Bernard Hickey talks with Marcus Lush on Radio Live at 6.50 am about NZ's poor safety culture and the ACC; Europe's financial crisis is back; Treasury sees worse economy

No worries then BH...everything seems hunky dory...

The cost to the economy to put right or at least put the chch rebuild on a firm rebuild path remains the hidden danger. Estimates seem to vary by nearly ten billion dollars....QED higher council rates in chch..austerity for sure...and end to the makework council splurging...concentration on doing the work required and not wandering off on a splurge.

Much of the remaining costs will be over to EQC extracting more from households on insurance bills when households cannot afford it. Expect an increase in the % who opt out of insurance completely.

The remaining costs will come out of the govt and therefore out of the economy.

Conclusion. It is of critical importance that CERA and Gerry and the Cabinet make BLOODY SURE the spending remains within NZ as far as this is possible. In other words, if we look at Labour costs....to import thousands of foreign workers would be bloody dumb. That would just ensure the wages by and large went overseas and not into the NZ economy. The same is true for materials and construction work.

Far better to stagger the work of the rebuild to fit the local labour supply and local constraints without causing price spikes and rorting charges. You will not see the Japanese govt allowing foreign companies to do the rebuilding needed in Japan.

The great commodity export bonanza BS from English has come to an end along with the slowdown in China. Any farmers who have not used the burst of cash to pay down debt deserves to leave the farm. The credit splurge in suburbia encouraged by the banks and supported by Bollard with his near zirp games...utter madness. The game is over Alan. Put the bloody ocr up and start encouraging saving and moving this turd economy away from debt.

Here is zee question for you....as a good German would you vote for zee European fiscal union....not ferken likely.... right Helmut.

So...vee Germans are buying zee gold like butta und vee expect zee Euro to become zee toilet paper.....vee vill return to zee German mark.....

I think the NZ is too safety conscious. I believe there is a diminishing marginal utility to safety. You can add more and more legislation and make things more and safer…but I think it will have the inverse effect and actually make the process more dangerous. If something is dangerous it should it should actually look and feel dangerous. You see this in the automotive industry where mandatory seatbelts and airbags have led to people driving more dangerously. So inducing even more safety regulation will actually makes it more dangerous since you are increase complacency.

You can only make a product, service, or industry so safe. My point is if everyone is wearing Hi-Res safety vests when does a Hi-Res safety vest just become background noise? I see people all the time with Hi-res safety vest standing in the middle of the road. How is wearing a hi-Res safty vest make you immune to a car? Who is responsible for their safety? Me? I think that there is inherent risk in any job and you do the best you can to mitigate that risk but I think the day-in-day out complacency will always trump safety. The corporate culture of taking risks and sideswiping safety regulations to stay on schedule will always beat out common safety practices.  When there is a large man-made disaster in a company “corporate complacency” is often cited as the root cause. Adjustments are made, training is done, and safety is increased but that will only last until the next complacency crisis.

So I think it’s no longer “Safety First” it is now “Safety Third”. We need to follow SOP’s and make sure people stay safe but we cannot overburden the process to a point that people ignore the safety rules to stay on schedule.

If safety was truly “first” here is a brief list of industries that could no longer exist:

Smelting plant

Fishing

All forms of Racing

Cars

Construction

The Space industry, including satellites

Airline

Trains

Radio Antennas and communications networks including the internet

Oil

Mining

Road construction

Major Manufacturing

My point is that risk in an inherent part of life. You think your safe in your own home? Yeah Right! The riskiest thing you do each day is take a shower. You’re more likely to die in your own bathroom than in any other region of your home or work environments. You can only mitigate risk you can NEVER eliminate risk.

Kiwis are so safety conscious and risk adverse that if there isn’t a sign actually telling them what to do they will freeze up and panic. There are too many signs! Why do I need a sign telling me which side of the road I should drive on? Shouldn’t I have figured that out when I got my licenses? Why licenses people if you’re not going to trust them with it?  Granted Kiwis are the worse driver I’ve seen in a developed country but I think that has to do with improper education and complacency in the over usage of signage. You want to make New Zealand a more attractive manufacturing sector and make the country safer then get rid of the overburdening safety regulations.

I also used to think that ACC would produce irresponsible behaviour, and to a degree it does.  Discussions with American colleagues have convinced me that there is no way that we would want anything like their litigeous system.  If you think that our beauracratic system is stiffling; USA business is scared stiff of trying anything new or changing anything for fear of unknown consequences and potential law suits.  

Re mining safety, we had a perfectly good system with the dedicated mines inspectors until the idiots in Wellington decided that they new better than the system that had evolved from many years of knowledge and experience.  Fine for them they may have dressed it up to appear like they saved a couple of hundred thousand a year, got a big fat bonus and promotion, then moved on to a new department to stuff up something else.  The past few decades have been full of this sort of thing.  (Suposed savings were probably more than swallowed up by increasing Wellington staff levels and spin doctor consultants.) 

 "The Pike River details that emerged yesterday were appalling. Daniel Rockhouse, who dragged his colleague out of the mine, had never had a safety drill. The emergency phone did not work. Oxygen stations did not work. See more detail in this Stuff story.  And we heard of more damning safety lapses in the inquest into the Tamahere Icepack explosion that killed firefighter Derek Lovell. A 2005 safety report's recommendations were never carried out. The plant's gas detector failed"

It's not the ACC no fault system that is to blame.  It's the failure of management to monitor the safety systems in place or even implement them.  It's the failure of authorities/regulaters to supervise/monitor the same.  It's the maximise profits at all cost.

If ACC wasn't around or safety regulations didn't exist these events would've still happened.

Updated with audio link from this morning.

http://www.radiolive.co.nz/ACC-made-Pike-River-more-dangerous/tabid/506/articleID/22866/Default.aspx

cheers

Bernard

There's a difference between our no fault ACC and not maintaining safety standards. ACC pays out no matter who's at fault while not maintaining safety standards should bring people to court.

Of course, our regulations and the enforcement of those regultaions also need to be up to to standard so that when businesses don't maintain safety standards they get raked over the coals and shutdown if necessary.

 ..another political cover up ???

..and who and where was the person from the government in charge with authority power to check and regulate safety issues/ concerns in that industry ? Was most needed profit seeking more important - then the NZworkforce ?

Anyone asking these questions ?

I'm not sure if  ACC alone is the cause. Enforcement and slap-on-the-wrist punishment is also to blame. Kiwis just don't care if it's against the law or regulation because the consequence of non-compliance is trivial. 

Sometimes, we even punish the wrong animal. Whenever a dog attacks someone, the dog is put down and the owner usually goes off scott free. How does this send the message that the owner is responsible for ensuring the dog is not a safety hazard to others.

http://www.3news.co.nz/Kiwi-drivers-ignoring-cellphone-ban/tabid/817/articleID/224605/Default.aspx

"Accidents are rarely accidental." From 'Flirting With Disaster', By Marc Gerstein:

http://flirtingwithdisaster.net/cases_313.html

Culture, complexity, complacency - take your pick? Hands up those who think the Pike River Disaster will not show similarities with the cases discussed above.

Think the learning from those cases will be much different from the learning to come out of Pike River? Having worked in similar environments and from what we see and hear now, I doubt it - and the likely lack of difference in causation is the tragedy. We don't learn easily do we.

I find the axe-grinding regarding ACC interesting. So are we saying with no ACC, maybe another solution to that issue, things would be better? Check those cases. 

Cheers, Les. 

FYI here's a response via email from Fiona Robinson, a media advisor from ACC:

I was interested to hear that you had been commenting on NZ's poor safety culture and ACC on Radio Live and on your website.

We’re always glad when people like you highlight the importance of workplace safety. As you rightly noted in your interview, workplace injuries are significant in New Zealand and in the 2009/10 financial year there were 222,000 new workplace injuries. In the same year workplace injuries cost $669 million, according to the cost of active claims to ACC.

It was mentioned in the conversation on Radio Live that 'employers are complacent because of the no fault nature of ACC'.

Given this comment, I thought you'd be interested to hear about some changes to the way ACC charges business levies that will mean business cannot be complacent about workplace injuries.

These changes mean thatwhile ACC continues to cover people injured at work, their company or employer is now charged business levies that reflect their safety record and claims history.

From 1 April this year, ACC introduced a new system (called Experience Rating) which means that companies with a poor safety record will be paying an increase (or loading) in their ACC levies from this year. Those with a good safety record will get a discount on their levies. It works in a similar way to a no claims discount offered by a private insurer.

The aim of experience rating is to encourage safer workplaces .

Previously a company’s ACC levy was based on injury rates within an industry. This means businesses pay the same levy as others in the same industry, even though their safety record may be better.

Experience rating means that a company’s levy will be adjusted to more fairly reflect its own safety record, not just that of the industry as a whole.

For larger businesses paying ACC levies of $10,000 or more, levies will be calculated to take into account:

• The number of claims made by employees for work-related injuries (with medical costs of $500 or more) over the previous three-year period;
• The length of time employees receive weekly compensation; and
• Any fatal injury claim.

That information will be compared with other businesses in similar industries, with similar injury risk.

If a business’s performance is better, ie if there are fewer employees receiving weekly compensation, then the levy will be lower. However, if the performance is not as good, the levy will be higher. Levies can increase or decrease by up to 50 percent.

Smaller businesses or self-employed people with levies of less than $10,000 will receive a ‘no claims’ discount of 10 percent provided they have had no weekly compensation or fatal injury claims over the previous three years.

There will be no change for smaller businesses or self-employed people generating between one and 70 weekly compensation days paid. A loading of 10 percent will be applied for smaller businesses or self-employed people who generated more than 70 weekly compensation days paid or any fatal injury claim.

This is a mandatory system - and while there are some exceptions - this now applies to all employers, self-employed and shareholder-employees paying ACC levies.  The introduction of experience rating is part of the wider government response to the Workplace Health and Safety Strategy for New Zealand.  

Nonetheless we can always do more, and we appreciate your support in raising awareness of the importance of workplace safety.

Best Wishes Fiona

http://www.acc.co.nz/for-business/experience-rating/index.htm?utm_sourc…