Hello, I work as a mobile repair technician for for some large equipment, obviously a big portion of it is changing parts. Most of the parts are reasonably sized so it’s not a big deal for a single technician to change the parts by themselves, I’d say 80%-90% of the parts are capable of being changed easily by one tech.
The issue I’ve run into a few times is when I need to change a larger part. Some of the large parts come in large crates that easily weigh over 100lbs. Technicians are expected to drive to the warehouse and load the crate into a truck by themselves and then deliver it to the site and replace the part by themselves. In the machines these parts are suspended several inches above the ground on rails. No support equipment such as weight belts or pallet jacks are provided or even mentioned by management.
To me this seems like a serious safety violation. It seems to me that changing these larger parts would be much safer with a team of 2-3 technicians, the issue is the company is so understaffed that in order to get 2-3 techs together in one place would require losing coverage of half the state for half a day and our response time average would be terrible so management doesn’t want to deal with that so they just push techs to “just figure it out by yourself”. The last couple times I have had to change one of these large parts I have pushed to have another tech assigned to assist me and the response has always been that it would be too difficult and I need to do it myself.
I’m not sure what to do, I don’t want to get fired for speaking up but I also don’t want to throw my back out or get crushed under one of these large parts. I live in Florida so I have basically no labor protection at the state level but surely there is a federal law or regulation that this violates. Any advice would be appreciated.