23
Blood Money? The Effect of Bonus
Pay on Safety in Coal Mines
Andrew
Hopkins
Department of Sociology,
Australian National University
ABSTRACT
It is often argued that the production bonus system contributes to the
rate of accidents in underground coal mines. The evidence for this
proposition is examined here and found to be wanting. Major causes of
unsafe practices on the part of the miners are the desire to reduce the
workload and an adherence to informal safety standards which are
often not adequate to deal with exceptional situations. The paper
argues, finally, that management must share responsibility for many of
the miners’ unsafe practices and that many accidents are quite clearly
high
attributable
to
management negligence.
INTRODUCTION
Coal mining is a dangerous business. Over 100 men have been killed
in New South Wales underground coal mines in the last ten years
(Joint Coal Board, 1981, 10). The most dramatic cause of death is the
methane gas explosion which devastates large parts of a mine, often
killing considerable numbers of men. In 1979, for instance, an
explosion at Appin, just south of Sydney, killed 14 miners. The most
serious explosions in Australian mining history occurred at Bulli in
1887, when 81 miners were killed and at Mount Kembla in 1902, at
which time 96 miners perished (Dingstad, 1980). Such explosions are,
rare and are thus not the major cause of death.
Most fatalities result from falls of coal or rock from the roof, while the
second most common cause of death is accidents involving
underground mine machinery (Leigh, 1981, 8).
Non fatal injuries are also alarmingly common. In N.S.W. south
coast mines, for example, a man can expect to have an accident on
average every 16 months (Joint Coal Board, 1981, 6).
These figures do not convey the whole story. Dangerous and
potentially disastrous events occur continually. In one mine I visited,
reputed by union officials to be the safest in the southern district, I
was told that in the preceding fortnight there had been three ignitions
of pockets of methane gas, caused by the accidental cutting of electric
however, relatively
24
cables. Fortunately, on none of these occasions had the levels of gas
been sufficient to cause an explosion and the fires had been
extinguished within a matter of seconds. On a second visit to the same
mine I discovered that twice in the previous week mining machinery
had been buried by roof falls, the driver in each case narrowly
escaping injury. Although I was assured by management that each of
these was an unusual event it is clear that dangerous occurrences are
frighteningly common.
The tragedy is that many of
occurrences are quite preventable,
these accidents and dangerous
sense that they occur as a
result of violations of the Coal Mines Regulation Act or as a result of
departures from recognized safe mining practice. Judicial and coronial
inquiries into the causes of mining fatalities have routinely found this
to be the case and it was certainly true for four and perhaps all five of
the dangerous incidents reported above.
More systematic evidence of the relationship between accidents and
illegalities has been produced in another context. A Californian study
has shown that, in the case of fatalities resulting from explosions,
crushing by machinery, or electrical mishap, well over half can be
attributed to violations of industrial safety regulations (Mendeloff,
1979, 98).
.
in the
BONUS v SAFETY?
The crucial question, then, is why do miners engage in unsafe and
frequently illegal behaviour to their own detriment? The answer
which one hears time and again is that the men are encouraged by the
bonus system of pay to engage in unsafe practices in order to
maximize production. N.S.W. miners are paid a wage plus a
productivity bonus determined by the total output of the mine for the
week. In some mines, in some weeks, the bonus may be just a few
dollars but in others it often exceeds $500 a week, on top of a wage of
perhaps $350 a week. Such high bonus payments might well be
expected to serve as an inducement to miners to cut comers.
This was certainly the view held by the coroner at Muswellbrook
Court House, 14 December 1981, at the inquest into the deaths of two
miners killed in a roof fall. ’I am of the opinion’, he said, ’that ...
there is a little too much eagerness on the part of the men in the mine
to get the coal out’. And according to Judge Goran in his report on the
West Wallsend explosion, ’the drive for production by the deputy
appeared to be the motive for the dangerous practice (that lead to the
explosion) (Goran, n.d. (a), 51). The deputies, it should be
explained, are the lowest level of management in the mines. They are
.
25
in some respects to safety officers and in others, to
foremen. Like rank and file miners, they participate in company
productivity bonus schemes.
Union officials, too, are quick to blame the bonus system and one in
particular is very outspoken, publicly describing the bonus as ’blood
money’. The president of the Miners’ Federation in Australia has
described it as ’a system of payment which penalises caution and
safety’ (see Common Cause, 21 July 1982, 4). Even some of the miners
themselves believe that the bonus system contributes to accidents.
Most miners, however, assure you with apparent sincerity that the
bonus does not adversely affect safety. They point to the fact that
miners are frequently prepared to strike over a safety issue, sacrificing
in the process not only the bonus but also their wage. What, then, is
the truth of the matter?
I began this inquiry assuming that the critics of the bonus system
were right. My aim was simply to find the evidence to prove their
point. As I proceeded, however, the evidence seemed always to elude
me. I was led finally to a position of considerable scepticism about the
alleged connection between the bonus and unsafe practices in the coal
mining industry. What follows is in part an account of the reasons for
this scepticism. It is based on observations made underground, on
conversations and more formal interviews with a number of miners,
on discussions with inspectors, union officials, managers, coroners
and others and on a study of various official reports and statistics.
equivalent
OTHER MOTIVES
.
The first point
sometimes
a
to be made is that even if the pursuit of bonus pay is
motivating factor in men’s minds, it is not always so.
This became clear to me on a visit on which I was to spend a whole
shift underground observing a team of six or seven men at work. We
arrived at the mine face at the beginning of the shift to find that the
continuous miner - an
electrically operated underground excavating
machine used throughout the coal fields-was not working.
Electricians were summoned to repair it and soon realized that it
would take them at least half an hour to do the job. At this stage the
manager, who was in communication with the men by phone from the
surface, suggested that we spend the day in another section of the
mine where another continuous miner was available, standing by for
just such a contingency as this. The men, however, vetoed this
suggestion, preferring to sit reading papers and talking until the repair
was completed. It is clear from this episode that bonus considerations
are not always uppermost in their minds. Indeed, the opportunity to
26
take a break from the monotonous and demanding routines of mining
would appear to outweigh any consideration of bonus. This is a theme
I shall take up again shortly.
Although it is apparent from the foregoing discussion that the
bonus is not always a motivating factor, there may well be many
circumstances in which it is. For instance shuttle cars (coal cars) and
personnel carriers are often driven dangerously fast and are a source
of many accidents. Perhaps the bonus can be seen in operation here?
But examination of the circumstances suggests otherwise. Take the
case of a young miner whom I interviewed. He had been driving an
empty personnel carrier at a speed he now concedes was dangerous
and which he admits was faster than he would have been driving had
there been other men aboard, when he hit a lump of coal which had
fallen from the side of the tunnel onto the roadway. The vehicle
bounced, dislodging his helmet, and slipped sideways into the wall
knocking down three roof support props. The accident was not
reported and the props were never replaced, but he now drives more
slowly, moving his helmet lamp from side to side on the lookout for
obstacles.
This incident had nothing to do with bonus, for the speed at which
he was driving had no bearing on the mine’s production. I suspect that
this was simply a case of youthful exuberance, of daredevilry. Indeed
this same young man had recently lost his car licence for dangerous
driving and it seems probable that the factors at work above ground
were also responsible for his below-ground accident.
A second transport accident of which I was told occurred when a
shuttle car slipped sideways into a high voltage electricity cable taking
power to a nearby continuous miner. The driver should have
dismounted and moved the cable away from the shuttle car. Instead,
he simply drove away, damaging the cable in the process and causing
it to spark, thus igniting the methane gas being given off by the coal in
the car. No explosion occurred and the fire was extinguished in a few
seconds.
Why was the driver in such a hurry? Is this an example of the effect
of the bonus? Again the answer must be no. Shuttle cars stand idle for
much of the time awaiting output from the continuous miner at the
mine face. Thus, the haste with which they are driven cannot
influence mine output. When I asked other miners what was going on
in this man’s mind at the time, it was suggested that he was probably
most concerned about being seen by his mates as an incompetent
driver if he had to stop and ask for help in moving the cable. I was told
that he would have been thinking somewhere in the back of his mind:
’aw shit, theyll have a fucking giggle at me if I don’t get this thing out
27
of here’. Had he actually asked for help he might have been teased
with: ’Jesus, can’t you drive the fucking thing; what are you doing,
prick?’
This incident does point to one significant source of accidents in
mines: the social pressure on individuals not to appear incompetent or
unmanly. Another instance of this was recounted to me by a man who
injured his back. He had been standing on a chunk of coal raising
heavy pipe above his head with the help of one other man, when he
slipped and fell. He told me that it would have been better to have
three men doing the job, but he didn’t raise this at the time as he didn’tt
want to be seen by others as an ’old woman’.
It has often been suggested in the literature that group pressure to
demonstrate masculinity promotes risk-taking behaviour in certain
circumstances (Fitzpatrick, 1974, 28). And, as we have seen, there are
clear signs of this process at work in the mines. But there is certainly
no full-blown cult of machismo (masculinity) to be found. Acts such
as those described above occur only when the risks involved are not
clearly perceived. Where the risks are clear, the men are normally
quite cautious. Those who are asked to go under unsupported or
sagging roof will often object. They may ultimately comply (as one of
my interviewees did on one occasion), bowing to the judgement of
superiors that the roof was safe, or they may refuse absolutely, (as
another did), but their manhood is never in question. In one incident I
witnessed, electricians were working on a continuous miner which
was out of action when a deputy, checking the roof overhead, chipped
off a small piece of rock which fell harmlessly to the ground. The
electricians jumped back in alarm. There was a certain amount of
joking about this (’what are you trying to do-kill us?’), but there was
never any suggestion that the fear exhibited by the electricians was in
any way unmanly. Roof falls are too serious a matter for questions of
masculinity to arise.
It is noteworthy that a detailed study of a group of miners in the
United States came to a similar conclusion (Fitzpatrick, 1974, 103).
There, the investigator found that a willingness to face unnecessary
danger was never used, even implicitly, as a test of manhood. The
had
a
mere
fact that
one
had chosen to be
a
miner
was
sufficient.
AT THE FACE
So far we have drawn a blank in our search for evidence of the
effect of the bonus on safety. It is, however, right at the face, at the
point at which coal is being cut, that we are most likely to find what
we are looking for. Before embarking on this stage of the investigation
we need to understand something of the mining process.
28
by driving forward a rectangular network of
to the extremity of the area being mined. The
tunnels
development
blocks of coal left standing are then mined in retreat, of which I shall
say more in a moment. Mining is done by huge machines, continuous
miners, driven by one man. These both cut and load the coal into
shuttle cars which take it to a conveyer belt for transport to the
surface. In the development phase the continuous miner can advance a
tunnel by 2 meters in the space of about five minutes, but mining must
then stop for perhaps fifteen minutes while the driver and the other
eight or so men in the team busy themselves putting up roof
supports - vertical props and cross bars bolted to the overhead strata.
Roof supporting is the most time consuming and arduous part of the
process. When the machine is actually cutting coal the rest of the team
stands by, for the most part, idly.
In the retreat phase, when the blocks between the tunnels are being
extracted, the process is somewhat different and considerably more
hazardous. A certain amount of roof support work is put in place, but
by and large mining in this stage is carried out under unsupported
roof. The machine makes a series of passes through the block to be
mined, but the blocks are narrow enough (perhaps 12 metres) and the
machines long enough to ensure that, generally, the miner driver is
not actually under unsupported roof. Moreover he is required to leave
one (in some mines more than one) small pillar of coal, called a’stook’,
to act as a natural support. The size of this pillar is often not closely
specified but it would typically be expected to be several square metres
Coal is
in
cross
won
section.
It is not intended that the roof above the mined out block remain
permanently in position. Rather, the roof is expected to collapse in a
controlled and predictable way as the continuous miner retreats.
Indeed this is considered desirable because it releases the pressure on
adjacent blocks of coal making them safer to mine when the time
comes.
The retreat phase of mining is more productive than the
development phase since a great proportion of time is spent actually
cutting coal. It is in this phase of mining that, according to critics of
the bonus,
for here, it is said, any
roof.
One particular short cut that is often said to occur is the mining of
all or part of the stook, the pillar which is supposed to be left standing
for the miners’ own protection. This was precisely the reason for an
incident mentioned earlier in the paper when a continuous miner was
buried in a roof fall. According to some of their fellow miners, those
responsible were ’robbing the stook, robbing it blind’. They were said
most
evidence of short
comer-cutting
cuts is
occurs,
quickly buried under collapsing
29
be after ’easy coal’, a reference to the fact that the stook could be
extracted without having to install any additional roof support. Here
finally is the evidence we have been looking for of the effect of the
bonus on safety. But is it?
to
ALTERNATIVE INTERPRETATIONS
First of all, can it be simply assumed that the men in question knew
that what they were doing was wrong or unsafe? Certainly
management thought so. ’The miner driver should have known
better’, the manager told me. He had been instructed on several
occasions to leave a stook. But, interestingly, the size of the stook had
never been specified. Only after this incident, were the men actually
told how large a stook they were required to leave. Moreover, it seems
that the miners had been accustomed to leaving little or no stook,
without mishap. What had happened was that mining had progressed,
without anyone realizing it, to an area of the mine where roof
conditions were appreciably worse and where the stook was now
vitally
necessary.
more interestingly, the men had a ready justification for their
practice of removing the stook: it was imperative that the roof collapse
in order to release pressure on adjacent blocks of coal before mining of
Even
those blocks could commence; to- facilitate this collapse it was
necessary to remove the stook. This was apparently legitimate
practice in some other mines and a young and inexperienced geologist
to whom I spoke in the presence of some of the miners agreed that,
theoretically, the removal of the stook was justified on these grounds.
The men immediately took this as a confirmation of their claim.
The miners believed, moreover, that their superiors condoned the
practice. Assistant undermanagers had from time to time walked into
the workplace, seen what was happening and walked out, thereby
implicitly approving the removal of stooks.
This is not, however, a fair inference on the part of the miners.
Lower management is under very great social pressure from the
miners not to be continually critical of their work. The following is
probably what happens. An assistant undermanager arrives at the
work place on a routine tour of inspection, chats to the men, asks
casually if roof conditions are O.K., is assured that they are and
departs. He may or may not notice that the men are ’nibbling at the
stook’, but since this is normal practice he turns a blind eye so as to
avoid trouble.
The pressure on deputies (foremen) to avoid trouble is even greater.
They must work alongside the miners and so cannot afford to
30
antagonize them. One deputy confided to me that the miner driver in
the crew he was supervising was a ’bit of a hot head’. The driver had
been working in mines for longer than the deputy and usually felt he
about it than the deputy. Consequently, he did not take
advice.
And advice is really all a deputy can offer. Any deputy who tried to
issue orders to his men would soon find his life quite unbearable. I
witnessed one deputy who had decided to work overtime at the end of
a shift being quite mercilessly ridiculed by the remainder of the crew
who had decided not to.
Even a union safety official I spoke to complained of the social
isolation which was his lot if he attempted to enforce safety
requirements against the wishes of the men. He would often be greeted
on arrival at the work face, he said, with cries of: ’here comes little
Hitler’.
The point is that the failure of under-managers to prevent the
removal of stooks is not necessarily evidence of their approval of the
practice. Nevertheless, it is perfectly understandable that the men
would interpret this failure as such, thus further legitimizing the
knew
more
kindly
to
practice.
What is most interesting about this whole episode is that it shows
just how much ambiguity, misinformation and misunderstanding
surrounds the question of safe mining practice in relation to stooks. It
is clearly not enough for management to issue instructions and then to
assume that they will be carried out. The channels of communication
are far from clear and competing information may well receive
priority in workers’ minds. The collective beliefs of the men on the job
about safe mining practice sometimes bear little relationship to the
views of top management.
But even if we assume the worst, namely, that the miners were
clearly aware of the required procedures and deliberately chose to
ignore them, it cannot be simply that this was for the sake of the
bonus. A more plausible hypothesis is that one of the primary concerns of
any worker engaged in routine, boring and alienated labour is being
able to do his job with the minimum expenditure of effort. While coal
is actually being cut by the continuous miner, the men have very few
functions to perform and are able to relax. But as soon as the machine
stops, they must get busy on roof support and other associated work.
This is particularly true in relation to the removal of a stook. Once
mining of a particular block of coal has finished, the men must make
preparations for mining the next block, putting up supports, moving
the machine and so on. It is in their interests that this moment be
deferred as long as possible, by mining the stook. As one inspector of
31
mines put it to
me: imagine yourself a miner towards the end of the
shift, with only the stook left standing. You can either begin the
preparatory work for the next block of coal or you can continue to
take it easy while the driver cuts a few more cars of coal from the
stook, thus leaving the preparatory work to miners on the oncoming
shift. The choice is clear.
I suggest that the removal of the stook, the attraction of ’easy coal’,
probably has more to do with a desire to minimize effort than with a
desire to maximize earnings. This analysis is reinforced by the incident
discussed earlier in which the miners preferred to relax and read
papers while the machine was being repaired, rather than go to
another area of the mine where they could have begun work
immediately.
recounting another rather trivial incident which neverthehighlights the pervasive effect which this motive of work
It is worth
less
minimization has on safety. One minor told me how he had on one
occasion been putting up a prop when the roof gave some slight
indication of danger. He knew he should go and get a jack to support
the roof temporarily while he finished the job, but he ’couldn’t be
bothered’. A second warning noise changed his mind. However,
having located a jack he found that it would not fit and, rather than
looking for another he finished the job without any temporary
support - and without incident. Here it is a clear recognition of
danger, accompanied by a willingness to take the risk so as to get the
job done with the minimum of inconvenience.
EXPERIENCE-BASED STANDARDS
Even at the mine face, then, we have failed to find an unambiguous
instance of the alleged detrimental effect of the bonus on safety. The
problem is that unsafe practices that maximize income, can plausibly
be seen as motivated by a desire to minimize effort. The issue might be
clearer if we could find an instance of an unsafe practice which
maximized production but which did not involve any corresponding
reduction of effort. With this in mind let us consider the phenomenon
of methane gas explosions and the regulations designed to prevent
them.
be
triggered by electrical sparks when the level of
atmosphere rises above 5 per cent. The Coal Mines
Regulation Act requires ventilation in the mines to be such as to keep
Explosions
can
methane gas in the
the concentration well below this level. Indeed mining must stop if the
level at the face reaches 1.25 per cent and men must be withdrawn
from the area if the level reaches 2 per cent; but the men are quite
32
prepared to tolerate gas in excess of these statutory limits. According
to a witness at the judicial inquiry after the Appin explosion, 1.8 per
cent was ’not abnormal’ (Goran, n.d. (b), 55) and one miner I spoke to
said that he had
matter is
on
occasion worked in up to 3 per cent. However, the
serious. The continuous miner is equipped with a
even more
methane monitor which is designed to disconnect power to the
machine if the level of gas rises above a certain limit. The level of gas
would normally return below this limit within a few seconds of the
cessation of mining, but restarting the machine has to be carried out at
a junction box some distance from the miner by a deputy who is not
always present and who may have to be located. A machine which is
continually tripped by its monitor can thus cause considerable
annoyance to the men and distruption to the mining process. Where
this is happening and the men have the slightest reason to suspect that
the monitor may not be working correctly, miners have been known to
disconnect the monitor and to continue without this safeguard. The
attitude expressed to me by one man was that ’if you hit a bit of gas,
you can be through it in no time, so what’s the use of stopping?’
Note that the violations occurring in connection with gas can hardly be
said to be motivated by a desire to minimize effort (to observe the
regulations by stopping whenever the level of gas is above 1.25 per
cent involves no additional effort). Can these violations be said to be
motivated by a bonus-induced concern for productivity?
Even here the answer is not clear-cut. An explosion is a rare event.
Most mines have never had one and several years may elapse without
a single explosion anywhere in the Australian coal fields. Thus the
miners’ own experience leads them to discount the possibility of an
explosion as they go about their work and to view the limits and
standards specified in the legislation as somewhat arbitrary and
unnecessarily stringent. They know from their own experience that
gas can be tolerated with impugnity and they tend to see the standards
laid down in legislation as having been devised by people with little or
no knowledge of actual mining conditions. What happens, in other
words, is that, based on their own experience, miners develop their
own safety standards which diverge markedly from the official ones.
Unfortunately, since the experience of any particular group of miners
is limited, their own experience-based standards do not take into
account the exceptional events or circumstances which official
standards are designed to allow for.
Precisely because the miners’ standards are experience-based they are
in consent flux. The Appin explosion in 1979 is very much part of the
experience of miners in the southern N.S.W. coal fields and attitudes
to gas changed in consequence. There is now a greater appreciation of
33
the risks involved and according to miners I spoke to, practices have
For example, most miners would now regard the
disconnection of the methane monitor on a continuous miner as an
unacceptable practice. One should not, however, expect these changes
to be permanent. As the memory of Appin fades a more tolerant
attitude to gas can be expected to re-emerge.
It is clear, then, that in flouting official requirements in relation to
gas, miners are not deliberately engaging in behaviour known to be
unsafe; they are conforming to their own experience-based safety
standards. But the question remains: why are these experience-based
standards substituted for the official ones?
The answer may well be, in part, the existence of a bonus-generated
production pressure. To be continually thwarted in their task of
cutting coal by what are regarded as arbitrary and unnecesssarily
stringent standards, must lead naturally to the substitution of the
miners’ more ’realistic’ experience-based standards.
Even so, there are certainly other influences at work. Probably the
single most important source of the attitude of tolerance towards gas
exhibited by the men is from management. Evidence given at the
Appin inquiry showed that high levels of gas were regularly recorded
at the mine face, in part because certain of the fans used to ventilate
the mine were not sufficiently powerful. This was commented on by a
government inspector on several occasions over a period of months,
and on each occasion management promised to remedy the problem.
In fact this was never done. Moreover, the management at Appin was
systematically violating regulations concerning allowable levels of gas
in intake airways (upstream from the work face). The Act specifies
that levels of gas here must, understandably, be considerably lower
than at the face itself - less than .25 per cent as opposed to 1.25 per
cent at the face. In fact, however, management was tolerating up to .5
per cent, with the concurrence of government inspectors, on the
grounds that it was ’not practical’ to meet the stricter standard in gassy
mines such as Appin. Judge Goran, who conducted the Appin inquiry,
commented on this as follows
changed somewhat.
One cannot escape the inference that gas was tolerated in this mine
unless it was believed to be dangerous ... What was in fact allowed to
happen was the growth of a philosophical attitude towards methane as
a fact of life. It was a nuisance, it could hold up production in working
places, but it was not a matter of great concern standing in places where
the possibility of ignition was remote. The officials had their own view
of when gas was permissible. It differed from the standard of the Act.
Even Inspector Mould tolerated it (Goran, n.d.(b), 87).
Miners, then,
were
tolerating illegal
simply following
concentrations of gas.
the lead of management in
34
But to return to the impact of the bonus, the point is that in so far as
the bonus is implicated in these violations, it is not a case of the bonus
over-riding safety considerations. It is simply that the bonus may play
a part, and I would suspect a less important part than management
example, in the substitution of experience-based for legislative
standards.
Moreover, it needs to be said that these experience-based standards,
at least those in relation to levels of gas, have not been discredited by
the disastrous explosions which occur from time to time with massive
loss of life. Most fatal explosions in Australian mining history have
been associated with an exceptional build-up of gas, often when
mining was not actually in progress and having nothing to do with the
tolerance of gas shown by miners in normal production shifts.
In so far as a careless attitude towards gas is evident in these
explosions it is carelessness on the part of management, not of the
miners. To demonstrate this in detail would take me well away from
the purpose of the paper. Let me, therefore, simply illustrate it by
reference to the Appin explosion. In this case the management
initiated a ventilation changeover, a change in the path followed by
air circulating in the mine, as must be done from time to time as the
network of tunnels is extended. But no one checked that the change
has been successfully carried out. In fact it had not and one of the
working areas of the mine lost all ventilation with the result that a
major build-up of gas occurred. The explosion was triggered by men
on a non-production shift working with electrical equipment in this
unventilated area.
It is noteworthy that under United States government mine policy
this could not have happened. The policy requires that before a
ventilation changeover, power to the mine must be disconnected and
must not be reconnected until checks have been carried out to verify
that all relevant sections of the mine are adequately ventilated (U.S.
Mine Safety and Health Administration, 1978). That Australian mines
do not, on their own initiative, take such elementary precautions can
only be regarded as negligent.
A FURTHER EXAMPLE
We have not been able to rule out the possibility that the adoption of
less stringent, experience-based standards in the case of gas may be, in
part, bonus-motivated. It is important to recognise, however, that in
many circumstances alternative standards are adopted for reasons
which fairly clearly have nothing to do with bonus but rather with the
previously discussed concern to minimize effort. Consider the
35
following. Both the starting and stopping of electrical mine machinery
involves the creation of a spark. For this reason the starter wiring on
such machinery is enclosed in a large metal box. The box has a heavy
hinged door which, when closed, must be tightened down around the
edges with sometimes 24 bolts. When properly bolted down the door
and hence the box is ’flameproof’. This means that even though the
spark inside the box may ignite any methane gas which happens to be
present the flame will
not
be able
to escape
and ignite gas outside.
according to Judge Goran, the explosion at Appin was
triggered by a failure to observe this procedure. An underground
Now
electrical fan had been giving trouble and an electrician had been
asked to repair it. Having done so, he had wished to check his work
by running the fan and, rather than tightening down all 24 bolts, had
merely closed the door and inserted one bolt, giving it two turns. The
box was thus not in a flameproof condition and it was the test start or
stop in these circumstances which set off the explosion.
Prior to the Appin explosion this was apparently quite a common
pratice, even though totally illegal. Moreover, in the case in question
it was done with the approval of a deputy who was standing by at the
time. In the miners’ experience, with gas levels well below 5 % , this
was a reasonably safe practice. It was only because of the abnormal
build-up of gas caused by a ventilation failure, for which I have
argued management must be held responsible, that the practice on this
occasion proved fatal. This is a particularly clear example of an
experience-based standard, a short cut if you like, which, though
perhaps reasonable under normal circumstances, was inadequate in
the exceptional circumstances pertaining at the time of the explosion.
What can be said about the motive for this particular short-cut?
Anyone who watches an electrician carry out a repair and laboriously
tighten the 24 bolts only to find on test starting that the repair has not
worked and that all 24 bolts must again be undone can have no doubt
that the short-cut is simply designed to make life a little easier for the
electrician and has nothing to do with a concern for lost production.
A CRITIC’S CLAIM
So far our inquiry has failed to yield clear evidence of a connection
between the bonus and unsafe practices. Perhaps a consideration of
the arguments of those who have criticized the bonus system will
clarify the connection. Unfortunately, most of those who assert a
connection offer no argument beyond saying that it is ’obvious’ that a
bonus system must induce men to cut corners. The following case,
however, provides a little more access to the type of reasoning which
36
may sometimes be involved. It concerns the death of two miners
crushed by a fall of coal. A union safety official who had been present
at the inquest explained it to me thus. The men were accustomed to
dividing the work team in two, each half taking the meal break
separately. In this way production could continue uninterupted. It
meant,
though,
that
during meal periods
crews
worked short-handed
at regular intervals, without the most experienced members of
the team present. It was this dangerous and bonus-motivated practice
which had lead to the fatalities, he told me.
and,
Yet an examination of the transcript of the coronial hearing
revealed that the accident had not occurred during a meal break and
that the practice of splitting meals breaks was not therefore relevant.
How did the union safety officer get his information so wrong?
On speaking to the coroner I found that he, too, was firmly of the
opinion that the bonus was the root cause of the accident. Yet in his
half page formal coronial finding he does not actually make this claim.
Indeed he says nothing about the cause of the accident itself but
confines himself to criticizing first the practice of working shorthanded during meal breaks and secondly, the fact that, particularly
when crews are working short-handed, electricians will often be found
driving shuttle cars even though not in possession of the appropriate
certificates of competency. Both were dangerous, bonus-motivated
practices, he suggested. (Whether they are in fact dangerous is quite
debatable). Given these findings, it is easy to see how the false
impression could be created in the minds of those who had not studied
the evidence and who
were pre-disposed to blame the bonus that the
had come to the conclusion that the bonus system was in fact
responsible for the double fatality.
Again we have drawn a blank. Even the evidence cited by a critic of
the bonus turns out upon examination to be inconclusive.
coroner
SOME STATISTICAL EVIDENCE
The detailed examination of particular circumstances has failed to
yield conclusive evidence against the bonus. Let us take a broader,
statistical approach. If the bonus does indeed affect safety, we might
hypothesize that the mines in which miners are making the most
money are also those with the highest accident rates. Certainly this is a
claim which is heard from disgruntled workers in lower production
mines. However, figures produced by the Joint Coal Board show that
only a slight relationship exists betwen the size of bonus payments and
accident rates in N.S.W. mines. Moreover the relationship is the
reverse of that hypothesized: high production, high bonus mines tend
37
have lower accident rates. Various interpretations might be made of
this finding, the most plausible being that the relationship revealed in
the figures is not in fact causal, both variables being functions of a
third, the quality of roof. Where roof conditions are good, we would
expect lower accident rates and, because less time has to be spent in
roof support, higher production. My point is not that this
interpretation is necessarily correct but that the existence of such
alternative interpretations of the data means that we can infer nothing
about the effect of bonus payments on safety simply by looking at the
correlation of these two variables across mines.
The problems with any attempt to correlate accident rates with
bonus payments across a number of mines is that the relationship, if
any, is likely to be confounded by other variables in the manner just
described. A clearer indication might be obtained if we could, in a
particular mine or group of mines, experimentally move from a bonus
to a non-bonus system, or vice versa, and monitor the effect on
accident rates. Just such an ’experiment’ occurred in Britain in the mid
1970s. Prior to that time British miners had been paid on a wage basis
alone, but 1974/5 saw the introduction of a scheme in which miners
were to be paid a quarterly bonus, based on the entire national output
for the previous three months. A bonus was in fact paid during the
first quarter of 1975/76, but no further production bonus payments
were made during the remainder of the financial year, ’as national
output at no time reached the base level necessary’ (National Coal
Board of Great Britain, 1975, 13). The scheme, in short, was a failure.
A second scheme, based on the productivity of individual mines
and involving weekly bonus payments was introduced in 1977/78. In
1978/79, the first full year of operation of the scheme, productivity
increased by about 8 per cent and the average bonus payment made to
face workers was about £22.50, on top of a wage of approximately
~90 per week. In 1979/80, the average weekly bonus paid to face
workers was about S31 on top of a wage of approximately ~102.
(National Coal Board of Great Britain, 1978/79, 18; National Coal
Board of Great Britain, 1979/80, 22).
What was the effect of this new scheme on safety? The relevant
figures are presented in Table 1.
Consider first the total accident rate figures in the last column
(accidents involving over three days absence, per 100,000 manshifts).
These show a steady decline throughout the whole period. The same is
true for the serious injury figures, the greatest single drop being in the
first full year of the scheme’s operation. The fatality rate is more
variable, probably because the number of fatalities is small enough,
statistically speaking, to be affected by exceptional incidents. Thus the
to
38
Table 1. Accident
rates in
British coal mines
(a) rate per 100,000 manshifts
(b) injuries involving more than three days absence from work
(c) first, abortive bonus scheme introduced
(d) first full year of operation of effective bonus scheme
(e) figure inflated by two exceptional events (see text)
(f) change in method of reporting accidents: figures not comparable
Source: Relevant annual reports of National Coal Board.
fact that the number of fatalities in 1978/79, the first full year of bonus
payments, is exceptionally high, is largely a consequence of two
accidents - a runaway train which killed seven miners, and an
explosion, which killed ten. As if to underline the random nature of
this figure, the number of fatalities in the following year was a record
low. Overall, the fatality trend appears to be downwards over the
whole period. The British National Coal Board comments on these
figures as follows:
suggested that incentive payments could be a contributory
factor in accidents, but detailed examination of accident statistics
reveals no evidence for this view. The circumstances of fatal and serious
reportable accidents are always examined meticulously and this
scrutiny has failed to show any link between the accidents and the
It has been
incentive scheme. Indeed, safety levels on the coalface, where most of
the incentive earnings are generated, continued to improve in
1978/9-with an 8°lo reduction in the incidence of fatal and serious
accidents caused by falls of ground
Great Britian, 1978/79, 20).
at
the face (National Coal Board of
In its report for 1980/81, the Board commented:
This record
productivity
year coincided with the second full year of the
incentive scheme and the Board welcomed this as further
safety
evidence of the
(1980/81, 24).
compatibility
of
safety, efficiency and productivity
39
acknowledged that, prima facie, these figures constitute
quite persuasive evidence against the alleged effect of the bonus
system on safety in coal mines.
It must be
However, the National Coal Board
possibility
of
an
adverse effect
on
was
very
aware
safety and expanded
its
of the
safety
programs in the year just prior to the scheme’s introduction. In its
1979/80 report it said: ’the unions and the Board will be particularly
alert to ensure that men do not take risks to earn more money and are
determined to improve the industry’s safety record (1979/80, 18). In
its report for 1980/81, the Board further augmented its safety program
’with the launching of a special safety initiative in the second half of
the year. The initiative required all Areas and collieries to prepare and
carry out special safety programmes’ (1980/81, 23). The sceptic might
argue that these efforts in a sense destroyed the validity of the
’experiment’; that were it not for the safety programs, a relationship
between bonus payments and accident rates might have been more
apparent. While this is certainly a possibility, the evidence is clearly
strong enough to cast very serious doubt on the alleged affect of the
bonus on safety.
TYPES OF BONUS
The British experience highlights another important matter which
has so far been overlooked, namely that the precise nature of an
incentive scheme may have a bearing on whether or not it jeopardizes
safety. Perhaps with hindsight it is obvious that the first abortive
scheme, based as it was on the output of all mines over a three month
period, could not have been expected to have any real impact on the
motivation of the individual miner. Even where a bonus is paid on the
basis of the output of a single mine or factory for a week, the incentive
for the individual to cut corners in any particular context is
minimal - he would not expect to be able to boost his pay significantly
by individual illegal or unsafe acts. On the other hand, a bonus paid
on the basis of individual output, might more plausibly be expected to
induce unsafe behaviour. The contract system of payment in
operation in the early days of coal mining in N.S.W. was one such
scheme. Accoding to Gollan, (1963, 171), the scheme ’was one of the
most fruitful causes of accidents. Miners took risks to fulfil their
contract rather than spend time on securing their working place’.
Gollan provides no evidence for this claim and in the light of previous
discussion no such claim should be accepted uncritically. Surry
(1977, 115), concludes on the basis of a survey of the relevant research
findings for industry generally that there is no evidence that
40
rates, as opposed to fixed pay, lead to higher accident
The point is, however, that even were there evidence
forthcoming in relation to the contract system, it could not count as
evidence against the type of bonus system in operation in N.S.W.
piecework
rates.
today.
Certain other incentive payment schemes to be found in some
Australian mines may be more detrimental to safety than the bonus.
In these schemes, which operate in addition to the normal bonus
system, a crew which cuts more than a specified number of cars of
coal in any one shift (say 100 cars) receives a small additional payment
(perhaps half an hours pay). If a crew realizes towards the end of a
shift that it is within striking distance of this target it may be tempted
to cut corners. One crew I was told of, realizing that it was within
sight, not just of an incentive payout, but of a record number of cars
of coal, decided to continue cutting right to the end of the shift,
leaving no time for stone-dusting - a safety procedure normally
carried out towards the end of a shift. This was left, with
management approval, to the oncoming shift. The record was duly
broken and the manager rewarded the crew by taking them and their
wives out for an expensive dinner. The incentive in this particular
instance was evidently the satisfaction of breaking a record and not
just the additional earnings entailed, but it does provide tangible
evidence of the way in which a company can generate production
incentives which on occasions over-ride safe mining practice.
THE FUNCTIONS OF BONUS
Even though no definite connection has been established between
accident rates and the bonus scheme in operation in N.S.W. coal
mines, might it not be prudent to abolish the scheme in favour of a
wage, equal to the current wage plus the bonus in some recent high
production period? Such a system would not appear to be financially
disadvantageous to miners and might possibly lead to some, albeit
very slight, increase in safety. I put this suggestion to a number of
miners, all of whom rejected it. Their reasons lead me to realize that
the bonus system performs a number of other functions for miners
apart from augmenting the existing wage. A consideration of these
functions will help us understand the miners’ attachment to the present
system.
First and probably most importantly, under the present system,
whenever there is an increase in productivity brought about by changes
in mine organization or whatever, miners receive an automatic pay
increase without the need for industrial action. Thus, for instance, in
41
one N.S.W. mine, the installation of underground storage bins which
enable production to continue when the conveyer belt is temporarily
out of action, saw a substantial increase in production and hence
bonus payments. There is, however, a limit to the automatic pay
increases which can be gained in this way. When a major
technological change, such as the introduction of long wall mining,
promises massive increases in productivity, management insists on
lowering the bonus rate.
Secondly, whenever miners are seeking a pay rise, it is far easier to
achieve a rise in the bonus rate than a rise in the award wage. This is in
part because, in demanding a bonus increase, the union is confronting
the management of a single mine; wages, on the other hand, are set on
an industry-wide basis and increases are correspondingly more
difficult to achieve. Furthermore, management is inherently more
amenable to bonus rate increases than to wages increases since, when a
company wishes to cut production, for whatever reason, bonus
payments are automatically reduced. The wage component of
expenses remains fixed, however.
A third function of the bonus system is that it is seen by miners as
enabling them by working harder to increase their take-home pay in
the weeks immediately preceding Christmas or any other holiday
break during which they expect their expenses to rise. I have seen no
evidence that production does actually increase in this way, but
whether it does or not, the possibility of such an effect is one of the
reasons some miners give in support of a bonus system of payment.
A fourth argument put to me by one miner was that the bonus
system is a step towards profit sharing and, more generally, employee
participation in management. This, he told me, is vital if
multinationals are to be prevented from exploiting coal reserves in a
manner contrary to the Australian national interest.
A final function of the bonus is that it gives men a sense of
recognition for the work they do. There is a feeling of pride at the end
of the shift and at the end of the week when the number of cars of coal
cut is chalked up on the board; the bonus is tangible recognition of the
work which lies behind these figures. Furthermore, men in high bonus
mines resent the idea that men in other mines who, they assume are
not working as hard as they, might nevertheless be paid the same high
wage. This, they feel, would devalue their own efforts.
Interestingly, the fact that the bonus system results in pay
differences between mines meets with considerable disapproval from
many union officials. Pay differences set miners from different mines
against each other and more than one bar room brawl has been
precipitated by such rivalries. Officials see this as destructive of union
solidarity.
42
To summarize, the attachment of miners to the bonus system is not
a matter of the size of the next pay packet. There are also
psychological and longer term financial considerations involved. Any
attempt to eliminate the bonus system on the grounds of its possible
(though, I have argued, improbable) contribution to the accident rate
would need to take careful account of the other functions performed
by this system of payment.
just
A SAFETY SUGGESTION
In this investigation of the effect of the bonus on accident rates,
several other sources of illegal or unsafe behaviour have been
identified - a daredevilry in certain circumstances, a concern on
occasions not to be seen as unmanly or incompetent,
misunderstandings and misinformation, the adoption of experiencebased standards, and, most importantly, a desire to make the job a
little easier. This last motivation is implicated, I have argued, in
numerous types of illegal and unsafe practice, with perhaps the most
serious consequences in the matter of roof support. One method of
overcoming this problem would be to introduce, in addition to the
existing production bonus, an incentive scheme designed to achieve
adherance to aproved roof support practices. I am not suggesting a
safety bonus scheme based on the number of accident-free days, such
as operates in certain industrial contexts. The problem with such a
scheme is that inadequate roof supporting does not invariably, indeed
relatively rarely, result in accidents. Thus, the safety payoff of proper
roof supporting would, I suspect, not be sufficiently direct to
outweigh the extra work involved.
A more appropriate scheme would be to pay a bonus based simply
on the number of props or roof straps installed. Companies have
already shown a willingness to negotiate additional or alternative
bonus schemes when it suits them. For instance, one N.S.W. mine has
recently introduced a bonus scheme designed to encourage miners to
drive their tunnels straight and narrow, both vital requirements for
the new technology soon to be introduced there. It should not be
beyond the wit of those concerned to devise an appropriate scheme
along the lines I have suggested.
MANAGEMENT RESPONSIBILITY
As this paper has been concerned with the effect of productivity
bonuses on safety, it has tended to emphasise the motives which lead
miners to engage in unsafe practices. This leads all too easily,
43
the conclusion that it is the miners, not management who
primarily responsible for accidents in the industry. This view is
widespread in management circles. For instance, according to an
official at the Broken Hill zinc mines, 3 per cent of accidents are due to
’unsafe conditions’ while the remaining 97 per cent are due to ’unsafe
acts’. This shows, he says, that ’effort must be focussed on changing
the minds of men’ (Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy,
however,
to
are
1975),
83.
It is the well-known response of ’blaming the victim’ for his or her
misfortune. (Other examples of this response are: blaming the
unemployed for their failure to find work and blaming the rape victim
for putting herself in a position where she might be raped.) ’Blaming
the victim’ serves to divert attention from the responsibility of those in
more powerful positions for the victim’s fate. In the present case it
diverts attention from the responsibility of management. In order not
to leave the reader with the impression that accidents are all in one
way or another the fault of the coal miner I should like, by way of
conclusion, to look briefly at management’s role and responsibility.
Consider again the claim that since 97 per cent of accidents are due
to unsafe acts, ’efforts must be focussed on changing the minds of
men’. This conclusion simply does not follow. The Chief Safety
Engineer of the British National Coal Board has argued that
campaigning to ’change the minds of men’ is not as effective as
introducing technical/physical changes which actually prevent
accidents. He argues, for instance, that no amount of exhortation will
completely stop men from jumping off moving transports, a common
source of injury. The real solution, he says, is for management to
install sliding doors which open only when a vehicle is stationary
(Collinson, 1978, 80).
There
technical/physical modifications which could
machinery in Australian mines to eliminate the temptation
to cut corners. It should be possible, for instance, to construct
methane monitors for continuous miners in such a way that they
cannot be disconnected by the men at the face. Again, the temptation
to which electricians are subjected not to tighten down all 24 bolts on
a flameproof enclosure before doing a test start could be avoided,
either by devising a less laborious system for closing the door, or by
installing a device which made it impossible to do a test start until all
the bolts were tight.
Third, it is no use management bewailing the fact that miner drivers
seem unwilling to wear the special respirator devices (airflow helmets)
designed to protect them from coal dust, potentially the most serious
health problem faced in underground coal mines. The problem is that
be made
are numerous
to
44
drivers wearing the helmets must crouch to fit inside the cabin on
the continuous miner, clearly a physical design defect. Moreover,
miners claim they cannot hear adequately when wearing the
device - again a matter for redesign.
Fourth, visibility from the drivers seat of a shuttle car is grossly
inadequate. Shuttle cars must be driven in both directions from a seat
located at one corner of the vehicle. Thus, in one direction the driver
is sitting behind a load of coal and cannot see in front of him.
Specifically, visibility is restricted by the presence of what the miners
call ’greedy boards’, which raise the side of the vehicle to increase its
coal carrying capacity by four or five tonnes. Numerous accidents, all
too easily attributable to driver negligence, are in fact a consequence
of this design problem. The solution is not to urge men to drive more
carefully, but to improve visibility, perhaps by installing dual
controls, one seat at each end of the vehicle.
(In a similar vein, it seems inexcusable that shuttle cars provide their
drivers with no protection against roof fall. A solid protective canopy
would almost certainly have saved the life of a miner killed recently
when the shuttle car he was driving was buried by a four foot thick fall
of roof coal (Common Cause, 23 September 1981).
The point of these examples is to show that unsafe acts cannot
simply be blamed on the miners. Management must accept
responsibility for the failure to make engineering changes of the type
just described.
More generally, however, it is fair to say that unsafe company
procedures are the root cause of many mining accidents. We have
already seen that had the management’s ventilation changeover
practices at Appin been in accordance with United States government
policy, that explosion could not have occurred.
A very similar procedural failure was responsible for an explosion
at West Wallsend colliery which devastated the mine at a time when,
fortunately, no one was underground (Goran, n.d. (a)). On this
occasion, deputies returning from a Christmas holiday break
switched power on to the mine without first going underground to
check the ventilation. Unknown to them, the main fan had been out of
action for 48 hours and the mine was full of gas. A spark from a
defective cable somewhere usnderground triggered the explosion.
The mine’s rules required that the power not to be turned on until
after the deputies had entered the mine and checked for gas. This was
not however the de facto practice. The routine was always to switch
the power on first and then to proceed underground to carry out a preshift inspection. This was explicitly approved by at least one of the
mine’s assistant undermanagers (Goran, n.d.(a), 71) and may well
most
45
have been occurring with the knowledge of the manager himself,
despite written instructions to the contrary. Even giving the manager
the benefit of the doubt, he is guilty of gross negligence in having
failed to see that his instructions were carried out.
What lies behind this management failure is, as might be expected,
the quest for profit. The West Wallsend pratice of putting power on to
the mine before the deputies did their inspection, meant that an
electrician who would otherwise have had to remain on the surface to
switch the power on when the order was phoned through, could
accompany the deputies underground and attend to any electrical
work which needed to be done. The procedure meant, moreover, that
the deputies would be able to start underground pumps and conveyor
belts as they passed by and, if needed, use power to start diesel man
cars whose batteries were not in proper order. Thus, everything
would be ready for a ’push button start’ by the oncoming shift. The
pressure for a ’push button start’ apparently came from higher
management who were said to ’require an explanation for every delay’
(Goran, n.d.(a), 52). Had the deputies observed the regulations
correctly they would apparently not have been able to ensure a push
button start without a commitment of more men than the
management was prepared to make to pre-shift preparations (Goran,
n.d.(a), 69).
The production/profit motive was highlighted in 1981 in a rare
departmental prosecution of mining company officials, for using
welding equipment in a gassy place without adequate safety
precautions. According to the men’s counsel the welding was carried
out in haste to ’ensure that production could get under way when the
Easter holiday ended’ (The Picton Post, 29 January 1981). This
comment was obviously intended to place the men’s actions in as
favourable a light as possible, but in so doing it shows very clearly the
way in which the production pressure maintained by top management
generates illegal and unsafe behaviour.
CONCLUSION
This paper has been primarily an exploration of the effect of the
bonus system of payment on safety in coal mines. Contrary to my
own initial expectations, the evidence suggests that the bonus system
has no significant effect on safety. Miners do unsafe things, not for the
sake of bonus, but for a number of other reasons, the most prominent
being the desire to make a dirty, boring, physically demanding job a
little easier than it would otherwise be. Furthermore, no amount of
exhortation is likely to alter this situation. If management is serious
46
about preventing miners from doing unsafe things the most effective
way is to design machinery and organize work in such a way that
unsafe acts become impossible. But in any case, many accidents and
certainly
most
explosions
which
occur
underground
are
ultimately
attributable to unsafe company practices for which management must
bear primary responsibility. It is only if the focus of attention can be
shifted from the actions of individual miners to the role and
responsibility of management that we are likely to see any significant
reduction in the unacceptably high rate of accidents in underground
coal mines in this country.
REFERENCES
Australian Institute of Mining and
Metallurgy, (1975), Occupational Safety in
Mines, papers presented at a symposium (AIMM: Parkville, Vic.)
Collinson, J.L. (1978), ’Safety: Pleas and Prophylactics’, The Mining Engineer,
(July).
Dingstad, D.P. (1980), ’Responses to the Bulli Colliery Disaster of 1887’,
unpublished B.A. thesis, History Dept. Wollongong University.
Fitzpatrick J. (1974), ’Underground Mining: A Case Study of an Occupational
Subculture of Danger’, PhD thesis, Ohio State University.
Gollan, R. (1963), The Coal Miners of N.S.W., Melbourne, Melbourne
University Press.
Goran, A.J. (n.d. (a)), ’Report on the Explosion at West Wallsend No. 2
Colliery on 8th January 1979’, unpublished report available from
N.S.W. Dept. of Industrial Relations.
Goran, A.J. (n.d. (b)), ’Report on the Appin Colliery Explosion of 24 July
1979’, unpublished report, available from N.S.W. Dept. of Industrial
Relations.
Joint Coal Board (J.C.B.), (1981), Accident Statistics, New South Wales Coal
Industry 1971/72 to 1979/80, Sydney, Joint Coal Board.
Leigh, J. (1981), ’Health effects of coal mining operation’, unpublished paper,
available from the Joint Coal Board.
Mendeloff, J. (1979), Regulating Safety: An Economic and Political Analysis
of Occupational Safety and Health, Cambridge, MIT Press.
National Coal Board of Great Britain, 1975/76, 1978/79, 1979/80, 1980/81,
Annual Report.
Surry, J. (1977), Industrial Accident Research: A Human Engineering
Approach, Ontario, Dept. of Labour.
United States Mine Safety and Health Administration, (1978), Underground
Manual II—283.