Most safety professionals can tell stories about how workplace injuries are hidden so that bonuses or rewards are still distributed even though they are not warranted. Most of these examples are at the shop-floor level where rewards, although much anticipated, are minor – first aid kits, movie tickets, sometimes money – and where peer pressure can be quite overpowering. But occasionally a situation is revealed where senior executives also rort the system in order to obtain a reward or a bonus. In September 2010, the UK union Unite has revealed just such a case in Network Rail, a case where the chairman has acknowledged that greed played a role. Continue reading “UK case exposes the hypocrisy of leadership commitment”
Category: executives
Tooma takes aim at the Environment Minister over accountability
Participants at the 2010 Safety In Action conference and the 2010 ASSE Conference will be familiar with lawyer, Michael Tooma‘s faith in due diligence to improve safety management in Australia. In the lead-up to his appearance at another Australian OHS conference in October 2010 he has again restated his faith but this largely ignores the changed political context of OHS harmonisation on which the new Work Health and Safety laws are based.
I have mentioned Australia’s current peculiar political position elsewhere. The uncertainty of Federal politics overlaps and could greatly affect the OHS harmonisation process, or rather, its application. It seems even more likely that the Labour Governments in Queensland and New South Wales will fall at their next State elections rendering the fast becoming an ideal of OHS harmonisation dead.
Tooma (pictured right) makes no mention of the changed political reality in a recent media release concerning his upcoming conference appearance although he is willing to take a pot shot at the Federal Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, over the lack of accountability over the deaths, fires and injuries that resulted from the botched home insulation scheme. Continue reading “Tooma takes aim at the Environment Minister over accountability”
Cath Bowtell jumps to federal politics
The current Executive Director of WorkSafe, Cath Bowtell, has confirmed that she will contest a seat in the Australian Parliament, according to The Age and AAP reports on 6 July 2010.
As previously stated, this move sets some challenges for WorkSafe Victoria. The Acting Executive Director following John Merritt’s departure, Stan Krpan, put in his notice shortly after Bowtell’s appointment was announce several months ago. It was rumoured that one of the labour law firms would snatch him up and although Steve Bell is establishing his own identity at Freehills, the firm lost a major brand advantage when Barry Sherriff left for Norton Rose.
There is no doubt that Bowtell fits the Labor Party needs of the Melbourne electorate but her departure must unsettle WorkSafe. It now needs to go through the recruitment process again just as the federal government’s OHS harmonisation program is hitting its second phase. WorkSafe’s HR people must be tossing up whether to choice another candidate with a strong social conscience but, barely hidden political ambitions, or to look again for an appointment from its own ranks.
Perhaps it needs to look to the small and sometimes dubious pool of Australian safety professionals. The profession itself is traditionally conservative but at least they may be ready to serve the principles of safety instead of self interest.
Perhaps, WorkSafe should look overseas. John Lacey, former President of UK’s Institute of Occupational Health & Safety, has been a regular visitor to Victoria for over a decade and maybe he could be induced to relocate, even for a 5 year contract. It would be tempting to look for candidates from outside the political circuits in Australia.
Another Australia emergency organisation faces bullying claims
Emergency service organisations, like the military, are susceptible to accusations of bullying due to the hierarchical command structure on which they are based.
For decades this type of structure has been seen as a requirement for efficient emergency response or other activities under tight timelines and high expectations. It would not take much to perceive one’s supervisor saying “move it, move it, move it” or similar, over time as a repeated insult and, being repeated, an instance of bullying.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is reporting on claims by the former president of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade Board (MFB), Adrian Nye, who was stood down in April 2010. The ABC says Nye has accused the MFB of having a culture of bullying.
CEO Graeme Fountain has called in KPMG to investigate Nye’s claims.
There is sufficient evidence to suggest that the hierarchical command structure is no longer compatible with contemporary expectations of respect, health, safety or wellbeing. Continue reading “Another Australia emergency organisation faces bullying claims”
An executive decision leads to over six deaths
“Don’t put all your eggs in the one basket”. The first time we hear such a saying is likely to be from our parents or our grandparents but it could equally apply to all the applications of risk management. Clearly someone at Sundance Resources forgot this wisdom when its board members boarded a plane in Africa to visit a mining site. The plane crashed and all on board died.
The remaining Sundance executives quickly acknowledged the error in media conferences shortly after the incident even though the decision was understandable. In safety and workplace parlance, the board took a “shortcut” in safety, an act that would have been soundly disciplined for most workers.
Everybody takes shortcuts at work and sometimes these shortcuts lead to injury or death. It is easy to say that the cause of an incident is a specific decision, the shortcut but it was not only the Sundance executive’s decision that contributed to the death. In this instance the board entered a plane that later fell from the sky. If they had made the same shortcut but on a different plane the outcome would have been very different.
Deaths always have a context to them and present a variety of “what-ifs” when we investigate. A specific combination of events/decisions/actions/shortcuts lead to a death. The Sundance shortcut was clearly the wrong decision, at the wrong time, in the wrong place and with the wrong mode of transport but there are more contributory factors that will become evident when the wreckage is fully recovered. Continue reading “An executive decision leads to over six deaths”
Safety needs to be seen to be more than politics
Any optimism that one may have felt over the appointment of Cath Bowtell as the executive director of WorkSafe Victoria may be very short-lived if the reports on the cover of The Age newspaper are to be believed. The Age reports that Cath Bowtell is the frontrunner for a seat in the Australian Parliament following the MP for Melbourne, Lindsay Tanner’s decision to not contest the upcoming federal election.
For those who want political discussions on the Labor Party machinations, this is not the right blog. IF Cath Bowtell enters the race for a Federal seat, what does this say about the position of WorkSafe’s executive director? Continue reading “Safety needs to be seen to be more than politics”
The Bhopal disaster should be remembered when considering what comes after the BP oil spill
As the BP/Gulf of Mexico oil spill dominates the American media, the rest of world has been noting a closure, of sorts, on the Bhopal disaster of 1984. Seven former Union Carbide executives have been sentenced to 2 years jail each over the disaster. The CEO, Warren Anderson, showed an appalling lack corporate leadership by leaving India and not facing the charges laid against him in India.
The disaster exposed half a million people to methyl isocyanate, killed almost 4,000 people, and changed the lives of millions. These changes continue today with birth defects, health problems and contaminated land.
Some media have noted a similarity in corporate responses to initial investigations and inquiries but there are more important lessons involving safety, corporate responsibility and social policy from the Bhopal legacy that should resonate with those American communities affected by the Gulf of Mexico spill. The mishandling of the aftermath of the Bhopal disaster has exacerbated the horror of that day which can accurately but heartlessly be described as a “process safety failure”.
These issues are tellingly described and reported in a highly-recommended series of radio programs produced by Radio Netherlands and broadcast on 19 June 2010.