January Article of the Month

The rate at which work-related deaths occur globally is growing. This impacts not only workers, but members of the public, who also bear the risk of falling victim to these catastrophic events. There is a need for intervention on how we regulate and manage workplaces to reverse this trend, and in this article Gregson and Quinlan make the case for the ‘Ten Pathways’ model to form the basis of this intervention. The model comprises of a typology of the key types of failures that surface when investigating major accidents – workers’ concerns being ignored, or failures in regulatory oversight, for example. Gregson and Quinlan apply the model in their analysis of Dreamworld accident, an incident involving a theme park ride that caused the deaths of four people in 2016, and show that all ten of the patheways were present to some degree in the leadup to the event. Gregson and Quinlan argue compellingly that very many workplace deaths are preventable, and that the current trend of increasing deaths globally is not inevitable. There are actions needed by OHS managers and regulators at all levels to reverse the trend, and in this article Gregson and Quinlan show how the Ten Pathways framework is the playbook to guide them.