At lunch Tuesday at ASSE’s Safety 2013 I had the pleasure of dining with Mike Williamsen, one of sharpest minds I’ve met in safety, a longtime friend and working colleague of the late Dan Petersen, and now a consultant for Caterpillar Safety Services.
Accountability in its truest sense refers to one’s responsibility for one’s obligations. You are responsible for some result or you are obligated to someone. These are the things you are accountable for. In practice, we would say a person is accountable when he chooses a job that best provides for his family, or that a doctor is accountable when she looks out for the best interests of her patients.
Thou shalt not kill. People have been using rules to protect people since man left the primordial forest and walked up right for the first time. For people some rules are sacred—they are worshipped for their own sake. For others, rules were meant to be broken. Irrespective of your view of rules, they form the foundation of society of all levels.
In the four decades since the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act) was signed into law, workplace deaths and reported occupational injuries have dropped by more than 60 percent.
A group of leading governments join together in a unique initiative to commit to corporate sustainability reporting, in support of paragraph 47 of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development – Rio+20 – outcome document.
I received your letter last week, and while nothing I say or do will ever erase your tragedy I do hope I can help you to understand the state of workplace safety today.
