Baldor Electric Company employees of its Fort Smith, Ark., motor plant last month completed 15 million hours without a lost-time accident. According to Baldor, they have been working toward the achievement since August 2010.

During a recognition ceremony held June 16 on the Fort Smith campus, Leon Jones, Jr., director of the Arkansas Department of Labor, presented a plaque to a member of the Safety Committee and congratulated all of the employees. He noted the plant was the first group of employees in Arkansas history to achieve this milestone.

“The best thing we can do today is to get everyone home safely,” he added.

“You are more important than you know to someone in your life,” said Pat Hart, division head of health and safety for the Arkansas Workers’ Compensation Commission, to Baldor employees. “You take your body with you wherever you go.”

 Johnny McKusker, Fort Smith plant manager, added: “Hitting 15 million hours – there’s got to be a lot of luck in doing that. But, we are trying to take ‘luck’ out of the equation by incorporating proactive measures. Talking about the things we ‘always do and never do,’ using SafeStart to change habits and behaviors and analyzing root causes are tools we are all using. But we continue to need your help every day to identify the risks that are still out there.”

Baldor has been producing industrial electric motors in Fort Smith since 1957. Baldor became a member of the ABB Group in 2011.