The Tribune

INDUSTRIAL accidents aren’t like spilled milk. You can’t just wipe them up, gripe for a minute about the mess and move on. They can change a life or steal it. And yet, every day we see men trying to prove they can defy gravity and work on sloping roofs 30 or 40 feet in the air without a single harness, rope, or piece of hardware tying them to anything other than hope.

Every day we see trucks packed with workers hanging on to a piece of metal or sitting on a truck bed railing dreading the next pothole that will force them to breathe deeply and hold on for dear life.

Did they not watch the news the night before and hear about an industrial accident that turned into a fatality? Have they not heard that in America 5,000 people die every year on the job or from injuries they got while working? Are they blind to the fact that every year between 2.5 and four million men and women in the US are injured on the job? Every one of those millions has a mother, a father, brother, sister, husband or wife. Maybe they had a baby on the way.

Incidents change families forever

Death and injuries don’t just hurt the one who is hurt or killed. The incidents can change a family dynamic forever. They happen in a split second that can never be reversed. The physically fit young man who a day before was running in the morning before work or playing hoops with his young son when he got home is now paralyzed, confined to a wheelchair, angry with himself and bitter toward the world, eventually resorting to drugs to relieve his pain, unable to work to put food on the table. Mommy has to take a second job or work longer hours. Sis might have to forsake her dreams of college.

No, industrial accidents are not like spilled milk.

Two more people in The Bahamas died this week because of one. How many more do we have to lose before we say ‘enough!’ and get serious about enforcement? The Department of Labour is trying. I’ll give them credit for that. Just walk into the building on Rosetta Street and you will see OSHA posters and signs everywhere.

What’s an inspector to do?

But how many inspectors are there to enforce the rules and regulations, and what does it take to make them look the other way? I’m not implying that any individual is on the take, but let’s face it. This is The Bahamas and we’re kind, accommodating people, who want to be helpful. So, when the construction chief says, “I been tellin’ de men dey gotta do better. ‘Yes, sir,’ dey promise. Den dey gets up dere and does the same thing again we just got done tellin’ em about. We done give ‘em rope and tings. We say dey gotta have hard hats and construction boots and we give ‘em hard hats if dey don’t have der own. We tell ‘em you gotta tie on the rope and they tell us dey can’t get da’ job done fast like we want if dey have to worry ‘bout dat rope getting all caught up and ting. ‘We can’t move like we wanna move, dey tell us, with that ting hangin all over us.’ And what we s’posed to do?”

Here’s exactly what you are supposed to do.

Your job’s on the line

Tell them no rope, no harness, no job.

You can tell them that and more, like “carry your behind somewhere else and take your foolishness with you.” That’s what you’re supposed to do.

But if the inspector looks the other way, trying to be a nice guy, and keep the job open cause the guys need to earn a living and the super or boss promises to do better and invites you to come back next week and you can see the improvement for yourself.

Now what are you supposed to do? People have to earn a living.

Suppose someone goes hungry because you closed down a job? Suppose a baby needs formula and the mama was counting on the pay from the baby daddy and now the daddy who was just working hard isn’t working at all because YOU shut his ability to earn money for formula down? What then?

It’s not like the people who are doing foolishness on the job, taking unnecessary risks, are bad people. That’s the irony. They’re working. Maybe that same fella who is strolling on the roof, hammer on hip, stack of shingles or next 4x8 sheet of plywood at his feet, knelt by his little girl’s bedside the night before as she said her prayers.

Maybe he buckled a toddler into a car seat, kissed her on her tiny forehead and waved Mom and little one bye that very morning, watching them drive off to pre-school.

Maybe he took all the precautions he thought he should as a responsible person and parent, praying, getting that car seat and using it, and maybe the pressure to be one of the guys – unencumbered and strutting their manhood on the roof four stories in the air was just a bow to peer pressure. He figured he could handle the slope. It was, after all, just another day on the job that he would manage like the day before, hanging with the guys who think they are invincible. Only we are not invincible.

Manhood isn’t only muscle

It’s made of accepting responsibility, even when it’s uncomfortable. Even when, instead of being one of the guys, you’re the one warning the guys. If you ever read the horror stories of what happens to the injured, to the ones scalded by fire who would be better off dead, or who lose an eye or arm or leg or the ability to walk because the machinery they were operating was faulty and they kept using it anyway, or they were blinded by welding because pulling the shield down on the facial protective gear seemed like no big deal since it was just a tiny spot that you had missed before.

Not every industrial accident causes life-changing injuries or circumstances, but enough do to wake us from a dangerous slumber. We must take the potential for industrial accidents far more seriously than we do. Many businesses do and to them goes the credit. Manufacturing plants keep records of accident-free days or weeks. Publicly-held companies post on-the-job accident rates in their annual reports. But only a handful of companies in The Bahamas take it as seriously as they should, looking at enforcement (especially in construction, landscaping and transportation) as critical to the work routine as showing up for a contract. 

Luck has its limits

We need to stop pretending that luck will continue to carry us where common sense leaves off. We need to stop believing there is no best-by date for piling into the back of a truck with nothing to hold onto but dreams as the overloaded vehicle speeds along bumpy roads and the next deep pothole it drops into could toss a rider overboard, where his head crashes into the tarmac and the tarmac wins.   

The Bahamas is advanced and progressive in so many ways. We punch above our weight in AI, in humanoids and robotics, in automation and digitalization. We are the first country in the world of more than 200 nations to have Central Bank-backed digital currency. Yet we are years, maybe decades, behind in basic safety enforcement on the job. It’s time to give the working population the respect it deserves and do more to ensure protection, even if they go fighting and screaming that the rope around their waist while working on a roof is a deterrent to speed. A slow day today is far better than no day tomorrow.