Thread: has OH&S gone overboard

And the policy makers and bean counters never thought of that and it's impact on many fronts.

You can't legislate for common sense.

This is the problem with all these arguments. It's fine to say "under this scenario, we should do this instead of that" or "this person has more experience, so should be allowed to think for themselves". How do you implement that in practice? How do you create a standard set of rules that allow interpretation without loopholes? You end up needing an expert person on site at all times to make judgement calls on these things. And you can bet if something goes wrong, those calls will be scrutinised very closely. Who would want that job?

Of course it makes more sense to let the plasterers work off a step, rather than having a blanket rule that applies to a maximum working height without scaffolding. Do you want them to put a specific clause in the legislation to cover that and every other scenario? You would need a legal advisor on site to interpret it every day to make sure you're doing each and every job right.

I haven't seen too many suggestions here of how to fix the problem, other than the predictable "I've been doing this for x years and don't need anyone to tell me how to do it".

You are correct SC - our current ways of addressing these issues is limitation and restriction.

This certianly results in less accidents and keeps the bean counters and legal people happy with simple laws that they and everyone else understands.

This approach does however limit innovation and implementation of new methods.

For example, if you as a tradesman on site thought of a new method that protected against accidents, (perhaps better protection than is currently used), do you think it would ever get off the ground?

I am sure that the legal people would suggest that you document the method in detail and approach the relevant authorities to have this method tested and adopted into the current laws. I am sure the foreman on site would give you time off and the $$$'s to develop the documentation and to pay the relevant people to test this method.

Overall your idea would benefit everyone however the foreman would most likely tell you to stop dreaming and get on with the job.

I am not suggesting that we discard our current OH&S laws but improve them by making them easier to improve.

Things like that do happen within organisations. Like you say, it's not likely to go down well on a building site though, when most people working there are sub-contractors and you're being paid to work, not think...

I'm just interested to hear how it could be done better while still achieving the aims of:

1. Forcing employers to take responsibility for safety of their workers
2. Forcing employees/sub contractors to observe identified safety measures
3. Making it hard for anyone to find sneaky ways around the rules by declaring theirs to be an exceptional case

And also making it possible for employers to know their responsibilities without hiring solicitors to interpret the legislation for them.

I'm just glad I never have to deal with it. Not much OH&S in my line of business.

It is even worse in the catering industry.
My next door neighbour has a market stall selling hamburgers etc.
In one shire they get fined if the inspector sees them without gloves, but it is ok to touch food and money with the same gloves on.
In another shire 50K away, the inspector hates gloves and fines them if he even sees a box of gloves displayed.
Inspector #1's reasoning is that hands are not clean enough to handle food.
Inspector #2's reasoning is that you are more likely to wash your hands if you can feel your hands are dirty.
If you run a registered stall more than a certain number of times a year you must do all these courses, presumable to prevent food poisoning.
If you sell coffee you must provide polystyrene cups with a lid, so that customers cannot scald themselves on the contents but it is ok if they remove the lid one step away and drop it on the ground.
You must have a basin, soap, water and towels for washing your hands.
All your extension cords etc. must be tagged.
And on and on and on.
If you are a registered charity running a sausage sizzle, sell fish and chips etc. under that certain number of times a year, you do NOT need to do a food hygiene course, you do not need to carry third party insurance, you do not need to put lids on coffee cups, you do not need to carry handwashing items, you do not need to have your cords tagged.
Can someone please tell me how food poisoning, scalding, poor hygiene, electrocuting, other accidents know the difference between a registered stall and a charity because I certainly cannot work it out
Wolffie

Gee there's so many future DARWIN AWARD recipients here

Originally Posted by Wolffie

Can someone please tell me how food poisoning, scalding, poor hygiene, electrocuting, other accidents know the difference between a registered stall and a charity because I certainly cannot work it out
Wolffie

They cant what they are saying is if your in that business run a clean ship.
If you are a charity and do it a couple of times a year there is little risk of stuff growing in your fridge breeding under the benches,being swept under the carpet,everyone in the caravan getting electrocuted because shonky cousin bob the wanna be sparky fixed the deep fryer for free and fried everyone in the caravan instead.The whole purpose of the charity is to raise funds and they would have liitle chance of raising funds if they had to abide by the hospitality rules and regs in set up expenditure alone.
Oh and if you have ever bought anything from the charities in my area not sure about yours but they are usually a site of utter cleanliness with people running round everywhere with dishclothes cleaning up and maintaining an impressive shopfront.
Compare this to dodgey daves takeaway at the Sunday market where the oil in his deep fryer smells like its ten years old and is a fire hazard and the mixture of food in the bottom of the bain marie looks like a pizza and its little wonder why they expect nothing less than what they do.
Cheers rileyp

Originally Posted by rileyp

They cant what they are saying is if your in that business run a clean ship.
If you are a charity and do it a couple of times a year there is little risk of stuff growing in your fridge breeding under the benches,being swept under the carpet,everyone in the caravan getting electrocuted because shonky cousin bob the wanna be sparky fixed the deep fryer for free and fried everyone in the caravan instead.
So a dodgey extension cord fx. is OK for a charity but not for a stall holder?
On a hot day meat and sausages know not to go off in a charity esky but do it in a stall holder's fridge instead?
The whole purpose of the charity is to raise funds and they would have liitle chance of raising funds if they had to abide by the hospitality rules and regs in set up expenditure alone.
And if something does go wrong and they have no insurance it is "Bad luck mate, we are a charity"
Oh and if you have ever bought anything from the charities in my area not sure about yours but they are usually a site of utter cleanliness with people running round everywhere with dishclothes (eeek, a breeding ground for bacteria) cleaning up and maintaining an impressive shopfront.
And we know for sure that the kitchens where the food is prepared for charities are spic and span? I have seen some horror deliveries here.
Flies know not to hang around the open displays of charities but go and try to get into the enclosed cabinets of the stall holders?
Compare this to dodgey daves takeaway at the Sunday market where the oil in his deep fryer smells like its ten years old and is a fire hazard and the mixture of food in the bottom of the bain marie looks like a pizza and its little wonder why they expect nothing less than what they do.
That kind of stall holder would not last long up here, the health inspector would come down on him like a ton of bricks. Stall holders are trying to make a living and cannot afford to run that kind of business.
Cheers rileyp

And BTW, stall holders are not allowed to prepare food in their own kitchens, they are not allowed to have hamburger rolls or bread that has been frozen, who knows how many times the stuff at the charities has been frozen if it didn't sell first time or how long since they bought the hamburger mince or sausages and kept it in the fridge?
But that's ok, because they are trying to raise funds for whatever reason they deem important.
No matter who sells the food, food hygiene regs should be the same for everybody.
Wolffie

On the topic of food, I agree that there should be an equal playing field of regulations for everyone. Food affects us all, and one bad batch of snags in a charity BBQ could see an entire community with a terrible guts ache - jamming the local health services. Personally, I'm quite fussy, make that very fussy about my food. I would rather go hungry than eat something that has been prepared in a mold factory of a kitchen.
However, such courses are expensive for those who do wish to raise money. Perhaps a set of regulations enforced on paper would be suffice, displayed on site, and anyone who sees a breach can take it on their own to report it (would want to be something decent like a rat infestation to avoid being shunned by the community - which is another topic altogether).

Regarding workplace health and safety. Sure, some things are there in good measure, like air circulation, noise restrictions, eye protection and whatnot. You would have to be a fool to work in a factory without a set of muffs, glasses and boots.

What bugs me is the "training" people have to go through for some things. Like someone said before about changing a light bulb; you aren't allowed to change it without a "qualification", when just about anyone with an IQ can do tasks like that. Such things like that seem to be quite frequent in the office and indoors type workplaces.

On the other hand, people are allowed to use giant pieces of machinery like presses, guillotines and folders etc with some "course" cranked out by the armchair technicians - who know nothing about the piece of equipment, read the manual, and write a course on it. Half the time the course tells you how to operate it, sure, but they rarely tell you what to look out for, what to feel for to predict the event of a mishap; what the limits of the machine are, and how to know when you are getting near those limits. Sort of like being able to feel when a saw blade is getting blunt, not only does it take longer to cut with, but you can literally feel the teeth slicing the wood - at least thats how I interact with my tools.

Those people who are deemed worthy because of a two day course are the ones that cause these OHS legislations that make no sense, because they go by a book and not experience and common sense.

I'll use the chainsaw as an example. My grandfather, father, and myself have all used chainsaws to saw up timber, fall trees and anything you can think of. I began using one when I was about 6 or 7, holding the machine with my dad as we cut wood, and he taught me the things he knew, things he learned from his father and so on. We can all tell when something is wrong with a saw, and usually figure out the cause in a matter or a few minutes. Combined, there would be close to 50 years of chainsaw experience between us, and never has either of us come into contact with the teeth of a saw. Why? Because we all learned through experience and guidance, not a course that is meant to be remembered all in 2 days and doesn't tell you what you really need to know.
Almost makes you think that machinery should only be used by those who can, not those who are just "trained".

Regarding safety EQ when using machinery, I wear what is required; always snug long clothing, boots, muffs, and glasses when doing things that can ruin my eyes. It's all common sense, and any idiot can see that.

I remember a good saying from a movie: "Those who can: do. Those who can't: teach"

Sorry for the long post, I can go on for ages about this stuff.

The first assumption people make when talking about this stuff is that everyone out there has the same common sense as they do. The second is that they themselves have it. We all think we know what we're doing because we've been doing it since we were kids, or Dad taught us, or some old bloke at our first job taught us. Experience definately counts for something, that's what forms the basis of the knowledge we have of the "right way" to do something. It was discovered through trial and error, so there's nothing wrong with experience as a teacher.

Where it falls down is that you cannot assess experience. How do I, as an employer, know that your old man and his old man weren't complete gumbys with a chainsaw? Maybe if I met them and shook hands with them they'd have fingers missing and scars all over their legs (definitely not having a shot at your blokes here, just illustrating the point). It has to be assessable across the board. How is "my old man taught me" going to stand up? My old man taught me too, but it was only last weekend.

This is the idea behind all this workplace training. Where it fails is in the implementation. You go away and do a 2 day course where you're supposed to learn all the hazards and the correct techniques. I wouldn't mind betting that even a guru like you would pick up something you didn't know. But it's not going to substitute for a life time of experience. So from that point of view, it's only about covering the employer's backside. If you cut your arm off, he can say to Work Cover "well, I sent him on the chainsaw course - he has his ticket".

But you've got the wrong end of the stick. It's not the people who go away and do a 2 day course where they learn from a book who "cause these OHS legislations that make no sense", it's the people who think they know but don't, or are just plain stupid who cause the government to enact this legislation to protect them from themselves. The rest of us have to suffer with it.

I'm with silentC, it does not matter how many generations of wisdom or education a family has it simply won't cover all the necessary skill and wisdom needed for all people (including idiots) to safely operate all machinery. Besides, machines change, materials change, people's attitudes change - like young people who want things done instantly - like now!

As a society we have for too long lived our lives relying too much on anecdotal or one off evidence. This came from when we lived in small tribes and was the way we survived but at that time we had a life expectancy of about 20 years. Farming and village life increased life expectancy as information was shared across a number of tribes. When we moved into cities our life expectancy dropped until modern science, medicine and engineering flourished to a point where it started to increase life expectancy.

But believing in the one off anecdote is still in our genes and is very powerful and has to be one of the leading causes of the propagation of idiocy.
, eg my grandmother smoked at lived to be 99 therefore there can be nothing wrong with smoking. My brother drives like an idiot and has not been killed therefore I can drive like one too etc. These anecdotes and problems are relatively easy to understand, but one does not have to go too far to encounter much more complicated ones eg global warming. These forums are full of anecdotes, some are well argued, others are just opinions with nothing of any substance to back them up. However, the collective wisdom of the whole forum is pretty impressive, particularly on ways of doing but is far from complete in terms of risk analysis - for example where are the considered opinions of the medicos, the materials scientists and engineers who have actually done research on safety (and I'm not just talking about one or two we need the collective wisdom of their equivalent of the WWF)

One of the things that we should teach our kids is risk analysis. I know the words put some people off but it does cover a lot of physical and non-physical things. It is a mix of common sense, maths, facts and cause-and-effect, but it also gets people to think outside the square. To perform comprehensive risk analyses in any trade one really does need to know or call on medical, statistical, engineering and scientific expertise. As a society we really do work in a dumb arsed way. No one person can know it all and there have been very few changes in the past until someone dies and then the courts or coroner force changes. Setting up and applying reasonable OHS regulations before someone else dies seems a sensible way to go. The problem is with the the term "reasonable". As others have said, to cater for increasing idiocy the regulations have to become more and more draconian and further and further under the control of bean counters and desk jockeys. I think this is the issue for us to tackle, not the fact that we have OHS regs - that should be common sense.

Originally Posted by Durdge39

It's all common sense, and any idiot can see that.

if this still makes sense - reread the above paragraphs.

I had a very interesting visit yesterday from a senior lecturer in OHS at work enquiring about doing some collaborative research on safety harnesses. We had a 1/2 hour chat and much of what we have been chewing on in this thread has come to the surface.

Problems like, workers owning harnesses but they just sit in their bags in their vehicles. Incorrect wearing of harnesses. Damaged harnesses failing. Buying cheap harnesses that don't meet safety standards. Manufacturers changing designs and using different materials and claiming they meet standards but independent tests showing otherwise. etc

This raises the question How much do we really know about harnesses? By "we" I'm not talking about WWF members, I'm talking world wide - it turns out that we actually have significant gaps in our worldwide knowledge.

Shall I just tell him to forget it and just keep relying on common sense and anecdotes handed down from generation to generation?

I apologize if my first thread sounded as though people should rely on stories and whatnot. The point I was trying to make (which probably wasn't all that effective at 1:30 in the morning) is that people need training that really is training. I was using our story as an example as a sort of metaphor that accidents are avoidable if you take a bit of time to gain the experience, and that's what the courses lack.

Again, my beef is the so called training out there for people who have never used such equipment is just a piece of paper, and that more guided experience will prove to be more beneficial. For instance, would a chainsaw course that meet OH&S standards tell you how to predict a log that will jam, or how to fall a tree? All I see from these is the "Safe and effective" way to lop 1" thick bits of foliage off a tree. Courses for things that can kill you need to be modified to give enough experience, whereas those issues like the light bulb should be looked at again too.

Regarding relying on "my old man taught me": everyone will have to do a course for a piece of equipment, that is unavoidable, and I don't disagree, and if they have had (properly guided) experience, then they will fly through the course, and an instructor will be able to see that. They will get their ticket, and the likelihood of an accident is a lot less than Joe Blogs who took up the job because it was there and he touched that equipment for the first time that morning.

And the idiot comment was just regarding wearing personal safety EQ, like the muffs, goggles, boots and clothing. Signs are required to be there to tell you when to wear something. And you would really have to have a screw loose to not know when to wear such equipment.

I agree with you BobL about the harness situation, and any others like it. Things do need to be researched, and that does benefit everyone, but I fear that they might not pass that knowledge on in the courses that are run.

Again my case in point: courses don't teach all the things that should be known, and the ignorant ones who disregard their personal safety, and that of others are the ones causing the problems in the OH&S schematics - like the light bulb issue.

RE: "accidents are avoidable if you take a bit of time to gain the experience, and that's what the courses lack." I don't know about completely avoidable but certainly they can be reduced, and keep in mind that experience is a very hard teacher.

Courses are not meant to be the be all and end all of OHS, they should be treated more as a "stop and think" exercise, and I certainly encourage my teams to do some reflection afterwards.

Just about all of the OHS courses I have done, (with a couple of hours of background reading on the legisltion) I could have given the course myself, and I can nearly always ask questions the course instructors cannot answer. The classic one was in testing and tagging - it was poor and the while the guy doing the course could quote all the legislation by heart he did not really know the difference between current and voltage.

Nonetheless as the head of my unit I attend this (and other courses) to show good example and then we get together as a group pick the holes in them later, and I found out that some of our juniors were not all that up to speed on current and voltage either. For this experience our unit paid $1600 to the OHS training company - a complete waste of money - maybe, but it forced us to stop and think about electrical safety for a few hours which we never seem to have the time to do, and in hard terms our legal bums are now covered.