Not many people alive today would have seen the newspaper headlines on the 15th of October 1913. That was the day after what has become known as the ‘Senghenydd Colliery Disaster. It was the result of an explosion at the Universal Colliery near Caerphilly, Glamorgan, Wales. In that catastrophe, 439 miners and a rescuer were killed – the worst mining accident in the United Kingdom.
However, mining safety has come on in leaps and bounds since then – but one of the reasons why there are no longer disasters such as that which devastated the communities of Glamorgan is that safety-related training for miners, like the Standard 11 Mining Induction, has now become a priority for mining companies and contractors across Australia.
The fact of the matter is that the mining environment is simply not static. It is continually evolving on a number of fronts, including the continued refinement of the physical processes used in obtaining rare and essential minerals. As the pace of modern life continues to accelerate the need for more and more minerals to fuel that development increases.
This has inevitably led to a more pressurised mining environment. Mines are now deeper – and operating in environments that are by their nature more and more challenging. Even those open-air operations that do not require plumbing the depths of the Earth to obtain valuable minerals are becoming more and more challenging. And with those challenges come dangers. Heavy machinery and the increased pace of operations mean that the margins for error are increasingly narrow.
This has meant that safety training within the mining environment has become one of the factors that influence not only the profitability of the mining operation but also the health of those who are at that all-important ‘coal face’. Mining companies are more and more aware that the value of those who take those valuable minerals from the ground are the true assets of each company – the skilled workers that are involved in a particular company’s day-to-day operations are part and parcel of the value chain – their safety is intrinsic to the company’s wellbeing and are essential cogs in the machinery that provides a return on investment for the shareholders of any particular operation.
Of course, employees have become more and more vocal and demanding in their quest for increased safety standards – which has contributed to the focus on safety training. The fact of the matter is that a mining company that does not prioritise training in world-class safety standards will see an exodus of skilled labour – and subject itself to potentially devastating litigation. In today’s hyper-competitive environment consumers have access to information in near real-time- and any lapses in safety protocols will be punished. Good corporate governance and attention to safety training is today simply a matter of survival – not only of the company itself but also to those in its employ. Those workers who are not trained to world-class standards of safety will vote with their feet – and find employment els
