SAFETY
Let’s talk about “fixing the workplace, not the worker”.
We can look at a program called TOP, or Triangle of Prevention Program.
The program centers on fixing the workplace, and not the worker.
This is done through creating and effective safety system. You may
ask what has motivated all this concern in changing the workplace
not the worker. Well typically, the ccident prevention has been defined
by management as an individual workers esponsibility. Here he employee
involvement safety programs are based on behavior modification. The
goal is to reduce the OSHA recordable injury rate by changing the
behaviors of workers. What has come of all this you may wonder. Well
the union often creates a name for their local program. Management
may even agree to not use discipline when unsafe behavior is observed.
However we have seen that behavior modification safety programs are
a perfect fit of management’s avoidance of responsibility for
health, safety and accidents. When management runs process units
beyond factory design limits, reduces preventative maintenance staff,
crowds equipment together, hires poorly trained contractors and downsizes
safety budgets, these unsafe management behaviors are ignored by
behaviorist safety programs.
Behavior modification programs are the least effective way to prevent
accidents because they focus on the narrow issue of correcting worker
mistakes. When the Health and Safety Committees investigated the
injury using a fix the workplace, safety system approach, the committee
saw that the worker’s injury was a symptom of a problem with
the facility’s internal workings. Behavior modification programs
assume that the workplace and its safety systems are designed and
maintained safely. Behavior observation programs actually function
as a means of convincing workers to adapt their behaviors in order
to keep unsafely designed equipment running. Behavior modification
programs concentrate on getting workers to adapt themselves to the
unsafe equipment by wearing fall protection harnesses or other personal
equipment.
Rather than focusing worker attention on organizing collectively
to fix the workplace, behaviorbased programs have workers target
each other for individual change.
Now we can look more towards
the workplace. When we view the workplace and “fixing” it
we usually take on the attitude of, when a pump fails it is recognized
that the thing that actually broke down was the plant’s mechanical
integrity program. The key for prevention of future similar incidents
requires examining and changing the mechanical integrity system.
Therefore, attention focuses on issues such as why the pump-monitoring
program did not detect a problem with the bearing.
Now the question may possibly be how do we create a safer workplace?
This truly requires us to look at industrial health and safety in
a fundamentally new way. After all, our entire society is based on
blaming the victim. The national focus on individual recycling concentrates
our attention on the least effective area for actually reducing pollution.
However, it is very effective in transferring blame and responsibility
for pollution onto working people and away from corporations who
create, control and profit from the system of pollution.
So in conclusion the workers are the problem that needs fixing in
order to have a safe workplace.
They claim that the behavior modification of individual workers is
the solution. In reality, unsafely designed, maintained and managed
workplaces are the primary problem. The best way to prevent injuries,
fires, explosions and hazardous material releases is by fixing the
workplace, not the workers.
