On Thursday, October 18th, MTM held its annual membership meeting. (Pictures are included in the newsletter.) At each MTM annual member’s meeting we try to spend most of the time relaying helpful information to our members. This year, that topic was active shooter and crisis management (Crisis Recovery after Active Shooter and Traumatic Events). Given all the things we’ve read and heard in the last couple of years on this topic, it seemed wise to have a professional in this field present toMTM members. The speaker was Dr. Ken Wolf who consults on workplace violence, active shooter survival, crisis management strategies and downsizing reductions in force. His resume is quite impressive and details his work in many crisis situations. Dr. Wolf assisted the US Army on-site at Ground Zero after the terrorist attacks, assisted following the mass shootings at the United States Post Office in Royal Oak (1991) and Dearborn (1993). He also responded to the Northwest Air disasters #255 (1987), #299 and #1482 (1990). Dr. Wolf assisted Ryder System and the UAW – GM after the Oklahoma City Terrorist bombing. He has been a news analyst for the Detroit affiliates of ABC, NBC and CBS. In the reviews of his presentation, the common topic critique included: learned lots, time well spent, can we have him back for more? His presentation was educational, interesting and at times scary. The topic and presentation captivated your attention.

While most of the meeting was spent on the above topic, I did give a quick nine month financial/dividend view of 2018. The year is not over and good/bad things can still happen, with nine months we are starting to get a pretty good picture of how the year’s finances/losses are doing. Overall, the results are not on pace for the record year of 2017, but 2018’s results still look good. And only two months to go before we close the year.

The loss year does look different than 2017. While the accident frequency in 2018 is nearly the same as recent prior years, we are seeing an increase in accident severity. Just in the last couple of weeks, we had an electrocution, an employee on his first day with an amputation, and third, a second amputation in the same week which required an air lifting to a trauma center. In the third case, we found in the accident investigation the employee had developed a creative way to bypass the tag out switch. So, my request to you as owners and managers of all our shops, please focus on guarding, looking for creative tag out measures, and training of new employees. Your goal, like ours is to always send the employee home in the same condition as they arrived. Be safe, John

The 2018 Annual Meeting was a great success. Here are a few snapshots from the event:

 

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By Ruth Kiefer, Loss Control Manager, ARM

With the ever tightening labor force and your need to fulfill orders and production, more of you are turning to a temp agency to fill this need. So what are your obligations to this temporary worker? Or to your new hires for that matter? I’m here to tell you that there is no longer an experienced workforce, or the days where you can find a good lathe operator, someone who knows the ins and outs of the presses in your shops. Those days are gone, the good ones are already working or retired, so you are left with inexperienced workers to choose from. As you know, schools no longer have in house training programs, it’s now left to you, the businesses to do the training, to create and form the “experienced worker”. It’s now on you to educate the younger workers entering the manufacturing sector.

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We are excited to announce that we have enhanced our customer portal so that you will now have the ability to upload medical documents as a means to get them to the claims adjuster that is handling your claim. This can be done by following these simple steps:

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