N.Z. “Immature” In Tackling Industrial Accidents

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30190, 23 July 1963, Page 17

N.Z. “Immature” In Tackling Industrial Accidents

(From Our Own Reporter) TIMARU, July 22. He estimated that the total number of work injuries of ah' kinds exceeded 4.4 m a year, and that the gross cost of accidents to industry in New Zealand was not less than £17,000,000 a year—“a staggering, unnecessary burden to be borne,” said the assistant chief research officer of the Labour Department (Mr R. J. Mardle) addressing a residential industrial safetv course today. The course is the first to he conducted by the National Safety Association in Timaru.

Mr Mardle, in a paper on the industrial accident problem in this country, said that hi America work injuries declined between 1943 and 1959 from 46 injuries per 1000 workers to 30.1—a 34 per cent, reduction. In Great Britain, the rate of injury in factories fell from 43 per 1000 in 1943 to about 23 in 1958, a reduction of 46 per cent. Reductions in accidents in industry of ttie scale mentioned had not taken place in New Zealand, one reason being that few New Zealand workplaces had had realistic accident-prevention programmes for very long, he added. “Compared with Britain and America, we are very immature in tackling the problem of accidents in industry," Mr Mardle said. “Serious Understatement” In 1956, official statistics showed that there were 43.630 work accidents. In 1961, there were 54,249 compensable accidents in New Zealand. However, the figure seriously understated the total number of industrial accidents that occurred. Accidents not reported by insurance companies were estimated ait 6000, a conservative figure for those carried by employers would be 5000. and he estimated that there would have been 14,000 injuries to self-employed persons—a total of more than 79,000.

Information tended to support his contention that, in New Zealand, the ratio of minor injuries to compensable injuries in manufacturing industries was about 55 to 1. If this were so, the gross total of minor injuries was 4.345,000, said Mir Matdie. In New Zealand, tbe total productive time lost by persons injured alone was estimated at about 5m man-days a year.

The direct national cost of industrial accidents was not less than £8,500,000. About 100 persons were killed at work each year, and about 1000 permanently disabled. Every day of the year there were more persons away from work through industrial injuries than the whole of the country’s intake from immigration, said Mr Mardle. Furthermore, there were approximately 200 cases of injuries serious enough to keep men away from work for more than six months, and more than 750 instances where the injury delayed return to work for from three to six months.

“The field of occupational safety is one where there is plenty of room for the most visionary and practical idealism of which men are capable,” said Mr Mardle. Accident Rate In industries , in which there had been a large intake of young workers, the accident rate had risen out of proportion to the rate of in-

take; success in tackling work accidents had been greater in industries organised under a roof, than in “outdoor" industries; and, there had been greater and more immediate success in stopping work accidents by combating environmental and mechanical conditions than by indoctrination of the worker, Mr Mardle said. One of New Zealand’s special problems was the growing number of accidents at work to young persons. In 1958, male workers below the age of 21 experienced 137 accidents fo - every 100 accidents to adult men. “It is a problem that will grow in seriousness. We must do something about it. While my department, the Department of Health, the Education Department, and the National Safety Association are alive to it, and are actively working to do what they can with trade teachers, trade pupils, and apprentices, the real work of safety train-

ing of young persons rests with industry itself," Mr Mardle said. Mr Mardle said that in America in 1961 there were 30.1 injuries per 1000 workers. That year, the New Zealand labour force averaged 918,000 Had New Zealand experienced work accidents at the same rate as the United States of America, we would have had 27,632 accidents. Estimates totalled more than 78.000, and there seemed no way of explaining the huge discrepancy except by saying that New Zealand had not really begun to tackl. the problem. Mr Mardle said that although the 1961 figures showed a small increase m total accidents over the 1960 figures, the accident rate had again improved a little.

There was a declining tendency in the serious injuries rate over the last few years in relation to the steadily increasing labour force and. as experience indicated that trivial accidents were more easily avoided, this relative stability in th. number of, and slight decline in the rate of serious injuries had encouraged the belief that, in spite of a growing labour force, the actual accident rate for several years had at least been held, said Mr Mardle.

He said the figures for 1961 were most encouraging, as the increase in total accidents was much less than the increase in total employment.