A disaster waiting to happen: Silently silencing stakeholders at the Pike River Coal Mine

Abstract

Prior to the Pike River Coal Mine disaster in which 29 workers were killed, the discourse around the mine was one of success in terms of safety and environment, yet the post-disaster the discourse quickly shifted to ‘a disaster waiting to happen’. The central question is: why did so many individuals remain silent over the lethal working conditions prior to a major mining disaster? In order to understand the reasons, we draw on the corporate social responsibility literature and Thomas Mathiesen’s work on systemic silencing of stakeholders as it provides an inclusive framework of the subtle, pervasive methods of a network consisting of professional associations, organisations, government departments and whole communities that are pressured into silence. The framework not only provides an analysis of why and under what conditions individuals remain silent, but it also provides the context in which silencing occurs. Analysis of the Pike River Coal Mine disaster demonstrates that silently silencing stakeholders is not solely a consequence of suppressive stances of the corporation, but rather that the corporation itself is one of many stakeholders in a social, economic and political industrial relations context that leads to systemic silencing of individuals and, in this case, the deaths of 29 workers at the mine.