hi there! i need help with these questions under the module: Work, Health, Safety & Wellbeing.

QUESTION 1

Refer to the air safety example in the Hopkins (1995) reading, 'Whose responsibility?' What was the sequence of events on the day of this near disaster? How did the Bureau of Air Safety Investigation and the Civil Aviation Authority investigations differ in their explanations of this incident? According to Hopkins, what lessons can be learnt from this incident in terms of accident causation and safety management? Refer to the concepts of 'active failures' and 'latent conditions' in your answer.

Hopkins, A 1995 'Whose responsibility?', in Making safety work: Getting management commitment to occupational health and safety, Allen & Unwin, NSW, pp. 1-15. (below)

Whose responsibility? The central question of this book is: how can we best get management to improve its occupational health and safety performance? But before we even begin to consider this question we need to explore the assumption inherent in it, namely that it is management which is responsible for worker healthand safety. This is i confroversial assumption. Were we-ro assume-ffiatworkers are responsible for the illness and injuries which befall them we would be asking instead: how can we best get workers to behave in less risky ways? We need at the outset, therefore, to justify this assumption of managerial responsibility. Such is the purpose of this chapter. Perspectives on the causes of injury and illness There are a number of perspectives on the causes of injury and illness which can be classified into two broad types: those which locate the causes in the personal characteristics and behaviour of the workers themselves and those which locate the causes in the wider social, organisational or technological environment. The former type has often been described as 'blaming the victim'; for the sake of symmetry I shall term the latter, somewhat loosely, ,'1:>Jaming t~e __ syst~m'. It is most important to understand that each perspe-ctive implies a strategy for combating illness and injmy. If, for instance, one sees worker carelessness as the primary cause, then exhortation and education may be the appropriate policy responses. If, however, one notes the close association between 1 MAKING SAFETY WORK injury and the violation of safety regulations by companies, then prosecution of companies may appear the best strategy. The perspective one chooses to emphasise is thus a matter of considerable practical significance. Blaming-the-victim approaches Blaming the victim is a style of explanation to be found across the whole spectrum of human affairs. The rape victim is often blamed for putting herself in a position where she might be raped; while the unemployed are accused of not wanting work. Similarly, a good deal of cancer research is aimed not at discovering environmental causes of cancer but at identifying types of people most likely to contract the disease (Epstein 1978, p. 395). (Although strictly speaking such research implies no blame, it does assume that victim characteristics contribute in some way to the illness.) We have even seen asbestos mining companies trying to shift the blame for the deaths of their workers by arguing that the risk of asbestosis is heightened by smoking, for which workers are responsible. In what follows I shall outline four types of explanation for industrial injuries or illness which essentially blame the victim. (a) Accident-proneness A great deal of accident research is of the blame-the-victim variety in that it seeks to identify accident-prone individuals (see Bass and Barrett 1972, eh. 15; Nichols 1975, p. 219). Injury statistics are correlated with individual attributes such as age, sex, intelligence and personality in an attempt to discover which types of workers are most prone to injury or illness. The policy which follows from this style of analysis is to deny employment to those prone to illness and injury. As one manager I spoke with said: 'If I could have sacked just two of the workers in this plant when I took over, I could have cut the injury rate in half'. If migrant women are found to be more susceptible than their Australian-born counterparts to RSI, or if it is found that men who wear glasses are more prone to accidents in mines because condensation on their glasses in the moist underground atmosphere obscures their vision (see AIMM 1975, p. 2), employers may want to screen them out. A particularly clear example of this approach was an advertisement placed in the Financial Review of 21 September 1981 by an insurance company. It recommended the employment of short stocky men to do lifting work on the principle of: less height, less leverage, fewer back problems. While the policy of screening out employees at risk may seem 2 WHOSE RESPONSIBILITY? sensible from the point of view of employers, there are many objections to it, of which I shall mention just two. First, those who report the most accidents are not always the most accident-prone. When an investigation was carried out at one hospital of nurses who were reporting the most needlestick injuries, it was found that they were simply the most conscientious reporters. Hospital policy was that all such injuries be reported, but some nurses regarded them as too minor to be bothered filling out the injury notification forms (see also Smith and Wilkinson, 1990). Second, and more importantly, screening out workers prone to injury or illness is a discriminatory policy which runs the risk of seriously disadvantaging sections of the workforce. Such discrimination is now largely illegal (Johnstone 1993). (b) Tbe ignorance/carelessness theme A second type of blame-thevictim approach assumes that injuries are a result of carelessness or ignorance on the part of workers. Perhaps the best known example of this can be found in the report of the United Kingdom Committee on Safety and Health at Work, chaired by Lord Robens. Robens found that the most important single reason for accidents at work is apathy or carelessness (Gunningham and Creighton 1979, p. 143). A secondary factor identified by Robens was worker ignorance of correct safety procedures. He concluded that what was needed was policy designed to generate greater interest in and awareness of safety issues among workers. A variant of the ignorance/carelessness theme is to attribute injury to violations of safety regulations by workers. The corresponding strategy is to penalise the violators. (c) Tbe culture of masculinity A third blame-the-victim approach focuses on the culture of masculinity as an explanation for accidents. It is sometimes suggested that a concern for safety is regarded as effeminate and that workers are forced to do unsafe things by the fear of being labelled as cowards by their workmates (see Fitzpatrick 1974, p. 28). Again, training and education aimed at breaking down this culture will be the obvious response. ( d) Malingering The most dramatic blame-the-victim approach is the suggestion that many injury claims are false or exaggerated and are made so that workers can take time off or extend their time off on workers compensation-recreational compensation as one manager called it (see Chapter 10). We shall return to this analysis in later chapters, but, in principle, any policy which seeks to identify malingerers and penalise them in some way will do nothing to reduce the number of real injuries which may be occurring. 3 MAKING SAFETY WORK Blaming-the-system approaches In contrast to explanations which focus on individual worker characteristics are the accounts given in terms of the environmen~ in which the work occurs and the systems of management or production. I discuss just a few of these in what follows. The list is 'not intended to be exhaustive. (a) System failure The NSW coal mines inspectorate employs an accident investigation system which assumes quite explicitly that accidents are due to a system failure of some kind. The methodology looks not only at direct causes of an accident but also at surrounding systems which may have contributed to the accident environment. The exact circumstances of any individual accident probably will never occur again, so preoccupation with those exact circumstances is likely to be of limited benefit in future prevention. Broader examination of systems which may have failed, or been less than adequate to ensure safety, in the accident environment are therefore brought within the ambit of the investigation ... System investigations are conducted on a 'no fault', 'no blame' basis-that is to say the potential culpability of individuals or liability of organisations, are not taken into account (Coal Mining Inspectorate, 1993, foreword). (b) Company violations of safety regulations Unlike the preceding type, explanations in terms of violations of safety regulations by. companies do imply legal liability. They are system-blaming in that it is often an organisational or management system failure rather than the culpable act of an individual which is the root cause of the violation. One US study, for example, concluded that in 76 per cent of cases 'management negligence or failure to exercise due care in controlling the physical conditions of mines was at least a contributing factor to the accidents' (McAteer 1981, p. 943). A study of 39 mining disasters (where five or more people lost their lives) has shown that violations were a contributing factor in 64 per cent of cases (Braithwaite 1985, p. 23), while a study of non-disaster mining fatalities in the US in 1975 showed violations to be a contributing factor in 72 per cent of cases (McAteer 1981, p. 942). In most cases these were company violations. (c) Production imperatives There is evidence that many injuries are caused by the pressure to restore normal production when for some reason it has temporarily broken down (Nichols 1975). When an assembly line stops or a machine malfunctions the pressure on workers to take shortcuts in order to get things going again are 4 WHOSE RESPONSIBILITY? often irresistible and many a finger or limb has been lost in these circumstances. Another production pressure which is often cited as a cause of accidents is the production bonus scheme which operates in many industries (Dwyer 1981). Under certain conditions such systems can place great pressure on workers to engage in unsafe practices. (d) Tbe physical/technological environment Physical/technological environment explanations are often used to account for the high accident rates in particular industries. The large number of accidents in North Sea drilling operations, for instance, was commonly attributed to the fact that men were working at the frontiers of technology and in adverse climatic conditions (Carson 1982, p. 5). Choosing between explanations: a first attempt What these blaming-the-system explanations all have in common is that they place responsibility for hazards on management rather than on workers. Thus, even if we discard the notion of blame, as some readers may wish to do, there remains an important distinction between the two in terms of where the onus for the prevention of injury and illness lies-on management or on the worker. The question which then presents itself is which style of explanation is to be preferred. How can we choose between these contrasting and in some cases even competing explanations? One strategy is to assume that for each accident one or other of the factors discussed will predominate and then to identify the proportion of injuries attributable to each. Those who take this approach normally come to the view that in the overwhelming majority of cases it is the worker who is primarily responsible for the injury. Thus one observer has claimed that 85 per cent of accidents are due to 'lack of training and education, poor work habits or lack of motivation' (see McAteer 1981, p. 938). The remainder are presumably due to management failures, unsafe conditions and the like. And an Australian mine manager once reported to a mining seminar that at his mine 3 per cent of accidents were due to unsafe conditions while 97 per cent were due to unsafe acts on the part of miners. He concluded that 'effort must be focussed on changing men's minds' (AIMM 1975, p. 83). This is, however, a quite unsatisfactory way of resolving the issue. Unsafe acts may have organisational or systemic causes. If so, it may be the organisational procedures rather than the minds of 5 MAKING SAFETY WORK men which need to be changed. This point is so important that I shall develop it at length in what follows, drawing on an air safety example. The multiple causation of accidents: an air safety example On 12 August 1991 two landing aircraft came within a few metres of colliding at Sydney airpott. Had the collision occurred upwards of six hundred people might have been killed. The collision was ave1ted at the last minute by the pilot of one aircraft aborting the landing when less than a metre above the runway. The aircraft were landing simultaneously on intersecting runways, in accordance with SIMOPS (simultaneous runway operations). According to these procedures, one aircraft is supposed not to make use of the full runway but to stop short of the intersection. On this occasion a Thai Ai1ways pilot who had received the instruction to stop short of the intersection had not understood this requirement, and had begun the landing unaware of the restriction and unaware that another aircraft was landing simultaneously on the other runway. In analysing the causes of the near miss it is easy enough to point to pilot error and to suggest that the pilot did not pay sufficient attention to the landing instructions he had been given. But it is also the case that a more disaster-prone landing system would be hard to imagine. The SIMOPS procedure in use at the time did not allow for any pilot error. Nor did it allow for mechanical failure or any other factors which might make it impossible for a landing aircraft to stop short of the intersection. An analysis of the incident by the Bureau of Air Safety Investigation (BASI, 1993) draws specifically on the accident analysis model developed by James Reasons in which he distinguishes between active and latent factors, which correspond broadly to the victim- and system-blaming explanations discussed above. (The following quotations from Reasons are found in the BASI report, p 31.) Active failures [are defined as] those errors or violations having an immediate adverse effect. These are generally associated with the activities of 'front line' operators: control room personnel, ships' crews, train drivers, signalmen, pilots, air traffic controllers, etc. Latent failures: these are decisions or actions, the damaging consequences of which may lie dormant for a long time, only becoming 6 WHOSE RESPONSIBILITY? evident when they combine with local triggering factors (that is, active failures, technical faults, atypical system conditions, etc) to breach the system's defences. Their defining feature is that they were present within the system well before the onset of a recognisable accident sequence. They are most likely to be spawned by those whose activities are removed in both time and space from the direct humanmachine interface: designers, high-level decision makers, regulators, managers and maintenance staff. Reasons argues that an accident or near miss of the type discussed above is usually an 'organisational' accident. That is, a situation in which latent failures, arising mainly in the managerial and organisational spheres, combine adversely with local triggering events (weather, location etc) and with the active failures of individuals at the sharp end (errors and procedural violations). This analysis is broadly applicable to industrial accidents as well. There are both latent (system) factors and active (individual) factors which can be identified in most if not all accidents. It is thus quite misleading to suggest that a certain proportion of accidents can be attributed to unsafe acts by workers and another proportion to unsafe conditions or systems in which the work is carried out. Choosing between explanations: a second attempt Even though there may be a contribution from both victim and system in most or all cases, there is still often a need to emphasise one or other of these sets of factors for policy purposes-that is, in deciding how best to prevent harm occurring to workers. It is interesting to note that the Bureau of Air Safety Investigation chose to emphasise the system factors in its recommendations, urging that the SIMOPS system be changed and landings staggered to ensure that an aircraft could pass through the intersection without risk of collision should it fail to stop as the result of human or any other failure. The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which was responsible for the regulation of aviation at the time, took a different view, in effect rejecting this recommendation. It chose to focus on the pilot error and ways of ensuring that pilots comply with procedures. It instructed aircraft controllers to require pilots of landing aircraft to read back their instructions and confirm their ability to hold short of the intersection. In addition, because of fears that certain foreign 7 MAKING SAFETY WORK pilots might not have sufficient competency in English, international airlines were excluded from being involved in SIMOPS unless they provided documentary evidence that their pilots understood the system. The CAA decision was clearly less than satisfactory from a safety point of view. It presumably acted as it did because a policy of seeking to ensure that pilots understood their responsibilities was relatively easy to implement. In contrast, the policy of abandoning simultaneous landings advocated by BASI would probably have reduced the number of landings which the airport could accommodate and consequently been resisted by interested parties. But the CAA policy did nothing to rectify the latent failure in the system. In the event of another communication breakdown in relation to landing instructions, or a mechanical failure preventing an aircraft from braking rapidly, there was nothing to prevent a similar incident occurring, this time with disastrous consequences. This example provides the key to the choice to be made. Emphasising system factors will often be a more effective and reliable way of preventing harm to workers than urging them to be more careful-more effective because it gets at the underlying preconditions which enable harmful incidents to occur, and more reliable since it does not depend on human beings doing the right thing-always a problematic basis for guaranteeing safety. More-. over, management is in control of these systemic or organisational factors. Thus, emphasising management responsibility provides the best chance of harm prevention. The problem is that, from management's point of view, emphasising human error is often the cheaper strategy since it avoids the need to make expensive system changes. Thus management interests and effective prevention often lead in different directions. Let us consider two more examples to illustrate these points. Accidents which occur when miners jump out of personnel cars before they have stopped can be attributed to the impulsiveness of the men concerned or to the fact that the cars have no doors. The chief safety engineer for British coal mines chose to focus on the latter approach. No amount of exhortation, he writes, will stop men jumping off moving transports. Far better to fit doors to the personnel carriers which open, automatically, only when the vehicle has come to a standstill (Collinson 1978). But such a solution is more costly from management's point of view. It is cheaper to try to change the behaviour of workers by warning them of the dangers and threatening disciplinary action against offenders. 8 WHOSE RESPONSIBILITY? Again, consider the problem of long-distance truck drivers who go to sleep at the wheel, killing themselves and others as result. An examination of their system of work shows that they are often expected to work long hours by freight forwarders, employers and others who determine their schedules (Hensher and Battellino 1990). Such a perspective suggests that the way to handle the problem is to require the latter to change their expectations and to make them legally responsible for the hours worked by drivers. However, there would clearly be widespread resistance from the business community if this led, for instance, to some curtailment of the practice of overnight delivery between major cities, on which so many businesses now rely. Alternatively, the problem of driver fatigue can be conceptualised as the driver's problem. This leads to suggestions about how drivers can be helped to meet their responsibility to stay awake. They can, for instance, make use of fatigue monitoring devices, available overseas. One such device is an eye closure monitor which is attached to glasses and sounds an alarm if the eyelid remains closed for more than half a second. Also available is a head nodding monitor-an earpiece which buzzes loudly when the driver's head nods forward beyond a certain angle. The suggestions which see fatigue as primarily the driver's problem are far cheaper and less disruptive to industry. It is partly for this reason that they are regarded by some authorities as having considerable potential (Haw01th et al., 1989). But for a variety of reasons they are less reliable as ways of combating fatigue than restructuring the transport industry so as to remove the pressures and incentives for drivers to work unreasonable hours. The hierarchy of controls The preceding discussion suggests that it is generally preferable from a harm prevention point of view to locate the causes of illness and injury within the system of work rather than in the characteristics and behaviour of those who suffer harm. This principle gives rise to the well-known 'hierarchy of controls' for dealing with occupational hazards. One version of the hierarchy is as follows (Victorian OHSA, 1990): CD elimination or substitution engineering controls CD administrative controls personal protective equipment 9 MAKING SAFETY WORK At the top of the hierarchy, the ideal way to deal with the hazard is to eliminate it totally or to substitute a less hazardous substance, process or piece of machinery. An example would be to use clips, clamps or bolts as joining devices instead of a toxic adhesive. If it is not reasonably practicable to eliminate the hazard then engineering controls should be considered. Dangerous machinery can have guards installed, fume cupboards and ventilation systems can be constructed to deal with . dangerous gases, and noisy machinery can be enclosed. If this is not reasonably practicable then administrative controls can be applied. Examples would be: reducing exposure periods, reducing the numbers of employees exposed to a hazard, regular cleaning of contamination from walls and other surfaces, and permit-to-work systems, involving agreed procedures and precautions, for identified hazardous operations. Personal protective equipment (PPE), for instance ear muffs and respirators, is the last resort, to be used only when no other solutions are available. The problems with reliance on PPE are manifold. Mathews 0993, pp. 446-47) lists some of them as follows. First, PPE frequently does not provide the protection claimed, especially if not properly fitted and maintained. Second, and relatedly, the effectiveness of PPE is hard to monitor; it is difficult to measure just what a worker is inhaling through a gas mask and, difficult to know how effectively he or she is being protected. Third, PPE is uncomfortable and commonly makes working more difficult. In hot environments goggles, helmets, masks and protective suits are particularly uncomfortable. Fourth, PPE may be a hazard in itself. Goggles can fog up in moist conditions and ear muffs can prevent workers from hearing warning signals, as the following tragedy illustrates. Four Western Australian rail workers were killed by an oncoming train whilst conducting maintenance on a track . . . Apparently the train driver blew his siren as a warning, but due to the noise of the compressor and jackhammers, together with the fact that the men were wearing ear muffs, they were unable to hear the signal and consequently were struck (Mathews 1993, p. 111). Mathews' judgement on PPE is that 'every piece of protective clothing and equipment that workers have to use is a burden on the worker and represents a failure of management to control the hazard . . . In a properly controlled working environment, a worker should not need any PPE at all' 0993, p. 446). The hierarchy of controls embodies the principle that where a 10 WHOSE RESPONSIBILITY? worker suffers illness or injury it is better policy to attribute this to the employer's failure to control the hazard than to the worker's failure to use personal protective equipment. This discussion therefore reinforces our earlier conclusion about preferred types of explanation. It is yet another way of expressing the idea that emphasising management responsibility is likely to lead to more effective and reliable solutions than holding workers responsible. A case study: lead The following account of the response of one company to an occupational health problem it confronts illustrates a number of the ideas developed above. In particular it illustrates how easily and naturally a victim-blaming approach can arise. Lead has long been recognised as a dangerous substance and thus a problem for workers in lead smelters (Gillespie 1990). It is especially dangerous for children since high levels of lead in the blood can retard their intellectual development. The possibility that female smelter workers might be pregnant is thus a matter of particular concern. The traditional solution has been to ban women from employment in the lead indust1y. This is a strategy which treats the problem as arising from the peculiar vulnerability of a particular class of workers rather than from the work environment to which they are exposed. It is a blame-the-victim approach par excellence. However, the advent of anti-discrimination legislation has rendered this solution problematic, placing pressure on industry to reduce lead contamination to the point where it poses no appreciable risk to any worker (Winder and Mason 1994). But, although in this respect the responsibility is being shifted back to the employer, there remain subtle ways in which the lead smelting industry continues to hold workers responsible for the problem. This is facilitated by the way in which lead contamination is measured. There are two common types of measurement: leadin-blood and lead-in-air. Lead-in-blood measurements are clearly more relevant from a medical point of view. But lead-in-blood measurements leave the way open to holding the victim responsible in a manner which is not possible with lead-in-air measurements. The point is that a focus on lead-in-air leads to a policy of containing lead emissions at their source, clearly a management responsibility. A focus on lead-in-blood throws up the additional possibility of encouraging workers to wear personal protective equipment11 MAKING SAFETY WORK respirators. Workers whose blood lead levels are too high can then be blamed for not using this equipment or not using it properly. Consider the lead control program instituted by Pasminco at its Boolaroo smelter near Newcastle. (The following factual information was provided by the company: Sinclair et al. 1992. The interpretation placed on this information is my own.) In 1989, in light of the anti-discrimination legislation, the company embarked on a campaign to reduce substantially the blood lead levels of its employees. In terms of the hierarchy of controls discussed earlier, the option of eliminating the hazardous substance or using a substitute is not available. The next best strategy is to make use of engineering controls to curtail emissions at source. The company did carry out a number of engineering improvements consistent with this approach. As a result, lead-in-air concentrations were reduced over a two-year period by 35 per cent, based on sampling at 11 'audit' sites around the plant. But at two points where much of the leakage apparently occurs reductions of only 11 and 16 per cent were recorded. Most of the company's emphasis appears to have been further down the hierarchy. One strategy was to provide 'clean' rooms for staff which they could retreat to and which would serve as areas of 'respite' from the need to wear respirators. These rooms were sealed and their airconditioning units were improved. Their cleanliness was maintained by encouraging employees who became excessively contaminated with lead dust during their shift to change their overalls and shower before entering these areas, and by imposing stricter controls over the cleanliness of people using the cafeteria. Finally, dry sweeping of the clean rooms (which stirs up lead dust) was banned and high efficiency filter vacuum cleaners were used instead. These procedures, it should be noticed, are largely of an administrative nature and as such are towards the bottom of the hierarchy of controls. As a result of these measures, lead-in-air levels in the clean rooms, isolated from the rest of the plant, were reduced. In addition to the clean room policy the company introduced improved road sweeping and regular housekeeping inspections throughout the plant, again essentially administrative controls. At the bottom of the hierarchy of controls, Pasminco laid great stress on the use of personal protective equipment. The quality of this equipment was improved and employees were given greater encouragement to wear it. Moreover, employees whose blood lead levels were found to be above a certain threshold were asked to 12 WHOSE RESPONSIBILITY? undergo formal counselling, using a check list, to identify faulty protective equipment or poor work practices which might be responsible. If their blood lead levels reached a second, higher threshold they underwent in-depth counselling by the superintendent and the results were formally recorded. If a worker's blood lead concentration reached a third and even higher threshold level he was required to face an interview with the company general manager, undergo a medical examination and accept a transfer away from his job for a minimum of three months. Note that these formal counselling procedures embody a quite explicit blame-the-victim philosophy, complete with the punishment of transfer for those whose offence is greatest. The statistics upon which Pasminco places greatest emphasis reinforce this blame-the-victim approach. It is not lead-in-air but lead-in-blood performance which is regularly publicised. But, more than this, the company chooses to emphasise not the average blood lead reading for all employees but the number of employees reaching counselling levels. This statistic, together with the number of weeks since the last transfer, are used for reporting at weekly management meetings, safety committee meetings and in the works newsletter and magazine. The point about these statistics is that they focus on individuals whose blood lead levels are higher than some norm. Such a focus naturally invites a consideration of what it is they are doing to distinguish themselves in this way and in so doing places the responsibility on them, thus downplaying the company's responsibility for the high levels of lead-in-air to which all the workers are exposed. The company's lead control program achieved a dramatic drop over a two-year period in the numbers of workers whose blood lead concentrations were at counselling levels-from about 100 workers in tests at the beginning of the period to about 10 in tests at the end. Viewed in this way, the policy of holding workers responsible has been effective. However, the average blood lead level of all employees dropped by only 16 per cent during this same period, a far less impressive figure. Since there is no safe level-that is, no level below which workers can be confident that they are not at risk-the situation is still a cause for concern. Putting all this another way, while the 'deviants' from the norm have been disciplined and brought into line, the norm itself has not dropped as much as might have been hoped. With hindsight this appears an almost predictable outcome of the policy. A final aspect of the Pasminco policy was to discourage workers 13 MAKING SAFETY WORK from smoking and to prohibit smoking where lead hygiene was a particular problem. While . a 'no smoking' policy is desirable as a means of protecting all workers from passive smoking, the point is that at Pasminco this was part of its anti-lead strategy-motivated by the fact that smoking increases the lead intake. The anti-smoking policy thus ends up, yet again, placing responsibility for high blood lead readings on the worker. Prioritising the control of lead-in-blood rather than lead-in-air has a particularly undesirable consequence which I have not yet addressed. The problem is that atmospheric lead affects not only workers at the plant but also residents in nearby communities. Su1veys have shown that the blood lead levels of children in the Boolaroo area are higher than normal and this has given rise to great local community concern (McPhillips 1994). Health authorities have responded with their own version of victim-blaming. They have advised local housewives to keep their houses scrupulously clean and to inculcate good hygiene habits in their children. Given this approach, children whose blood lead levels are excessive reflect badly on the hygiene practices of their parents, particularly their mothers. Such an interpretation would not be possible if the focus were on the measurement of lead-in-air, for this is something for which local residents can in no way be blamed and for which Pasminco must bear full responsibility. It should be noted that Pasminco received a National Safety Council of Australia (NSW Division) A ward for Excellence for its program of reducing blood lead levels among its own employees, a matter about which some local residents are particularly bitter. The Pasminco story illustrates just how easily a victim-blaming approach to OHS can arise. In this case, the emphasis on lead-inblood measurements contributes powerfully to a focus on what individuals can do to lower their own lead levels and distracts attention from further action which the company might take to reduce lead pollution at source. The result is that lead emission levels at the plant remain higher than they might otherwise be, with consequent effects not only on all workers at the plant but on nearby residents. Conclusion This chapter has argued that it is generally more useful to attribute health and safety problems to a systemic, organisational or work 14 WHOSE RESPONSIBILITY? environment source than to attribute them to the characteristics and behaviour of workers. It is more effective, in other words, to hold management rather than workers responsible for illness and injury. This is not an argument stemming from notions of justice or fairness or from a pro-worker/anti-management viewpoint, although such moral and political arguments might well be mounted. It is simply a utilitarian argument: holding management responsible is more likely to achieve the desired outcome than is blaming the victim. Once this is understood, the central question of this book comes into focus: how can we best get management to shoulder its responsibility? This chapter then is really a preliminary one. The central concerns of the book will be articulated in Chapter 2.

QUESTION 2

According to psychologists, what personality and other individual characteristics influence an employee's safety behaviour and their ability to respond to workplace hazards? To what extent do you think accidents and other safety outcomes are influenced by individual worker differences, and to what extent do you think they are determined by other factors? Justify your answer.

QUESTION 3

What are the main findings of Robinson and Smallman's (2006) statistical analysis of the relationship between various work, employment and workforce characteristics, and the rate of injury and illness in British workplaces? What is the significance of those findings?

QUESTION 4

In Singapore health and safety, what are the critical differences between common law, legislation, regulations, approved codes of practice and guidance material? Who makes these different types of regulation? Are all the types equally legally binding? Explain your answer.

QUESTION 5

What factors affect the willingness of employees to report health and safety concerns? How can the problem of workers' reluctance to report workplace hazards be overcome in Singapore? Do you think enhanced health and safety consultation arrangements, similar to the consultation requirements in the UK and Australia, are the solution? Justify your answer.

QUESTION 6

Why has wellbeing become an increasingly significant issue for organisations in recent years? Do you believe that organisations introduce wellbeing programs for altruistic reasons? Justify your answer.