accountability – Page 77 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

The practical manifestation of safety leadership

Professor Andrew Hopkins‘ frequent appearances at safety conferences are always fascinating as he does not simply trot out the same presentation each time. He is certainly not a priest with the same 52 sermons each year.

At the Building Safety conference Hopkins spoke briefly about mindfulness but grounded this in how executives and others should inspect a worksite and what questions to ask. He discussed audits also but there will be more on that in another article.

Hopkins insisted that executives should show leadership and begin to satisfy their positive OHS duty and their due diligence obligations by walking their worksites, talking with their workers and, most importantly, listening to the answers. There are no hard and fast rules or guidelines on the frequency of these visits but he said that the executives should NOT be accompanied. Having a phalanx of execs in pristine PPE approaching a work group puts the workers on guard and makes them self-conscious. Continue reading “The practical manifestation of safety leadership”

Supreme Court decision limits public knowledge of OHS offences

In May 2013 Fiona Austin (@upfrontfi) a lawyer with the Australian law firm, Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF), tweeted:

“Great win in the Supreme Court! No more naming and shaming for health and safety offenders in Queensland”

The Supreme Court decision is an appalling situation over which OHS professionals and regulators should be outraged.

Austin and other HSF lawyers authored a longer article on the case and totally miss the point of why OHS offenders should be named. Shaming of offenders is a different matter.

The article explains how a decision under the Penalties and Sentences Act 1992 (Qld) may stop the OHS regulator in Queensland, Work Health and Safety Queensland, from listing the names of offenders on its website. Continue reading “Supreme Court decision limits public knowledge of OHS offences”

New Zealand railways, red tape, politics and workplace deaths

On 28 April 2013, New Zealand lawyer, Hazel Armstrong, published a 48-page book on how workplace fatalities and the management of the NZ rail industry has been related to politics and economics.

This is an ideological position more than anything else and the evidence is thin in much of this short book but there is considerable power in the description of the manipulation of occupational health and safety regulations and oversight during the political privatisation of the NZ rail sector. Many countries have privatised previously nationalised, or government-owned, enterprises usually on the argument of productivity and efficiency increases. Armstrong argues that these arguments were used to justify breaking the trade union dominance of the rail industry. Continue reading “New Zealand railways, red tape, politics and workplace deaths”

National Workers Memorial opens

Yesterday Australia opened its National Workers Memorial in Canberra. The Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten, spoke at the ceremony with, largely, an edited and reduced version of the speech he presented in Brisbane earlier last week. The Canberra speech dropped all the ANZAC Day references and spoke about the importance of remembering.

“By erecting this monument, we tie the lives and memories and families of thousands of Australians to this place. We stand here in this place as a mark of respect from a civilised community as an expression of failure and regret. That’s what all memorials are, and this one is no different. This is a symbol of the mourning for those lost too early from our tribe Australia.” Continue reading “National Workers Memorial opens”

How can one learn from OHS mistakes if those mistakes are hidden?

Occupational health and safety (OHS) regulatory agencies have existed for decades, originally with an enforcement role but increasingly aimed to prevention and education. It is fair to say the “2nd generation” of OHS regulators in Australia appeared in the 1980s. It is also fair to expect to be able to readily access the corporate memory and prosecutorial activity of the regulators, particularly since the growth in the Internet. Very recently WorkSafe Victoria reviewed its online database of OHS prosecutions excising prosecution summaries prior to 2012. This decision is a major weakening of the “state of knowledge” about workplace safety in this State, a decision that some have described as outrageous. How can one learn from mistakes if those mistakes are not made available?

Continue reading “How can one learn from OHS mistakes if those mistakes are hidden?”

Social media manipulation of OHS statistics

Recently SafetyatWorkBlog criticised the focus on fatality statistics as a measure of success. Workplace fatalities are a convenient measure but can seriously misrepresent the status of workplace safety by ignoring psychosocial hazards and occupational illnesses. An infographic came through the SafetyAtWorkBlog inbox this weekend which illustrates the unhelpful obsession with fatalities but, perhaps more importantly, the risks of social media.

This infographic from US firm Compliance and Safety (purposely unlinked) is slickly produced for social media and blogs but is fundamentally invalid. The title at the top is a ridiculous comparison. “Is OSHA a wasteful regulatory nightmare or common sense that saves lives?” The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) may be wasteful but how can this be compared to the amorphous and self-serving concept of “common-sense”? The implication is that common sense equates to a free-market regulation of workplace safety. The failure of the free-market approach to occupational safety, and to the environment, many decades ago is exactly the reason why regulations were introduced. There were too many businesses exploiting workers and the environment by creating harm without accountability. Continue reading “Social media manipulation of OHS statistics”

The smell of ‘corruption’

Such are the warning signs

It stopped at 2.32 pm of an ordinary day. One string of events ended abruptly at the pinch point of a groaning conveyor belt when his arm was ripped off. Do you think of Swiss cheese models of risk alignment? Of complexity or failure to learn? Of the Moura coal mine disaster, the Longford oil and gas plant disaster, the Baker report and the BP Texas City refinery fatalities, of 29 miners killed in the desolate and terrorising Pike River coal mine, NZ, 2010? Do you think of precariousness lurking at work, of leadership, of productivity?

For me this was the 5^th arm I was personally aware of disappearing violently at work, generating years of withdrawal and solitude unrecorded in any OHS statistics. In that time I had also observed hundreds of missing or useless machine guards. Such a well known and easy hazard to fix. What exactly is the problem, what does it indicate about OHS generally, and what may go some way towards practical improvements? Continue reading “The smell of ‘corruption’”

Category: accountability

The practical manifestation of safety leadership

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Supreme Court decision limits public knowledge of OHS offences

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New Zealand railways, red tape, politics and workplace deaths

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National Workers Memorial opens

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How can one learn from OHS mistakes if those mistakes are hidden?

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The smell of ‘corruption’

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