Why do workers die at work?

Bob Briton

Last week a solemn ceremony took place in Melbourne as part of 
the commemorations in this, the 34th anniversary year of the West 
Gate Bridge disaster. Just before noon on October 15, 1970, the 
bridge collapsed killing 35 and leaving 17 seriously injured. It 
was Australia's deadliest workplace tragedy and work has now 
begun on a memorial along the boardwalk where the debris crashed 
down all those years ago.

Thirty-five sculpted columns will line the walkway — one for 
each of the lives cut short. Last week's gathering marked the 
commencement of the work. It is expected that the monument will 
be completed in time for the anniversary. A Herald Sun report 
records Major Projects Minister Peter Batchelor saying that it 
would commemorate all Victorians who died in industrial accidents 
at work.

"Accidents".

"Died" — in the past tense.

The memorial would "serve as a stark reminder to us all of the 
need to work together to prevent unnecessary death in the 
workplace."

Us?

At the end of April, NSW Industrial Relations Minister John Della 
Bosca unveiled a union-funded memorial to workers killed at work 
at Sydney's Darling Harbour. During the moving ceremony, families 
tied photographs of their loved ones to the 4.5 metre high bronze 
and stainless steel monument. The unveiling was part of 
nationwide activities to mark International Workers' Memorial 
Day.

With all the lip service being paid to workplace safety on the 
occasion of the international day, an onlooker could be forgiven 
for thinking that governments, the bosses and the workers were as 
one in their desire for safer conditions at work. You would not 
think that every Australian Government — state, territory and 
Federal with the notable exception of the ACT — was 
simultaneously fighting alongside the bosses to PREVENT the 
addition of the crime of industrial manslaughter to the statute 
books.

It seems deaths in the work place are something we, quite 
rightly, should feel sad about but not something we ought to feel 
angry about. And after all, the various governments involved are 
pledging tough new regulations to curb the plague of death and 
injury attributable to the workplace. Is the response adequate? 
Not by a long shot!

The scale of the "problem"

ACTU Assistant Secretary Richard Marles has compared the attitude 
of authorities to deaths and injuries in the workplace to 
society's attitude to the road toll. They are almost accepted as 
a fact of life. Marles points out that, while people do not look 
kindly on negligent driving, they do not usually associate the 
bad driving in question with criminality. Luckily, from the 
bosses' point of view, this is the attitude taken to workplace 
tragedies by the various bodies charged with overseeing 
occupational health and safety standards.

However, the comparison with the road toll can only be taken so 
far. In the case of the road toll, major changes in behaviour 
with regard to drink driving have occurred — aided, no doubt, by 
the introduction of random breath testing. Most instructive for 
the comparison with the workplace is the fact that since the 
1970s all states have had the serious crime of culpable driving 
on the books. All this has corresponded directly with a marked 
reduction in the national road toll — 3900 deaths in 1970 
compared to 1634 to March this year.

The comparison falls down in a number of other areas also. First 
of all, not many of our policy makers are prepared to see if a 
similarly tough legislative approach to workplace safety would 
reap similar benefits. Secondly, while you would not expect much 
debate over the numbers killed and injured on the roads, 
authorities are keen to keep the official statistics for 
workplace death and injury as low as possible.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) claims that around 450 
people die at work each year. If you add the numbers that die at 
some later date from their exposure to asbestos, it turns out 
that in excess of 2000 Australians — or more than five every day 
of the year — are killed by their work. According to Access 
Economics [a body hardly renowned for its sympathies with the 
cause of the workers], if Australian authorities we were to 
calculate work related fatalities the way they do in Finland, the 
figure could range from 4500 to 8200 deaths every year in 
Australia.

Australian figures do not include any stress related causes such 
as heart disease, substance abuse or suicide. Non-smoking bar 
staff who die of smoke related disease are not considered. The 
effects of bullying are not estimated. The ABS numbers only tally 
the cases that were compensated. No compo means no statistic.

Industrial manslaughter

The ACTU accepts the lower estimate of 4500 — a figure that 
still dwarfs the road toll. The trade union movement clearly 
takes a much more realistic attitude to the crisis than the 
bosses or most governments and is keener to curb the worst 
excesses of the current situation. The headlines over recent 
months tell the story.

Last November the ACT Legislative Assembly added industrial 
manslaughter to the Crimes Act. The legislation came into force 
in March. It provides for sentences for employers of up to 25 
years in prison and fines of up to $250,000. Already the case of 
60-year-old Dimitrios "Jimmy" Theodorelos, an electrical 
assistant and ETU member who died in a fall, is being 
investigated by the Australian Federal Police.

Meanwhile, the Federal Government moved quickly to exclude 
Commonwealth public servants from their right to protection under 
the Act. Robert Gottliebsen of The Australian dutifully passed on 
the ridiculous defence that the ACT legislation could put the PM 
behind bars if a public servant suffered a fatal fall down a 
flight of stairs.

Proposed Victorian legislation would have allowed for fines of up 
to $5 million for corporations and prison terms of up to five 
years for the worst kinds of industrial manslaughter. However, 
the Bracks Government dropped the proposal even before it 
established a review under Chris Maxwell QC of the state's 
occupational health and safety (OH&S) record. Victoria will now 
get a number of "roving inspectors" to enforce the OH&S 
regulations. There will be tougher penalties and enforceable 
orders to rectify problems. There will be increased penalties and 
the possibility of short stints in jail for offending bosses, 
even for first offences.

The NSW Government, which has already gutted the rights of 
workers and their families to workers' compensation and common 
law claims, also passed the workplace safety question to a 
committee late last year. The four-member panel has handed down 
"tough" recommendations for legislation almost identical to their 
Victorian counterparts. Panel members maintain that to charge 
employers under the Crimes Act would be a backward step and, in 
any event, it would be too difficult to prove a case of 
industrial manslaughter against a boss. It seems that, while a 
seven-year term for daubing the Opera House with anti-war slogans 
is in order, comparable jail sentences for negligent bosses are 
inconceivable and unworkable. The sentences, it should be 
remembered, would only apply where the death resulted from 
negligence.

In South Australia it has been left to No Pokies MLC Nick 
Xenaphon to introduce a private Member's bill permitting a charge 
of industrial manslaughter. In Queensland, Premier Beattie 
recently revealed plans to spend $15 million over the next three 
years on an extra 27 health and safety inspectors throughout the 
state — but still no industrial manslaughter legislation.

Tasmania is in a unique situation. Most observers believed that, 
like every other state in Australia, Tasmania had no charge of 
industrial manslaughter. However, the pursuit by the Meatworkers 
Union of the case of 16-year-old Matthew Hudson — who was 
working unpaid at a Launceston meat processing plant at the time 
of an accident involving a forklift — has unearthed some 
forgotten legislation from the 1920s in the Tasmanian criminal 
code. It remains to be seen if the antique legislation will help 
Matthew's family and the community obtain some measure of 
justice.

"Affordable safety"

It must be born in mind that the promises from the states to 
increase penalties for deaths and injuries due to employer 
negligence start from a very low base. Some examples from the 
ACTU site will illustrate the point:

* The owners of Victorian trucking company Caldwell and Pither 
Pty Ltd were fined $20,000 after a worker was buried under a 
truckload of logs that had fallen off one of their trucks.

* When a Queensland man was killed using a power saw on site, 
Chevron Construction Company Pty Ltd was fined $37,000.

* In a NSW case involving Steggles and Network Production 
Personnel, in which a driver without appropriate training was 
crushed by a tractor, a total of $376,250 was imposed in 
penalties.

In the last mentioned instance, the actual fine of $159,250 paid 
by Steggles represented 0.025 per cent of the company's annual 
revenue.

Jan Carrick — whose 18-year-old son died on his first day at 
work for Drybulk Pty Ltd in Melbourne in 1998 — told a crowd at 
a union-organised rally outside Victoria's Parliament in April 
that the offending company will not be paying the penalties 
handed down. Drybulk went into liquidation so neither the company 
nor its principals will need to come up with the $50,000 in 
safety fines or the $20,000 in criminal compensation.

The current situation is a farce. Even the doubling of existing 
fines and other sanctions would still leave us with a farce. When 
he was Workplace Relations Minister, Tony Abbott made it clear 
that his attitude to workplace safety was predicated on the need 
to turn profit and safeguard investment. His successor, Kevin 
Andrews, is continuing in that tradition.

At the time the Federal Government was legislating to weasel out 
of the ACT's new legislation, Mr Andrews was trying out an 
argument for the truly gullible: that tougher laws will cause 
accidents!

"Industrial manslaughter laws only lead to uncertainty for 
employers and employees. Ensuring Australian government employers 
and employees are not affected by industrial manslaughter laws 
means the focus remains on preventing workplace accidents."!!

The Federal Government's attitude is reflected in its treatment 
of the National Occupational Health and Safety Commission. The 
Commission is charged with producing key national standards for 
safety in the workplace. It is under-funded. It has no hope of 
effectively dealing with the nine jurisdictions around Australia 
that it is supposed to co-ordinate. Very few new or revised 
standards, codes or guidelines emanate from the struggling body. 
The Productivity Commission has even recommended closing it down!

Australian governments see the world the same way the bosses do. 
Employers will take any and every shortcut they can to reduce 
production costs. To them, workplace death and injury are 
insurance-related "risks" that are calculated in production 
costs. Training for the safe use of equipment, the provision of 
useable up-to-date safety equipment and the monitoring of safety 
standards on the job are "on costs". They are budget items under 
constant downward pressure in these days of super capitalism.

The dollar cost of insurance and penalties (what there is of 
them) is weighed up against the dollar cost of safety. Health and 
safety becomes an issue for the employer only when failure to 
implement an OH&S measure costs more (e.g. through trade union 
actions, pitiful government penalties, consumer boycotts, etc) 
than protecting its workforce.

Workers should remember that the more significant gains in safety 
standards were only achieved after the most determined battle 
between unions and employers. Virtually every one of these 
advances — the ban on working on building sites in the rain 
springs to mind — was hard won and now subject to sneaking or 
crude "grab back" from the bosses.

Unfortunately for the labour movement, union representation in 
the workplace continues to slip. While unions in Australia can 
boast a high level of training and expertise in OH&S issues 
(dating back to the days of the Trade Union Training Authority), 
relatively fewer workers are benefiting from this knowledge and 
protection.

The number of non-unionised casual workers in the workforce has 
risen to 28 per cent of the workforce nationally. Casuals are 
over-represented in the statistics for workplace deaths and 
accidents. According to a recent report by the University of 
Adelaide School of Social Sciences, casual workers are more 
likely to suffer stress and low self-esteem. Two thirds are 
"deeply unhappy" about their insecure situation. They are more 
likely to work when ill or not to report accidents or hazards for 
fear of the sack. Casual workers are much less likely to get 
training or take part in other work-related communication.

Swinburne University's Brain Sciences Institute reports that as 
many as 750,000 Australians were subject to at least three 
attacks of irresistible sleepiness every week — a recipe for 
disaster when handling machinery or driving. Long hours and 
increasing demands on workers are producing an increasingly 
dangerous cocktail of threats.

Solutions

It is certainly time to send the anti-worker Howard Government 
packing and to scrap non-union Australian Workplace Agreements 
and other reactionary elements of their industrial relations 
regime. Legislation to convert greater numbers of casual workers 
into permanent ones is way overdue. A drive to unionise a larger 
proportion of the workforce is a genuine life and death 
requirement. Enterprise Bargaining Agreements should include 
undertakings in meaningful language — not "motherhood" clauses. 
Campaigns for adequate staffing levels are needed.

The many provisions that were contained in awards regarding 
occupational health and safety should be restored and the whole 
OH&S system strengthened. In particular, trained trade union OH&S 
reps should have the right to stop work on a site where the 
health or safety of any worker is at risk.

Full compensation rights under common law must be restored. The 
removal of common law rights was taken by governments to reduce 
the cost of insurance premiums for bosses and must be overturned.

The destruction of the centralised award system has fostered a 
type of decentralisation that allows the owners of unsafe 
workplaces to undercut businesses doing the right thing in terms 
of OH&S. It becomes a race to the bottom, and the price is 
workers' lives. Clearly this development must be reversed.

Beyond that, an assault must be made on the bosses' ideology that 
underpins the policies currently killing and maiming workers. 
This ideology of profits before people prefers symbolism to real 
action over workplace safety. It is cheaper.

Sue Baxter is the mother of Joel Exner. He was the 16-year-old 
worker who fell to his death last year on a Sydney building site. 
The inadequately installed safety mesh failed. It was his third 
day on the job. In response, the NSW Trade and Labor Council 
wanted the penalty of industrial manslaughter pushed up the 
legislative agenda of the NSW Parliament. This was to be known as 
"Joel's Law".

There is still no "Joel's Law". There is a monument to fallen 
workers in Darling Harbour. Sue Baxter commented in the press 
that she would have preferred industrial manslaughter legislation 
to a monument. "I have been appealing to the Government about the 
need for industrial manslaughter laws. Joel would still be alive 
if corners weren't cut", she told The Daily Telegraph.

Monuments and observance are important. However, it is only when 
workers become more organised in the workplace and begin to 
strike back at the bosses' ideology that the real gains will be 
made. When people come before profits!