From Sudbury to Chicago, Complaints About ‘Blame the Worker’ Safety

[marmar]

from In These Times:




From Sudbury to Chicago, Complaints About ‘Blame the Worker’ Safety

Monday
May 9, 2011
9:20 am

By Kari Lydersen


TORONTO—After a bitter strike by nickel miners in Sudbury, Ontario, the Brazilian mining company Vale last year instituted a brand new safety policy, according to miners speaking at a conference in Toronto on Saturday.

It was based on a premise that has become increasingly popular among multi-national companies and smaller employers in North America and globally in recent decades: behavior-based safety programs, which analyze workers’ exact movements, behaviors and attitudes to find out what factors, in the company's view, are causing accidents and injuries.

Union leaders and other critics have dubbed the programs “blame the worker,” on the premise that rather than addressing unsafe workplace conditions or inherently hazardous and grueling aspects of many jobs, employers say that accidents and injuries are almost entirely the result of worker behaviors and mindsets.

“A guy broke his leg on a broken stair, and instead of fixing the stair they disciplined him for not seeing the broken stair,” said Jamie West, a Sudbury miner and member of the United Steelworkers, at the Mining Injustice conference covering mining-related labor, environmental and human rights issues in Canada and globally. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/7282/from_sudbury_to_chicago_complaints_about_blame_the_worker_safety/

[Brickbat]

1. Many, many industrial workplaces are implementing these kinds of programs. They are also writing

lots of rules about how to operate machinery, locomotives, and tools, in order to set up a framework of blame if something goes wrong. It seems to me that operating heavy machinery in a way you have for years without incident is a lot safer than suddenly having to worry about following rules you could be fired for ignoring.

It would be like all drivers suddenly being required to keep their hands at the 10-2 position on the steering wheel at all times, and to take one hand off for no more than 3 seconds to adjust a turn signal, and to keep the left foot flat on the floor at all times, and to turn the head to the left 45 degrees and to the right 45 degrees every 7 seconds to observe traffic, and to lift the head 15 degrees every 8 seconds to check the rear-view mirror. It just doesn't make sense; trying to follow all those rules and worry about them instead of just *driving* would be a lot more dangerous.

[fasttense]

2. Nothing new

When 8 year old boys lost their arms while sweeping up the dust from under moving textile equipment, they were blame for not being fast enough. When young girls lost their fingers in textile mills they were blamed for not operating the equipment properly.

Blame the victim is American employers' cheapest medical compensation plan. It's all about making money off the backs of impoverished workers.

[xchrom]

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