Monday 23 June 2008

Succeed as a contract labourer - PART 3

(Return to - PART 1, PART 2)

Every new job requires a site induction. Keep your mouth shut, unless you have a real question. Nothing sounds stupider or more annoying than that one person who insists on adding a personal story for every point the Safety Officer makes.

The Safety Officer doesn’t care. He wants to get through the induction and have a coffee. He particularly doesn’t want to hear about how ‘my mate Johno dun some stuff while no one was looking and he never got hurt’.

The Safety Officer is employed to save the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation insurance. He is not your friend and doesn’t give a fuck that you can’t wear all the PPE in all situations.

HE CANNOT SAY IT’S OK NOT TO USE PPE.

They tread a fine line between allowing their company to maintain production while trying to keep the site safe. Agree with everything they say and sign their little books and papers then sort it out when you get back to reality on site.

These days, even your supervisor won’t allow company rules to be bent anymore. Even if the rules are stupid, HE KNOWS HE IS PERSONALLY LIABLE AND WILL GO TO GAOL AND LOSE HIS HOUSE TO PAY THE FINES IF YOU ARE KILLED OR BADLY INJURED.

He almost definitely doesn’t want to go to gaol and arguing with him about safety procedures probably won’t help you out in the long run.

(See - Succeed as a contract labourer – PART 4)

No comments: