The Concept of Enterprise Safety Education and Attempts

Shi Wenliang Zhan Baoshan

Zhen Zhou Coal Group Company

Abstract: People are the decisive factor for the safety in production. This paper stresses the idea of "priority is given to human beings", expounds the necessity to take the mine safety education both as the starting point and the destination by applying the practice of Zheng Zhou Coal Group Company --"strengthening the consciousness of safety, standardizing the behavior of safety, cultivating the science and technology quality ", promotes and ensures the safe production in mines by attaching great importance to tapping up the human initiatives. 

As one of the industry and commercial enterprises, the coal mine industry is very unusual, most of them are operated underground accompanied with complicated conditions and constant risks, and exposed to the threat of five huge natural disasters, namely, flood, fire, gas, coal dust, and roof-collapse. The Communist Party of China and the government leaders attach great importance to them. Since the previous year consecutive rectification movements have been launched with coal mines as the focus of the rectification. This shows the Central Committee of CPC and the State Council are deeply concerned with the health and safety of miners and staff members. The safety education is an important means to ensure safe operation. Under the current circumstances, careful study and good safety education is of very important realistic significance for further conducting rectification of special items. 

Through long years experience Zheng Zhou Coal Group Company has learned that human beings are the decisive factor for safe production. With people as the main body of objects of the education, and with the improvement of the safety consciousness as the main task, the safety education is a task of both realistic necessity and long-term strategic significance. In practice, with the protection of the staff and miners' health and safety taken as both the starting point and ending point, the leaders of the Group pay much attention to giving play to the subjective initiative of people in many ways , such as strengthening safety awareness, standardizing safe operation procedures, improving self-control; cultivating science and technology quality and enhancing safe productive capacity as the strategic point so as to provide spiritual and intellectual support to stabilize the safe production situation of the enterprises and promote the production. The death rate per million tons of raw coal in the Group Company has been kept below one person for 10 years on end, and the Group Company has been entitled the Advanced Unit of Safe Production at the national and provincial levels for many years. When the Group realized 8 years safe production from 1989 to 1997, the People's Daily issued a report acclaiming the Group Company for its safe production championship it won 8 years in succession.。

1. Enhancing safety awareness and workers' consciousness of safe production

In the productive and operational activities the workers are the creators of safety production and its beneficiaries. Since the workers are at the key positions, whether their own safety awareness is strong enough and whether their vigilance is firm enough directly act on the specific safe production activities, and sometimes play a crucial role in precautions against accidents. We are alarmed time and again at many bloody accidents. A decline in alertness is the greatest enemy to safe production as well as the greatest hidden danger. In order to solve the problem theoretically to transform constantly the security consciousness from the weak to the strong, realizing the change from the unconscious idea " I am requested to pay attention to safety " to the self-conscious idea "I am ready to pay attention to safety for myself." Thus the theoretical guidance, emotional appealing and the three dimensional defense have won excellent effects.

● Preparing public opinion extensively 
Wide and lasting spreading the public opinion of safe production is carried out to create greatly an atmosphere of everybody being concerned of safety, and cherishing life. The Group authority makes fullest use of cable TV, radio, miner's newspaper, blackboard newspaper, special column, photo exhibition, and many other media or tools to promptly publicize the general and specific policies of safe production, laws and regulations of safe production and major activities of safe production. Whenever laws and regulations of safety production make a public appearance, we seize the opportunity to throw in huge quantities of manpower and material resources to publicize, in a concentrated way, the laws and regulations. After the appearance of the Coal Law in 1996, the Group authority launched a grand powerful and dynamic parade with over 80 propaganda cars and more than 1600 staff members and workers covering 40 kilometers from the mining area to downtown Zheng Zhou City, evoked strong repercussions among the broad masses. Especially, after broadcasting the safety articles of the law, the employees' law awareness of safety was enhanced. In the annual National Week of Safe Production, the leaders of the Group authority speech over the broadcast station of the mining area to mobilize the broad masses to take an active part in the activities of the Week, and also organize art troupes to write and rehearse programs of safety for themselves, and then give performance deep into the mining area, even at workshop and pit-head, thus creating a dense atmosphere of safe production. Last year during the period when the State Council rectified especially the production safety throughout all the mines all over the country, we propagated the significance of the special rectification through TV, newspapers, and meetings at different levels, thus making the Party's major policies strike root into the heart of people. The persistent popularization of safe production exerts imperceptible influence on the thinking of staff and workers. The slogan "Safe Operation --a Glory, Violation of Rules -- a Shame" is becoming the consensus of the staff and workers in the mining area.

● Emotional education i.e. strengthening affinity and influence in the safety education instead of the simple stiff, harsh and even reprimand way of education so as to appeal people emotionally. We put forward three new educational modes: First, take an oath before a work shift. There is a photo board of family pictures set up in the meeting room at the pit-head in every mining section. Before the staff and workers go underground, they raise their fists and take an oath in front of the photos. The words of the oath read "For the sake of my own safety the family's union and the steady development of the enterprise I am determined always to pay attention to safety, follow safety rules and regulations. I will not violate rules, and disciplines, and be careful not to hurt myself, not hurt others, not to be hurt by others, and make my contribution to safe production. Every phrase of the 88 words oath is a gem -- a commitment to their relatives, and an ever-lasting alarm which always encourage them to keep safety firmly in mind. Second, the education by sharing one's own experience with others. The victims or relatives of former accidents are invited to make a speech on the platform to the staff and workers to enhance their awareness of safety with the vivid bloody facts. A coal mine held a report meeting, at which a 30 years old staff member told the accident, caused by breaking rules, he had suffered from and his painful experience: his leg broken and amputated, his wife divorced and his family destroyed. The speaker on the platform was very painful, and regretted deeply; the audience in front of the platform, surprisingly shocked, felt sad and shed their tears. The staff and workers received a lively and profound education of safe production. Third, recreational safety education--safe production signature drive by thousands of people, weekend recreational activities at the cultural plaza, including speech contest, calligraphy, cartoon exhibition, lantern riddles. These activities combine the education with recreation so that they attract all the staff members and workers into an atmosphere of safety where they are affected and nurtured. 

● Create three-dimensional defense, that is to create an all-sided safety idea；the Party, administrative department, Labor Union and Youth League of the enterprise work together to construct a line of defense for the safety in all aspects. Ensuring safety in production is a matter of prime importance in coal mine, the Party, administrative department, Labor Union, commission for inspecting discipline and Youth League of the Company work on five fronts with individual responsibility for the same target to form a mechanism for safety education. Implementing safety education on five fronts means that the Party responsible for "Prevention", placing the implementation of the policy of "Safety First, Rely Mainly on Prevention" on the important agenda of the party work, going deep among the workers, making investigation and study from time to time, understanding the train of thought of the workers, educating the workers in accordance with their special safety problems, strengthening the self-consciousness of safety in production continuously. The administrative department takes the charge of managing "the Headers", taking safety consciousness and sense of safety responsibility as the key factor for evaluating the cadres of all levels, anybody who thinks much of safety will be elevated, otherwise will be reassigned, strengthening the safety consciousness of the leaders at all levels. The commission for inspecting discipline is responsible for supervising "the Party", implementing effective supervision over the broad mass of the party members to evaluate if they have carried out the Party's policy of safety in production, and then take the evaluated results as key points in party style construction, encouraging the finer, criticizing the poorer, educating the broad mass of party members to take the lead in creating safety consciousness and set example for the employees in production activities. The Labor Union is responsible for managing "the Network", bringing its bridge function into full play to keep in touch with masses, setting up mass supervision organizations to educate employees with safety consciousness, strengthening the safety consciousness in the course of mass safety supervision. In addition, the Dependents Management Assistant Organization plays a role of secondary safety front under the Labor Union at each level, mixing the love of mothers, sons, daughters and spouses into safety assistant movement, in which the function of education and inspiration can't be substituted by other means. The Communist Youth League is responsible for managing "the Post", the Communist Youth League at all levels take the young employees as the main force and key objects in mining safety. Taking the safety education for the Youth Safety Supervisor and the Communist Youth League as a precursor, using their exemplary behavior of observing labor disciplines and just and forceful supervision, lead and educate the broad mass of young workers to keep firmly in mind the idea of "Safety First", establish safety consciousness, providing ideological guarantee for the safety in production. 

2.Standardize Safety Behavior, Enhance Self-restriction of the Personnel

The fact that the essence of safety culture construction lies in person makes it the first on schedule to attend to and solve the ideological problem of the personnel regarding safety production. Although it is true that thought goes before action and controls the behavior of the personnel, in reality the ideology of the personnel is unstable, subject to various factors such as society and family. Changes in mood will dilute the personnel's sense of safety, arouse paralyzing ideas and weaken the sense of self-consciousness of safety production. When the sense of safety weakens and self-consciousness declines, most probably leading to a departure from the safety behavior, it becomes extremely imperative to restrict and standardize behavior through the establishment of strict and scientific rules and regulations together with enhancement of safety management. Comparatively speaking, the sense of safety is intangible, whereas safety management is tangible. The former can get a root cause treatment whereas the latter merely a symptom alleviation. The former emphasizes on self-consciousness, whereas the latter on restriction - one soft, one hard. Accordingly, only by a perfect combination of a soft tactic with a hard one as well as a treatment by looking into both root cause and symptoms of a "disease" can a safety production be effectively guaranteed. 

Taking scientific management as a significant task in its construction of safety culture, Zheng Zhou Coal Group Company has always laid emphasis on the establishment, perfection and implementation of rules and regulations for safety production. Closely integrating state laws, decrees and regulations such as Coal Law, Mine Safety Law, and Coal Mine Safety Regulations with real situation of its own safety production, the Corporation has formed a complete set of safety management system compatible to mining circumstances. These regulations, up from the Corporation down to basic-level divisions and teams, up from the president and general manager down to mine chief, section chief and team leader, and still down to workers of different work types, have expressively designated safety responsibilities for each part, thus providing a model and standard for safety construction and making it possible for the personnel to go by rules, act by laws and self-restrict by regulations. Chaohua Coal Mine, affiliated to the Corporation, has taken the road of systematic management and established 44 safety production management regulations in consideration of real mining situation. Consisting of safety quality standardization, coal mining, excavation, machine, transportation and ventilation and safety production management, these regulations as a whole have set down models and standards for the safety behavior of the personnel together with correspondent checking, awards and punishments systems. In combining encouragement with restriction and overall management with specific treatment, the Mine has formed a scientific management system for safety production and achieved remarkable success in avoiding law-breaking and discipline-breaching instances as well as in reducing accidents in which casualties or injuries are involved. Ever since its putting into production in 1993, the Mine has realized safety production each year and become a banner of safety production of the entire Corporation. Peigou Mine, also, affiliated to the Corporation, pays special attention to the improvement of safety management effect and regards the establishment and perfection of safety self-restriction mechanism as a key point in the safety production. Focusing on its basic-level divisions and professional security department, the Mine has strictly implemented safety production responsibility system and greatly inspired active participation in safety management by leaders of various levels through the implementation of safety object management, safety work check system in divisions, linkage between salaries of division chiefs and team leaders to safety achievement, and wash-out system in mid-level leaders and section leaders. As for management behavior, there has taken place a significant change from a passive state to active one, a substantial transformation from "obliged to take charge in safety control" to "offering to take charge in safety control". 

In order to standardize the management and operative activities of the broad mass of workers in the company more effectively, special attention is paid to the standardization of quality management and that of post work consistently. In the aspect of management, we established a comprehensive, overall quality control and guarantee system to control and standardize all factors and links which affect the quality of engineering, including engineering design, technical measure, equipment installation, project starting and check and acceptance etc.; in the aspect of post work, cultivated the employees' good habit to work according to regulations and standards, standardizing safety control behavior by standardizing the operative activities of the employees. According to the stipulations of the "Operational Regulations and rules" and "Safety Regulations in Coal Mine", all units, including the production management sections for coal mining, driving, mechanical equipment, transportation and ventilation, worked out, combined with their practical conditions, the operative criterions for each working post respectively. Taking these documents as a basis, the "Detailed Rules on Staff Behavior" was formed through inducing, trimming, fully proving and practical examining, establishing a criterion for the employees' safety behavior. 

As an ensuring measure, the safety responsibility system is strongly emphasized and carried out in our company, strengthening safety responsibility and its investigation. Firstly, define the safety responsibilities and strengthen supervision and management for each level to establish a level-by-level safety control mechanism; secondly, strictly execute economical restriction system - the policy of rewards and penalties shall be carried out, no matter how difficult the financial situation is; thirdly, anybody who failed to carry out the provisions or failed to deal with and report any hidden trouble of an accident or the person who is responsible for an accident or violated the rules will be seriously investigated and give disciplinary sanction according to the system of accident responsibility investigation, provision of responsible investigation for hidden safety trouble and report system for safety operation. 

Implementation of safety management under provisions and rules will be surely a process from resentment to acceptance, from enforce to self-consciousness. When the safety behavior standard becomes all employees' self-conscious action, the standard becomes habit, habit makes things natural, the subjective initiative of safe operation of the employees will be greatly brought into full play, the man-made accident factors will be avoided effectively, the initiative of safety in production will be hold into the workers' own hands. 

3.Improve the personnel's quality in science and technology and promote the enterprise' safe production capability

The fundamental improvement of the enterprise' safe production situation relies not only on necessary basic material conditions, but more on the improvement of the personnel's quality in safe production and technology. The employee's safety awareness and work enthusiasm are surely a must for safe production, but enthusiasm without technical know-how and skills is like a porcelain mender without a diamond cutter and can never ensure production safety. Therefore, in building the company's safety culture we always put the quality of human resources on the first place, providing employees with education in production safety through various means and channels to meet the need of safe production. First, we hold company-wide training sessions in safe production, with trainees taught by both external and internal staff, partly or fully relieved of their work. The emphasis is on the pre-post training of new employees, post-change training, training of engineering and technical personnel in updating production safety know-how, training of cadres in production safety management, training of special underground workers in operational skills, and training of employees in safety skills。Every year close to 20,000 employees/times are trained. Second, we often hold drills and competitions in post-related skills among various types of workers, such as coal miners, tunneling workers, shot lighters, gas checkers, electricians and rescue workers. Since 1989 we have every year organized the mine rescue crew to take part in various drills and competitions in mine rescue expertise. Our company's mine rescue brigade finished up the first three prizes in the 4th mine rescue competition of Henan Province, and won 8 of the 22 prizes in the 5th Competition. In the 4th national mine rescue competition last year, the company representing Henan Province won first prize among all the 28 participated teams from 26 provinces. All of these achievements have fully shown our rescue team's overall quality and strength. Third, we hold safety knowledge contests. The company has participated in knowledge contests in the Coal Law and in the Mine Safety Law held by superior administrative departments, the safety knowledge contest of Henan Province and the Yu'an Cup safety knowledge contest. Company staff from leaders to ordinary workers actively took part, launching wave after wave of mass learning of safety knowledge. Fourth, we carry out broadly and intensively the Safety-Cup Contest activities. Cadres at section and brigade levels are examined up every year on their command of safety technology knowledge, so as to spur grass-roots cadres to learn skills and improve their own quality, to give play to their important roll in safety, on-site and technological management, and really build them into front-line backbone in safe production, who are proficient in technology, aware of safety, good at management and able to hold the pass.