This Monday 28 April was International Worker’s Memorial Day and World Safety and Health at Work Day. Every year in New Zealand, around 50 people die as a result of accidents at work counted in WorkSafe’s official statistics.

When I worked in the Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety’s Office, he and his Press Secretary and I would all receive text messages from WorkSafe notifying us of a new fatality. Once a week or thereabouts, we would receive a sad short summary of another life cut short.

WorkSafe’s notifications are deeply misleading. There’s no text message for the 900 deaths due to occupational disease each year, none for the 40 deaths due to work-related suicide, and nothing for the 75 deaths due to work-related road fatalities. If these were notified, the Minister’s phone would get three text messages every day of the year with a new death, a new tragedy. I wonder if this picture would make it harder for Governments to be cavalier about the cost of workplace harm (noting that this misses the 100,000s of non-fatal injuries and diseases).

On Worker’s Memorial Day, I remember my grandmother who lost her father in a tunnel collapse and then her sister and niece at Tangiwai on Christmas Eve. I remember friends and colleagues who took their own lives due to workplace stress. I remember the families I met when I worked at the CTU who lost loved ones at Pike River or on a Forestry Block. I remember the holes left in families.

I remember Charanpreet Dhaliwal. Charanpreet was a 22-year-old computer studies student. On 17 November 2011, his friend called him to ask him to fill in doing security work on a construction depot in Henderson because it was his birthday and he wanted the night off.

Charanpreet had no training as a security guard but he needed the money so he agreed. He met his new employer on site. The employer gave him a set of keys, a hi-vis vest and business card. After showing Charanpreet around the site, his employer left him to his first night of work.

Early in the morning of 18 November, four men who had been kicked out of a nightclub and were running from the bouncer came onto the site. Without training and without an easy way to check in, Charanpreet confronted the men. Charanpreet was hit in the head with a piece of wood and died almost immediately. His body was discovered by workers coming onto the site at 3am.

His alleged murderer was acquitted at trial, as was his employer, because WorkSafe failed to show that he should have been aware of and followed the relevant Australia / NZ Standards. WorkSafe had no guidance on security work at the time.

I had the privilege of representing Charanpreet’s family (still in India) at the Coronial Inquiry. The Coroner recommended a series of steps to WorkSafe, including the development of guidance for static security guards. Years later, the New Zealand Security Association and the unions had their guidance endorsed by WorkSafe.

I remember Charanpreet and how we let him down. He was unlucky but he was also in a situation he should never have been in without training or protection or systems in place. We could have done better.

Health and safety people understand this. Often, they have stories of their own about how their life was touched by a tragic accident. We want to make things better. That’s why we do what we do. That’s what Worker’s Memorial Day is about. Mourn the dead and fight for the living.

Ngā mihi

Jeff Sissons
NZISM CEO