Industrial Casualties

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 634, 10 April 1929, Page 8

Industrial Casualties

Time Lost Through Accidents

WITH the time that is lost annually to New Zealand industry through accidents, nearly 400 men could be kept in work for a full year. At an average weekly wage of £4 10s this means a deficiency in earning power of something over £90,000. Fatigue and carelessness are substantial contributors to the rising calendar of industrial accidents.

THE significance of the Dominion’s record of industrial accidents lies, not in the irksome statistical fact that just over 1,000 thumbs and fingers were chopped off by machinery during the year, nor in the painful presence of 375 strained backs, but more in the delicate inference by the Government Statistician, Mr. Malcolm Fraser, that many of these mishaps could and should have been avoided.

During the year 1927-28 industry in this country lost 120,473 working days on account of accidents to 5,848 people. Most of these suffer-

ers were men, but the high percentage of accidents in factories accounted for the presence in the statistics of a large number of women and girls. A great many of these incidents are merely tricks of circumstance which are likely to be played by fate on any job, but the element of careless as shown in the closely compiled returns is a mild indictment upon the loyalty to instructions practised by the young New Zealand worker. Nearly half of the accidents happened in factories, most of them as the result of power-driven machinery. The tendency for an employee to save time by not switching off power when making adjustments or cleaning his machine is shown clearly to be responsible for much pain, inconvenience and loss of working time, in some instances the accidents resulting from deliberate disobedience of instructions. In accidents due to loose clothing being caught in machines, serious injury and death are disclosed to have resulted, although, as the statistician tactfully puts it, “this is a matter

where the employee himself can take precautions against the possibility of accident.” Carelessness in attending to apparent minor accidents, too, has been the cause of much unnecessarily lost time to industry in the Dominion, for a telling column of figures proves that prompt attention and after-care to injuries which were considered trivial would have saved a great deal of time and avoided the sacrifice of much earning power. Women Leave Work Young From the grouping of ages respectively of men and women, it would appear that New Zealand’s female workers are either less careful or less fortunate than the men-folk, for the average age of accidents among men is given to be 33.15 years, while among women, accidents happen at the average age of 20.50 years. This is readily accounted for, however, by the fact that men normally spend the greater part of their lives in factories, while the women are removed from the matrimonial shelf long before they have an opportunity of growing old in their jobs. Physical fatigue, though possibly not noticeable in any individual accident, cannot be overlooked as a contributory cause when viewed over the whole. A man who suffers injury after he has been at work for some hours probably feels as fresh then as when he started, but unconsciously he is wielding his tools less nimbly than when the starting whistle blew, or he is less alert in tending the machine under his control. Figures prove it. Fatigue Plays a Part An analysis of machinery accidents in factories during 1927 demonstrates that a greater percentage of them occurred toward the end of the week, when the employees become more susceptible to fatigue, and thus increase the liability of mishap. This element of fatigue is brought out more clearly when the hours of accidents are classified. Allowing for the variation in the working day, and the short day on Saturday, as well as for the luncheon hour spell, one discovers that for most classes of accident there is a tendency for the risk to increase—in sympathy with increasing fatigue—with each additional hour of the working half-day. In all groups the third and fourth hour of continuous work appears with convincing consistency to show that the cumulative effect of the unbroken spell of work in fatiguing the worker, makes him less alert and lays him open to greater risk. Physical disability, the statistician reveals in a final thought, is frequently of smaller moment eventually than the loss sustained in earning power. Approximately 10 per cent, of those suffering permanent disability are severely handicapped in earning their livelihood after their accidents, as the diminution in opportunity to obtain work is proportionately much greater than the actual impairment of ability to earn.