NZ's OSH policy is fine. We have a woeful track record for work place injuries and deaths.

MikeB4:

 

NZ's OSH policy is fine. We have a woeful track record for work place injuries and deaths.

 

Osh policy may be fine, but woosh policy needs attention, IMO. 

Fred99:

 

MikeB4:

 

NZ's OSH policy is fine. We have a woeful track record for work place injuries and deaths.

 

 

 

 

Osh policy may be fine, but woosh policy needs attention, IMO. 

 

 

didn't woosh go pop?

This thread popping up in my "Participating" feed all the time.

Fred99:

 

Lizard1977:

 

 snip

 

 

One of the last organisations I worked for, we stored food and food grade product in warehouses around the country, poo from assorted vermin a potentially serious contamination issue.   Documenting policy however, the end result was a 100 page thesis within the mountain of warehousing policy.  It went in to great detail, the person with the policy document on his desk would be able to identify if the poo was pigeon, starling, or sparrow, mouse, rattus or norwegicus depending on the gloss on the turd.  Then intricate detail about lifestyle, habits, zoonotic diseases transmitted and their consequence, down to descriptions of arthropod vectors of diseases that nobody has ever heard of for hundreds of years.  There were photos of the bloody things in the internal policy document.  As a regional manager, I was affronted by this huge waste of time and effort, especially as it had taken the national distribution manager half his career to write - during which time maintaining normal operation seemed to have been an afterthought.  It made absolutely no difference at all to operations - the whole thing could have been avoided and summed up in a few short lines:

 

Employ standards approved experts to inspect warehouse, implement preventative measures, check at recognised standard intervals, and deal with any problem if found.
If problem is observed or reported in between checks - call in experts as above.

 

Too much policy IMO turns what should be simple - in to rocket science.

 

That certainly sounds like overkill, but I do have a smidgen of respect for people who are capable of that kind of thoroughness and attention to detail, especially as a person who is known (and valued) for thoroughness.

I stumbled on this on Jalopnik a couple of weeks back. It's about a company (one of many, I'm sure) that is in the business of teardowns and producing technical assessments of each component.  The level of detail they produce is mind-blowing.  Complex systems fascinate me, and the work that must go into building not only the components, but the support systems, logistics, engineering specs, etc is phenomenal.  I'm deeply impressed that our society can produce such fantastically complicated products and systems, and to the outsider it looks so seamless.  

TimA:

 

This thread popping up in my "Participating" feed all the time.

 

hahaha I read that as this thread is "pooping in my participating feed"

MikeB4:NZ's OSH policy is fine. We have a woeful track record for work place injuries and deaths.

Do we really?  Can someone point me to an international comparison of fatality statistics based on truly harmonised datasets?  I mean one that excludes occupational diseases, commuting road fatalities in work vehicles, corrected for the high percentage of self-employed fatalities (eg farming), all of which make our statistics incompatible with those we get from the other countries with whom we normally compare. And one that isn't commissioned by ACC or Worksafe?

As far as injuries go, the fact that there's a financial incentive to report every work injury in NZ, no matter how slight, might also distort things.

I can't really see why New Zealanders should be more accident prone in the workplace than anyone else.  "She'll be right" attitude? - I don't think so.

http://hstaskforce.govt.nz/documents/comparison-of-ilo-published-occupational-fatal-injury-rates.pdf

Geekzone being offline for up to an hour today. I refuse to go get a life! 

DarthKermit:

 

Geekzone being offline for up to an hour today. I refuse to go get a life! 

 

But its back now so thats no longer a problem

mclean:

 

MikeB4:NZ's OSH policy is fine. We have a woeful track record for work place injuries and deaths.

 

Do we really?  Can someone point me to an international comparison of fatality statistics based on truly harmonised datasets?  I mean one that excludes occupational diseases, commuting road fatalities in work vehicles, corrected for the high percentage of self-employed fatalities (eg farming), all of which make our statistics incompatible with those we get from the other countries with whom we normally compare. And one that isn't commissioned by ACC or Worksafe?

 

As far as injuries go, the fact that there's a financial incentive to report every work injury in NZ, no matter how slight, might also distort things.

 

I can't really see why New Zealanders should be more accident prone in the workplace than anyone else.  "She'll be right" attitude? - I don't think so.

 

I can. Essentially the fact that no one can be sued creates a culture of carelessness and laissez faire that would never be tolerated anywhere where there is a risk of a lawsuit.

MikeB4:

 

NZ's OSH policy is fine. We have a woeful track record for work place injuries and deaths.

 

The logical response to which would be to intensely focus on safety in forestry, agriculture and construction.  Sort those industries out and you will take a huge chunk out of workplace deaths and serious accidents.

The OSH legislation is OTT for low hazard workplaces. 

mclean:

 

Do we really?  Can someone point me to an international comparison of fatality statistics based on truly harmonised datasets?  I mean one that excludes occupational diseases, commuting road fatalities in work vehicles, corrected for the high percentage of self-employed fatalities (eg farming), all of which make our statistics incompatible with those we get from the other countries with whom we normally compare. And one that isn't commissioned by ACC or Worksafe?

 

As far as injuries go, the fact that there's a financial incentive to report every work injury in NZ, no matter how slight, might also distort things.

 

I can't really see why New Zealanders should be more accident prone in the workplace than anyone else.  "She'll be right" attitude? - I don't think so.

 

I'm not sure we should use those factors  to let ourselves off the hook.  We should still be trying to eliminate injuries and deaths.

There is only a financial incentive to report injuries for which you need treatment or time off work.  In a work place you want all injuries reported and near-misses too.

I live in a hilly farming community. Nearly all quad deaths are caused by rollovers. A roll bar cage would be the most effective solution for this. Instead, OSH has an obsession with making farmers wear helmets, which have no effect whatsoever.

Small thing that annoys me about the subject of OSH, is that it's very hard to make conclusions from cross-country comparisons, as everybody uses different methodology to collate data.  Even if you exclude variables in reporting "injury", work-days lost etc - so just use perhaps workplace deaths as that's superficially a "binary" equation - it's still not so simple.  For example, if the cow cocky rolled his quad bike when picking up the paper from the front gate - is that a "workplace injury"?  If a miner karks it from emphysema - how much of his death was attributable to coal dust etc?