"WOULD you look at your man," sneers resident Neanderthal Man in the workplace as he watches a colleague don safety equipment. Muscle bound between the ears, he boasts he's never had an accident in his life. Every inch the embodiment of a bloke whose personal responsibility ceased development on his 12th birthday, he lacks the wit to know that his actions can place his colleagues and himself in danger.
Yet if you suggested that he didn't care for his colleagues, that he didn't have their best interests at heart, that he wasn't a man's man and one of the lads, and if you tentatively hinted that he diced with the health and lives of his mates - and the financial and emotional well being of their families - he'd come down on you like a ton of bricks.
Driven demented and increasingly resentful, you could track his movements and try your best to undo his blazing trail of accidents in waiting. You could challenge him or berate him but his sort takes no prisoners. Informing management can seem like squealing (and becomes impossible if Neanderthal and manager are one and the same guy). And anyway, efforts to report potential dangers to those in authority can fall like Milton's Satan into the nether world of line managers, procedures and bureaucracy.
The stark reality remains that workplace safety initiatives often founder. Last September's report by the Dublin based European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions chillingly confirmed that "the well defined and vast theory of occupational health and safety is not being implemented".
It showed that men at work were more likely to be exposed to noise, vibrations, radiation, high temperatures and low temperatures than women; more likely to labour for more than 40 hours a week, work shifts or irregular hours and do nightwork; have to meet tight deadlines and be more likely to receive remuneration on a piece rate or productivity payment.
Meanwhile a new EU report on accidents and fatalities at work - the first of its kind - will soon be published by the European Commission's statistical office, Eurostat. This is expected to estimate that no fewer than five million work related accidents in 1993 resulted in a loss of more than 15 million working days throughout the EU.
Dr Cormac Macnnmara, a former president of the Society of Occupational Medicine, says "Maybe it is more part of the male psyche to put themselves more at risk. Young men always tended to be risk takers. It was great to die in the trenches. But today's youth are more alive to reality." He cites poor training and men over riding safety features on equipment as major causes of workplace accidents.
It seems to be a hard scenario to change. According to a report by the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (IBEC): "Man has a capacity for reasoning but, unlike other animal species, does not have a sufficiently well developed instinct for protecting himself against possible danger." It argues that a child's psychomotory training is acquired before the age of 12 or 13. Beyond that, specific occupational safety training is required. Unnerving, isn't it, the thought of working in dangerous places alongside an untrained 12 year old boy in the body of a man?
HAPPILY safety consciousness can be developed, risk management learned and a safety first attitude personally appropriated. But how? A pilot scheme in a section of the Aughinish Alumina plant in Askeaton, Co Limerick could provide one answer. Pat Sweeney, human resources co ordinator at the predominantly male plant, explains that workers in the pilot scheme interviewed all their colleagues and came up with a profile of a safe person. They were then taught how to intervene with colleagues whose behaviours were unsafe. Avoiding labels like "You're a chancer", they were taught to focus on the possible consequences of unsafe behaviours on others: "When you do that, the effect it has on me is it could blow out and I could lose my eye," could, for instance, be a response - neither given nor received as a threat.
The workers themselves conduct safety audits twice a week. Unsafe behaviours are recorded (minus any names) and displayed on a graph. The goal is to have no unsafe behaviours. "Safety is our major priority. It is a higher priority than production. You stop production if the job is unsafe. You've the right to stop work if it's unsafe," says Pat Sweeney.
An innovative aspect of the project is the third dictum in the catch phrase: know the procedure, use the procedure, improve the procedure. If imperfect procedures are not improved workers will turn a blind eye, undermining the safety culture and establishing a new, unofficial norm.
Pat Sweeney stresses that at Aughinish: "If you don't recognise a risk, it's only a matter of time before you have the accident. The macho thing to do here is to intervene."