The corporate cultures of Australia’s mining industry have been under substantial scrutiny for over a decade. Sexual harassment, bullying, work-related suicides and more psychosocial hazards have been identified with strategies introduced to address the cultures that contribute to these occupational harms. On 20 November 2024, Rio Tinto released a progress survey on its cultural change …
Reasonably practicable control measures are most often determined by the courts during a prosecution. Every other determination of reasonably practicable in occupational health and safety (OHS) compliance is an educated guess by employers. However, this does not always have to be the case, as a short excerpt from the Annual Report of New Zealand’s Ombudsman illustrates. Pages 52 …
The workplace culture of EY and other major consulting companies came under scrutiny several years ago following an apparent work-related suicide at the offices of EY in Sydney. EY’s workplace culture is again being examined after the death of a young EY employee in India, allegedly due to work stress....
The inquiry report into the Grenfell Tower fire has yet to be seriously considered from the other side of the world. However, the report is being mentioned in Australia’s emergency services and fire sectors. The inquiry has been thoroughly followed and analysed in the United Kingdom, and many excellent summaries have been published in newspapers, books, …
Work-related suicide is the psychosocial equivalent of a physical workplace fatality. They represent failures of occupational health and safety (OHS) management and the presence of unsafe systems of work. Several years ago in Adelaide, Australia, a worker burned to death in his car outside the company’s premises. Work-related suicide after decades of bullying was the …
Nobel-prize winner Joseph Stiglitz does not write about occupational health and safety (OHS). However, he does write about the sociopolitical and economic context in which businesses operate and from which worker health and safety decisions are made. In August 2024, Stiglitz is touring Australia. On August 7, 2024, he addressed a packed auditorium in Melbourne. …
On the afternoon of Friday, August 1, 2024, Safe Work Australia (SWA) announced important changes to the incident notification obligations in Australia’s Model Work Health and Safety laws. These changes are particularly relevant to the issues of psychological harm in workplaces and work-related suicides. I asked SWA for some clarifications on the changes and the …
