Deaths and Serious Injuries at Work Could Be Cut Dramatically - Assignment Example

Every environment, which involves physical activity, can also be the stage for physical injuries as well as deaths. And, the working environment of industry is no exception. That is, in the working environment of industries, lot of physical activity is involved. Even though, this physical activity outputs in the form of profit and growth for the organization and also the individuals, associated with the organization, it sometimes results in tragedies. Tragedies will be in the form of injuries and deaths. And, this paper, will discuss the types and levels of injuries and deaths that could happen in a industry, as well as the reasons why the injury and deaths happen, how can it be addressed and finally what are the changes that will be visible, if the causes are addressed. Deaths and serious injuries at work Unison of humans with an urge to usher an organization into a leading ‘utopia’ will be a successful endeavor, if the humans show unified, undaunted, unabated and unabashed conduct. And, if all the ‘parts’ of an organization, which include the workers and the departments, conduct this way, they can be fully utilized to have ubiquitous presence all over the world. So, it is similar, to how all the body parts or organs function unison ly to help a human survive, study, search, succeed etc. But, ironically when the body parts of the worker itself gets affected including the physical body and the mental part, due to the events that take places inside an organization or in a workplace, then the concept of unison will be unfulfilled. This could happen when the tragedies of injury and death takes place in the workplace. Nichols (1997) has shown how the term ‘industrial injuries’ should be preferred to the term ‘industrial accidents’ since variations in their rates are not random, but vary with determinant conditions, particularly with changes in the intensification of labour. Discuss the types and levels of deaths and serious injuries at work? In what types of organisations (think of theme 1*) are they most common? The injury and the resultant death can be classified into four types aaccording to the nature of the injury. That is, how the injury or death happened is crucial and based on the frequency of the injury and death, it is classified. The classification comprises of injury and death due to fall from heights, injury and death that happens when workers are struck by moving or falling objects, likewise by moving vehicle and finally by the trapping that takes place due to collapse and overturning. “There is a small but important corpus of work on the sociology and social history of industrial injury and illness” (Bloor 2002). Note: from Health safety and Executive. 2006. From the table given, one can understand that the most common kind of fatal injury that is happening to workers in recent years have been falling from a height. In the previous decades, the rate of fatalities from falls from the height was always in the top reaches. But, the rate decreased in 2005/06 from 53 to 46. This represents the lowest figure on record and continues the general downward trend over the past ten years. Then, being struck by a moving vehicle and being struck by a moving or falling object comes second and third in respect of the fatality that happens in work environment. Then, the injuries and deaths are also classified according to their severity. That is, severity is based on the area of the injury, and the long-term impact it will make on the lives of the workers as well as the lives associated with the worker. There are three levels of injury and deaths, they are, fatal, major and over-3-day injury (health and safety executive 2006). Fatality is the extreme end that can happen to the worker. That is, many modern day job has inbuilt risks and when the risk reaches the crescendo, death will be the result. The major injuries include fractures, amputations, dislocations and other injuries leading to resuscitation or 24-hour admittance to hospital. This type of injuries are of common variety and lies between life threatening and life damaging. An “Over-3-day” injury includes other injuries to workers, which lead to their absence from work, or inability to do their usual job, for over three days. Each organization will have different infrastructure and setups. And in a correlated way, this different infrastructure only determines the types of the injury. That is, the types of injuries that were discussed in the above passages were more prevalent in specific organization. The types of organizations or industry, where the injuries and deaths are most common are the industry of construction, transport, retail, chemical, nuclear-based energy generation, ordnance, agriculture etc. And among them, construction industry only accounted for 53% of all fatalities to workers particularly from falling from a height. Assess the (various) explanations of why deaths and serious injuries occur. Which are most plausible and why (could relate your answer to the data above)? How could they be addressed? In the working environment, there will always be risk factors. That is, even though industries are manufacturing or creation hub, it could also turn out to be a destruction hub. That is, in the midst of positive utilities, there will occur fatalities as well. The occurrence of these deaths and injuries could be man-made mistakes and machine made mistakes. The man made mistakes could be the result of human frailties like drop in concentration, lack of skills, nervousness, lack of interest, overconfidence etc. These human mistakes not only affects and injures the person who is a culprit, but also other innocent workers. The same is the case with machine made mistakes. These machine made mistakes are primarily caused by worker’s lack of knowledge, skills, experience etc, along with faulty equipment, worn out parts etc. “ The imperfectness of the individual which causes the troubles but the defectiveness of the system itself” (Kinnersley 1973). The occurrence of above-mentioned types of injury and death may be caused by one reason or chain of reasons. In the case of falls from height, ladders and roofs were the most common agents associated with it. Among them, Ladders accounted for the greatest number of major injuries and deaths, coming around 39% of the overall cases. As ladder is an integral object of every industry, its presence cannot be whisked away. But while using it, many dangers are faced by the workers. And, they themselves put in these dangerous situations due to their lack of concentration. The workers lack concentration due to the stress they will be under if they work continuously for successive days. This can be addressed by giving the workers the needed rest through spaced out holidays. Also with the entry of advanced ladders into the market, the danger level is coming down. Being struck by a moving or falling object, are the next most common kinds of fatal injury. That is, in the industries the presence of heavy metals or materials cannot be avoided, its presence is mandatory. The movement of these objects needed to be controlled very precisely because of its complexity. Most times that what happens, but some times that preciseness is missed causing tragedies. Various avenues can also address these causes. That is, wearing protective gears and maintaining the machines regularly could avert these tragedies. In all above cases, the role of managers are very important because being the leader of the group, his/her decision could alter the lives of workers from injuries and deaths to happiness and prosperity. “ The initiative on safe working will be lead by professionals within the team.” (Torrington, D. et al 2002) Why might organisations not be taking the types of measures discussed above (various themes would be helpful here and relate to the first point above)? The enforcing authorities mostly expect the organizations to have systems of inspections, investigations or other regulatory contacts according to the nature and extent of risks prevalent in the workplace. But, the organization always tries to find excuses and loopholes to avoid these inspections. These inspections will expose the ‘skeletals in the cupboards’, which could eventually lead to sealing as well as closure, and the fear of it, only makes the organization to avoid the mandatory inspections. Sometimes the organization forming a group among themselves will try to override the regulations using their financial and political clout. That is, when the organization understands that its pre-eminence or its productivity is under threat, they will try salvage it through crook and means. For that, they will group among themselves to override as well as change the regulations. “Powerful business lobbies and governments have indeed been using their influence to try to bring about changes and regulation… these efforts have been directed not towards providing greater protection for workers—but at diluting or removing measures which opponents routinely describe as constituting a ‘burden on business” (Bain 1997). In this case, the grouping of workers in the form of trade union is the counter that can be used. “For many trade unionists, health and safety had become an extension of collective bargaining” (Beck and Woolfson 2000). Also, the option of fining the organization will only work to a certain limit because many organizations are well equipped financially to pay out the fines. And after paying the fines they will carry on with their mistakes endangering the workers. The option of giving more rest and spaced out holidays for physically and mentally stressed out workers to increase their concentration level is also not feasible. Because in this fast moving world, where the competition between organizations is on knife-edge, any inactivity due to rest and holidays will be very detrimental to the organization. “In creating jobs that demand less of the body, industrial production has also tended to create jobs that give less to the body” (Zuboff 1988). That is, the organization needs full utilization of their workers to reach their targets and to increase productivity. So, they cannot compromise on this account. So, the organizations have no other option to make the workers work with lot of stress in a risky state to reach the organization’s goals. How would the changes proposed in the question (i.e. increased penalties, individual liability) affect (or fail to affect) – directly or indirectly - either the causes of deaths and injuries identified above or the reasons why organisations are not taking measures to address those causes? The changes that can be implemented will surely have positive spinoff in the total functioning of the organizations preventing the deaths and injuries. That is, the inspections of the organizations on a regular basis will push the organization to follow and maintain the safety measures. “Increasing evidence of employers and governments promoting and implementing policies and practices designed to reduce the horrendous toll of illness, injury, disease and death” (Bain 1997). So, in the aspect of inspections and fines, if the organizations and the enforcement authorities play their role up to an optimum level, the level of injuries and deaths could be minimized. The same is the case with giving adequate rests to the workers. The workers if given adequate rests will become re-energized and will be able to provide double the amount of work both quantity wise as well as quality wise. Also designs of the organizational infrastructure have gone a long way in improving the mental attitude of the workers and thereby minimizing their stress levels and violent streaks. As violent streaks also leads to injuries and deaths. “ Overcrowded, poorly ventilated, dirty and noisy premises experience higher rates of violence than do those which exhibit good physical design features” (Homel and Clark 1994). In this aspect, the managerial style may also be relevant because open participatory management style being conducive to reducing the risk of violence compared to a closed, authoritarian management style that may increase the risk of violence (Chappell and Di Martino 1998). “Managers were able to identify a range of signs that to them indicated that people in their organization were under stress” (Dewe and O’Driscoll ). In that case, the managers could be able to stop the worker from reaching the extremities of injury and deaths. The issue of work related violence is one of the increasing concerns for the employees, who can suffer from pain, distress and disability (Boyd 2002). These can only lead to injuries and deaths in the vicinity of the industry. But, it could be averted, by following the safety measures. In other words, a ‘safe’ organization—results from the constant engineering of diverse elements (for example, skills, materials, relations, and communications)(Gherhardi and Nicolini 2002). “The quality of work and the living conditions of workers play an even more important role to bring about health-promotive changes at the workplace( Chu and Simpson 1994). So, these safety measures could bring out a wholesome change to the workers and the organizations. Reference Bain, P. 1997. Human Resource Malpractice: the deregulation of health and safety at work in the USA & Britain, Industrial Relations Journal. Ibid. Beck, M. & Woolfson, C. 2000. The regulation of health and safety in Britain: from old Labour to new Labour, Industrial Relations Journal. Bloor, M. 2002. No longer dying for a living: Collective responses to injury risks in South Wales Mining Communities. Boyd, C. 2002. Customer Violence and employee health and safety. Work Employment and Society. Chappell, D and Di Martino, V. 1998. Violence at work. Geneva: International Labour organization. Chu, C. & Simpson, R. 1994. Conceptual issues in work site health promotion. Retrieved February 12, 2007. www.ldb.org/whpr.htm Ibid. Dewe, P. & O’Driscoll, M. 2002. Stress Management interventions: What do managers actually do? Personnel Review Doherty, N. & Tyson, S. 2000. HRM and Employee Well-Being: Raising the ethical stakes. Gherhardi, S. and Nicolini, D. 2002. Learning the Trade: A Culture of Safety in Practice Organisation. Health safety and Executive. 2006. Fatal Injury Updates. Retrieved February 12, 2007, from http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/overall/fatl0506.pdf. Health safety and Executive. 2006. Kinds of Accidents. Retrieved February 12, 2007, from http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/. Ibid. Homel. R and Clark. J. 1994. The prediction of violence in pubs and clubs. Crime prevention studies 3. Nichols, T. 1997. The Sociology of Industrial Injury. London: Mansell. Torrington, D. Hall. L and Taylor, S. 2005. Human Resource Management. 5th Ed. Prentice Hall. Kinnersley, P. 1973. The Hazards of Work Pluto. Zuboff, S. 1988. In the age of the smart machine. The future of work and power. New York (Basic Books). Read More