The program is based on key ergonomic principals and a strong communication strategy, with workers and their partners encouraged to speak up.

NSW Trade & Investment Practice leader Kylie Newton said the project involved researching and piloting innovative messages to support a site-based program.

“The pilot includes video and poster images of Tahmoor miners and their wives encouraging fellow workers and/or partners to get involved in the program,” she said.

It uses the tagline: “Speak Up, Don’t Make Yourself Bloody Useless”

The site-based component of the program utilises the concept of workers as the task experts.

With the assistance of several site “champions”, the aim of the program is to identify the mine’s most physically strenuous activities and then utilise the

hierarchy of control to implement changes to reduce the hazardous manual component of the task.

Tahmoor mine manager Peter Vale welcomed the project.

“Xstrata Coal Tahmoor was more than happy to pilot the ergonomics program,” he told MineSafetyUpdate.

“We have a number of operators with vast experience in the underground environment who can use their knowledge of the day-to-day tasks to determine a better way, and therefore avoid injuries.”

One Tahmoor “champion” participating in the program is longwall operator Michael Mackaway.

He believes the program “puts the focus on

returning home safe each day”

Mackaway said heavy work over time had eventually led to capable workers being unable to continue in their roles and they had to leave the industry prematurely.

He told MineSafetyUpdate” that he hoped the program would shift the focus of his workmates from trying to be the “strong man” to looking other ways to do the task, and avoid becoming “useless” to their families or workmates.