was sold to International Paper. Operations involved in those transactions or closed have been removed from historical data.
  2. Employee data includes supervised contractors.
  3. Contractor RIR data does not include contractors from our real estate subsidiaries.
 

Fatalities

It is not acceptable to Weyerhaeuser that any person lose his or her life while working for us. Regrettably, we experienced fatalities in the last year. On Apr. 22, 2010, an employee died at our Port Wentworth, Ga., facility, when he was struck by a telehandler, a type of powered industrial vehicle. On Aug. 12, 2010, a contract employee died near Pe Ell, Wash., when a chain on the harvesting machine broke and a piece of metal penetrated the cab. On Jan. 19, 2011, a contract employee died when a loader he was moving across a bridge overturned into a creek.

These incidents were reviewed by the senior management team and the board of directors after thorough investigations. Lessons learned from the incidents were communicated to contractors (as appropriate) and all employees across the company, and recommendations were implemented.

Compliance

We conduct health and safety regulatory compliance audits in all of our manufacturing businesses to ensure compliance with all applicable regulatory requirements and company standards.

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   Sustainability in Action
The daily grind

In 2000, George W. Bush won the U.S. presidential election with a recount in Florida, the Internet stock bubble burst, and mad cow disease became a hot topic for cattle farmers. The USS Cole was attacked in Yemen, and the human genome was finally deciphered. From the opening of the movie "Gladiator" to the very first "Survivor" on CBS, 2000 was a year that changed the world.

It was also a year of change for our saw filing room in Drayton Valley, Alberta. That September was the last time the saw shop group had an injury. While executing more than 20,000 saw changes, repairing and re-tipping more than 125,000 saws, and regrinding more than 30,000 chipping head knives, the five employees in this department have worked without a recordable incident.

All five Drayton Valley sawmill saw filers — Don Cameron, Wayne Sargent, Len Sicinski, Dave Lee and Francois Demers — attribute their safety achievement to the safety systems Weyerhaeuser has put into place, their personal commitment and dedication to safety, and their teamwork.

"Teamwork's important, all right. We all look out for each other's safety, and everyone pitches in," says Don Cameron, a saw filer for almost 25 years. "We're a team, and we all help each other out. We've put a lot of emphasis on developing our ability to flow to work so jobs aren't piling up for any one individual and no one feels rushed."

The saw filing department in Drayton Valley has proven day after day and year after year that high-risk tasks can be completed safely with good planning, good processes, and good teamwork.

As Wayne Sargent says, "We've been able to achieve 10 years recordable incident-free by following the proper safety procedures consistently."

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INCIDENT INVESTIGATION AND REPORTING

To prevent injury, a company must learn from its safety incidents and near misses. Our incident investigation standard requires that all incidents be reported, recorded and investigated according to defined processes based on the type and severity of the incident. Causes must be identified and action taken to prevent recurrence.

Our Safety and Health Information Management System enables us to report incident data and the resulting investigation information, track the progress of corrective actions, analyze company trends and identify potential risks in health and safety. We collect and analyze information on:

  • Work-related injury and illness
  • Environmental incidents
  • Near mishaps
  • Hazard observations
  • Property damage
  • Vehicle incidents
  • Process loss
  • Product damage

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HEALTH AND SAFETY EXCHANGE

The Health and Safety Exchange is a primary way we assess and improve the health and safety management systems at Weyerhaeuser locations. All North American operations are reviewed against the following criteria (or a subset) annually.

  • Leadership in health and safety
  • Employee-driven
  • Work-site analysis
  • Incident investigation
  • Hazard prevention and control
  • Inspections
  • Industrial hygiene
  • Health management/occupational health
  • Emergency preparedness
  • Training
  • Business focus activities

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RECORD KEEPING

Accurate reporting and record keeping provide a solid foundation for tracking and analyzing incident trends so we can implement effective safety processes and prevent injuries. We expect accurate record keeping, and we are working diligently to improve our accuracy through record-keeping audits and training. Our record-keeping accuracy rate for 2010 was 82 percent, below our goal (95 percent) and below the average level found by OSHA inspections at companies across the United States (90 percent).

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HEALTH AND SAFETY POLICY

It is Weyerhaeuser's core policy and highest priority to protect the health and well-being of all employees through the prevention of injury and illness at work. This commitment is based on caring for our employees.

Expectations

Business activities will be conducted to:

  • Focus on preventing incidents to achieve a workplace that is free from work-related injury and illness and to enable employees to complete each workday and their work life in good health
  • Achieve full compliance with all applicable legal requirements and company standards
  • Identify and respond to any public health impacts of our operations and the use of our products and services
  • Treat injured employees with dignity and respect and provide the best medical treatment for workplace injury and illness
  • Effectively manage illness and injury and reduce associated costs
  • Maintain a workplace free of the effects of alcohol and other drugs of abuse

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   Sustainability in Action
Injury-free Uruguay

In May 2010, Weyerhaeuser's South American forestry operations in Uruguay achieved five consecutive years without an employee recordable injury. Uruguay's finance, administration, industrial and human resources teams have gone more than five years without a recordable incident.

"By maintaining a strong focus on safety, we've taken the first step toward delivering world-class results," says Álvaro Molinari, general manager of Weyerhaeuser Products (Uruguay). "The next step is to sustain this level of performance by continuing to instill safety values into every aspect of how we do our jobs."

The five-year safety milestone was the result of dedicated leadership combined with an enthusiastic employee commitment that created a culture of caring based on Weyerhaeuser's "Orange Book" principles of:

  • Demonstrate caring leadership
  • Be employee-driven
  • Do the basics well
  • Focus on the greatest potential improvements
  • Recognize and manage risk

Weyerhaeuser began operations in Uruguay in 1996 and has been recognized publicly as a leader in modeling safe work practices and in creating a safe workplace. More than 3,500 employees and contractors have received safety prevention training. The business has also hosted safety workshops for other companies interested in improving their own safety practices.

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Last updated June 10, 2011.