The report, Trust and Safety in the Coal Mining Sector, noted concerns arising from around 150 interviews of management and workers from both New South Wales and Queensland at 10 minesites, and involving three coal mining companies, corporate management, inspectors and trade union representatives.

The report also detailed management approaches of higher OHS performing operations.

In the introduction, authors Neil Gunningham and Darren Sinclair stated why trust was essential for OHS outcomes in the coal mining sector.

“Crucially, in earlier preliminary work, we found that where mistrust was not overcome, then workers treated almost all management safety initiatives with suspicion and refused to buy into them,” the report said.

“Consequently, even with the best of intentions on the part of corporate management, and the most sophisticated and ambitious OHS management tools, the presence or absence of trust has the potential to determine the ultimate success or failure of such initiatives, and thereby greatly influence OHS outcomes.

“Mistrust also handicaps the ability of inspectors to work together with minesites to improve OHS outcomes.”

The aftermath of the Gretly disaster in 1996 and a consequentially more prosecution or adversarial-orientated approach from state inspectorates, which includes holding individual mine managers accountable for deaths under criminal law, weighed in heavily in the level of mistrust across the spectrum of stakeholders involved with OHS in coal mining, according to the report.

The shift to an adversarial approach differs from the “advise and persuade” approach that the report says was employed by inspectorates prior to Gretly.

From the respondent answers, the report noted breakdowns in trust and communication between the mining industry and the relevant inspectorates – with this more evident in NSW than Queensland – and also that fear of prosecution may inhibit in-firm accident investigation, prevention and remedial action.

The threat of legal action and its consequences appear to be wide ranging from the report’s findings.

“For companies who perceive themselves as willing to comply voluntarily, or to go ‘beyond compliance’ [in OHS regulations], the fear of ‘unjust’ prosecution may also have a number of other unintended consequences – for example, a reluctance to report incidents,” the researchers said.

They said inspectors were also scared to speak out too much about safety concerns because of litigation fears.

“The new prosecution policy has substantially changed the behaviour of many inspectors who for the most part have now adopted a defensive, risk-averse strategy whereby they no longer provide advice for fear that this advice might be used as a defence by mining companies in future prosecutions,” the report said.

Report recommendations

Noting that the prosecution of individuals, particularly in the Gretly case, provoked a massive reaction from the mining industry where penalties were viewed as unfair as well as “sending an unacceptable message about the moral seriousness of the offence and the ‘criminality’ of individual managers”, the report reached a variety of conclusions with the key one focusing on issues involving the threat of prosecution.

“Rather than prosecuting routinely in the case of fatalities or serious injuries, prosecution should only take place against genuine ‘bad apples’, and in circumstances that will foster prevention rather than retribution,” the report said.

“The principal (but not exclusive) criteria for determining prosecution should be past track record, the seriousness of the risk and its potential consequences, and the degree of culpability of the offender (irrespective of whether death or injury has resulted).”

Other recommendations include the facilitation of regular, open meetings between mine managers and mine inspectors where issues can be raised without fear of self-incrimination, and an exploration of greater integration between company and inspectoral safety audits.

Operational differences between strong and weak OHS performing mines

The blame game is a big source of mistrust, according to the research undertaken, with lower OHS performing mines perceived to have breached “no-blame” policies.

“Many companies have introduced such policies in relation to the reporting of incidents, accidents and equipment damage, as one step towards establishing a safety culture,” the researchers said.

“However, there is evidence that in some lower performing mines the no-blame policy is not applied by all managers or in all circumstances.”

Turnover of senior management was another factor with four of the five lower OHS performing mines having a high turnover of senior management which included mine managers.

“This can greatly inhibit attempts to build and maintain trusting relationships between management and workers,” the report said.

“High turnover of management also raises doubts in the minds of workers as to the long-term viability of the mine.”

The ACARP report also found a “single catalytic event” which triggered a breakdown in trust between management and workers was common in many of the lower OHS performing mines, with the precise event varying from case to case.

Poor performing OHS mines also tended to have highly visible and distinct divisions in the workforce, such as between workers on staff agreements and those on collective agreements, which may accentuate the formation of factions in the workplace culture.

Discernible trends were also noted in respect to line management, where line managers at three of the lower performing mines believed they lacked management support and were not trusted to play a more active OHS role.

The operational structure of a mine also resulted in some differences, with the traditional centralised structure of having a single undermanager in charge of all operations across an entire shift seen as less favourable than a process-based organisational structure which divided a mine’s operations into usually three areas, such as production, development and surface operations.

“There is a tendency for mines that have adopted a process-based organisational structure to fall within the higher performing OHS category – four of the highest performing mines operate under this structure,” the report said.

For further details and findings, the report is available for sale from ACARP’s website.