Tuesday, November 06, 2012

Someone is knowingly lying here. Is it Red Alert?


This is from the last published NZ Yearbook - 2010. Not fully up-to-date but it'll suffice.

Between 2004 and 2009 there was an average of 8.5 construction-related deaths (investigated by OSH).

In a post about "unsafe building practices", Red Alert says:

The NZ Herald reported on November 2nd that since July, more than 400 actions have been taken against 760 construction sites for not complying with guidelines on safe working at height. Inspectors shut down 215 of the sites, and issued more than 160 written warnings requiring immediate remedial action.
While Construction Minister Maurice Williamson finally admits there is a problem, this Government has had four years in office, and in the meantime, we’ve had an average of 100 deaths a year, with workplace injuries and fatalities reportedly costing New Zealand about $3.5 billion annually.
Better check out what the NZ Herald said:

Workplace injuries and fatalities cost New Zealand about $3.5 billion annually and 100 people on average die each year.

100 workplace fatalities. That means 'construction' and every and any other industry. This is a classic case of conflation.

Each of these deaths  represents untold grief and it's unpleasant to discuss them in the context of controversial statistics. But I cannot believe that in 2010 and 2011 deaths due to building accidents increased twelve-fold.

I heard a caller to talkback pushing this so-called building fatality rate. His position was that if they all happened at once it would be a national disaster but because they happened in a staggered fashion they went under the radar. He said he was a building safety officer so no excuse for getting it so wrong. Perhaps he was a  Labour propagandist.

11 comments:

mark said...

Of course, like welfare, the wealth of experience you have puts you in a position to comment about work place safety.

Lindsay Mitchell said...

I wasn't commenting about workplace safety. I was commenting about manipulation of statistics. Would you like to contribute on that subject?

KG said...

Don't be silly, Lindsay, that would require Mark to..you know..think.
I'd expect his silence to continue.

Adolf Fiinkensein said...

Of course they lie.

They are socialists.

Johnny said...

Mark said

"Of course, like welfare, the wealth of experience you have puts you in a position to comment about work place safety".

Then we should close down all newspapers, cos I suspect there are few workplace safety experts trained as journalists.

(Probably few workplace safety experts as well trained as workplace safety experts).

PM of NZ said...

All the leftards are doing is taking up the issue so they can place their own 'highly trained' H&S bludgers into each workplace. For the lay person, a trojan horse for installing unionised stooges that do nothing for the bottom line into each workplace under the guise of 'safety'.

Zoe Black said...

Part of that jump was due to Pike River (Nov 2010), although obviously it is still distorted upwards.

Paranormal said...

Generally the H&S person is the white coated terror.

A friend of mine was one of the senior managers on a major project. The H&S nazi on the project was a real prick - threatening to close the site down when cars weren't parked exactly according to his direction etc. They finally got rid of him when he wanted the site shut down because of a highly toxic chemical onsite.

At one of the managers meetings he presented his case about this highly toxic chemical and how unsafe it was and he'd have to shut the site down until the problem was rectified by removal of the chemical and site clean up. It was a huge presentation full of detailed information researched by the H&S guy.

They were all quite worried until they discovered he was talking about the little blue smelly cakes in the toilets.

Anonymous said...

CR, you are a rightist hypocrite, as angry and as narrow minded as the leftards that you so disparage. Do you blog from underground.

Jo.

Anonymous said...

I'm wondering if the stats used by the Hearld include deaths during the CHCH earthquake. As they happened in a workplace they could be counted. That would be a gross distortion of the stats, but still valid stats.

Also as a Health and Safety delegate and a union rep, I feel I can say without any bias, that it makes no commercial sense to had bad H&S policies. One bad accident and the cost to the employers is huge. It's cheaper to have good sensible policies before an accident happens. Heavy emphasis on good and sensible policies. Ruining your employer finacially is just dumb.

Brian.

Anonymous said...

If the statistics are correct or not I do not know.However if there is an increase I can comment on my observations.When times are tough the tough get going.Not always in a good way.Who would make a fuss when safety practices are not up the standard when you may lose your job?And on top of that threat you may find it hard to get another job.This is reality.I work around the Construction Industry and not all employers give a toss about their workers welfare.This is fact.You are supposed to fill out accident reports and say what went wrong and how to avoid an accident in future.When are these checked and discussed by anyone in authority?There needs to be spot checks of worksites. That is no appointments or warnings.