Health & Safety regulation

Daegerty

Revolving door thread got me thinking. I have always thought it was a bit mad to try and child/idiot-proof the world and the whole movement seems to be headed by a bunch of well paid public servants who are completely out of touch with reality and spend their days "thinking of the children"

Everything in life has risks, live and let live, life where everything is idiot proof would be very boring, etc, etc.

galwayrush

Common sense is more important, a lot of regulations are for stupid people.

Daegerty

galwayrush wrote: »

Common sense is more important, a lot of regulations are for stupid people.

Unfortunately they have the tendency to unduly restrict the not so stupid people

RachaelVO

It's the anal retention that goes along with a lot of health and safety that drives me insane! A common sense approach, and encouraging a common sense approach is a far more worthy exercise. I did see it once in train station, a cleaner was asked to pick up a piece of paper, and he said (and I'm not kidding) that he couldn't cos his job was to sweep, and to pick it up he'd have to go back into the cleaning supplies office and get special gloves for health and safety. IT WAS A CRISP PACKET that was CLEARLY empty. The supervisor just picked it up himself.

Stained Class

Health & safety inspectors are usually the type who are unable/unwilling to do real life productive jobs.

They just like to criticise those who do.

Daegerty

RachaelVO wrote: »

The supervisor just picked it up himself.

FFS the only thing he should have picked up was a long stick to give yer man a good hard belt with

Pushover.

Mike 1972

RachaelVO wrote: »

I did see it once in train station, a cleaner was asked to pick up a piece of paper, and he said (and I'm not kidding) that he couldn't cos his job was to sweep, and to pick it up he'd have to go back into the cleaning supplies office and get special gloves for health and safety.

Why are you scapegoating health and safety when the problem was obviously a lazy employee ?

Ken.

I remember once on a building site in waterford a safety officer came over as we were setting up a ladder at the side of a building. He told us that before anyone went up the ladder it had to be tied off at the top. We asked how do we accomplish that, his reply was "its my job to enforce the rules not come up with solutions"
My fathers (ex army, 6'1 tug of war champion) solution was to tell him to f off for 5 mins and all would be fine. The guy did f off but that might be because my father had a sledge hammer on his shoulder and had an evil look on his face.

Solnskaya

"Health and Safety" is actually a misnomer. The field should actually be called "Claims Avoidance". That then would at least be honest. If you think about it, the entire sector is dedicated to preventing even the most inept and deserving from getting hurt in any way, or if they do get hurt, proving to a judge that all possible measures were taken to attempt to prevent that incident from occuring. "The Department of Ar5e Covering" could be another name for it. It is sadly the result of all those "Have you been the victim of an accident?" ads run by bottom feeder Law firms, and until the law is changed to become more like that in NewZealand, we are stuck with it. Personally, I hate the whole health and safety before personal responcibility culture with a passion.

Quiet you

The regulations are weird. On one hand there's a clause called "reasonably practicable", which as you may have figured out, means that you only need put systems in place that are reasonable to the potential harm that could be caused by a particular hazard. Therefore, no need to go overkill. On the other hand if an accident happens society is so litigeous that employers are paranoid so like to err on the side of caution..

Safety officers however are all failed gardai as far as I'm concerned and take things to extreme levels. Their fascist personalities coupled with a lack of knowledge of what real workers do or how they do it leads to them being terribly fun individuals altogether.

RachaelVO

Mike 1972 wrote: »

Why are you scapegoating health and safety when the problem was obviously a lazy employee ?

It highlights the bullsh1t that goes hand in hand with H&S.

RachaelVO

Daegerty wrote: »

FFS the only thing he should have picked up was a long stick to give yer man a good hard belt with

Pushover.

That's what I thought too. We were trying not to laugh, but it's ludicrous that you can quote h&s to your own advantage.

Quiet you

RachaelVO wrote: »

It highlights the bullsh1t that goes hand in hand with H&S.

Actually, that's a good point. Health and safety can finish a company financially. The regulations in some areas that cover the likes of stress and noise could cripple a company if some smart ar*e employee decided to pick a fight.

Solnskaya

Actually, the one inarguable reason for not doing a certain task, is "Health and safety". Legally, if an employee deems that a task may have H&S implications there is pretty much nothing an employer can do to get said employee to do that task, until the employees H&S concerns have been fully met. If you disciplined an employee for refusing to do somthing on the ground they felt it would be unsafe, no judge would refuse their claim for unreasonable dismissal etc.
I was in the High Court recently(some fecker was sueing me) and the case before mine was a lad who tripped on a footpath and broke somthing minor-his claim againstDCC was upheld and he got major money- all I was thinking was that he was massively overweight and looked fairly clumsy and deserved to be told to feck off and watch where he was walking in future, but no, cue €€€€ for him. (I won my case, btw)

ScumLord

Doing one health and safety course is fine, you find out how to do things safely. But of course the government have to turn the thing into a money spinning thing by demanding you do the course every year or two, no matter how basic the lessons are.

Safety is hugely important and we don't pay enough attention to it but that's because the health and safety rules are often arbitrary and just to be seen to do something. So people pay no attention to them and treat the whole thing as one big joke.

RachaelVO

Quiet you wrote: »

Actually, that's a good point. Health and safety can finish a company financially. The regulations in some areas that cover the likes of stress and noise could cripple a company if some smart ar*e employee decided to pick a fight.

That's exactly it! I can understand that you do have to have safety regulations. There's no questioning that. You can't have exposed electrical wires or plaster hanging off the ceiling, for example. That is something an employer should have to rectify.

But there are times when it's just ludicrous!!!!

Quiet you

RachaelVO wrote: »

That's exactly it! I can understand that you do have to have safety regulations. There's no questioning that. You can't have exposed electrical wires or plaster hanging off the ceiling, for example. That is something an employer should have to rectify.

But there are times when it's just ludicrous!!!!

Yip, I lost my job partly to health and safety gone mad. Sit still while I vent a while.

I worked in construction but more the maintenance end of things. There was plenty of work even after the crash. The problem came up when tendering for new work. Prices were down so that meant cut backs in profit but more importantly competition was very high.

There's a nice little clause that states anyone who hires a company to carry out work is just as liable for the health and safety of the contractor as the contractor themselves. That meant that my employer had to hire a safety officer to deal with all the paperwork because the more compliant you can show yourself to be and the better your record is, the better the chance of getting the contract is.

Problem is, normal people would never be a safety officer and the less then completely moronic nazi wannabes join the gardai which has left very few of them available, hence they don't come cheap and now I scratch myself just to break up the day.

Thanks HSA.