This is my personal list of what it takes to have a successful health and safety program:

  • Maintain a well written Health and Safety Plan (HASP).
  • Employ and empower a skilled health and safety professional.
  • Enforce health and safety standards and procedures.
  • Train all the people who work on the site.
  • Have a tailgate meeting every morning and before any new or unusual activity.
  • Practice incident control.
  • Practice continuous performance improvement in a non-accusatory environment.
  • Audit health and safety practices and procedures independently.
  • Bar anyone from the site who violates heath and safety procedures.

I have written more of my opinions on what it takes to make a work place safe at this link. According to family legend,one ofmy grandfathers was killed in a mine accident in South Africa. I have worked on terribly unsafe sites and amazingly safe sites. “All” it takes is complete commitment frommanagement to worker and back again.

Thus it is with some sympathy thatI read of an upcoming strike on South African mines to demand greater attention to health and safety:

Mines in South Africa, the world’s top producer of precious metals, will fall silent at midnight on Monday due to a national protest against mine deaths, with warnings of further action if fatalities continue. “Companies cannot produce gold and platinum at the expense of workers, we want more safety training, maintenance, modern equipment and the government to deal with negligence,” Senzeni Zokwana, president of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), told Reuters. Almost a quarter of a million members of the country’s biggest mining union will down tools in the one-day action, the first-ever national and industry-wide strike on safety, as the death toll in the mines, some of which are the world’s deepest, rose over the weekend to near the 199 killed in 2006.

It is sad that it takes such action to shake an industry from decades and, yes, centuries of acceptance of unsafe practices. But it takes leadership and we are heartened to read the following from Cynthia Carroll at Anglo American:

Anglo is fundamentally driving a Zero Harm mindset, not accepting that people have to be hurt in mining and ensuring that everyone is treated with dignity, care and respect.I believe that changing Anglo’s approach to safety is the crucial first step to becoming the leading global mining company of choice. We are changing the way we do business in all things, through safety. This is not a course to become risk adverse, cautious or fearful. This is a bold direction for the company. This new approach to safety was reinforced when Anglo Platinum suspended production at the major shafts on its biggest producer in its Rustenburg Platinum operations for a period of up to 5 weeks, following 12 fatalities in the first half of 2007. Production was suspended while safety issues, from cold showers to dangerously confined work spaces, were addressed.

I started my career in mining when a failed tailings impoundment killed thirteen at Impala Platinum. I was set to design and construct the new impoundment as fast as possible. The practices that lead to the failure were investigated technically by the professional community, but few of the health and safety implications trickled into practice on other mines.

Thus, while Carroll may seeher lead to a Zero Harm mindsetas a “bold direction” for the company, she should also acknowledge that it is belated. And it willl take considerable effort to achieve, including a change of mindset on the part of leaders, managers, and workers all. For example, I recall the disputes on a $100 million Superfund remediation project where I once worked when workers were kicked off site for failing to wear a seat belt or forgetting to put on a harness when climbing on a roof. I had to remove from site one of the junior engineers working for me when the scraper operators complained that he was inattentive and presented a danger to their driving.

My point is that it is easy to proclaim zero harm, but it requires wrenching change. I still recall the scrap between the fat, white-man project manager and the skinny little health and safety lady over a health and safety procedure. She won; he was removed from site. This was done and is done on USA Superfund remediation sites; it is going to be hard to do the same on the mines. Why even in Canada there are judges who claim the mines should not be allowed to enforce zero drug tolerance policies. Can you imagine the hew and cry when somebody is barred from site for failure to put on a harness before climbing on a roof?

I was once the “object” of an incident control investigation. I resisted and squiggled and squirmed. Luckily for me, a man of almost Solomon-like wisdom lead the investigation and I changed the way I worked. Not then, but today, much older, I recognize the change was necessary to improve safety. Even today, I cannot get colleagues in an office setting to practice incident control. I know that it will be terribly difficult to practice incident control on a South African mine.

Point is that zero harm can be achieved, but it takes a change of practice and procedure and acceptance of these changes by all society. Unless society and the mining industry in South African (and elsewhere)are ready for these draconian approaches,they must not be surprised ifthey fails to achieve zero harm. It will take action as well as words; and while we all love words, we hate action that detrimentally affects our jobs.