Posted By Barrie (Badger) Etter
Apart from an early Act of Parliament to look after the welfare of apprentices does anyone know when the safety movement came into being?

The earliest I’ve come across to date is by the Great Western Railway Company in 1913 when faced with the government of the day threatening to pass an Act to force all railway companies to clean up their act (a sort of HSWA of its day) with regards to the safety of their workforces. Because of WW1 the Act never came into being. The movement work of the GWR continued the after that war. The activity initially used flyers with hints and tips on the right and wrong way of doing a task along with the printed word using photo’s and cartoons with the characters falling into all sorts of scrapes. These flyers were eventually pulled together into a pocket sized book and issued to some 80 000 of its employees. The pocket book was backed up with a quarterly magazine (I think) that had various competitions and promoting safe workers to their peers.

It was ground breaking stuff of the day that was followed by the other railway companies when they saw how well the GWR were succeeding in reducing fatalities and injuries.

If anyone wishing to know more, should then write to the Great Western Railway Society, Didcot and request a copy of their in house journal #183 (small fee involved).
This is not advertising any product but just passing on useful info for the intersted.

Can anyone top that?

Badger

Posted By Sen Sar

This site has some really interesting acts of Parliament.

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts.htm

Including:

Sale of Arsenic Regulation 1851
Explosive Substances Act 1875
Sale of Food and Drugs Act 1875
Boiler Explosions Act, 1890

Sar

Posted By Robert K Lewis
When you look back over the 19th century I think that you can say that the safety movement really started as a disaster again unfolded. Those with social consciences felt that too many were maimed or killed while employers began to see the loss of an assett, although this was much later in the century. A review of the Royal Commission into the deaths from the building the Woodhead Tunnel show how late in time were employers who still thought an extra penny on detonators was too large a cost to save lives.

Look for speeches by Lord Shaftesbury in Lords for some interesting contemporary comments.

Bob

Posted By Pete48
Barrie, I have a similar booklet issued by the NER which predates your GWR one by a couple of years. It was issued via the Mutual Improvement Classes but clearly sponsored and promoted by the company.
What I have always found fascinating is that the Railways in this country have always been highly regulated and these books clearly recognise the importance of what we would now call a safety culture even in such a regulated workplace. I thought this was your question, not whether H&S rules applied before this date?
If we remember that, even as late as the early 20th century, the railways were at the forefront of technology and clearly a high risk environment then we might reflect that we shouldn't be surprised to find lots of ground breaking approaches to every aspect of their business.
I reckon if I updated the language and typeset in my little booklet, it would pass muster in many companies today, over a hundred years later.

Posted By Pete48
Barrie, when I get home and provided I can find it quickly amongst the several hundred other railway books etc, I will contact you.
I know I should catalogue it all but time is always an enemy.
I have studied the GWR in depth for many years, since I first saw a GWR engine draw up alongside one from my home railway, the South Western; this was in Salisbury station many years ago.
Oh no, a safety bod and a railway buff, have I just outed myself completely? Now where did I leave my anorak. Must go put some coal on the fire and have a quick check round.

Posted By mike esbester
Hi,

This is a great thread - I've just picked up on it, but I'd love to hear more from you all on what you make of the GWR's safety campaign. Do you think that this is something that workers would have gone for? And do you think that this sort of thing (using photos and 'accessible' messages) that workers today can understand and put into practice?

I wrote my PhD thesis on the campaign, partly looking at the techniques the GWR used and partly at the messages that the material conveyed to workers and the government (and that the other companies replicated).

A lot of the things that previous posts have discussed have been government/ state regulation - this is very different from safety education as practised by the Great Western and other companies, which was (nominally) voluntary and designed to try to persuade people to act in ways the management decided were 'correct' or 'safe'. You are quite right to say that this approach was innovative - in the UK. Safety education was copied from the USA, where it started in the steel industry in 1906 and on the railroads in 1910.

I'd particularly like to hear more from Pete48 about his NER booklet - please contact me!

I'm also interested in how safety education was used beyond the railway industry - I've found some nice examples of the same things being used in factories, mines and other workplaces, from the 1920s onwards, but I'm sure there must be lots of examples out there that I don't know about. Do please reply if you've got any ideas on this!

Cheers,

Mike

Posted By Pete48
Mike and Barry,
I haven't forgotten you--just been incredibly busy and doing my bit for presenteeism (see other thread) for a week or so.
I have thousands of books on railway service/subjects all of which need cataloging. At the moment I am having trouble finding the NER booklet but I will find it and mail you a scan of the index etc.
I think it is very important that we remember that it is essential to view such records in the context of their time and not too easily transpose their worth or otherwise into modern society. For example the styles of management were completely different than today; the expectations of the workforce similarly so.
Railways were at the forefront of high risk and best practice, they were also facing increased pressure from the workforce to improve their conditions. (conditions that in the 21st century would seem both Draconian and totally unacceptable)
Such approaches are usually associated with a paternalistic working environment. That is one where the whole ethos and organisation of work depends on a sense of loyalty from the workforce derived out of better conditions than most other contemporary employers and a sense of worthwhile and valued service. Note that I use the noun service and not work. This is balanced by a recognition that trained, competent, committed employees are essential to any high risk, highly regulated organisation. Anything that will lock them into staying with the company is good. So although work on the railways at this time may have been hard, dangerous, physical work for most, it generally paid well and was, above all, secure employment where you and your family were looked after by the company and or union. Front line supervisors and managers were almost exclusively practically skilled in the areas that they managed. Employees would expect to take responsibility for themselves and actually take pride in doing a job well. Something that they would be encouraged to do. This, of course, also meant safely in accordance with the regs (i.e integrated safety). This was a major factor in establishing and maintaining respect at the "coal face".
I see these booklets as a record of what was at the time undoubtedly an enlightened approach but for a totally different world. The only similarity would be that companies were looking to maximise efficiency whilst minimising their risk exposures whilst the workforce was focused on improving working conditions. Remember when these booklets were published, the 8 hour working day was still some way in the future for most railway workers.

I agree that the approaches used by large companies like DuPont, Shell, BP, Exxon, ICI etc are very similar. These lasted up until the 1980's. Then society, in the UK anyway, shifted dramatically and as all the underpinning loyalties etc were swept aside the effectiveness of this approach waned. Buncefield, Texas City and other high profile incidents may well be seen as indicators of this when others look back in a few years.

Mike, I can confirm that you recall the DuPont history, as outlined in their courses in the 80 and 90's, correctly. If Merv see this thread I am sure he will give us chapter and verse. Us "oilies" had such things tattoed on our safety helmets:):):)

Posted By Brando
IOSH should gather together some of these historic documents and get them up on the web. Would love to see the handbook from DP that Merv has.

Brando

Posted By Raymond Rapp
Ahhh, but did they provide manual handling training?

Posted By Crim
They must have had training, otherwise how would they have known what to do?

Begs a question how did the very first trainer know how to train?

Or who trained the very first trainer, and was he/she qualified to train?

Posted By mike esbester
There have been some really interesting aspects drawn out of this thread so far, some of which I’d like to say a bit more on, to see what you make of it all.

As Crim and Pete48 have just mentioned, the issue of how someone learns – whether it be book skills or practical skills – is up for grabs: do you learn by reading or by experience (your own or watching someone else)? As far as I know, before the Safety Movement started, tasks were learnt through experience (including supervision, apprenticeship, etc). One of the key things about the Safety Movement is that it tried to codify working practices very explicitly – for example, in one of the booklets workers were shown exactly how to use a shovel.

So which might be more effective? Depends what we’re looking for: getting the job done, or being safe? In one of Pete’s earlier posts he raised the issue of efficiency. I know that for the GWR and other railway companies (in the first half of the 20th century, definitely, and probably later) efficiency was a huge concern: they faced rising labour and raw materials costs, but were restricted by law as to how much they could charge for freight rates. Just take a look at the company magazines in the 1920s and 1930s – they nearly always seem to have a feature trying to improve efficiency. The Safety Movement was just one aspect in this; although the language of Taylorism and Scientific Management isn’t used explicitly, you can see that it was an underlying concern – the railway companies were certainly well aware of Taylorism before 1920.

And here is a dilemma, which I’m sure you’re all familiar with: if you need to get the job done quickly (which I know isn’t the same as efficiency, but in the short-term is probably seen as being equivalent) it might be quicker to do it in a manner that is either unsafe or less safe than the ‘officially sanctioned’ way of working. So which do you choose? There is some evidence to suggest that railway workers before the Second World War felt the pressure to get the job done quickly and chose less safe methods of working. Whether this was because of the managerial pressure or because of a desire to maintain the company’s reputation for speed, service etc, is unknown – whatever the reason, the end result was often the same: in 1913 alone well over 30,000 railway employees were injured or killed.

The systematic element of the ‘Safety Movement’ is also important: again, so far as I know, this was the first time (in the UK) that a systematic campaign to improve safety (worker or public) was tried. Before this we had ad hoc methods (on the railways, circulars issued after a number of casualties were a typical example, warning the staff (‘servants’) not to repeat the same things). And given this was part of an international use of safety education (known to include Australia, New Zealand, America, Canada, France, South Africa and Switzerland, and I suspect many more), we can see that there really was something of a social movement in the early twentieth century designed to improve safety.

Pete’s comments about remembering the context of the time are quite apt. The ‘Safety Movement’ was a part of paternalism, so far as the railways were concerned, and a part of an industrial paternalism (or industrial welfare, if you prefer) that existed in the large companies of the time. This feeling is riddled throughout the campaign material.

Thinking about what approaches might realistically have been adopted at the time, it is unsurprising that safety education was chosen. The railway companies and the state (and I suspect that same will have been true of other industries, then and now) had several potential avenues – more law (so, regulation and inspection, with prosecution of offenders); changing the system of work (so workers weren’t put in dangerous positions); technologies (fencing machinery, automatic cut-off for machines, automatic couplings for freight stock to prevent employees from going between wagons and getting crushed); or education.

Taking each in turn, the state didn’t have the time, money or inclination to introduce (and uphold) greater regulation. Changing the system of work (for example, ensuring those maintaining the tracks didn’t have to work in amongst moving trains – a practice which continues today) would have been expensive, if it was possible at all (and it wouldn’t have been in all cases). Introducing new technologies would also have been expensive (automatic couplings were estimated – admittedly by the railway companies – at costing several million pounds in 1899), and would have taken time to develop. So we can see that education – which could be produced very quickly and was considerably cheaper – was extremely attractive.

Does safety education work? …. Ahhh, the really thorny issue! I’m going to hold back from commenting on that one at the moment – I think we’ve all got enough to think about without it, but in the future I would like to come back to it and see what you think.

mike

Posted By Merv Newman
peter,

thank you for that reference. And I wouldn't dispute a word of it.

And everyone already knows my opinion of the STOP programme.

All I can say to that is that in my DP plants, (1976 to 1989 as safety manager) we really did follow the hierarchy of management controls. (hey, I was just learning the job and presented it to management as the new way to go. So they did) And we got pretty good results (honest !) Despite the STOP programme.

As said, over a 10-year period we had one LTI and there were three "medical treatments"

* LTI slip on ice. Good management controls in place. supervisory failure.

* MT heel injury walking in front of pedestrian electric pallet truck. Unsafe act.

* MT finger injury. supervisory failure allowing unsafe act (safety detectors short circuited)

* MT cut finger. supervisory failure - employee mental stress over family problems not detected by supervisor.

I left them to their own devices in 1992. Perhaps I should offer my services as a consultant ?

Merv

Posted By GeoffB4
Sorry, nothing to add except to say, what an interesting thread this is and well worth reading through.

Except just had a thought - not all railway staff had a hard time. My grandfather was a porter at York station from 1915 until his retirement in the 60s (on a pension of 12/- a week. But he owned his own house outright - the reason was that he live off his tips from passengers and his wages paid off the mortgage.

Those were the day, when third class had wooden seats.

Posted By Merv Newman
The phrase "safety first" suffers from a traditional misconception. It is not "put safety first" which can lead to confused priorities and "it's elfnsafety innit" but rather "THINK safety first" i.e. whatever you are planning to do, think first about the safety of your actions". (RA) This avoids safety becoming a "bolt-on" and an impediment just when everybody is raring to go.

And yes, safety last. Leave the job safe.

Merv

Posted By Aidan Toner
Yes MERV
I suspect we are on the same team here.
This slogan/catchphrase has been misunderstood by many people (ie the average working man/woman) for along time.
....hence you do have to ask what good has it served over the years.???
Has it been more hindrance than help?
I think hindrance.

Posted By mike esbester
(Apologies to everyone who gets the alert that this has been posted)

Pete48,

I rediscovered this thread recently and thought I'd ask if you'd been able to locate that NER safety booklet you mentioned (not trying to hassle you, honest!).

Cheers,

Mike