In every action, may it be ordinarily or non-ordinarily daily activity undertaken by human beings, there is a risk associated with the action, regardless of its magnitude. That is, in everything that we do ranging from resting to participation in rigorous bustles involving rescuing work, or warring against adversaries, a certain degree of risk is always there.
Surely, this portrays that risk will forever be there in all human daily life activities, however, there are varying extremes of the risk depending on the kind of activity, or work being done.
If we view resting as having its own associated health risk, it’s vivid that the most important thing for a person to understand is the kind of risks embedded within the work s/he does, after acknowledge that little can be done to bring it to extinction (Barnett, 2005).
For many centuries, workplace incidents leading to work fatalities have been matters of great concern in all major industry categories; thus, over the years, efforts have been put to reduce the number of workplace injuries in most of the major industries of mining, transportation, building & construction, agriculture and food industries among others.
Certainly, the graph of work related industrial incidents have shown a decreasing trend in the last few decades, and such great injury reductions has been as a result of numerous federal and state historic established policies and legislations, dating back as far as 1960s during which occupational safety and health organization (OSHA) directed them to save the lives of miners.
This has however been extended to all kind of work categories, hence, meat packing industries have not been an exceptional (Anonymous, 1999)
Within the meat packing industries, the labor force is exposed to a number of risks including incidents of machine cuts which may be escalated by the machine’s high speed, animal attacks or even manipulated human systems particular in the areas of management and supervision.
As there is a diversity of risk sources within the meat industry, so as there are a number of strategies that have been put forward as ways of alleviating working under unsafe condition. Whereas in certain instances, reduction of machine’s high speed has been suggested as the best way of reducing the machine injury casualty rates reported in an organization, such protection reservation is subjective in one way or the other.
The idea of reducing machine’s speed may empirical end-up in stopping the machine, or low speed would result into a significant reduction of production. If the machine speed is slowed down, this will generally not only be contrary to the investor’s intentions, but it will also go against the normalcy of business operation practices and the nation’s objectivity of having increased economy growth (Wanda, 2007).
Based on the utilitarian approaches, it is detrimental to maintain the extremes of the machine’s speed, which would leave largest number of individuals negatively affected.
According to a utilitarian approach, optimal speed has to be maintained with minimum injury incidents for the organization to realize the highest returns on the investment serve and satisfy the greatest numbers of clients as well as making the most of the employees feel happy through rewarding them with better salary/wage payment.
In order to circumvent the idea of lowering machine’s speed, yet having the least number of parties who will be positively affect, robotic technology has been developed to change the bitterness of low productivity and quality for the joy of many, employees, employers and consumers (Eckhart, 2001).
Though there are numerous kinds of jobs in the meat packing industry, most of the work forces in this field are not aware of the great risk involved. As revealed, the labor forces in these industries are exposed to greater risk by working under unsafe environments of fast moving machines.
According to Human Rights watch, the greatest problem is not working at fast moving machines; however the exposure of workers to the unprotected high-speed machines bearing sharp cutting edges is the most worrying thing as these can easily deprive off worker’s life.
Generally, the obvious question that many would have is whether workers will have safe working environment by reducing the machine’s speed fixed increased blunt edge. This is impossible as far as production outputs and business results are expected for good and happiness of the entire society.
On the focus of material satisfaction and in the endeavor of achieving business goals of accruing of unprecedented profits, investors and the mainstream government bodies have greatly put efforts geared towards the reductions of workers’ unsafe environment.
With the governmental organizations concentrating on the formulation of stringent policies and laws of the injured victims, such as those policies dealing with reporting and compensation matters, operations have greatly changed in the organizations whereby enormous costs have been incurred through installation of protective devices and fixation of meshes at the entry point of cavities and around fast-moving parts with sharp edges.
Hence, they all consent that injuries have greatly been reduced in the recent past (Gonzalez, 2005).
For most workers, packing task in the meat packing industry is view to be the easiest of all other types of tasks, basically because it’s a light kind of job, where individuals are less tasked and burdened with lifting of heavy loads which normally have risks with physical evidences incase of incident occurrence.
However, with the false impression created by such an environments, worker accomplishing the packing task are more exposed to unfathomable hazards. A part from the dangers of sharp cutting parts, workers are usually kept on busy working conditions ensuring that they keep their pace with the speed of the packing machines.
In doing so, they overwork their bodies, causing invisible injuries in the physiological and psychological processes in the body. The government has given little attention to these sorts of injuries, which are much more severe type of injuries than those with physical evidences.
While a few public elites have the understanding of the risks associated with trick of overworking the labor force in the packing sections, the government entrusted by the citizens to protect them appears to either have diverted from its functions of protection, or its members lacks the necessary knowledge of the implications of using such high-speed machines.
This has lead to greater bonding of the government with meat packing organizations’ management team in preaching the word aimed at creating workers’ physical safe working environment, yet leaving out, or concealing the core part that would lead to full reali9zation of workers’ protection and greatest happiness (Eckhart, 2001).
In conclusion, the Human right reports was fraught of falsehoods if view from the deontological perspectives, where the government and its selected OSHA body believes that figures on the number of injuries and the production rate are the real measures of individuals protection, as there is compliance with civil laws and regulations, as well as by-laws from recognized governmental bodies.
However, the Human Right report was only true based on the utilitarian perspectives, that is when there is need to create room to make the greatest number of individuals happy. This calls for collaboration between the government, the industrial team and the non-governmental body engaged with the protection of human rights.
References
Anonymous, (1999). Improvements in workplace safety–United States, 1900-1999 MMWR: Atlanta
Barnett, T. (2005). Preliminary probing of the relationship between organizational characteristic and whistle- blowing by employees: JBE
Eckhart, R. (2001). The Moral duty to provide workplace safety: Professional safety 46(6) 37-38
Gonzalez, C. (2005). Group Criticizes packers’ meat industry officials dismiss Human Rights Watch report recommendations. Iowa, Nebraska
Wanda, L. (2007). A guide for the safe handling of engineering tasks: Greaves-Holmes