The scene plays out in Western movies. The villain Jesse James, the most famous member of the James-Younger gang that terrorized the Minnesota area in the later 1800s, is shot in the back, defenseless, by a fellow member of his gang out to collect the bounty on James’ life.

The malingering global economy has created, in many workplaces, a pervasive climate of fear. Fear can undermine worker safety in many ways. But unless we understand the nature and origins of this fear, we can never implement effective countermeasures.

As a good friend recently told me, "so many of us have had our heads buried in the feeding trough earning a living and paying our bills, we have not had time to look up and pay attention to what the hell is going on around us."