A Fountainhead of Safety? – The Australian Institute of Heinrich and Skinner

History never says goodbye – It really means see you later

Eduardo Galeano

A Karl Marx essay, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon is the source of a renowned quote from many historians…….History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. It reflects and aligns with Hegel’s philosophy regarding the apparent reincarnation of tragic global events. Moreover, organisations are an anthropomorphic fallacy with no memory, soul to save or body to incarcerate and the legacy becomes a millstone around the neck of society. Indeed, risk is socially constructed, inherently subjective and heavily influenced by prevailing circumstances. This defines the current predicament of industrial safety and has generated a sinister revival of atavistic accident theory with the renaissance of cognitive behaviourism and operant conditioning via the black box psychology of behaviour based safety, which inevitably blames the victim on the carousel of culpability. ^2–10

The Gilded Age

As the 19^th century waned Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner published a burlesque novel entitled The Gilded Age – A Tale of Today, which satirised the endemic deleterious greed and political corruption festering amongst US industry and commerce. It epitomised an emerging class of robber barons promoting innovation via crepuscular business scams that encouraged widespread commercial terrorism. A collaboration of buccaneering entrepreneurs supported by cohorts of socially autistic mercenaries established enormous trusts, which monopolised the manufacture of essential goods and distribution of critical services. ^11–10

This vast economic power engendered political influence via intensive lobbying that usurped federal, state and local government politics and legislation. It imposed a social and moral tyranny upon the lumpenproletariat and generated immense inequality with widespread subjugation of vulnerable migrants on the road to serfdom. It catalysed the ascent of William M. Tweed with an emergence of grubby Tammany Hall politics throughout New York State. Many men, women and children were typically engaged under indentured servitude or peonage and most factories, farms, stockyards and mines across the United States became hellhole slave pits. The deplorable inhumane conditions were repeatedly exposed by several noble journalists including Upton Sinclair, Ida Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens with admirable support from radical activists such as Emma Goldman and Joe Hill. ^15–24

Many of the rapacious corporate tycoons, which included the usual suspects such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, John Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie were oblivious to the social and environmental consequences and basked in extraordinary wanton gluttony to become commercial icons and household names with celebrity status. Additional reprehensible creatures included James G. Blaine, the Republican presidential candidate and the railroad magnate Jason Jay Gould, a devout advocate of eugenics who sanctimoniously proclaimed he……….Could hire one half of the working class to kill the other half. ^25–32

Rapid industrialisation and development with an unprecedented influx of vulnerable migrants supported by an ideology of self-reliance and primitive individualism inevitably generated class warfare. The arrogance of a new economic order underpinned by hubris incited widespread and often violent industrial action that witnessed the assassination of President William McKinley in an era eloquently and uniquely depicted by the acclaimed novelist John Dos Passos. ^33–35

It required answers to many critical questions that the lumpenproletariat dared not ask. Indeed, several of the issues are covered by the iconoclastic philosopher, the late Bertrand Russell in a timeless essay first published in 1932 and entitled In Praise of Idleness. Moreover, recent lyrics from a Texan troubadour, the late Guy Clark resonate…Survival’s never graceful when the changes come too fast. ^36–38

The initial response to rampant unfettered capitalism from the federal government was painstakingly slow although the bacchanalia and decadence of the roaring twenties quickly dissipated following the 1929 stock market crash. The situation was exacerbated by extreme drought and dust bowl conditions across the US and Canadian prairies, which culminated in unprecedented austerity, despair and anomie during the Great Depression. The solution involved antitrust legislation supplemented by Keynesian economics via Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal of relief, recovery and reform. ^39–45

Across the Atlantic Ocean in the United Kingdom equally appalling conditions prevailed. Legislation included the Health and Morals of Apprentices Act, which was initially implemented by Sir Robert Peel back in 1802. This was augmented by the holy trinity of common employment, voluntary assumption of risk and contributory negligence. It was eventually superseded by the Factory and Workshop Act 1895, which intended to regulate the conditions, safety, health and wages of people working in factories throughout the United Kingdom via a prescribe, police and punish regime However, Dickensian conditions prevailed and the industrial carnage continued relentlessly……He not busy being born is busy dying and if my thought dreams could be seen, they’d probably put my head in a guillotine but it’s alright ma, I’m only bleeding. ^46–52

The times they are a changin’

Meaningful humanitarian reform only occurred decades later following the Aberfan and Farmington disasters in the 1960s. The Aberfan tragedy in October 1966 involved the deaths of many infants when thixotropic tailings from a coalmine slag heap engulfed the Pantglas junior school in South Wales. Following a prolonged tribunal of inquiry it was later described as a mistake that cost a village its children. No criminal charges ensued and not a single National Coal Board executive was demoted or lost their job. Preventive statutory occupational health and safety legislation was eventually gazetted in the United Kingdom via the Health and Safety at Work Act etc Act 1974, which codified the duty of care principles of common law. ^53–63

The 1968 Farmington mining disaster in the United States claimed the lives of 78 coal miners and in December the following year Richard Tricky Dicky Nixon declined to meet with the inconsolable widows at the White House. After a prolonged and bitter battle that lasted almost a century, the slippery president reluctantly endorsed the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act. It eventually convinced mine owners, political leaders and health professionals about the deleterious effects of respirable coal dust. The legislation ratified the controversial black lung benefits scheme and established the Mine Health and Safety Administration agency with statutory obligations covering inspections of underground and open cut operations. It also prescribed requirements covering coal dust exposure limits and health surveillance. Some six months earlier on 20^th July 1969, the Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong walked on the moon and proclaimed….That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. ^64–72

The 1960s also witnessed the emergence of Ralph Nader, a prolific political activist and publication of his influential treatise entitled Unsafe at Any Speed. The book excoriated the US motor vehicle industry and disclosed the turpitude of General Motors with many astonishing revelations. It eventually led to the establishment of the US Department of Transportation and seatbelt legislation was implemented throughout most states. The response from General Motors was somewhat malevolent and the splenetic retribution included sustained harassment and intimidation in an unsuccessful attempt to extirpate the integrity of the consumer rights advocate. The Texan freedom fighter successfully sued GM for invasion of privacy and has since embarked on a sustained campaign, which frequently exposes corporate corruption and malfeasance. This includes recent condemnation of the Boeing Company and its senior management, including chief executive officer Dennis Muilenberg following the Boeing 737 Max Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 disasters. ^73–88

Déjà vu?

Progressive radical reform and global activism during the 1960s included significant social upheaval throughout France supported by numerous anti-war and nuclear disarmament protests across the US and United Kingdom. Reaction from corporate America was rather lacklustre although the hiatus merely presaged the long march of neoliberalism with its holy trinity of privatisation, diminution and deregulation and deification of the Friedman doctrine. The ideology emerged from the prodigious Chicago school of economics in a city where another notorious professional gangster plied his trade of extortion and intimidation throughout the 1920s. The entrepreneurial psychopath was convicted of tax evasion and admitted to the Atlanta US penitentiary and eventually transferred to Alcatraz in San Francisco bay. ^89–98

Corporate America’s offensive began in earnest via the infamous Lewis Powell memorandum and collaboration with Bryce Harlow, a lobbyist for Procter and Gamble. It was a blueprint to usurp democracy and extirpate the progressive social reforms from the 1960s. It garnered additional fervent support from several colourful racing identities including John Harper, a hatchet faced martinet and senior executive with Alcoa and William Baroody Sr. from the American Enterprise Institute. The lobbying juggernaut rolled into Washington DC to advocate the plutocratic merger of state and corporate interests and expand laissez faire economics ideology via regulatory and policy capture. Resplendent offices soon appeared along Massachusetts Avenue and the noisy influential neighbours on think tank row included organisations such as the Rand Corporation, Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute. ^99–113

Neoliberalism intensified via the Thatcher and Reagan alliance under the guise of trickle-down economics, which promoted freedom of choice via the sophism….There is no alternative. However, as the corporate pirates plundered the planet casino capitalism prevailed with a winner takes all ethos and somewhat predictably, the accrued wealth failed to cascade down to the lower echelons of society. Indeed, the unprecedented profits were insatiably privatised and any deficits or losses were dispersed and subsequently socialised, which generated escalating inequality. ^114–117

The brutal intent of free market fundamentalism was quite evident throughout Chile during the 1970s with the despoliation of its vast mineral resources and a coup d’état that removed its socialist president, Salvador Allende. The ideology was also enthusiastically embraced by many western democracies, which included the Hawke and Keating counterfeit labour governments in Australia and the Conservative Party of Canada under the tenure of Stephen Harper, a subsequent lobbyist for the mining, fabrication and use of chrysotile asbestos. ^118–127

In Australia, the corporate coup d’état gathered increasing momentum under John Howard’s neoliberal regime with assistance from many fawning acolytes, which included the four horsemen of the apocalypse, Peter Reith (Conquest), Kevin Andrews (Famine), Tony Abbott (War) and Philip Ruddock (Death). This involved the draconian and extremely unpopular work choices legislation and dissolution of the autonomous National Occupational Health and Safety Commission. Ingratiating support was provided from a former BHP executive who was appointed as an interim chairperson during its transition from an independent statutory body to Safe Work Australia, which is merely a captured government agency. ^128–137

Despite the election of a labor government in 2007 the ruthless neoliberal blitzkrieg continued via its economically conservative leader and treacherous solipsist, who publicly renounced democratic socialism as an arcane 19^th century doctrine shortly before assuming office. The renowned narcissist was recently rewarded with life membership of the Australian Labor Party although expulsion or rustication would have been a more condign option, especially after the disastrous home insulation program and deaths of four young workers. ^138–143

Moreover, following sustained lobbying via the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry under Peter Hendy and the Employers Federation via Garry (FIFO) Brack, the harmonisation of safety legislation became a trojan horse. It merely absolved duty of care and provided many corporate guerrillas with impunity. This often included an acquiescent social license to operate amidst a plutocratic maelstrom with a malevolent freedom to harm, which was especially convenient during the resources boom. The corporate hubris is unrelenting via their lobbyists who unashamedly advocate for directors’ insurance against criminal penalties for breaching statutory work health and safety legislation. It is a travesty of law and the standard of justice, much like health care, will eventually be determined by bank balances or credit card limits.……Money doesn’t talk it swears – American Express, that’ll do nicely, sir. ^144–155

Meanwhile in April 2007, the emergence of the subprime mortgage debacle across the United States presented additional foreboding challenges. The gigantic festering Ponzi scheme resembled a house of cards built on estuarine mud flats and inevitably imploded. It degenerated into a cataclysmic global financial crisis, which has since transformed into an autophagous frenzy of catabolic capitalism to remain afloat. A string of devastating consequences soon emerged via disasters such as Deepwater Horizon, Upper Big Branch, Pike River, Lac Megantic, Rana Plaza, Soma Eynez, BHP Samarco, Dreamworld, Grenfell Tower, Morandi Bridge and Vale Brumadinho. ^156–170

This was compounded by the resurgence of industrial diseases such as mesothelioma, black lung and silicosis with escalating psychosocial issues, suicide rates and inequality. Almost every problem can be traced to rampant unfettered capitalism and corporate malfeasance. If any skerrick of profit materialises the devastating consequences are summarily disregarded and it becomes irrelevant how many people suffer and die or whether endangered species are extinguished. Moreover, Josef Stalin’s maxim resonates…….One death is a tragedy and million is a statistic. ^171–180

Post-mortems or coronial inquiries invariably sacrifice the truth via denial, lame excuses, diversion or obfuscation with junk science to protect reputations and secure remaining assets. Furthermore, most global corporations have usurped governments and framed legislation to sanction their heinous crimes. The framework becomes a marketing platform for their dangerous goods and unethical practices that includes widespread manipulation of data. Meanwhile, worst becomes first and best is last, which creates a decadent society with desperate and homeless beggars trawling through eBay on smartphones in a frantic search for seasonally adjusted discounts on winter tents……God bless America. ^181–190

Despite the industrial carnage and inhumane social consequences many critics, which include several historians reject superficial comparisons with the Gilded Age and Great Depression. Solutions such as a return to Keynesian economics or another New Deal are considered inapposite and may even exacerbate the current situation. It illustrates there are serious ethical concerns when society allows itself to be driven by a market economy and a much more fundamental review of the role of government is required. This requires resetting market and state parameters and establishing how a civilised and democratic society must treat its people. ^191–196

Following the global financial crisis the free market advocates admitted their entire intellectual edifice had collapsed and it is time for their opponents to fill the vacuum. The subsequent venal populism will only be defeated using politics of paradise with a reinvention of the progressive trinity of liberty, equality and fraternity rather than the traditional dour labourism of industrial society. This should enable the lumpenproletariat to gain control of their lives and achieve social and economic security via an equitable share of tangible assets….Come senators and congressmen, please heed the call. Don’t stand in the doorway don’t block up the hall. ^197–201

This is my truth tell me yours

The resurgence of black lung across the Appalachian coalfields in the US and throughout Queensland’s Bowen Basin in Australia has generated devastating social and financial consequences. Since 1970 black lung compensation claims in the US have exceeded $45 billion. It amounts to many hospitals and other public health infrastructure and the performance can only be described as mediocre at best. In Queensland there are currently 105 confirmed cases of mine dust lung diseases although it enigmatically disappears in New South Wales coal mines. However, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and the McJob gig economy with contingent labour hire and exploitation of vulnerable workers are significant armaments in Abaddon’s arsenal and may be masquerading reality. Indeed, a recent Queensland state parliamentary inquiry revealed a catastrophic breakdown of a regulatory system that was intended to secure and protect the health and safety of coal miners. ^202–211

Evidence from public hearing transcripts provides numerous examples of intimidating, inhumane and mercenary leadership amidst the harrowing plight of many abandoned victims and their distraught dependents. Meanwhile, the International Labour Organization Convention C176 Safety and Health in Mines remains unratified. ^212–215

More recently a middle-aged Queensland stonemason succumbed to silicosis and almost 100 tradesmen throughout Queensland have been diagnosed with the disease. Some victims are categorised as terminally ill and an additional 800 potential casualties are undergoing diagnostic testing at a cost of approximately $1.5 million. Many patients will require lung transplants and it will place enormous strain on a struggling public health system. A senior physician has predicted the problem will escalate and the crisis could be become much worse than asbestos related diseases. ^216–218

In November 2017, the former executive director of SafeWork South Australia, Marie Boland was appointed by Safe Work Australia to review the model work health and safety laws. The subsequent report was released in February 2019 and concludes the model laws are operating largely as intended and support for the harmonisation objective remains strong. The statement was endorsed by the Safety Institute of Australia and is quite extraordinary considering the primary object of the model Work Health and Safety Act is to provide for a balanced and nationally consistent framework and secure the health and safety of people at work. ^219–225

After almost two decades, the chimera of harmonisation and national uniformity resembles a dog’s breakfast and has become increasingly complicated and vexatious. Several jurisdictions have embarked on a race to the bottom and implemented distinct health and safety statutes covering their mining and resources sectors, which are administered by alternative state government authorities. It can generate potential conflicts of interest and significantly increase the risk of regulatory or policy capture. This was recognised almost three decades ago by Lord Cullen during the public inquiry into the 1988 Piper Alpha oil rig disaster, which claimed the lives of 167 people. It is further exacerbated by the minefield of industrial manslaughter legislation, which is fraught with complex legal technicalities covering the burden of proof pertaining to negligence and recklessness. Moreover, the act is not culpable unless the mind is guilty and additional legislation is merely an encumbrance if the current framework is operating as intended. ^226–238

The late Aneurin Nye Bevan once described the UK Tory Party as….Nothing but organised spivvery and lower than vermin………In the current neoliberal climate of click democracy and casino capitalism littered with alternative facts and fake news another abrasive Bevan maxim resonates and became the title of a critically acclaimed album by the Manic Street Preachers……..This is my truth tell me yours. ^239–245

Ayn Rand Safety

The recent resurgence of black lung throughout Queensland’s coal mining industry produced a rather abysmal or even pusillanimous response from the Safety Institute of Australia and its bedwetting acolytes. The peak safety body failed somewhat miserably to provide any submissions to the state parliamentary inquiry or afford official representation at numerous public hearings throughout metropolitan Brisbane and regional Queensland. This was raised publicly with its chairperson during the launch of its strategic plan at a Queensland branch meeting and also discussed with the chief executive officer. The duo was at least consistent and offered an extraordinary response claiming the organisation had insufficient technical expertise. It was quite a remarkable admission considering it offers a program for certification of safety professionals and was somewhat discordant with its policy, vision and values. Moreover, the conspiratorial silence and inertia was hardly a voice for the unique perspectives of its profession. ^246–258

The Safety Institute of Australia has subliminally commodified safety and it is merely another cog in an enormous festering Ponzi scheme, which embraces pyramid selling with aggressive and deceptive telemarketing. It operates like a captured agency with obedience to the orthodoxy and its reticence and collective inertia was effectively censorship by omission and redolent of cognitive policy capture…….The opposite of courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow. ^259–263

This parochial sect is peddled as the national association for the health and safety profession in Australia with a unique voice to positively influence the development of health and safety policy and practice, which is reinforced by its vision for safe and healthy people in productive workplaces. It supports and endorses the current Safe Work Australia strategy, which proclaims………..It has been shown that good work health and safety improves long-term business productivity. Extreme caution is required with such medieval cause and effect ideology as correlation does not imply causation and the primary object of safety legislation is to secure the health and safety of people at work. The tenuous relationship between safety and productivity (production per unit of time) is diffuse, probabilistic and certainly not deterministic. It is incongruous with the rather clandestine Health and Safety Professionals Alliance code of ethics and the International Commission on Occupational Health publication. Indeed labour encompasses health, safety and welfare and is independent of and far superior to capital, productivity or production and merits much greater significance. ^264–276

This commodification, social atomisation and uberisation of safety has created a cult following that reflects and aligns with Ayn Rand objectivism, which advocates primitive individualism and the deification of unbridled laissez faire capitalism. It is a brutal extension of F. W. Taylor’s scientific management principles that dehumanises reality via technocratic rationality with sinister social consequences. These include decadent materialism, solipsism and selective breeding via eugenics, which is forebodingly reminiscent of Aldous Huxley’s dystopian society: ^277–287

O wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,

That has such people in’t.

The Australian Institute of Heinrich and Skinner

The Safety Institute of Australia is a custodian of the Occupational Health and Safety Body of Knowledge, which defines collective knowledge that should be shared by Australian Generalist OHS Professionals as a basis for understanding the causation and control of work related fatality, injury, disease and ill-health. However, the ubiquitous tentacles of free market fundamentalism and regulatory or policy capture have extended into the vocational and tertiary education sector and permeates the body of knowledge and work health and safety curricula. ^288–295

There is an extreme preoccupation with scientism, structuralism and positivism supplemented by statutory legislation, which is underpinned by the precautionary principle. It discounts the inherent subjective nature of risk and has generated a tyranny of bureaucracy in an otiose attempt to square the circle via one objective brain and technocratic rationality. This beguilement with rational decision making disregards the enigmatic interdependency of our 3.14159 recurring subjective minds and any concept of discernment, collective unconscious, satisficing, heuristics or arational thinking is typically disparaged and often demonised as blue sky thinking. ^296–309

It has created an alarming resurgence of atavistic accident theory with an inordinate reliance on reactive performance metrics, which is exacerbated by a zero harm fatwa and denies fallibility. This feudal sorcery is littered with pejorative terminology that creates pettifogging and the metric gets manipulated to embellish the ideology. Moreover, the social atomisation and primitive individualism destroys communities of practice, incidental learning and tacit knowledge. It extirpates trust and repeatedly blames the victim on the carousel of culpability, which generates fear although it further reinforces Wilhelm Reich’s observations……Scientific theory is a contrived foothold in the chaos of living phenomena. ^310–317

The junk science is typically aggravated by the black box psychology of behaviour based safety and other sinister and rather narrow behaviourist concepts, which undermines morality and progressively erodes common law rights. Conventional examples include human factors, safety culture and neuroscience with various other flavours of the month such as the current fad of behavioural economics nudge theory. Behaviourists have inveigled many of its acolytes to believe behaviour is a simple stimulus and response relationship. It fails, quite spectacularly, to explain how Beethoven’s late quartets were a conditioned response to his prevailing circumstances, especially during the final decade of an illustrious career in classical music. ^318–328

B. F. Skinner was the pioneer of radical behaviourism via operant conditioning and many of his books were written about people although most of his experiments were conducted on rodents or pigeons. This clinical and dehumanising process often depicts more about the superiority and pomposity of its observers rather than the performance of their scrutinised targets. It is littered with pejorative language and ambiguous assumptions and its many limitations can generate persistent counterproductive consequences, which include the sinister spectre of eugenics……The fundamentalists have taken the fun out of mental. ^329–333

Since the late 1990s, the corporate tyranny has intensified and is unmistakably recognisable amongst many contemporary global behemoths across Australia and presents formidable challenges. The response often creates increasing obscurantism with more questions than answers via junk science, necromancy or feudal witchcraft. This is repeatedly regurgitated throughout numerous formulaic safety conferences using death by Pierrepoint presentations littered with third rate material delivered by even lower grade acquiescent minds, which is hardly a necessity of life. ^334–338

The annual gala trivia ball occasionally involves a cameo appearance from a silver spoon academic reproducing the esteemed research of Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe. It typically leaves the sectarian WISH, YSP, LGBTQIWTF or #sapphiclivesmatter factions in fits of giggles with wet knickers to network amongst insignificant opportunistic hacks, bloggers or pesky barflies and publish solipsistic selfies on tedious antisocial media platforms. Meanwhile, the victims of black lung, mesothelioma, and silicosis struggle to sleep at night. The Safety Institute of Australia and its bedwetting acolytes are merely docile passengers in an unrocked boat as it navigates the treacherous dichotomy between securing the health, safety and welfare of people at work via academic impotence with an obedience to the orthodoxy and deification of the sacred Friedman doctrine………..We know what happens to people who stand in the middle of the road; they get run over. ^339–350

Following several years of internecine bickering, disunity and litigation many of its remaining Randroids, parasites, hucksters and troglodytes embarked on a brutal mechanistic discourse of protective stupidity, predictive policing, doublespeak and thoughtcrime, which is underpinned by a totalitarian and binary zero tolerance fatwa. More recently the organisation endorsed a change of its trading name in a belated attempt to repair a tattered image and restore its diaphanous integrity. Indeed, the professionally organised spivvery or passive vicarious entertainment on 24/7 cable television telemarketing channels is far more appealing with a markedly superior status and credibility. ^351–359

The Australian Institute of Heinrich and Skinner would be a much more appropriate title to align with its predominant scientism and positivism. Moreover, the body of knowledge should be rebranded as the Fountainhead of Safety to reflect its disproportionate objectivism, structuralism and Weltenschuuang. Back in 2012 when the former UK prime minister David (I was the future once) Cameron threatened……To kill off the health and safety monster, he could never have envisaged such autophagous assistance from a peak industry body and sectarian cult of certified malaperts. ^360–369