Workplace Report May 2009

Health & safety news

CWU attacks management blame culture

The CWU communication workers union has condemned local managers for issuing “blameworthy warning letters” or taking safety discipline cases against postal workers, in breach of Royal Mail’s national policy.

Dave Joyce, CWU safety officer said: “Over the last year we have seen a significant number of area managers and their teams adopt a ‘blame culture’ in complete contradiction to the approach we favour and agree is correct. There is too much of a tendency for managers to look to blame workers and to call for ‘something to be done’ whenever there is an accident or an incident without taking a good hard look at themselves and without thoroughly investigating the accident in consultation with the safety representative to discover the real root causes and then putting things right to stop it happening again.”