Working with the miners

This is important for a professional to understand that to get a workforce in a hazardous environment to believe in safety they need to never take safety negatively, once you go negative you lose your workforces respect and if you lose the men’s respect they will stop listening to you. If the incident was an accident (a series of unforseen events that will take place) and you have given out a written warning for a mistake then you will lose the respect of the men, often a verbalized warning is enough, call it having a chat and just write it down and get them to sign it.

You need to understand that to the outside world these are the jobs that HR people (with a degree) call unskilled labour when they talk about mining. They define most mining jobs as labouring jobs because the job has no value anywhere but a mine, it’s not like a fitter or a sparky, miners can only mine on a Minesite so it is unskilled labour according to the people with degrees. So when you ask about miner’s jobs you could be talking about 20+ jobs.

An example, in Hardrock underground mining a miner could be driving a truck for $325 a day or $1500 operating a jumbo, not bad for a day’s pay for unskilled labour. Why do they get payed so much for what they do? If they do it with care and respect these guys make a huge difference to the bottom line, in both safety and profit. If you and the miners can find the balance between safety and production you will achieve a safe work place.

You show me a professional work place I will show you a safe work place.

This is the running speed of your S/p (Safety/profit) of your mine. Go too fast and you will have incidents however if you go too slow you end up with mistakes. It has to be a balance to achieve this but it can be done.

It is ultimately the sole control of the people doing the job, their experience and understanding that determines whether the job is done safely or not.

Working in a hazardous workplace the miners are able to:

Spot the hazards;

Fix the hazards;

and have the confidence to stop the work;

In other words, their skills control the hazards in the workplace. So in order to achieve a safe work place, the worker needs to not only believe that a safe workplace is possible they must also have a broad understanding of the job and a belief in themselves to carry out the job safely. Again, it is ultimately the sole control of the people doing the job, their experience and understanding that determines whether the job is done safely or not.

Positive Tips

Safety can’t be bought, faked or obtained by fear it can only be earned with time and vigilance. To achieve this safe workplace we need to have a positive attitude towards and personal belief in safety.

Learn as much about the job as you can. Remember there is more than one way to do a job.

Believe in your skills to do the work. Safety comes from doing the job the right way.

Most important is the confidence to stop the work when the hazard can not be controlled.