Behind Subcontractor Risk: A Multiple Case Study Analysis of Mining and Natural Resources Fatalities

This study explores subcontractor risk in mining – and how their experience differs from principal contractors.

Not a summary – #LazyNYupload

(** Note: Shared under an Open Access CC BY 4.0 licence, allowing it to be uploaded here.)

Extracts:

· “our analysis shows that, even when subcontractor employees are covered by the same rules and systems as other workers, they experience those systems very differently”

· “the failure of conversion of expertise in work to expertise in safety and the difference in views of principal contractor staff to subcontractor staff when it came to safety work were results of the abductive analysis”

· “We also found that Safety Management Systems, which are often looked upon as being responsible for the safety of all employees (including subcontractors) do not necessarily cope with the variability introduced by the subcontracting system”

· “the focus of subcontractor employees on core work owing to the time constraints, and their most casual nature of employment leads to partial completion of the requirements of the SMS, which are often seen by them as non-core work”

· “In addition, the filtration of communication from the upper layers was found to affect the loss/misinterpretation of information regarding SMS when it comes to mainly smaller subcontractors at the bottom of the chain”

· “Time pressure leads to the fixation towards completion of core work as the completion of the task and attaching less importance to any non-core work that does not directly influence the task, leading to the only on-paper end of otherwise necessary safety work, which is now non-core”

· “Similarly, incentives that would form part of a long-term goal for principal contractor employees form part of short-term goals for subcontractor employees as many of them are hired on a casual basis and get paid by the hour. This would mean that the amount of effort that goes into short-term goals does not go into long term goals”