Attention Hull Cleaners!!! Please read!!!

[Wookie]

Hull cleaners are to hard hat divers as private pilots are to F-16 pilots. Different set of skills, different degree of danger, different equipment and therefore, different regulations. Or at least should be. Pizza delivery drivers and big rig drivers both use a motorized vehicle to do their work. But the similarity ends there, Should the pizza delivery guy be required to hold the same license that the big rig driver does?

I disagree. Go back to my example of hull cleaners for commercial vessels. And I mean the big ones, not little ones like mine. Are they not hull cleaners? Are they not commercial divers? Yes, the pizza delivery guy and the taxi driver need more training than the average recreational car driver. Not as much as the big rig driver. It's all a matter of liability. If the pizza guy or cabbie gets a snoot full and plows through a crosswalk of a school zone, killing little Muffie and putting Spencer in a wheel chair for the rest of his life, do you think the lawsuit will end with the driver? Dominoes Pizza is going to pay dearly for that one. That's why they hire independent contractors to deliver pizza, so the lawsuit can't come back on them. That's why cabbies have chauffeurs licenses and insurance to cover their commercial activities.

If you don't like the regulations, lobby to get them changed. If you want or need an exemption, apply for one. If you guys just continue to ignore them because you don't like them, you will continue to get willful violations. The OSHA inspectors don't give out willfuls lightly, because the OSHA judge takes a very dim view of willful violators. I don't see any winner in this action, except maybe a lawyer. I can just see the inspection now:

OSHA inspector: But sir, you have to have plans, procedures, hazcom awareness training, worker right to know, etc. etc. etc.

Hull cleaner: But, we just clean hulls.

OSHA inspector, looking through 29 CFR: Well, sir, I don't see a hull cleaner exemption here.

Hull cleaner: But, but none of that stuff applies to what we do!

OSHA Inspector: Well, sir, it does apply to you. You make money diving, and you have employees.

Hull cleaner: Yeah, well screw you! I don't have to follow your stupid regulations.

OSHA Judge: That will be $200,000 please.

 

[fstbttms]

Pizza guys and cab drivers do not get special training to do thier jobs. Domino's delivery guys are not independant contractors (I know, I was one.) Your argument that divers cleaning pleasure boat hulls and full-on commercial divers are doing the same job and should be regulated in the same way makes no sense. Yes, they both work in the water, but again, that's where the similarity stops.

 

[fstbttms]

If you don't like the regulations, lobby to get them changed. If you want or need an exemption, apply for one. If you guys just continue to ignore them because you don't like them, you will continue to get willful violations.

That's exactly what we are discussing here. Nobody has argued that hull cleaners should be excempt from any regulation, just that the current regs for commercial outfits were not designed to regulate our industry and are unworkable for us.

BTW- you make is sound like hull cleaners are getting OSHA violations right and left. There are literally thousands of hull cleaners working every day in this country, and have been for decades. The only OSHA violations I have ever heard of are two being discussed in this thread.

 

[Wookie]

Well, your argument that recreational divers that get paid to clean hulls isn't a direct violation of OSHA standards is contradictory to the actual regulations, regardless of what you think the regulations should say. So there!:mooner:

I worked in the ES&H department for a large government contractor back when I lived a different life. We had employees who dived casually as a part of their job. These employees were required to be SCUBA certified, and now and again, they would recover (using tools) environmental hazards found on the bottom. Specifically, they would recover old 8D batteries from USCG navigational buoys (in years past, the Coast Guard would dump them over the side). OSHA found that the combination of using tools, doing this during the workday, and getting paid for it made them commercial divers. We had all the money in the world to fight OSHA, but the corporate lawyers decided that, in the end, it wasn't worth either the fight, nor the exemption. We hired a real commercial dive company to come in and clean up all of the batteries in the lagoon.

I truly sympathize with your predicament. In the end, however, the hull cleaners will lose the judgment. Unless you guys all get together and form a Co-op or lobbying group, no one will take you seriously.

As it was stated by Muddiver, the government is not in the business of letting small businessmen survive. I don't blame Obama for that, because I'm old enough to remember presidencies before Reagan, when big government didn't thrash us all with regulations. It is obvious to me that a disgruntled employee turned in the St. Pete company, and the company in St Pete has decided for whatever reason or reasons to go this without consulting a lawyer. I hope that their personal assets are well protected by incorporation, etc.

 

[Wookie]

That's exactly what we are discussing here. Nobody has argued that hull cleaners should be excempt from any regulation, just that the current regs for commercial outfits were not designed to regulate our industry and are unworkable for us.

BTW- you make is sound like hull cleaners are getting OSHA violations right and left. There are literally thousands of hull cleaners working every day in this country, and have been for decades. The only OSHA violations I have ever heard of are two being discussed in this thread.

No, you aren't discussing changing the regulations, you are discussing a letter writing campaign. Letter writing campaigns do not change regulations.

and no, I don't think that hull cleaners are getting OSHA violations left and right. I think that if OSHA looked at any hull cleaning company WITH EMPLOYEES, they would get OSHA violations, because none of you can afford to follow OSHA standards for commercial divers as written. One man band hull cleaners (as I used to be in the winter) don't have anyone to get disgruntled and turn them in, and anyway, owners are exempt.

 

[The Chairman]

You may not like what the Wook is saying, but you can be sure that he is on target in his statements.

 

[fstbttms]

Well, your argument that recreational divers that get paid to clean hulls isn't a direct violation of OSHA standards is contradictory to the actual regulations, regardless of what you think the regulations should say. So there!:mooner:

I didn't argue that. Never have.

BTW- speaking for myself, I am not a recreational diver getting paid to clean hulls. I am a professional diver who has operated a successful hull cleaning business for 16 years. I do not dive recreationally. Further, I do not consider myself to be a "commercial" diver (even though I may technically be one), leaving that designation for the men and women who do hard hat commercial work. There is enough of a difference in what we do to warrant that distinction, IMHO.

 

[fstbttms]

You may not like what the Wook is saying, but you can be sure that he is on target in his statements.

No he's not. He has misrepresented my arguments, made statements that are factually inaccurate and used faulty logic to make his points. Again, I am not saying that hull cleaners should not be regulated. I am saying it makes no sense to apply the same regulations that hard hat commercial divers are subjected to.

 

[fstbttms]

and no, I don't think that hull cleaners are getting OSHA violations left and right. I think that if OSHA looked at any hull cleaning company WITH EMPLOYEES, they would get OSHA violations, because none of you can afford to follow OSHA standards for commercial divers as written. One man band hull cleaners (as I used to be in the winter) don't have anyone to get disgruntled and turn them in, and anyway, owners are exempt.

Well, assuming you are correct in your supposition that dive services without employees are not subject to OSHA regs, I agree with you here. However, I suspect if I were to browse the many threads and posts we have had on this subject, I would find at least some commercial divers arguing that companies using independant contractors would be under the gun as well.

 

[Wookie]

I'm really not here to fight with anyone. You can call yourself a dive professional, you can call yourself a one-legged dive monkey for all I care, the final answer is that you meet the test for commercial diver. In the end, you fall under commercial dive regulations, and as such are subject to the requirements of OSHA as commercial divers, with all that entails. Making sense doesn't matter when it comes to governmental regulations, and I use the term "you" not to refer to you specifically, fstbttms, but the global you which takes in all hull cleaners.

I have a liveboard dive boat. My dive boat was origionally built for servicing oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, which has as rough weather as can be found anywhere except maybe the north and bering seas. I have authorization to travel 200 miles from land, carrying 149 passengers. I have all documentation required to do that. I can legally carry passengers between the mainland United States and the Virgin Islands. Woe be unto me if I stop in Provo or the Dominican Republic for bad weather or fuel, because I lack a certain piece of paper called a Load Line. No one will issue a Load Line to a vessel of this age. So, although I can sail within 12 miles of Cuba or the Bahamas, I can't "go there". How much sense does that make to you. Should I tell the Coast Guard that those rules shouldn't apply to me because I'm too tall, or short, or good looking? and blow off the regulations? Cuba would be happy to take my cash, and so would the Bahamas. Too bad government agencies don't use common sense.