Category: accountability

Industrial Manslaughter is more than just a law, it is a cry for justice.

For those Australians who are watching the latest political push for Industrial Manslaughter laws, it is important to remember that the activity has a history that extends over a decade.  Many of the current arguments for and against have been addressed previously.  In August 2004, the earlier iteration of this blog, Safety At Work magazine, printed a special edition on “The Australian Industrial Manslaughter Debate”.  Below is an edited version of my Editorial in that magazine. A longer article on the issues raised in that edition is available elsewhere in the SafetyAtWorkBlog.

 

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The challenge of Crown vs Crown prosecutions

Recently the West Australian Department of Corrections was prosecuted over the work-related death of an inmate.  It was fined $100,000 plus costs over the death of a remand prisoner crushed between a truck and a wall at Hakea Prison in 2015.  The WorkSafe WA media release provides a level of detail rare in these sorts of incidents and it is recommended reading.

The incident and the prosecution raise enforcement issues that would be familiar to many occupational health and safety (OHS) regulators but also to businesses.

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Liability insurance products get some serious criticism

In 2017 the Queensland Government was advised to prohibit business insurance products that cover the costs associated with financial penalties that may occur after a successful prosecution of a breach of work health and safety (WHS) laws. This recommendation (page 47) was one of only two that were not accepted by the government and which were “referred to the WHS Board” for further consideration (footnote page 3).

On 17 October 2018 the Senate Education and Employment Committee’s report into industrial deaths similarly recommended the Commonwealth, State and Territory governments:

“amend the model WHS laws to make it unlawful to insure against a fine, investigation costs or defence costs where they apply to an alleged breach of WHS legislation;” (Recommendation 21, page xi)

Given the

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Bad bosses

Benjamin Artz, Amanda H. Goodall  and Andrew J. Oswald determined that

“There are no published papers — to our knowledge — that assess in an internationally consistent way the rarity or commonness of ‘bad bosses’.”

So they undertook there own research, published under the title “

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Families get a good deal from the Industrial Deaths inquiry

Photo credit: Workplace Safety Services

Will the recommendations of the Senate Committee’s inquiry into industrial deaths benefit relatives of deceased workers? Yes, mostly.

It seemed like relatives gained greater access to this Senate Committee than in other inquiries.  Some public hearings were held with only relatives presenting.  This is a major change.  The transcripts of the 2012

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Politics on display in final report of Australia’s Industrial Deaths inquiry

The Australian Senate inquiry into Industrial Deaths has released its findings in a report called “They never came home—the framework surrounding the prevention, investigation and prosecution of industrial deaths in Australia“.  For those who have followed the inquiry, there are few surprises but the report presents big political challenges, particularly as a Federal Election must occur no later than May 2019.

It has been increasingly common for such Senate reports to include, not necessarily, a Minority Report, but an alternative perspective on some issues.  Sometimes these reports show dissent in the Committee but more often than not these are statements that are aimed

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Glyphosate presents an OHS problem but maybe OHS is the path to a solution

Occupational health and safety (OHS) related decisions are made on the state of knowledge about hazards and it is up to OHS people to make sure the state of knowledge is at its best so that the best decisions can be made.  But what do you do if the state of knowledge on a hazard seems to be made purposely uncertain and that uncertainty is leading to the status quo, which also happens to provide a huge income for the owner of the product creating the hazard.

This seems to be a situation at the moment in Australia in relation to the use of the weedkiller, glyphosate, marketed heavily by the global chemical company, Monsanto.  The alleged corruption of data on which OHS people and workers base their safety decisions was perhaps one of the most disturbing elements of the recent ABC Four Corners program on the chemical (

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