Especially after some recent high-profile fatalities at work in T&T, this year’s Amcham T&T Health and Safety annual conference felt particularly relevant.
‘We must do more. We must do better,’ was a good way by Amcham’s president Stuart Franco to sum up the task at hand when he spoke at the event held last Tuesday.
And the need for everyone concerned to commit to health, safety, security and the environment must not be just a legal requirement because ‘it is a moral obligation’, stressed the US Ambassador to T&T, Candace Bond, in her keynote speech at the event.
They are both right.
In an ideal world, we should never have an accident at work that may lead to serious injuries or, more tragically, the loss of life.
We know we can’t make everything 100 per cent safe all the time, but we can have the policies, the equipment, the culture and the attitude to make accidents at work extremely rare.
And there are ways to make that happen.
To begin with, and as highlighted by bpTT’s top health and safety manager, Arthur Alexander, transparency is key.
Although transparency shouldn’t be limited to the field of safety at work, companies that adopt open and honest ways to deal with accidents have a much better chance of avoiding a repeat of similar cases.
This is even more so when the same level of open and honest engagement involves statutory bodies like the Occupational Health and Safety Agency (OSHA), as well as the staff–directly or through a recognised trade union.
The next step must be about sharing lessons that companies learn when they review and investigate an accident at work.
After all, health and safety solutions, especially at a broader level, should never be treated as intellectual property or sensitive business information.
Although not without its faults as we saw recently with the safety issues involving the Boeing 737 Max series, the aviation industry is a good example of how it openly learns from accidents and shares best practices amongst all aircraft operators.
And, without being complacent as it is clear there is work to be done here too, we must also acknowledge that T&T starts from a good base to create an even safer environment for employees, especially those working in higher-risk industries, like the energy sector.
In fact, there is a lot we can be proud of, with energy companies, by and large, having established a very strong safety culture here, and organisations like the Energy Chamber acting as a key conduit for shared experiences and formal training.
What we must do is build on that to make the workplace even safer. But, for that to work, we also need a deeper and better involvement of our labour movement.
It goes without saying that any trade union worth its salt will be hot on safety-at-work matters as the basis of a fair and respectful relationship between employers and employees.
After all, a clear and demonstrable commitment from both parties to make the workplace a safe and protective space for staff must always come first.
But here, again, we need both honesty and transparency from all parties.
Sadly, we have seen past examples of trade unions in T&T using alleged safety matters to attack businesses, especially foreign-owned ones, often without any evidence to back their claims.
This must stop, for the sake of honesty and, more importantly, for the sake of the workforce, as the use of (often made up) safety matters as a cynical tool to further the labour movement’s narrative does nothing to foster a constructive safety culture between the parties.
The weaponisation of safety matters can also confuse the arguments, making it harder for those involved to work out what is made up of non-issues and what are both true and truly important health and safety shortcomings that need fixing.
Employers and employees, as well as trade unions (where they are recognised), must work together to deal with health and safety matters in a fair but decisive way.
It is true that, in some cases, serious accidents at work happen due to failures on the employer’s part, be it down to poorly designed processes and procedures, the lack of training and adequate protective equipment, or down to the cutting of corners for expediency or savings.
But many accidents also happen when staff themselves fail to follow the rules, dislike or dismiss the need to use protective equipment or try to cut corners for their own benefit.
None of that can happen.
For employers, there are ways to seek redress through legal and regulatory routes.
For employees, there are disciplinary processes to also seek redress when they are the ones who fail to do the right thing.
And here is where we definitely need to have labour leaders and managers working together, as an adversarial attitude when dealing with health and safety matters will do little to avoid another accident in the future.
A joined-up, collaborative and transparent approach, bringing together statutory bodies, employers and employees (including the unions) as partners is essential if we are to really make serious work-related accidents virtually impossible.
In reality, a key message health and safety specialists highlight time and time again is that these are issues that matter to everyone and that, more importantly, are everyone’s responsibility.
If we work together, we can make our workplace safer, always striving to avoid what is probably the thing we dread the most: the need to tell a husband, wife, children, parent or sibling that their loved one will no longer come back home due to a tragic accident at work.
Together (and transparently), we can, and we must.
