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 “
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
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
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 (
SafetyAtWorkBlog has dipped into the occupational health and safety (OHS) and political issues around the death of Jorge Castillo-Riffo in Adelaide in 2014. On October 4 2018, the CFMEU issued a media release outlining the recommendations it made to the Coronial inquest into Castillo-Riffo’s death. They deserve serious consideration:
- Mandatory coronial inquests should be held into all deaths at work, with a mandatory requirement for the reporting of any action taken, or proposed to be taken, in consequence of any findings and recommendations made;
- Families should receive funding to be represented;
- An independent safety commissioner should be established in SA whose duty it is to review, comment and provide recommendations concerning the safety record of companies who tender for government construction contracts work over $5 million;
Recently the 20th anniversary of the Esso Longford disaster was commemorated in Victoria. Coinciding with this anniversary was the release of a book about the disaster and its personal aftermath, Workers’ Inferno, written by Ramsina Lee.
This book has been in development for many, many years and the Lee’s writing talent is on display in the structure of the book and the stories within. These stories largely linear But the multiple strands allow Lee to jump from one to the other providing a variety tone.
Many have been claiming that the era of neoliberal economics and the associated politics is over or, at least, coughing up blood. However, occupational health and safety (OHS) is rarely discussed in terms of the neoliberal impacts, and vice versa, yet many of the business frustrations with red tape, regulatory enforcement strategies, reporting mechanisms and requirements and others have changed how OHS has been managed and interpreted.
One of the most readable analyses of neoliberalism in Australia comes from