Class war
A few days ago, the West Australian had an interesting article on the construction industry. In fact, it was a very depressing article, demonstrating the total disregard that many — most — employers have for the safety of their workers, despite fatal consequences:
A WorkSafe blitz on tilt-up constructions will continue after inspectors found serious safety breaches on more than half of Perth worksites.
Minister for Consumer and Employment Protection John Kobelke said yesterday random inspections would be carried out and prohibition notices issued.
The blitz comes after the death of tilt-up construction worker Des Kelsh when a tilt-up panel collapsed in September last year.
In fact, WorkSafe found safety breaches at fifty-nine per cent of tilt-up workplaces. Given that this is not a minor problem, but a widespread an life-threatening one, I would have thought that something more substantial than just random inspections would be desirable. Indeed, that is what Big Kev is arguing:
Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union State secretary Kevin Reynolds said yesterday that more WorkSafe inspectors were required.
Mr Reynolds, who has been highly critical of the Government over the issue, said the blitz and new safety regulations were a step in the right direction.
But he said it was not good enough simply to toughen the rules. There had to be enough inspectors to enforce them.
The CFMEU would mount its own blitz and had employed a tilt-up construction safety officer who would visit sites.
Mr Reynolds said the union would act at sites deemed unsafe.
The CFMEU gets a very hard time in the West for its militancy. It is prepared to stand up to bosses who get in its way. In this case — when Reynolds practically stated his intention to barge onto work sites and call work bans — the paper did not go into conniptions. Apparently wannabe shock-jock (and former West Australian editor) Paul Murray went even further, declaring on air that the CFMEU’s militancy was not just tolerable but necessary.
It’s a pity it takes the horrific death of a worker to demonstrate to the media that unions provide a vital service to the community. It’s a bigger pity that 59% of bosses care so little about their workers that even a death won’t convince them to change their ways. As long as this attitude prevails, the red flag will fly.
“It’s a pity it takes the horrific death of a worker to demonstrate to the media that unions provide a vital service to the community.”
Wasn’t it WorkSafe that provided the vital service in this instance?
No, the CFMEU has been stopping work at sites with dubious safety practices for quite some time. All WorkSafe has done is (belatedly) verify their claims.
In fact, I’d go so far as to say that without the CFMEU’s intervention, there is a significant possibility we would have seen more deaths last year.
(btw, this is just tilt-up. There have been deaths due to cranes hitting power lines because site managers failed to cut the power, etc, too.)
Rob, you’d have a much greater chance of getting some sypathy for your causes if you dropped the constant hyperbole. You (and the CFMEU) are dead right to say tilt-up construction sites have serious safety problems. Hell, I live about 500m from the site where the fellow was killed in September, the sight of Channel 7 and 9’s helicopters floating over the site in the aftermath was not one I wish to see again.
But you launch into this case with the statement: “…demonstrating the total disregard that many — most — employers have for the safety of their workers, despite fatal consequences”.
Robert, this is just crap. I work at Bunnings’ central distribution centre. Big warehouses, shitloads of heavy boxes, stacked to 15m high rooves. It’s fucking dangerous if things aren’t done properly, and they know it.
They insist that any item over 28kgs be lifted by two people, they insist that back-braces be worn when doing any lifting, etc, etc.
Just before Christmas, a silly young bloke I work with was going bull-at-a-gate at strapping a load to a pallet with that metal strapping you see around pallets of bricks. Really he was being stupid by tightening the metal strapping too quickly and too tight. It slipped through the winder and cut his hand. Now, management says you cant do metal strapping unless you are wearing gloves.
On Thursday last week a shovel fell off a pallet from a height of about 1 metre. It hit a bloke on the ankle and caused him a bit of distress. Now we have to use pallet collars (foot-high surrounds to prevent loose loads falling off the pallet) whenever we stack shovels or other loose tools like it.
Plastic garden chairs came from the manufacturers in reasonably fragile plastic pallets of 200, four stacks of fifty and about 2.5 metres high. We sent them out to stores in that form, until a pallet broke at the Geraldton store, sending the chairs crashing to the ground from 5 metres in the air. Luckily it happened overnight so no-one was hurt. Now it takes about 15 minutes to restack each pallet of 200 chairs onto two wooden pallets, 100 each. Considering the average distribution is about 15,000 chairs, you can see that it is costing the company a SHITLOAD more in labor to get them out than it did before. But they do it, because it’s safer.
Why don’t you just drop the “us versus them”, “evil bosses” rhetoric? There are definitely cases where unsafe workplaces are putting lives in danger. But to suggest that “most” employers have “total disregard” for the safety of their employers is ludicrous.
Gareth, 59% of tilt-up sites = most bosses in tilt-up construction. That’s what the post was about. Perhaps I should’ve been clearer, but oh well. It’s too late now.
(And I do believe it’s us against them. Not because bosses are evil, but because they have no choice but to limit the rights, pay and condition of workers. Some of them are more sympathetic than others, but at the end of the day it’s a conflict of interest and the shit will hit the fan.)
But see Rob, that’s precisely where you are wrong. It is NOT ins employers’ interests to have injured workers!
The site where Des Kelsh was killed… that was supposed to be finished 6 weeks before Christmas so that the retailers there (the main drawcard is a Rebel Sport, I believe) could get a goood run into Christmas trading. The site is owned by Harvey Norman, so you can guarantee that the builder is paying some heavy penalties to them for not getting it finished in time.
Then there’s the compensation of the injured worker if he is injured/killed. Not cheap, not productive, not good business.
Then there’s the cost of hiring a replacement to do his job while a worker is injured (or, the cost of lost productivitiy by not having him available to work).
It just DOES NOT MAKE SENSE AT ANY LEVEL for employers to take risks with employee safety. Tilt-up sites are a real problem, yes. From what I understand, the whole method of construction is inherently unsafe… you’re talking about getting massive,massive walls of concrete and just putting ‘em up in the air in one go.
As for the 59%, I would wager that WorkSafe could find “safety breaches” on heaps of work sites. For example, a box might be sitting in the aisle at a warehouse rather than in the rack, because someone was getting stock out of it and didn’t put it back until the end of the day’s tidy up. There’s the risk that a forklift could hit it, or a person trip over it or whatever, and that’s technically a safety breach, but the reality is that a) no workplace is going to be 100% tidy 100% of the time, and b) ordinary workers have eyes and can spot things that might be a hazard in a lot of cases.
Look, we had a WorkSafe guy in the other day to inspect our fire sprinkler system. He said it had problems with the pump lacking pressure that needed to be fixed. No doubt that goes down as a breach in the WorkSafe stats. But in a fire drill last week it literally took less than a minute for everyone to clear the warehouse and get to the evacuation point by walking. The sprinklers aren’t going to save any lives. (Though they might safe some stock). Yet we’ve probably just racked up a breach.
Again, tilt-up is a problem. But drop the hyperbole! This huge irony keeps striking me that you, the workers advocate and one that cares is doing a “Labour Movement Work Experience Program” at the same time as me, the evil capitalist pig, is actually working in a blue-collar job.
Cheers.
Don’t you have to have capital to be a “capitalist pig”? Or, are you an aspiring “capitalist pig”? Just because you may want to be something it does not make you such a thing. Am i a capitalist because i have my superannuation funds involuntarily invested in a scheme that i do not ethically approve of?
Won’t employers will risk employee safety if they don’t possess any real concern for the individuals who work for them beyond the profits that they provide? Or do they not act as Economic Men?
I think it’s safe to assume that there are employers who do not wish to see their employees harmed.
However, my intuition would suggest that if employers do not have any moral or ethical commitment to employee safety, the likelihood of them risking employee safety depends on what ‘costs’ or ‘discomforts’ they will face if found to be risking employee safety. Providing they can (or think they can) avoid punishment (of governmental, community or economic kinds) then employers ‘will’ risk employee safety.
Gareth, if the costs incurred in workers’ comp payouts, etc, are outweighed by the savings made by cutting corners, then the economic decision is clear. DJ is spot on.
I think something has to be said for the remote possibility that some bosses may be human, with human feelings and the human belief that their workers’ safety just may be important, not from an economic point of view, but from a moral one.
Of course, we’ve got the evidence of thousands of corporations out there to disprove that possibility. Coca-Cola, Exxon Mobil, De Beers, etc. show such appalling disregard for human life that it’s hard to think of any of their higher-ups as anything but evil, cold-blooded things.
Nonetheless, not every boss who sees the chance to cut a few corners will jump at it. I hope.
No of course not, Mark. It wasn’t my intention to suggest that. There are many good bosses out there.
However, commercial pressures make cutting corners attractive, and sadly workplace safety is one of the first casualties.
Gareth, in case you’re interested, I’m also doing the program. Yes, I’m touring the unions, meeting MPs, being an intellectual wanker as you may like to think. But I also work part-time to pay for my uni books and transport, and have done for three years, so cut the superiority crap. For a blue-collar worker, you’re surprisingly snobby.
“For a blue-collar worker, you’re surprisingly snobby.”
This coming from the girl who doesn’t think the “Average guy” is intelligent enough to understand the refugee situation.