A Safe Work Culture

It is a ridiculous hour because I have been up packing for my trip to Brisbane tomorrow. Well, that's my excuse tonight, but I want to take this opportunity to  write about the views a (older and more experienced) colleague expressed to me about the inherent nature of occupational health and safety.

Now, for me, working in industrial relations is an ideal combination of law and public policy and the issues which surround them both, two areas which I happen to be passionate about and be actually tertiary qualified in. They are also two areas which I think fit together neatly at any rate. As a result I feel very comfortable when I’m dealing with issues of a workplace related nature.

However, I consider that occupational health and safety is a large enough area to really form a separate specialisation of its own. While a workplace issue, it is an area separate in its own right from other workplace issues, especially in the realm of political debate.

Like law overlaps with policy and vice versa, workplace safety overlaps with a technical understanding of the industry. While I can make myself comfortable in issues of safety so far as they extend into law (albeit, a much more abstract area of law than industrial relations) and to a lesser extent policy, I really believe that a passion, understanding and/or experience of the technical aspects in the relevant industry is an absolute necessity to grabbing safety with both hands.

The government departments of safety in each state (in Victoria it is WorkSafe) are committed to campaigning passionately for safer workplaces. One of the principles currently being put forward is that Workplace safety should be the number one priority for business.

This is where my colleague’s views come in. He disagrees that safety should be a ‘priority’ at all for business. He argues that safety should be a virtue. Working safely should come before considerations of profit, client satisfaction, product quality, etc. Its importance is beyond a mere priority.

In my view, his argument is that safer workplaces are best achieved at the ground level. A long term goal should be having safe practices built into general work practices; having workers perform safe work as second nature. The major mechanisms we’d need to use to reach this goal or something which resembles it would be within education and training. I think this line of thinking has a valuable place in the policy debate because it goes to the very grass-roots of the culture within many industries, especially construction.

Based on what little I know about safety, I have to agree with my colleague's way of thinking. Honestly, there are two things that I really know about occupational health and safety.

One: It is over-regulated. There is too much written down about safety which no one reads and few people understand. When push comes to shove and incident comes to fatality, mere ‘rules’ and ‘regulations’ are just ink on paper and nothing else.

Two: Safe work practices are inexorably linked with the technical practices specific to each industry. As a result, technical understanding is required for high-quality input into hands-on principles, and a ground-up approach challenging the ‘culture of safety’ in each industry is what is required for safer workplaces.

Hooked and Sinkered

One of the things I really love about the internet is the ability to talk to people with whom you would never have otherwise even figured out how to get in touch with.

Look at me, an amateur writer, no one cares much for what I have to say, but I can say it anyway - and to the whole world!

What brought this on? My favourite thing to muse about lately: people who irritate me. People who irritate me always have interesting things to say; interesting things which I never agree with. I'm not sure if they irritate me because I think they shouldn't be worth it yet they still interest me, or if they interest me because they irritate me. For now I will just accept that the fault is entirely mine for enjoying and seeking out confrontation.

At the moment, my two favourite people to read are Andrew Bolt and Lee Goldberg, not necessarily in that order. What do they have in common? Well.. they are both writers (for some reason), they are both arrogant, they both seem to be trying to change the world and... well, they both say things which are just, well, stupid.* However, they put their views forward in such a way that people actually read it. Each time I get sucked in and find myself reading something one of these gentleman has written, I get to the end and realise I have wasted another thirty seconds of my life.

But, because I disagree so strongly with what they have said, I find myself really thinking about it, and analysing it. Most interestingly, I have thought about something that I would not have otherwise thought about.

What I really want to say here is that while in my opinion, the world definitely does not need any more of these people, they do have their place. We really do need those people that makes us go "Hmmmmm.... No."



*Apologies if this word offends, but I really cannot find a better adjective at this time.