workplace – Page 178 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Serious injuries can occur regardless of good OHS intentions

SafeWork South Australia has illustrated a situation that is common in Australian workplaces – no matter how hard one tries to ensure safety, things can still go wrong. In a court case on 20 November 2009, four farm operators were fined over a foreseeable incident that cost a 20-year-old the sight in one eye as well a fractured skull and paralysis, from falling three metres. According to a SafeWorkSA media release

“The incident occurred in May 2006 as the farmhand, aged in his early 20’s, was working on a large stock crate prior to mustering sheep for shearing. The crate had been borrowed from a neighbour. The farmhand had to stand on a small platform three metres off the ground and operate a manual winch to lower a ramp within the crate.

During this task, the winch handle forcefully struck the man in the face, after which he fell from the platform to the ground. This resulted in skull fractures and the loss of sight in his right eye, and spinal damage, which left him paralysed.”

The farmers had preventative management measures in place prior to the incident and have made considerable changes to the workplace to enable the worker to return to work.

The comments of Industrial Magistrate Stephen Lieschke in his judgement are worth noting

“While (they) believed they were being comprehensive in their safety improvements, they appear not to have given the same attention to the stock crate as to their own plant and equipment, probably because it was occasionally borrowed to them.”

The defendants were fined $A28,000, a hefty fine compared to some given out in the same jurisdiction. This figure was after a higher than usual 30% penalty reduction. Industrial Magistrate Lieschke applied the discount because of an “exceptionally high level of demonstrated contrition”. The magistrate puts it this way

“General deterrence does require a substantial penalty due to the prevalence of serious injury from the obvious danger of unprotected work at height, and due to the need for employers to take a structured risk assessment and control approach to all work processes and plant.

As first offenders the defendants are each exposed to a maximum fine of $100,000. In my opinion a notional total penalty based on a starting point of a fine of $40,000 is appropriate after taking account of all the above circumstances. After reduction by 30% this results in an aggregate penalty of $28,000. This in turn results in a fine of $7,000 for each defendant.

I also record a conviction against each defendant.”

SafeWorkSA advised SafetyAtWorkBlog that they did prosecute the owner of the stock crate but that, in February 2009 also heard by Industrial Magistrate Lieschke, the charges were dismissed.

Also, the injured worker, Kerrin Rowan, received a worker achievement award from WorkCover in 2008 and clearly the support from the local community is important.

Kevin Jones

Safety photos

Many online safety professionals get the occasional email asking whether there is a repository of safety photos that can be used in support of safety programs. The enquiries come from all over the world and the easy answer is there isn’t one.

There are many reasons for this. One is that almost all of the photos taken by OHS regulators are produced for legal purposes and have legal restrictions. Similarly photos taken of incident sites by companies are usually for evidence.

The best safety photos are those photos that are not taken for safety purposes but standard work photos that show safe work practices. Yet few companies take photos of their workplaces purely to record how work is undertaken.

Recently the European Agency for Safety & Health At Work ran a contest for the best safety photo in Europe. The winner has been announced for a photo entitled “Beekeeper” by Christopher Azzopardi.

Beekeeper — Copyright - EU-OSHA, www.osha-photocompetition.eu

The Agency also has a gallery of the top 100 images received for the competition which are recommended for viewing.

The reuse of images are subject to legal restrictions so please check with EU-OSHA.

In SafetyAtWorkBlog’s experience, safety professionals should have a camera with them during inspections or walkrounds, not to catch out workers doing the wrong thing but as a record of how the workplace operates. Just as audits can provide snapshots of processes so images are snapshots of the “way things are done”.

Kevin Jones

Crushed finger leads to claim and Court

Regularly in OHS submissions to the government and on OHS discussion forums, safety professionals state that industrial relations should be kept separate from workplace safety issues. In a perfect world ? Possibly, but there was a court decision on 13 November 2009 in Australia that shows that this separation is not possible in the modern world.

According to a media statement from WorkSafe Victoria:

Concrete panel supplier, The Precast Company, pleaded guilty in the Dandenong Magistrates Court on Friday 13 November to failing to provide an injured worker with suitable employment as required under Victoria’s workers compensation legislation.

The Court heard that the injured worker was employed as a crane operator when he suffered a crush injury to his finger. He attended Dandenong hospital and 5 days later was certified as being fit for alternative duties.

Two weeks later, he left work early on a Friday to attend his doctor. When he returned to work the following Monday he was informed that he had abandoned his employment and had no right to be there.

At the time, the company defended its action stating the worker had not been dismissed, but instead had walked out of the workplace half way through the day without reason.

As the injured worker had an accepted workers compensation claim, The Precast Company, in dismissing the injured worker, had failed to provide suitable employment despite the worker being certified as fit for alternative duties. Under the State’s workers compensation laws, an employer is required to provide employment to an injured worker who has a capacity for work.

The company pleaded guilty to one charge of failing to provide suitable employment and was fined $2,500 without conviction and agreed to pay costs of $1,500.

WorkSafe’s own summary of court action provides more details:

The defendant company operates in the building and construction industry. It has declared annual remuneration of about $2 million and has 45 full-time employees. An employee working as a crane operator suffered a crush injury to his finger on 1 April 2008 and was issued with a certificate of capacity certifying him ‘unfit for all duties’ from 2-4 April and fit for alternative duties from 5-16 April. The worker returned to work on 7 April on light duties. He left work early to attend a doctor’s appointment and returned to work on 14 April and continued light duties. He saw his doctor on 17 April and was issued a further alternative duties certificate from 17 April -1 May.

On 18 April the worker left work around midday to attend his doctor’s later that afternoon when he was issued with another certificate. At this stage he had still not submitted a claim form. When he arrived for work on 21 April he was told that he had abandoned his employment and had no right to be there. He went home and soon after sought legal advice. He lodged a claim for compensation that day which CGU accepted.

The defendant company’s director wrote to WorkSafe stating that the worker was not dismissed but had abandoned his employment on 18 April 2008. The director was overseas on that date and his explanation is based on what other staff have told him. The foreman provided a statement to a circumstance investigator that on 18 April the worker “just walked out of the workplace half way through the day. He would not provide a reason. As far as I was concerned he was abandoning his employment at this time.”

On 23 June 2008, the date that the worker’s claim was accepted, he was issued with a certificate of capacity certifying him fit for alternative duties until 21 July. By dismissing the worker the defendant company failed to meet its obligation to provide him with suitable employment once his claim had been accepted.

These are the only public details available at the moment but clearly effective communication was not occurring between the employee and the company. Sometimes circumstances that involve safety become a more complex industrial relations issue which may lead to Court, no matter how hard you try to compartmentalise them.

Work-related suicides in Europe

The Irish Times has reported on a speech made by Dr Jukka Takala, Director of EU-OSHA, in Spain in November 2009.

“[Dr Takala] said since the publication of a recent study showing a very high level of work-related suicides by French Telecom workers, there was an urgency about getting this information. “Personally, I favour a system such as they have in Japan where the families are compensated for the suicide of a relative, and the debate has already started in this organisation and in the commission and some of the member states,…”

It is not uncommon in OHS to hear calls for further research and more research on work-related suicide is definitely needed. (Australia has some very good work in this area.)

Caution has to be voiced on the risk that suicides be seen as the mental health version of workplace fatalities. Research and OHS statistics often focuses on fatalities for various reasons including that the statistics are easy to quantify. If a worker dies from being crushed by a machine, its a workplace fatality. There is a trap in terms of suicides where the cause and effect is not so clear, or mechanical.

Only recently have workplace fatalities begun to be investigated with consideration of the social or non-work contributing factors. If the machine operator was pulled into the machine because they were inattentive, why were they inattentive? In terms of suicides, the agency of injury will be fairly obvious but the contributory factors could be far more complex. And if the suicide victim has not left a note explaining the reasons for their action, it is even harder to determine “cause”.

Looking at suicides runs the risk of not paying enough attention to the mental health issues that have not reached the suicide level. The focus should not be researching suicides but researching the combination of issues leading to suicide. It is a much greater challenge but is likely to have more long term benefits.

Takala’s comments about family compensation and the need to acknowledge the reality of work-related suicides gained the attention of The Irish Times because they meet the imperatives for a newsworthy angle. Takal’s speeches at the Healthy Workplaces European Summit 2009 covered much greater territory than the Irish Times article and should be read to better understand the comment’s context.

There are hundreds of work risks that require assessment and psychosocial hazards is one of those areas. A full list of speakers at the conference is available by looking at the program. Abstracts of most presentations are available for download.

Kevin Jones

Managing stress the Wall Street Journal way

When a financial newspaper or website posts an article about workplace safety, it is worth reading. The fact of such an article does not mean, though, that safety management is the focus of the story.

A 17 November 2009 article in the Wall Street Journal, ” Workers Denied Company Help Due to Stress-Related Complaints” understandably reports on new workplace stress statistics in a way attractive to its readers. Sadly it reports on “how can the problem be managed?” rather than the next step that OHS professionals should always take, “how can this problem be eliminated?”

The paragraph that clearly illustrates this myopia is

“Companies are now faced with critical decisions over how to tackle stress. The first step, according to Dr. Wright, is to provide workers with access to a dedicated help line service. “Picnics, parties … those things are nice to have when the times are good, but it is the fundamental things – like making sure your role fits your skills and having the support of your manager – that matters the most now.”

A help line as a first step? The article is full of statistics that illustrate the reality of the hazards. Talking to a sympathetic counselor throws the responsibility (blame?) onto the individual and away from the organisation.

Earlier in the article Aviva’s Dr Wright said that workers are

“…being pushed to work harder, longer hours, in roles they are often not trained for…”

He acknowledges that workload and excessive hours is a contributory factor but makes no recommendations for changing these hazards. Dr Wright accepts the traditional wisdom that harsh economic times leads to these pressures and individuals must cope, with some assistance from the employer.

It is probably unfair to expect the Wall Street Journal to publish an article that proposes fundamental change to the corporate order on the basis of valuing the mental health of employees. But OHS professionals and advocates, those speaking from a position of independence, must keep reminding business, and (sadly) some OHS regulators, that long-term sustainability will only come from valuing the workforce as human beings and not as cogs in the race for executive performance bonuses.

Kevin Jones

Below is a list of links to some of the reports mentioned in the WSJ article.

National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence

Aviva UK Health of the Workplace 2009 (report not found)

Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development

The meaning of work

A weekly radio program broadcast on Australian community radio station 3CR, Stick Together, broadcast a lecture by Barbara Pocock on the meaning of work.

Barbara Pocock is a leading workplace researcher and remains the voice on work/life balance. She is always worth reading and listening to. It is impossible to management workplace safety without continuing to learn what work is and how people look at work. A podcast of the Stick Together program is available for download.

Pocock says that many of the perspectives on work are negative and is therefore approached as a chore. She talks about how laborious jobs have declined in relation to technology and client demand and discusses

“efficacy, identity, contribution, vocation

social connection

opportunity to learn

positive spillover from work”

Kevin Jones

Global OHS statistics and trends

It is very easy to forget that workplace health and safety is a global issue. The pressures of work and the daily OHS issues can constrict our perspective for so long that we are surprised when we are reminded that people work everywhere and are therefore in danger in some way.

An article (citation below) from the Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health released online on 12 November 2009 is just one of those reminders that we need every so often. The article is called “The global and European work environment – numbers, trends, and strategies” and says

“We have estimated that globally there are 2.3 million deaths annually for reasons attributed to work.”

For the statistics junkies, the article goes on to report that 1.95 million of the annual deaths are due to illness and

“The average rate of disability and absence from work can be some 25% of the workforce in Europe.”

“The biggest causes of work-related illness in Europe are musculoskeletal diseases and psychosocial disorders (mental health)….”

“Work-related stress….affect(ed) an estimated 22% of EU workers in 2005…”

By looking at a variety of statistical records, the authors conclude that

“In the present political situation and serious economic downturn, legal measures need to be supplemented with economic justification and convincing arguments to reduce corner-cutting and avoid long-term disabilities, premature retirement, and corporate closures due to a poor work environment.”

Global OHS pyramid — The relationship between fatalities and other outcomes of work injuries and illnesses

The researchers advocate an integrated approach to managing safety in a workplace and list a “toolbox” of suggested areas. Many of these are already in place in many management systems.

This sort of global data is not going to change the management or operational practices in individual workplaces. That change will mostly come in response to site-specific events or initiatives. Governments need to know these statistics and trends so that they may plan strategic programs or structure their legislation but it is equally important for citizens and OHS professionals to be aware of this data for it is the citizens who hold governments accountable.

Kevin Jones

Takala J, Urrutia M, Hämäläinen P, Saarela KL. The global and European work environment – numbers, trends, and strategies. SJWEH Suppl. 2009;(7):15–23.

Category: workplace

Serious injuries can occur regardless of good OHS intentions

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Safety photos

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Crushed finger leads to claim and Court

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Work-related suicides in Europe

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Managing stress the Wall Street Journal way

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The meaning of work

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Global OHS statistics and trends

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