WORKPLACE HEALTH & SAFETY REFLECTION: ARE WE ANY SAFER AFTER PIKE RIVER? As the national society representing maintenance engineering, the MESNZ is unconvinced that New Zealand’s health and safety performance has improved since Pike River despite the efforts of Government and the Crown Agencies and will not improve until key players change their approach. MESNZ represents maintenance engineers from right across the country, drawing from every industry sector and major companies. As well as facilitating resourcing, networking and personal development of its members, we take a proactive interest in topics affecting engineers, with health and safety being front and centre. Our members first hand experiences of the new health and safety regime in the workplace do not show any change from 2008; rules-based downwardly driven management swathed in illogical decisions and urban myths, all in the name of Health and Safety. Worryingly, health and safety stats seem to have slipped from the public radar, as they did in 2002 when it took an organisation like MESNZ to point out that the numbers were in fact getting worse and that all the work of the modern health and safety ‘industry’ was actually doing nothing to improve the safety of workers. While the stats were healthy political fodder around the introduction of the new Act with ministers pressed for improvement, we predict the downplayed stats are the looming elephant in the room. The MESNZ comments are not limited to our health and safety performance though. We are equally targeted about where the problem lies; with company management and health and safety professionals. While we give credit to the law makers who effectively reshaped the legislation to close the loopholes and to the new Crown Agency WorkSafe who have done everything in its power to change the approach and interaction of the inspectorate, it is the senior players in management who have not risen to the clarion call for a paradigm shift. In a survey of 5000 industry contacts, we found the results around culture and management disturbing with the old rules-driven approach to management unchanged and safety culture stalled by the same old smoke and mirrors and urban myths of the past. The Pike River enquiry called for systemic change and even though Government got the message, health and safety professionals have missed the point that this includes them. The old legislation fuelled the attitude that health and safety was managements problem, side stepping personal responsibility. The new legislation is an opportunity to reverse that attitude. Companies that recognise this understand that effective health and safety management requires an upwardly driven approach focused on simplicity, personal safety, resourcing and empowerment. Unfortunately, some of our larger players in particular have missed the boat, simply waving bigger sticks at the workers. One such major corporate recently conducted a reality check of its lauded permit system to find that virtually no-one was using it. Why? The staff saw it as impractical, imposed and unworkable. A non-patronising approach based on keeping individuals alive and helping them resource the solutions may have heralded a more effective and sustainable result. The knock-on problem is that the big players are ardently copied by smaller companies hoodwinked by the PR. At MESNZ we paraphrase it as “The Emperor is Wearing Fluro Clothes”. At MESNZ we are so concerned about the issue, we have approached Worksafe as a first step to creating change. The reaction has not been overwhelming and we believe this is unlikely to change until health and safety once more becomes a political football. BY CRAIG CARLYLE, MESNZ 34 September 2017
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