Making Companies Safe - what works? (CCA ... - Unite the Union

Second, even if low injury rates genuinely reflect effective safety management, they cannot
(as we have seen) guarantee that individual employers are effectively managing health
hazards. For example, whilst DuPont is acknowledged to have extremely low lost-time injury
and illness rates relative to the rest of US industry, Ruttenberg and Huggins (1981) cite
evidence – including OHSA citations for wilful violations relating to excessive asbestos
exposure and NIOSH reports of excess cancers at particular DuPont plants – to suggest that
DuPont has neglected occupational health issues. 122
Nor can low injury rates provide assurance that individual enterprises are effectively
managing the risks of a major incident. For example, the Esso gas plant explosion and the case
of BP’s Grangemouth complex – both discussed in the previous chapter – illustrate the
dangers of using injury or sickness rates to judge general OHS performance. A study of the
Esso plant reveals that one of the causes of the explosion was the fact that management was
more concerned with reducing the economic costs of lost-time injuries than the consequences
of a major incident. 123
Similarly, the Westray mine in Canada had won a prestigious national safety award based
on low recorded injuries just a few months before it exploded in 1992. 124 And whilst BP
Grangemouth won a European-wide award for its management of psychosocial risks, it had
in the previous year been prosecuted by the HSE and fined £1 million following three
life-threatening incidents occurring at the complex within the space of a month. A report by
the HSE found that managers had failed to detect “deteriorating performance” and failed to
abide by the law. 125 These examples suggest that management initiatives on health and safety
will not necessarily correspond to areas of greatest risk, but may be directed towards hazards
that are perceived as involving an immediate financial cost to the company, or towards
hazards that are perhaps seen as easy or cheap to address.
Resources
The primary impetus behind the HSE’s consideration of earned autonomy appears to be
budgetary. However, there are good reasons to believe that earned autonomy will not
deliver the ‘savings’ needed to enable HSE to significantly increase its contact with ‘poor
performers’. Indeed there is evidence that the scheme may actually consume more resources
than routine inspections do. While budgetary arguments were a main motive behind OSHA’s
introduction of VPP, the Californian CPP actually consumed enormous resources, involving ten
times more OSHA staff than traditional inspections. 126 Similar resource problems arose in
relation to Maine 200, which according to Needleman:
“badly strained the resources of Maine’s Area Office, cutting in to the agency’s
other work and overloading the staff in ways that made them wish it have been
called ‘Maine 100’. 127
This was the case even though OSHA had withdrawn from routine inspection of participating
firms. Moreover, in view of the fact that changing circumstance can have an adverse effect
on health and safety performance, some sort of continuing regulatory oversight would be
crucial. Recognising that oversight and vetting of SMSs are likely to impose considerable
burdens on regulatory agencies, Gunningham and Johnstone suggest that this auditing
function could be performed by a suitably qualified third-party, with the audit paid for by the
organisation. 128 This suggestion is consistent with the proposal put forward by the HSE in
their discussion document. 129 Potential problems with this proposal will be discussed below.
96
Assuming for the moment that problems with selecting firms for earned autonomy status are
overcome, and assuming that auditing is an appropriate form of oversight and that this could
be carried out in a way that consumed less regulatory resources than traditional inspections,
precisely how much money was saved would depend on the number of companies selected
for earned autonomy status. Evidence is lacking about the extent to which individual
employers within the UK have adopted the kind of fully-fledged SMSs that might be required
by the HSE as a basis for achieving earned autonomy status. 130 However, the evidence that
does exist suggests that such firms are few and far between. 131 The most likely contenders
would be organisations in the high-risk sectors, but the nature of the activities carried out by
these firms means that the consequences of failure may be deemed too great.