It's OSH B'gosh

Pervasive Irresponsibility

We recall several years ago a motorist pulled into a service station. After the attendant put gas in the car, the motorist asked him to check the oil and water. “Sorry, sir,” said the attendant. “I can check your oil, but I am not allowed to check your water.” When queried as to why not, the attendant replied that they had recently had a visit from Occupational Safety and Health (“OSH”) inspectors. New regulations forbade the employees checking the water of customer vehicles. The owner of the service station faced prosecution if he did not comply.

The logic of this inanity is obvious if you accept the false religion of Athens. The State (that is, collective Man) has the authority and ability to create a sinless world, without imperfection. The utopian notion of human perfectability leads to a relentless and reckless pursuit of a world in which there is no harm, no danger, and in which all accidents are regulated out of existence. Thus, it becomes the duty of the State, not only to punish the reckless and careless who do harm to others, but to prevent any such things ever happening. So, the Occupational Safety and Health Directorate in New Zealand was born.

Gradually, the Directorate has been working through all occupations, jobs, employers, and work situations identifying risks to employees' health and safety. An extensive bureaucratic plan for each occupation/work place is required to be drawn up—identifying risks to health and safety, creating a mitigation plan, and ensuring that the mitigation plan is carried out. The more the Directorate delved, the more risks became apparent. The more rules, regulations, and bans were required.

In the case of our forecourt attendant, it turns out that service stations had been checking the water levels of cars since the automobile was first invented. It was part of the service. But the bureaucratic inspectorate at OSH eventually got around to working out that sometimes cars overheat. When that happens, removing the radiator cap can cause severe burns as a result of scalding steam and boiling water gushing out. Clearly this was an occupational safety issue. In the relentless and irresponsible pursuit of building a perfect world in which accidents are prevented by dictate, fiat, and regulation, the practice of checking water in the cars of customers has been banned.

The outcome of the OSH regime has been an ever encroaching, burgeoning, bloating, bureaucratic boondoggle over all of life. The economic cost to the nation is incalculable—it could only ever be roughly estimated, but it is huge. Service declines. Productivity falls. The costs of production rise. Inefficiency rises. Our exporters are made less competitive. Receipts and incomes attenuate. And this is just the economic cost.

There are other destructive effects from the OSH regime. Firstly, by seeking to remove risks from life, it encourages successive generations of pale and insipid human beings—forever fearful, forever looking to the State to protect them, forever looking for an existence cocooned in cotton wool. Mitigating and triumphing over risks by responsible calculation of those risks and effective action is replaced by a querulous demand that risks be removed before one acts. The notion of taking reasonable risks to capture reward is frowned upon.

Secondly, society as a whole becomes far less adaptive. Risks, taking risks, and facing risks—and experiencing the bad consequences when accidents and bad outcomes occur, is one of the essential ways to learn—and learn quickly. Non adaptive societies and cultures decline over time.

Thirdly, it creates a culture of widespread irresponsibility. The “buck”, as it were, no longer stops with me, but with the bureaucratic plan. If there is a failure, compliance with the plan is the appropriate and reasonable defence. “It is not my fault,” is the background choral litany of the OSH regime.

Fourthly, it has no limits upon the relentless extension of the power and interference of the State. Every accident becomes sufficient justification for the promulgation of dozens of new regulations not only in the specific workplace or industry, but in many other workplaces and industries, and on into schools, pre-schools, the health sector, local government, community organisations—all become more successively subject to the pervasive bureaucratic plan.

Athens is a deranged city—and nothing demonstrates its “sandwich short of a picnic” state than the OSH regime. It is symptomatic of the madness and spiritual blindness which pervades Unbelief. Athenian culture has collectively become like Nebuchadnezzar: unkempt, mad, growling in the fields, and eating grass like the beasts.

How does Jerusalem approach such things? That holy City starts from the premise that the world is imperfect and evil is intrinsic to it. Accidents happen. Even when there is no malicious intent, untoward outcomes can result. People can act, prepare, and plan with the utmost commitment to responsible behaviour, and still people can suffer damage and harm.

Secondly, the Christian faith insists upon moral accountability and responsibility. The buck stops with everyone.

Moreover, sinful human beings will be tempted to act irresponsibly. There can be a thousand signs up warning against swimming in a certain place, and some will deliberately take this as a provocation to swim in that precise area. Those who act irresponsibly deserve all that happens to them.

When irresponsible actions lead to damage and harm of the innocent, civil and probably criminal liability should result. The judges and the courts are in place to assess precisely that matter. Holding people accountable for their actions is far more godly than a vain and stupid attempt to force people to be responsible through a preventative bureaucratic plan. Forcing responsible behaviour is an oxymoron.

Employers clearly have a duty of care to their employees and their customers. It is part of loving one's neighbour as oneself. Instructing and training employees in responsible behaviour when facing risks at work goes a long way to fulfilling that duty of care. Instruction sheets and warnings to also customers also go a long way to fulfilling duty of care. Employees, for their part, have a duty of care to the employer, his property, and his customers. They also have a duty to act responsibly. If they fail in their duties and suffer bad consequences, they deserve it.

Over time, a body of judicial precedent builds to provide guidance. But the parameters within which the body of precedent is built up need to remain clear and inviolate: the duty of care is a universal verity for all individuals. The weighing and sheeting home of respective responsibility is the duty of the courts.