Beware behavioural safety, Unite campaign warns
7 June 2011
Unite has launched a campaign to warn members in the paper and
corrugated packaging sector about the potential dangers of
behavioural safety initiatives brought in by employers to address
health and safety issues.
Behavioural safety is the name given to a variety of management
programmes that focus on worker behaviour. Behavioural safety
proponents believe that 80 per cent to almost 100 per cent of
accidents are caused by unsafe acts by workers. They argue that to
prevent these unsafe acts, management should target specific
behaviours and aim to change them by observing and monitoring
workers.
Peter Ellis, Unite national officer for the paper and corrugating
industries, said: “Too many employers are introducing behavioural
safety schemes thinking they are the answer to everything on health
and safety. They cost a lot of money and they don’t work.
“We know from our experience, dealing with safety in thousands
of workplaces, that hazards and unsafe conditions cause injury and
illness. When the hazards are properly identified and fixed, injury
and illness decrease.
“In the meantime, it is our members who face the workplace risks
and under behavioural safety tend to get the blame as well.
Involving Unite safety reps, identifying hazards and fixing them is
the real route to safer workplaces.”
Many behavioural safety programmes are designed to undermine
trade union activity on health and safety, reduce the role of joint
health and safety committees and shift the blame for accidents and
poor health and safety from management to workers.
Unite opposes the use of any scheme that looks to ‘blame the
worker’. The main cause of injury and illness in the workplace is
in the failings of the management of health and safety, not in the
failings of workers.
Peter Ellis added: “Safety reps need to be involved in all
decision making processes around health and safety so that they can
bring their expertise to any discussions on what is needed to
improve workplace health and safety. It is important that workers
and unions achieve the fundamental goals of the union – achieving
safer, healthier and more hazard-free jobs.
“Fix the hazards, don’t blame the victims. Workers and their
reps are the solution to workplace health and safety concerns, not
the problem.”
ENDS
For further information contact Bud Hudspith 07881 588917 or
bud.hudspith@unitetheunion.org
or Ashraf Choudhury in the Unite Press Office on 020 3371 2061 or
07980 224761
For more campaign information click here
