Reviews find production comes before safety on the waterfront
Port of Tauranga employers copped most criticism from inspectors who conducted safety checks at 13 ports after two worker deaths this year. Amanda Cropp reports.
Safety reviews at 13 New Zealand ports have highlighted worker concerns about the risk of fatigue-related accidents as commercial pressure grows to ‘‘get the job done’’. Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Michael Wood ordered a national inquiry into port safety in April after two port worker deaths within a week, and initial reports have revealed there can be a disconnect between managers’ perceptions of safety standards, and what frontline workers say is actually happening.
At the Port of Tauranga, Maritime NZ and WorkSafe inspectors were told ‘‘tool box’’ safety briefings were faked, with workers signing their names on an attendance list for meetings that never took place, and reviewers said that if this was true, employers must take steps to ensure this ‘‘alleged subterfuge’’ was stopped.
One Tauranga port employer was described as having a culture of ‘‘production over safety’’ where accidents and incidents were dealt with when they happened, and less attention was given to prevention.
Inspectors met representatives from port management, stevedoring companies, health and safety teams, and unions on their site visits.
Summaries of 13 port safety assessment released under the Official Information Act note many good practices, such as new log-handling machines removing workers from harm’s way.
But they also identified areas in need of improvement including working at heights and under suspended loads, training, and fatigue, with the latter raised as an issue at Tauranga, Lyttelton, Napier and CentrePort (Wellington).
Workers complained about 12-hour shifts, and the potential for fatigue-related accidents as commercial pressure from shipping companies increased competition between ports.
Some Tauranga workers reported working 12-hour shifts eight days in a row and being told to ‘‘self-manage’’ their fatigue.
The review said workers transferred between ports did not have their hours of travel counted as work, so someone making the four-hour drive from Wellington to Tauranga was expected to start a 12-hour shift on arrival.
Requests for minimum staffing levels were ignored in some cases, so the number of people in a gang could change from one day to the next, even though the task remained the same.
‘‘More than once across the port inspectors were told there is often pressure on workers to ‘get the job done’,’’ the safety review said.
At Lyttelton, inspectors said some port workers were satisfied with shift arrangements, but others who worked 72 hours over six days, followed by 36 hours off, felt the period of downtime was too short.
Auckland and Lyttelton port companies have come under scrutiny following worker deaths this year, but they faced considerably less criticism than Tauranga in the safety assessments.
Lyttelton workers were pulled up for not wearing PPE properly, and at Auckland those driving cars off ships broke speed limits and failed to wear seat belts, issues both port companies say have been dealt with.
Maritime NZ director Kirstie Hewlett says the port summaries should not be regarded as an audit, or approval of health and safety practices.
They just provided a snapshot at a point in time, and were not able to cover all activities, with time
constraints preventing an in-depth assessment of training levels and standards.
At Tauranga, inspectors identified a number of shortcomings around training, and said businesses ‘‘must take steps to address the apparent inconsistencies between what the managers believe is in place, and what the workers are actually doing around the port’’.
Inspectors noted that training and standards for similar duties at Tauranga varied between different employers, and despite workers having been seriously injured in falls from heights in recent accidents at the port, there were concerns about one business regularly allowing untrained employees to work at height.
Due to language barriers, a training programme run by one operator had only one trainer to train all the workers from a foreign country, and a sampling of training records found a crane operator had completed only two or the four competencies required for his job.
Port of Tauranga chief executive Leonard Sampson points out the inspectors’ assessment covers at least six business operators including stevedores C3, SSA, ISO and ISL, and the port company’s individual report ‘‘didn’t raise any major concerns for either the regulators or ourselves’’.
He says they have not found any evidence of safety briefings being recorded, but not actually held, and employees from other businesses are free to raise such issues at shared safety forums.
‘‘There’s lots of private and public avenues to raise concerns and people often do.’’
Ports of Auckland chief executive Roger Gray has appointed an additional five experienced port workers, including the president of the Maritime Union, to coach staff on workplace behaviour.
‘‘I don’t think safety is about monitoring, it is about leading people by example.’’
Pat Kirk chairs the safety committee for the Port Industry Association, a body representing ports and major stevedore employers, and he disputes the claims about punishing rosters.
‘‘We’ve found that, for the past couple of years, supply chain congestion and labour shortages have been a far greater factor in fatigue management than shift patterns.’’
Kirk says a port sector health and safety leadership group with representatives from unions, regulators and industry will shortly launch new fatigue management guidelines, and they will help come up with tailored solutions to meet the needs of each port.
Maritime Union national secretary Craig Harrison says attitudes are changing, and he is aware of workers fired for serious health and safety breaches.
‘‘For a significant period of time safety briefings have not been taken as seriously as they should have been, but over the last 12 months I am starting to see change.’’
However, Harrison is not confident the disconnect between workers and managers over safety has been sorted yet.
‘‘This will take a while to fix, as it involves building trust within the workforce to be engaged and feel that they’re being listened to.’’
The 13 port assessments will feed into a national safety report looking at who was being hurt, how, and why, and a draft action plan will be presented to Wood in the next couple of months.
Some Tauranga workers reported working 12-hour shifts eight days in a row and being told to ‘‘self-manage’’ their fatigue.