Australia now has a Rural Media Farm Injury Dashboard, which shows the location of agricultural injuries and deaths from 2020 onwards. This is the type of publicly available information required to help reinforce an awareness of the dangers of farm work and demystify and destigmatise occupational health and safety (OHS) in this sector. There are …
Recently, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published an extraordinary article that seems to endorse the exploitation of the mental health of workers. (Although the article is paywalled, it is getting a run in some local Australian newspapers) The article reports that companies like Shopify, Solace Health, and Rilla are bluntly marketing roles that involve extreme …
Militant construction unions in Australia have damaged the relationship between the community and the trade union movement. Although the typical trade union member may be a nurse, a teacher, or a public servant, most would depict a member as a big, aggressive, rude, and domineering man. Australia’s trade union movement is trying to redress this …
In November 2022, then-Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins explained why sexual harassment in Australian workplaces continues to happen. Basically, she said this was because the sex discrimination laws were reactive to a worker complaint and placed no duty on employers to prevent these types of incidents. But there is more to it than that, and …
Occupational health and safety (OHS) is the central theme of this blog, but it is essential to remember that not all workplace health and safety actions are governed by a single set of laws or a single regulatory agency. Safety in the retail sector offers a good example....
The community in Melbourne, Australia, has been talking about little else but a sex abuse scandal in the childcare industry. (It makes a difference from talking about beef wellingtons.) The media and the government are announcing and investigating various regulatory and enforcement options to prevent a recurrence. This abuse is a grave concern and not …
It is clear from the emails I have received, as well as many of the comments on LinkedIn and other social media platforms, that the modern role of Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) remains a contentious issue, as discussed below. One of the many issues, young workers’ perceptions of EAP, was addressed by Alena Titterton of …
