💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › workers-solidarity-movement-accidents-will-happen.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 14:51:55. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-06-20)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Accidents will happen? Author: Workers Solidarity Movement Date: 1994 Language: en Topics: environment, industry, Workers Solidarity Source: Retrieved on 15th November 2021 from http://struggle.ws/ws94/accident41.html Notes: Published in Workers Solidarity No. 41 — Spring 1994.
Accidents rarely happen. They are caused. It is equally the case that
workers end up taking more than their fair share of blame when things do
go wrong. Such has been the case with a host of rail and air accidents
over the years, where drivers and pilots have quick1y been targeted by
the media. But when management is to blame, as is the case with just as
accidents, the same light of media exposure rarely shines as brightly or
for as long. It’s not difficult to see why.
Accidents for which management are responsible, often reveal glaring
inadequacies in how management operates and in its organizational
ability. The reason being that accidents rarely just happen “out of the
blue.” Most often, major industrial accidents are accompanied, in the
period leadingup to them, a period of months or often years, by a host
of smaller accidents — less serious in nature — but, with similar
underlying causes. Spotting these underlying causes is the key to
effective accident prevention andoften it is through safety reviews or
through the efforts of the workers involved that problems are picked up.
The big accidents occur because management either ignores or
deprioritises the advice it is given by those who review the smaller
accidents, either because of cost reasons or, simply, because of a
conflict in interest — i.e. production might have to be shutdown
temporarily.
In the Hickson case, it is known that an explosion occured in a waste
treatment facility in 1989. At that time the company was operating under
the name of Angus Fine Chemicals. The explosion in 1989, though small,
had important similarities with the recent major accident. For instance
one finding then was that changes were being made, to speed up waste
treatment, but without a proper understanding of what those changes
involved. Sound familiar? Maybe, but the lessons weren’t learned or
perhaps implemented.
One might ask then, quite rightly, how can such practices continue? But
they do. In fact, they are quite common; Hickson being no exception this
case.
The mainstream media rarely highlight this particular aspect of
accidents. The most important reason being that they, like any other
businesses support, first and foremost, the “right to manage”. According
to this “right” business bosses everywhere can only function by having
the unquestioned right to order people around. management give orders:
workers carry them out. This is regarded as the “natural order” — by the
media as much as by anyone else. It is viewed as the only way that
things can work — or, to put it another way, the only way that money can
be made.
But what is so “natural” about this way of doing things — particularly
when major accidents result! Absolutely nothing is the answer. What is
really being defended is the right of management to operate in a non-
democratic way. For safety to be properly protected in any industrial
enterprise, workers — who often see the problems first hand — would have
to have a real say in management decisions and what priorities should
be.
But such an idea is treated as poison by bosses everywhere, in
newspapers and television as much as in the chemical industry.
Anarchists argue that this is a crucial issue. The chemical industry is
one particularly good example of it. It isn’t the technology of making
chemicals — drugs etc. — that is so much the problem, as the way it is
organised. Right now it is organised in a non-democratic, hierarchial
way. And, not surprisingly, the interests of workers and residents are
second fiddle to those of the real powerbrokers — the shareholders. But
such a way of organising things is not set in stone. It can be changed.