At its annual meeting recently, the Rubber Manufacturers Association (RMA) presented eight of its 20 safety awards this year to U.S. Michelin manufacturing plants.

Two Michelin production facilities were recognized for excellence in worker health and safety, and six were acknowledged for significant improvements in these categories.

RMA’s Safety and Health Improvement Program (SHIP) awards, established in 1981, recognizes member companies that achieve significant enhancements in worker health and safety. The SHIP awards encourage and reward a company’s demonstrated commitment to worker health and safety.

Michelin plants in Greenville, South Carolina (Tweel), and Starr-Anderson, South Carolina (US10), received Excellence awards; another facility in Greenville, South Carolina (US1), as well as plants in Dothan, Alabama, two in Lexington, South Carolina; Tuscaloosa, Alabama; Norwood, North Carolina; Fort Wayne, Indiana; and Covington, Georgia; received Improvement awards.

Two categories of awards are presented to companies that demonstrate workplace safety improvements, which are measured by the incidence rate for lost workday cases. The Excellence category is for facilities that achieve an incidence rate that is 75 percent better than the average achieved by plants that provide data to RMA.

The Improvement award is for plants that achieve an incidence rate that is both 10 percent better than its rate in the previous year and the same or better than the RMA average incidence rate.

Forty-four RMA member facilities supplied data for the annual survey to determine the extent of workplace safety improvements. The data supplied to RMA is the same that is provided to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tracks injury and illness information on all industries.