A dead rabbit gets swifter, better justice

I couldn’t let this one slip by without re-printing it here. (Thanks to Rory O’Neill, editor of Hazards magazine, for permission to use such articles from Risks, the TUC’s weekly online bulletin for safety reps and others.)

Safety campaigners have reacted furiously after the death of a rabbit was treated more seriously by the courts than the death of a construction worker. Families Against Corporate Killers (FACK), which speaks for the bereaved relatives of workplace fatality victims, was speaking out after Discovery Homes (Scotland) Ltd was fined £5,000 and the firm’s director Richard Pratt £4,000 on 8 June after the death of employee Andrezej Freitag. On the same day Steven Appleton was jailed for causing unnecessary suffering to a rabbit at Magistrates Court in Caerphilly after he stamped it to death. He received a six month custodial sentence. FACK member Sharon Norman, whose father Gordon Field was crushed to death at work, has written to prime minister Gordon Brown to protest. She said: ‘When I read the two news reports and the outrageously different penalties handed down by our courts to the killer of a rabbit and the killers of a man, I was so angry and I had to email the prime minister. I asked him to explain to me how this could be right.’ She added: ‘Every year many more people are given custodial and suspended sentences for animal cruelty than have ever been given such sentences for killing a worker. We don’t condone animal cruelty but cruelty to people that devastates families must surely be more serious?’ She added it took three years after her dad was killed at work for his negligent employer to be fined, ‘yet the rabbit killer was tried, convicted and sentenced in a few months.’

• FACK news release and website. The death at work of Gordon Field, Sharon Norman’s father [pdf]. Contract Journal. BBC News Online

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Excellent Timesonline article in defence of HSE

TIMESONLINE
April 21, 2009

Health and safety: a grave error of judgment
They have been blamed for banning everything from conkers to classical music, but alll the Health and Safety Executive is really responsible for is ‘topple-testing’ in cemeteries, its chairman says…
…
Judith Hackitt travels home to Oxford most nights by train. “There is hardly a week that goes by,” she says, “when somebody doesn’t come on the tannoy and say ‘we can’t bring the trolley round tonight because of health and safety’. And actually, no.”

No?

“No,” says Hackitt. “You can’t bring the trolley round because the aisles are stacked with people. Or, you can’t bring the trolley round because the trolley dolly hasn’t turned up for work. It’s one of the two. It sure isn’t health and safety.”

Judith Hackitt is chairwoman of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). People, she says, are always stealing its phrase. “It’s a good one to hide behind,” she says.  There is Health and Safety, you see, and health and safety. People are forever confusing the two.

…

Last year, 229 people were killed in workplace accidents. “But actually, that is a gross underestimate,” says Hackitt. “Add to that the 2,000 people who died prematurely last year because they had been exposed to asbestos at work, the several thousand who had been exposed to other harmful substances. There are 100,000 people in Britain who have been injured at work, 28,000 with amputations. Two million off work, half of whom will never work again …” The fuss about health and safety, she says, makes it so much harder to promote Health and Safety. Forget about conkers and gravestones,” she says, “and let’s focus on the real problems. If I find all of this rubbish demoralising, imagine what it’s like for our inspectors. They’re the ones who visit families after someone has died. And to be called the Health and Safety Taleban? It’s horrible.”

I’ve only provided a couple of clips from this excellent article…
Give it a full read — see the Comments, and copy it to people.

TIMEONLINE article.

There are two seperate issues. Health and Safety and the ‘Sue’ culture. The first is use some sense and understand risks. The second came about when a certain government decided that solicitors could advertise.
- S G Robinson, Harlow, UK

Journalism feeds on negativity. In the case of safety this encourages accidents, because it discourages the necessary change in thinking that is required to reduce the level of accidents and illness created by doing ones job. Typing for a living can give you some quite painful industrial injuries.
- Karen Leader, Orpington, Kent

Rename the HSE the Occupational HSE (OHSE). The Legal fraternity, Magistrates and Judges have a lot to answer for us becoming such a litigious society and perhaps it is they who need a dose of Common Sense training. Don’t forget the insurance industry who can be just a silly and of course councils.
- Tony Horsfall, Caversham, England

Totally agree with Judith Hackitt – lets deal with the compensation culture, solicitors advertising no win no fee and employers who still see health and safety as getting in the way, while their workers are injured or worse – media – get some perspective. Well done the Times – an objective piece.
- Keith Allen, Rudgwick, UK

Hydraulic Safety Awareness

Dear Mr Mac,

By way of introduction, I am the Senior Aircraft Accident Investigator
within the Royal Navy Flight Safety and Accident Investigation Centre
(RNFSAIC) based at RNAS Yeovilton in Somerset.  As well as accident
investigation one of my other tasks is as the Technical Editor of the Royal
Navy quarterly in-house flight safety magazine titled ‘Cockpit’.    Recently
it became apparent to me that some of our RN aircraft maintainers and
engineers did not fully understand (or had forgotten) the risks involved
when working with and around high pressure aircraft hydraulic systems thus, as I have done with other issues in the past, I publish an article reminding people of the risks and associated mitigation.  Whilst researching hydraulic safety I came across your PowerPoint presentation ‘Hydraulic Safety Awareness’.  May I just say that what a superb, hard hitting and informative set of slides.

With your permission I would like to use some of the facts set out in your
presentation such as the hazards, temperature vs. time causing 2nd degree
burns, and so on. I do not propose using the personal detail of the case
studies and photos because we have records of our own accidents within the RN. You may be interested in 2 of which that spring to mind;  in 1998 a Sea King helicopter crashed as a result of a hydraulic leak and fireball
initiated by arcing of a chaffed pipe and electrical cable. (Happily the
crew survived without serious injury) and a near fatal accident when a
maintainer got his head trapped between the closing nose undercarriage doors on a Sea Harrier during fault rectification work.  In this case it was the quick thinking of his colleague which saved his life by emergency dumping hyd servicing rig pressure.  Nevertheless the victim suffered severe crushing and fracture of his lower jaw. The manual selector was not correctly set and locked and the jack safety gags had not been fitted. The under-carriage door jacks, although relatively small, exert a force of just over 1 ton.   

Yours,     

Bob Vickery
Lt Cdr R J Vickery RN
Senior Investigator
RNFSAIC
Mil  93510 6622
Bt   01935 456622

Hydraulics Safety Awareness PowerPoint Presentation (680kb zip)

Most workers won’t blow the whistle

As reported in the Risks Newsletter 372…

Fewer than one in every three workers would blow the whistle on their employer if they broke health and safety laws, according to the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH). A YouGov poll commissioned by IOSH found that only 28 per cent of people would report their company or organisation to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) if it was in breach of health and safety legislation. The survey of 1,332 employed people from across Britain found that 35 per cent would report their line manager or supervisor to their boss if they felt there was a risk they or a colleague could get hurt at work. Almost threequarters (74 per cent) said they would tell their line manager or supervisor if they felt there was a risk they or a colleague could get hurt at work. And just 50 per cent said they would tell their colleagues if they felt there was a risk they or a colleague could get hurt at work. Five per cent said they wouldn’t do any one of these. The poll found workers massively under-estimate the numbers killed and injured at work each year. ‘The fact that more than two-thirds of people said they wouldn’t blow the whistle on their employer for doing something illegal suggests a few things,’ said IOSH president Ray Hurst. ‘It could be that people are very loyal to their employers or, more likely, that they’re scared of the consequences if they get found out having told. It’s also quite possible that people don’t know how to report to the HSE.’

• IOSH news release.

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An old scab postman lay dying…

An old scab postman lay dying… He sent for his son. The son rushed to his bedside and put his ear close to the old man’s lips.

“Yes Dad, what do you want to say to me?”

“Son”, he wheezed, “I’ve got one last wish, and I want you to see it’s carried out.”

“Yes, Dad, what is it?”

“When I’m gone, I want you to arrange my funeral.”

“Yes, Dad, I’ll do that.”

“And I want you to arrange that the Union Banner is draped on my coffin, and that my pallbearers are good Union members, and better still, Union Reps.”

“But Dad”, the son replied, confused, “You never supported the Union. When you started in the Post Office as a casual, it was the Union who got you a permanent contract, but you always slagged them off.”

“I know, son.”

” And the Union got you taken on full time, but you thought it was management who had given you a full time job, and although you joined the Union, it was only to get any protection going, in case you needed it.”

“Yes, son, that’s true.”

“And when you were threatened with dismissal for sickness, it was the Union Rep who represented you and saved your job.”

“Yes, she did.”

“And you took every pay rise, and improvement that the Union negotiated, though you always said that the Union did nothing for you.”

“Yes…”

“And when the Union said a stand had to be taken against Management’s refusal to negotiate on their plans to cut wages and impose their Business Plan, you resigned from the Union ‘on principle’, as you were against strikes.”

“Yes, son, I did — the Union can’t tell you what to do.”

“And you crossed the picket line, laughing at your colleagues standing there losing pay to defend their pay, their conditions and their jobs.”

“Well, yes, I did. They’re idiots to think they can stand up to Management.”

“And you did every bit of overtime going, even coming in on your days off.”

“Yes, son, well, you have to look after yourself.”

“And if anyone called you a scab, you went running to the manager to get disciplinary action taken against them.”

“Yes–well, they shouldn’t be so nasty to me, I’m only doing my job.”

“So Dad, if you’ve hated the Union all your life, why would you want Union members to be your pallbearers?”

The old scab wheezed and gasped, turning blue, before he breathed his last, and departed this life for that hell reserved for scabs, nonces, bullying managers, torturers, concentration camp guards, fascists, greedy bosses, and the rest of the dregs of humanity. He beckoned his son to come closer, and with his last breath he whispered:

“GOOD AND DECENT TRADE UNIONISTS HAVE CARRIED ME ALL MY LIFE, AND I WANT THEM TO CARRY ME WHEN I’M DEAD, TOO.”

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Who gets the most (and least) holidays

When it comes to holidays, it’s best to be working in Finland, and just about the worst to be working in the United States.  A new study by human resource consulting firm Mercer ranks countries by their paid time-off policies and finds that Finland has the most generous paid time off laws out of 49 nations surveyed by Mercer. Besides getting fewer paid holidays than workers in most other countries, Americans tend not to use all the days they do get, and what holidays they do take are spent in small slices and often in contact with their jobs, according to findings from other sources.” The typical practice in the United States – among large companies anyway – is 15 days paid vacation and 10 days of paid holidays for full-time employees with 10 years of tenure”, according to Mercer.  (There is no minimum paid-annual leave law in the United States.)

Here in the United Kingdom, we get a minimum of 20 days of paid leave, plus 8 paid national holidays, where the Working Time Directive provides entitlement to paid annual leave from the first day of employment (never mind after 10 years!!).  Most of our colleagues in the European Union, however, have moved ahead and totals of annual paid holidays of 30 to 36 are not uncommom. See the CNN article and the table of countries at: http://money.cnn.com/2007/06/12/pf/vacation_days_worldwide/

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Union anger at HSE over ‘worker involvement’ paper

Following on from my previous comments on, and praise for the recent HSE Leadership Conference, I’m dismayed to discover this news on the IOSH official magazine site, shponline.co.uk.

Apparently the HSE will not be proposing that the Health and Safety Commission recommend establishing new duties on employers to consult safety reps on risk assessments, and on employers to respond to representations from safety reps.  This has upset Amicus and the TUC’s Hazards Campaign, and understandably.  Despite 91 per cent of respondents agreeing (in an HSE-sponsored worker involvement exercise) that there should be a duty to consult safety reps on risk assessments, and 96 per cent saying there should be a duty to respond to representations, the HSE did not recommend that any changes in H&S law be made by the HSC.

The HSE has apparently said: “The HSC reaffirmed its strong support for safety reps at the meeting. The paper made it clear that, while 91 per cent of respondents thought a duty to consult safety representatives would be useful, this figure masked a much less enthusiastic response from employers, of whom only 42 per cent were in favour. For example, the CBI objected strongly to the proposal for a legal duty to consult safety representatives.”

Hmmm. Well, they would, wouldn’t they?

Read the IOSH/shponline report HERE.   The response from Amicus is HERE.

Worker Involvement: results of the consultation exercise and a proposed approach to current and future work

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HSE Leadership Conference, Derby, 29 March

HSE Leadership Conference, 29 March 2007:
The Cost of Getting The Point Across

The “Leadership Conference” hosted by the Health and Safety Executive on 29 March was billed as a specialist one-day programme in “how to achieve effective leadership in Health and Safety for Directors and CEOs of Manufacturing Organisations”, and it wasn’t a conference that many Safety Reps will have attended.

You’d be forgiven for fearing the worst — for thinking that the under-funded and under-manned HSE was turning it’s back on Safety Representatives, by taking the step of charging, what for any Rep, would have been an incredible entrance fee for this conference.

Locked in continuous struggle to get time off from employers to attend such events, and disadvantaged by the high cost of HSE publications that are often needed to do their jobs successfully, few Safety Reps were going to be in a position to buy their way into what appeared to be an “exclusive” conference.  It almost looked like a calculated snub, in some new outbreak of class-warfare, with Reps (“the riff-raff”) being virtually barred from the proceedings by the £150 fee for a seat.

‘Not to worry, mates — nothing so sinister was ever on the agenda.  But I shall return to that.

The boat was pushed out on this conference, with sponsorship from O2 as well as with commercial exhibitors in an adjacent hall who paid for the right to flog their H&S wares and services.  The promotional leaflet, skilfully aimed at the bosses and managers with key words that would draw their interest, promised to show them how they could improve company performance through effective leadership.  “Performance” and “leadership” were used frequently throughout the promotion, and the prominent O2 symbol lent a touch of commercial style to a leaflet devoid of any union logos.

There was some thought put into the marketing of this conference, and I think it succeeded admirably.  Attendance was high, with 32 large dining tables overlooking the Derby FC pitch, filled with seven and eight people at each table.  Large LCD screens placed to the sides of the main stage provided extra viewing of the PowerPoint presentations as they were rolled out by a good selection of speakers, and wireless Blackberry devices, situated on each table, were set up to provide feedback during the customary interactive session — all going to create a more “managerial” and “hi-tech” ambiance than we generally find at such conferences and seminars.

The key aims of the conference were, in the words of the Delegate Information Pack, to:
1) Promote the application of senior management leadership in health and safety in manufacturing industries
2) Share best practice in leadership, by demonstrating successful models of leadership in a variety of manufacturing environments
3) Demonstrate the effects of good leadership
4) Illustrate the components of good leadership in health and safety

All fairly vague and innocuous, from the sound of it, and much like what we’re used to from the HSE, as well as from the promotional material of management consultants, if you’ve ever seen any. That, I think, may have been part of the strategy.

The heavyweights amongst the several speakers were certainly John Oliver, OBE, and his partner from the days of Leyland Trucks, David Graham.

John is the author of two books on management technique and  is also a former CEO of Leyland Trucks.  It was John‘s application of his “radical employment engagement” method at Leyland Trucks that turned the company around in less than two years, transforming it from an unprofitable wreck, hobbling along on government hand-outs, into the most cost-efficient operation in Europe.  The sum of John’s excellent presentation was that employee engagement can be the safest, quickest and cheapest way of transforming an organisation, delivering results in greater efficiency, quality, employee morale and profitability, by releasing the hidden talent and expertise within an organisation and maximising contribution from the workforce.  “You’ve got two of these”, he told the managers, pointing to his ears.  “And you’ve got one of these”, pointing to his mouth.  “That’s telling you something — you’re supposed to use these twice as much as this.”

David Graham was John Oliver’s Production Manager in their time together at Leyland Trucks.  He followed John onto the podium and his presentation was an apt follow-up, linked as it was to John’s by their experience together at Leyland. David offered a highly humorous monologue on his inadequacies as a production manager, and how he underwent the change from the old autocratic management methods of the 1960s and 70s, to the more effective “participative coaching and facilitating” approach.

With comical self-ridicule — taking the mick out of himself somethin’ wicked — he illustrated how his own lack of leadership skills contributed to the malaise that Leyland Trucks was suffering in the 1980s.  Everyone laughed at the tale of his tough-bastard approach to management, with his inter-department squabbles, jealousies, blame-shifting and refusal to listen to anyone’s ideas but his own.  His presentation was an exercise in self-mockery, but it was also an ingenious mirror through which those in the audience could perhaps see themselves, once the laughter had died away.

In contrast to all the valuable academic and statistical evidence promoting this change in leadership style, one speaker in particular, Frank Carrano of Accident Safety Awareness Presentations offered personal and graphic evidence of the terrible impact on an employee’s life as a result of an accident at work.

With slides of his accident — a half-ton metal sheet fell onto his back — of his injuries, and of the active life he had before the accident, Frank’s hard-hitting presentation drove home the message for the need for risk assessments, safe systems of work and procedures.  Frank’s honest and sensitive story exposed the audience to the personal and family consequences of a serious works accident and gave everyone food for thought on the human element of a good health and safety system.  Frank is to be commended for his courage, both in coping with what happened to him, and in taking his story to the many, many people who will benefit from hearing it.

Any trade union representative who has attended some of the conferences and seminars hosted by the HSE will have noticed how edgy and uninterested a few individuals suddenly become when a Union official or Safety Rep takes the podium and mentions the subject of consultation, of “listening to Reps”. You’ve seen them squirm in their seats, gradually slouching in boredom, and you could tell that they’ve turned off the internal volume control.  You’ve seen them look at their watches, as if they’re thinking “Ah, I should hear the Union side, but now’s the time to beat that motorway traffic”, and they slide out of their chairs and make a crafty exit “for the toilet”, carrying all their paperwork and jacket with them.  But not this time.

The presenters here were in command of entertaining speaking skills and held the attention of everyone.  Many in the audience made copious notes in their pads to take back to work with them, and the applause for every speaker was genuine — not the polite but half-hearted applause you sometimes hear.

Now, why did I say “Not to worry” about missing this conference?

You needn’t worry about having missed it because the message, repeated time and again by every speaker, was the one that we wish would be heard and acted upon, the one that we are so familiar with that we’re almost bored with it ourselves:  that an essential of good business leadership is communication, and communication means listening to the workforce and working with Safety Representatives.

Earlier speakers and those who followed John Oliver and David Graham all delivered the same message: that employees should not be merely consulted, as a paper exercise conducted in compliance with regulations, but should be effectively involved in providing answers to health and safety problems in the workplace.  Every presentation used hard examples and offered hard evidence of the wide-ranging business gains that have been made by companies that have taken the route of participatory leadership, in leading by visible example; actively demonstrating a commitment to health and safety; and actively engaging the workforce in health and safety matters.

The only real departure from this underlying message came with a series of propositions to be discussed and voted on at the tables, in the interactive session.  The propositions all revolved around management accountability, and the results from the votes of the tables of assembled managers and middle-managers told a story that we, as union members and safety reps, should consider.

Three of the propositions stand out as good examples of the point I’m going to make.  They were:
1) that there are limits to the effect that directors can have on accidents and ill-health. Ultimately it is up to those who create and are exposed to the risks — i.e. the workers — to behave in such a way as to exercise care and avoid risks.
2) that directors who lead successful companies are, by definition, good leaders and the existing leadership skills they have are sufficient to ensure they can lead effectively in the area of health and safety.
3) that health and safety performance is too remote from the boardroom to be a legitimate factor in the remuneration of directors.

When the votes were transmitted on the Blackberrys and counted, the first proposition was defeated by 80%.  The two other propositions were opposed by 100% of the votes.

This vote on the propositions was conducted before the presentations by John Oliver and David Graham, so they can’t be construed as “tests” of what the audience remembered hearing in the presentations.  They were a relatively fair gauge of opinion around the tables.

What these results demonstrate is that we must we recognise that not all directors, managers and middle-managers are conducting themselves with that “them-and-us” attitude — that mind-set from the 1970s of mutual distrust and resistance to change, on both sides, that so damaged the British economy.  The risk of perpetuating that attitude amongst ourselves, by refusing to recognise that management is moving into the 21st century, is that we may become the greatest obstacle to the changes we seek.

Had you been there, it would definitely have been a case of the speakers “preaching to the converted”.  There was little at the conference that you didn’t already know or agree with, and you might have found yourself with a dose of numb-bum and an itch to hit the motorway early, if you hadn’t paid a hundred and fifty quid to be there!

As it was, I think the entrance fee served not so much to exclude Safety Reps, as it did to attract those people to whom the HSE really wanted to speak.

The “marketing”, as it were — the strategy and the psychology — behind the success of this conference required the feel of “exclusivity” and a price.  I was fortunate to have been invited, and I sensed that those who attended were not only pleased with the event, but that the message that was being delivered was acknowledged and well-received.  As Safety Reps, we could never have done it better ourselves, and we owe the HSE a round of applause for a job well done, even in our absence.

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