I havent said "we are spending enough to cover off safety in the workplace". Nor did I say collateral damage is acceptable.

I have said we ought to become better informed about a particular death before forming views on preventing such deaths.

And I have suggested that the law of diminishing returns may be in play. Beautifully illustrated in the hand crafted graph I posted above.

Today's thought

We can and do that already

Gee> I wouldn't be using mountain bikers as the exemplar.

I've got one of those. Had a fall with quite a significant head injury. Completed our Return To Work program.

What does he do? Goes mountain biking again
What happens. Has another fall
What's the consequence. Another significant head injury.
Where am I? Grumpy because I have another RTW to deal with and more lost productivity.

4 staff = at least $800,000. Where would you put them. (4 people is getting close to the sweet spot where you need a fifth person to cover the leave absences of the other four - so lets call is a $m)

Worksafe fines go into the consolidated fund (like all the other fines) not to worksafe. So all bigger fines would do is theoretically reduce the overall tax burden. Perhaps an increase in the OSH levy is what you are looking for. (I wouldn't be keen on that because that means I pay more and get nothing for it)

ACC is very generous. If you die reasonable funeral costs are covered and if you have dependants they get cash for quite some time.If you don't die you get 80% of your lost earnings plus a truck load thrown at you to get you rehabilitated.

We traded this generous compensation for the right to sue. When you introduce the right to sue the only winners are lawyers. Within our legislation part of an OSH "Fine" can be paid to the victim.

Fines ought to be proportional to ones ability to pay. Big profitable companies = big fine. Low paid worker = small fine. Either way it is to hurt. Its called a consequence.

We have a catalogue. Staff get to choose whatever they like up to a certain generous $ value. Beyond that they pay the difference.

I have loaners to cover if they don't have their own and until their boots arrive.

They get to keep them when they leave.

Anything beyond that is administratively costly and not worth it.

Its two large enterprises behind the latest fatalities.

Tweak one. I've no problem with more inspectors on the ground. But not more police - I'd prefer their resources got put into other areas. We already have prosecutions and higher fines - but that "motivator" lever doesn't seem to be working.

Tweak two. Two different things. ACC = compo for loss of earnings. Prosecution = bringing people to account. There is already a mechanism for that. But it is expensive to run a prosecution. More money spent by worksafe on prosecutions = less money for inspectors on the ground.

Tweak three. I can't speak for everyone - but in my area Worksafe have been very good at creating these. No fault there.

Here is something that is relatively untried - more prosecution / fines of workers.

I've expressed my views broadly on this forum before on pre employment testing. Suffice to say they should not form part of our safety management.

That aside the number one best way to assess a worker (against whatever it is you want to measure them by) is the "work trial". No matter what your employment process is it has many fail points. Which won't be overcome until you got to actually observe a person on the job.

Good ole Andrew. Just rocked up to Gordon (an accountant with no mining experience) and said "G'day hows this super gassy mine with my members in it going Gord" "Bonza Andrew. Fair dinkum she's all spick and span and above board" "Good on yah Gord. As you are then. Now where's Damian and Ged?"

Theres a story line you will never see written.

And a warning why you don't want some unions involved in FPA's

The way these things work is a settled Fair Pay Agreement will be at the lowest common denominator.

An FPA is a clean slate document. It is not the re-negotiation of a Multi Employer Collective Agreement or a Collective Employment Agreement.

Safety standards are already enshrined in law. So a FPA cannot have a suggested clause that is anything less than this standard. Therefore a Clause has to be greater than the standard. And it is this clause that will be negotiated. And therefore moving into negotiating about safety. Which is something that in my view should not be done.

In the end it ends up being a nonsense. Heres an example. A task requires safety boots as the necessary PPE. And the required pair is $100 for a laced up version. That boot meets every standard and every requirement to do its job. So you are going to end up with the parties negotiating a better boot. This is interesting - what is a better boot if the minimum standard is already a good boot. So they parties will bat this back and forth for ages and settle on "lets get a $150 boot". Now some employers can't afford the $150 boot. And why should they when they can get a perfectly adequate boot everyone is happy with for $100. But that doesn't matter. So that clause will go to the Employment Relations Authority. And they won't like it because there is not enough specificity around what a boot is. So it will go back to the parties to define "boot. Yadah yada yada. Eventually it goes out to ratification to employers. And little Joe Blogs Limited who can't afford the boot casts a "No". But this vote is overrode by the "Big End Of Town". So Joe Bloggs decides he can't afford all these new fangled employment conditions so shuts up shop. That's the end of the safety issues for him. But workers in the Big End of Town employer get their $150 safety boots. But they have lost their hot chocolate at smoko

And that is all aside from considering what Maori view on safety boots. Because their views need to be sought in the process.

Andrew Little is the union boss who is on record as saying Pike rivers health and safety (to paraphrase) was an exemplar.

For a start I wouldn't be encouraging people to cycle to work. First - its their time. Not mine. So none of my business. Second - with drivers like ours its damn dangerous to be on a bike.

As for the visiting customer. Aesthetically I don't think it is a good look turning up on a bike. All sweaty and hair a mess with cycle clips.Is the company such a cheapskate it can't afford to give the person a car?

As from there do the risk assessment. Personally. Id err on metal vs metal rather than metal vs a squishy thing.

No. Fair Pay Agreements is a shocker. Worse piece of draft legislation ever.

And I am appalled the drafters think Health and Safety should be a negotiable thing..
What are they going to do "Oh I know how about we pay you $0.20 more and we'll do away with the supply of safety boots"

And many workers are at major risk of losing their union. That's not going to be good for them (Assuming their union is any good at health and safety. Andrew Little certainly wasn't.)

Just for the record I am not laying the blame for 50 - 60 workplace deaths on the workers. That said my last death was 100% on the worker. If you go sticking your fingers in live wires it isnt going to end well. All authorities and coroner agreed.

And the other day. Despite all tools to work from home, all tools to self test, countless messages in all manner of media from everyone from the PM down to stay at home, numerous colleagues out of work due to the Covid we have a person who decides to come to work coughing and spluttering., And before he gets sent home manages to infect another couple of people. By deliberately entering their workspaces when there was no need to be there. Thankfully there wernt too many people there because the rest were working from home.

What I am doing is responding to a post that said "Why are we still killing our workers " several days after the death and there is zero evidence that we did in fact kill the worker. And there is no public information surrounding the 70+ year olds death.

One thing we can do when "turning over stones" is take an unemotive look at the facts, drill down to the causes and learn from there.

As for the rising number of serious harm incidents there will be multiple explanations. One factor could be our work force has increased from 1.5m in 2004 to 2.8m last year. More workers = more exposure events. And unemployment has gone down from 162,000 to 93,000. So maybe we are hiring more people less equipped for the work environment. I dont know about your environment but I can tell you that with our closed borders Darwin would have a field day looking at the people we are left with looking at employing.

Time to look at platitudes

Perhaps we are in "the last mile"

You know. where you put reasonable resources into something and you get 90% there. But to extract that last 10% is extremely difficult and the return on investment may not be there.

First issue is to determine cause of death. That may assist in helping waterside fatalities. But the information may not apply to any other industry.

And while arguably you are safer getting home today than in 1970s. You really are no safer getting home than you are in the past 2 decades. Most of what ever gain in change was made in the 80's and 90's.

If we take the view its vehicles that kill then deaths per vehicle has been trending down since the 50's. And as you can see we havent really gone anywhere since the early 2000.'



And just to get a sense of scale it was 12.4 deaths' per billion vehicle kilometres traveled back in 2001 and 6.9 in 2020.

Same with vehicular injuries. Flat (tolerated?) over the 1950's to 60's. Then dipped until the early 2,000's where they have stagnated


So for all the money spent on roads, safety features in cars, "better" driver training, drink driving really it hasn't made much impact whatsoever.

So we have saved 5.5 lives per billion KM traveled. And the economic value of a NZ human life is around $6.6m per person

Possibly, because at the end of the day we have over-engineered solutions so individuals no longer think. Or they lack motivation to be responsible for their own actions. They are perhaps lazy and just sit back and rely on all the safety devices around them.

Or really. It might be because we cant fix stupid. (without bankrupting ourselves in the process)

And one final word on the transport analogy. There are over 20 factors that lead to motor vehicle accidents and consequential death / injury. Top of the list is drugs / alcohol. Next going to fast followed by loosing control. See what I mean about trying to fix stupid? These are all issues related to the individual and the choices they make. Might actually be the same in the waterside industry.

We ought not be doing what we do because the law says so.

But I am stunned OP can be studying a Grad Dip and the law isnt mentioned at all in the course.

Its a bit early to say "we are killing our workers". No doubt in the fullness of time there will be an enquiry and causes of death will be determined.

Covid legislation has been literally changing on a daily basis Drafters cannot keep up with what caucus decides. I've lost count of the amendments of amendment of amendments.

Best not worry about it at all now. No regulator is going to have a clue just which piece of enactment they are going to ping you with.

Health (including mental) at a macro level = H&S (while understanding a person is at work 8 hours a day and therefore exposed to non-work mental health issues for the other 16 hours a day

Health at an individual level (especially mental health) = HR for all the privacy and other aspects (eg bullying / domestic violence).