Still learning after all
these years
Yoksas celebrates three
decades on the job
By Ellen Hickok-Wall
Daily Reporter Staff
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"There's
a certain sense of satisfaction that maybe, just maybe,
you have helped somebody go home in the same manner they
went to work that morning."
George Yoksas
Area
Director
Milwaukee OSHA Office
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George Yoksas,
area director for the Milwaukee office of the Occupational Safety
and Health Administration, has worked for the agency for about as
long as it's been in existence, and he has no intention of leaving
any time soon.
Yoksas said he
loves his job for two reasons -- one selfish and the other noble.
"Having 29
years -- close to 30 -- in safety and health, every day I still learn
something," he said. "That's the selfish part."
The noble part
of his work, Yoksas said, is he believes that OSHA does a lot of good.
"There's
a certain sense of satisfaction that maybe, just maybe, you have helped
somebody go home in the same manner they went to work that morning,"
he said.
At the scene of
the World Trade Center devastation from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks,
Yoksas and other OSHA officers spent a lot of time helping workers
go home safe at the end of the day, he said. He and most of his 23-member
staff responded to a call for voluntary help from the regional and
area OSHA offices in Manhattan.
Yoksas said it
was difficult to put into words the scene he witnessed in New York
City.
"The word
that comes to mind is surreal," he said. "It's very difficult
to describe. The scope of the devastation is something that words
fail."
Words did not
fail Yoksas when he described the people on the scene.
"It's truly
remarkable to see the efforts of the workers, the police, the Port
Authority, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army - all there coping and
dealing with it and moving forward," he said.
And OSHA continues to play many roles at Ground Zero, Yoksas said.
"A lot of
our work was safety and health in the field, advising the police and
fire contractor types, observing for safety conditions and getting
corrective measures in place -- on-site air monitoring of personnel,
providing respiratory protection and fit checking," he said.
"We also
had a team of OSHA people in a utility vehicle where we would have
hard hats, gloves, glasses, personal respirators and protectors,"
Yoksas said. "We could call this mobile supply place, and the
OSHA people would come 24-7. That's still ongoing."
On the home front
Back home on the
job, it's not always easy to quantify the effect of OSHA's efforts,
he said.
"It's very
difficult to measure accidents that did not happen," Yoksas said.
"We want to be measuring whatever our impact is through whatever
intervention there may be."
But whatever level
of intervention is needed, the area director said his job leads him
into just about any situation.
"One day,
I'm 300 feet down in a deep tunnel project," Yoksas said. "The
next day, I'm in a high-rise construction project. Then the next day,
I'm in a steel mill or an auto assembly plant."
If he could get
one message out about OSHA, Yoksas said it would be that the agency
can be a resource as well as a watchdog.
"We need
to be both," he said.
Yoksas said that
during his early years with OSHA, people were very leery of the agency.
"It's amazing,
sometimes, the distrust," he said. "I give presentations
to the community, and when I first started, people would come up and
ask a question and hold their hand over their nametags."
It was OSHA's
sometimes controversial image that got Yoksas' attention in the first
place. In 1973, he was in Illinois when his dad turned him in the
direction of a state-sponsored program that eventually turned into
OSHA.
"My dad,
God rest his soul, was a millwright at Reynolds Aluminum," Yoksas
said. "One day dad said, 'There's this new program that has the
whole plant in an uproar. Why don't you check it out?'"
That advice, which
Yoksas said he followed, planted the seeds for his job with OSHA --
a position that eventually blossomed into a 30-year career.
