What Workplace Health & Safety !!

[b0son]

Originally Posted by Trevor 57

thanks for your positive contribution, I am sure your children will appreciate going back to the 'good old days' with workplace safety, hell workers are just a disposable commodity anyway

Any discussion of OHS inevitably proceeds the same way discussions of unionism do. People immediately go to extremes and talk about no penalty rates, no holiday leave, no sick leave, etc. But what have unions done *positively* in the last 10-20 years, other than have a hand in killing a few local industries?

Times have changed, we've moved on. It's silly to assume we'd go back to the bad old days. I doubt there would be carnage in the workplace if we simply required a little more personal responsibility of people. People ultimately want to make it home alive, and those who do take unnecessary risks do so regardless of what rules are in place.

In a global economy, we have a global workplace, and if we blindly increase regulation for the hell of it, we just send more and more jobs OS to those with more lax regulation. We need some middle ground.

Right now, we're being asked to buy into the lie that more bureaucracy translates into better quality. It frequently does not.

[Beastie]

I've been sitting in the background on this one.

Whilst I think the OP was simply highlighting how it was done 'back in the day', it has clearly moved on to a different discussion.

The OH&S rules have dramatically changed over time, hopefully with a view designed to help prevent injury and death in any workplace - not to slow a job site down.

As Trevor 57 states, the rules are rules - it's how employers & employees decide what to do.

Recently, I had a team of contractors come onto my work premises to erect 9m high racking. Their employer had decided to not hire a scissor lift, which meant that his team had to climb the racking. Whilst they were wearing harnesses, they were clipping & unclipping as they moved between beams.

Once I saw this happening, I immediately asked them to stop work! The last thing that I wanted was to have one of these guys fall and hurt/kill themselves.

Who do I blame?

The business owner of the contractors for not hiring the scissor lift to save costs and the contractors for making the decision to climb the racking and not insisting they have a scissor lift.

In the end, it all worked out and a scissor lift was hired and nobody was hurt, but it's the 'what if' factor that people either choose to ignore or are forced into to get the job done.

Everyone deserves to go home from work everyday!

[Trevor 57]

Originally Posted by marty351

Apparently drilling plastic requires a hot works permit. 1.5 hours to do a 1 minute job.
This is where it gets a bit silly.

again, workplace procedures can be just plain dumb, and here is proof

Originally Posted by b0son

Any discussion of OHS inevitably proceeds the same way discussions of unionism do. People immediately go to extremes and talk about no penalty rates, no holiday leave, no sick leave, etc. But what have unions done *positively* in the last 10-20 years, other than have a hand in killing a few local industries?

Times have changed, we've moved on. It's silly to assume we'd go back to the bad old days. I doubt there would be carnage in the workplace if we simply required a little more personal responsibility of people. People ultimately want to make it home alive, and those who do take unnecessary risks do so regardless of what rules are in place.

In a global economy, we have a global workplace, and if we blindly increase regulation for the hell of it, we just send more and more jobs OS to those with more lax regulation. We need some middle ground.

Right now, we're being asked to buy into the lie that more bureaucracy translates into better quality. It frequently does not.

Experience tells me that some people are risk takers some aren't. People who live on, or grow up on farms are more likely to get hurt in the workplace from my experience. If you have heard of the Pareto principle, the 80/20 rule, 80% of the accidents happen to 20% of the people, you and I know them as "accident prone", you know who they are at your workplace, hell, you might even be one of them -

Generally people who get hurt at work do so trying to 'keep production going', they are trying to do the right thing for the company, they rush, take short-cuts etc and then pay the price.