construction – Page 36 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Union movement misdirects on OHS

According to an AAP report on 3 June 2009, the ACTU is forecasting action on the matter of workplace deaths. Although the issues is heartfelt and important, the Australian union movement mostly discusses OHS in relation to its opposition to the Australian Building and Construction Commission. The AAP report is a good reflection of this.

ACTU secretary Jeff Lawrence states that the rate of workplace fatality is unacceptable but is then quoted as saying

“The high level of deaths and injuries in the construction industry is a national disgrace and yet safety standards have got worse in the period the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) has operated.”

It has never been the role of the ABCC to regulate workplace safety obligations. That obligation sits with the State OHS authorities and maybe the Australian Safety & Compensation Council (now Safe Work Australia).The union movement has been instrumental in improving safety on worksites throughout Australia but Jeff Lawrence’s misdirection to the ABCC does a disservice to the efforts of OHS professional and health & safety representatives.

Kevin Jones

Workplace safety can be funny

This week workplace safety on a building site received a much needed dose of humour. The Australian show “ThankGod, You’re Here” had a comedian enter a pretend building site and have to face questions from an OHS inspector as if he was the owner of the site.

The sketch has added impact because of its timing. It is hard to imagine this occurring ten years ago in a society and industry where OHS compliance was less valued, when hardhats were considered optional and when brightly-coloured vests looked stupid. That the sketch is funny is a measure of how OHS regulation and enforcement has matured and just how successful the OHS regulators have been in changing the society’s attitudes to workplace safety in Australia.

Also, it shows something more illustrative of comedy, more true. In the sketch there are some wonderful stunts done by a small earthmover. Only last year there was outrage, and fines, over some forklift stunts done for real by a young driver in Melbourne. The environment makes the difference between laughter and outrage.

The success of the TV show’s concept is also indicated by the issue of the 12-year-old welder on the building site. The comedian, Merrick Watts, removes the issue of age by insisting the young boy is actually in his fifties and just looks younger.

WorkSafe Victoria, whose logo is worn by the pretend inspectors in the sketch, have said that they did not pay for brand placement and that the show did not belittle the work they do. In fact the show “actually showed that we have a job to do and that there are good reasons for it.”

Kevin Jones

Australian trade unions hijack the World Day of Safety

Every year the ILO sponsors the World Day for Health and Safety At Work on 28 April 2009. This day is a day of remembrance for most countries where people reflect on those who have died at work in the previous year. Each year, these days are full of tears and grief, and motivation for safety professionals to work harder.

When handled well these are days of sorrow and dignity. Sadly, occasionally, these days are hijacked by the trade union movement in their industrial campaigns that only indirectly relate to workplace safety.

A couple of years ago, at the height of the union campaign to oust the Howard Government in Australia, the Victorian Trades Hall spokesperson, Brian Boyd, spoke passionately in support of the campaign. His political calls did not relate to the memories of the dead workers who people were there to remember and mourn.

For 2009, the Construction Forestry, Mining and Energy Union has imposed their campaign against the Australia Building & Construction Commission on the World Day for Health and Safety At Work, or Workers’ Memorial Day, whichever matches one’s political leanings. This demeans the original intention of the day and should be criticised.

The tenuousness of the ABCC campaign and safety is discussed elsewhere but it is inappropriate for the CFMEU Construction Division National Secretary, Dave Noonan, to link in a media statement the two issues:

“Each week on an Australian construction sites, statistics show that a worker will die. We cannot let this go on for another week let alone for another five years. Construction workers and unions are today making a stand for safety. If that means we have to have stop work meetings for safety or refuse to cooperate with the ABCC, then that’s what we’ll do.”

It is believed that there are no restrictions for meetings to discuss OHS matters on construction sites but there are conditions for union right-of-entry on OHS matters as listed below. The processes seem reasonable and are similar to the processes applied for several years in the Victorian jurisdiction.

It is disappointing to the OHS profession to link safety with a non-safety-related industrial campaign. What is more disturbing is the misuse of a memorial day to dead workers for political ends.

Kevin Jones

According to the website of the ABCC:

“1. A union official must have one of the following valid reasons to enter your site:

Investigate, on reasonable grounds, a suspected breach of the Workplace Relations Act 1996, a collective agreement, an award, an AWA or an order of the AIRC

Hold discussions with members or workers eligible to be members of the union

Perform inspections and functions under an OHS law *

If none of these reasons apply you have the right to refuse entry.”

Also

“Union officials must comply with your reasonable requests about:

The rooms or areas they may use on the site for holding discussions

The route they should take to access those rooms or areas

Occupational health and safety”

* Under the Workplace Relations Act 1996 union officials who enter a worksite for OHS purposes must hold a valid federal permit, produce that permit on request, exercise those rights during working hours and comply with reasonable OHS requirements.

The misuse of OHS in industrial relations campaigns

Workplace safety and industrial relations are undeniably tied together in terms of policy development, legislation and implementation. This week the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) used the occupational safety record of the Australian construction industry to criticise the Australian Building & Construction Commission (ABCC).

wilcoxreportmarch2009-cover It should be stated here that SafetyAtWorkBlog does not support the ABCC. The Commission is a travesty and a political construct of the conservative side of politics. That the Rudd Labor government has allowed the Commission to persist is atrocious. However, the ABCC was established because of the perception that the Australian building and construction industry was corrupt, regardless of the absence of evidence through the Cole Royal Commission. Has the construction unions addressed this perception? No.

In the 3 April 2009 media statement issued by Dave Noonan, CFMEU Construction Division National Secretary, there are the following comments

“The right of construction workers to have a safe working environment is a glaring hole in the report. Justice Wilcox has skimmed over the issue of safety, which is a basic right of construction workers.

Safety was not part of the scope of the inquiry for Justice Wilcox. Action may have been taken by the ABCC on union representatives who were on construction sites to discuss safety but it is the presence on the site and the way that presence was achieved that is the issue, not whether the site is safe or not.

“It is shameful that the two employers used to prop up arguments for the retention of the powers of the ABCC, BHP Billiton and John Holland, have had a worker die on site in the last fortnight,” said Dave Noonan.

SafetyAtWorkBlog has elsewhere mentioned the poor safety record of BHP Billiton and the campaign on worker safety by the unions against John Holland. However, these two companies are operating within their legal rights even if one does not agree with their decisions. The focus of attention should be given to the current government which has chosen to act slowly on the ABCC, an organisation the Australian Labor Party, in opposition, opposed.

The difficulty for the union movement is that the ALP requires the ongoing support of the Australian labour movement to provide it with membership and finance (not to mention a career path for the trade union secretaries). The trade unions need the political influence of the ALP and are obliged to criticise politely but not too overtly.

“The 154 page report does not mention the safety record of the construction industry or the fact that one worker dies on average each week.”

Safety was outside Justice Wilcox’s terms of reference.

“The so called ‘industrial harmony’ brought about by the ABCC and heralded by Justice Wilcox comes at the expense of the lives of construction workers. We have deteriorating safety on construction site across Australia. At the very time Justice Wilcox was finalising his report, BHP and John Holland had a construction worker killed on their project,” said Mr Noonan.

Noonan does not offer evidence of the link between the operation of the ABCC and “deteriorating safety”. It is suspected that such research would indicate that the correlation is not that clear and that there are many other factors affecting safety management.

“Industrial harmony” is an unfair description as even totalitarian regimes can claim harmony.

“The report also fails to deal with breaches to International law by the building and construction laws. Australia has been criticised by the International Labor Organisation six times for undermining workers rights.”

This is again outside the inquiry’s scope. The ILO criticism is valid but the capacity to change is not with Justice Wilcox or the ABCC but with Australia’s politicians, who should be the union’s real targets.

“Australia’s construction unions will continue with the campaign for rights on site, using the full strength of the union movement.”

This is no more than what the union movement was established for. The union movement needs to remind itself that it is a member organisation and that worker rights are not necessarily the same as union rights. Not all union activity benefits its members.

“Workers rights to a safe workplace and equality before the law are core Labor principles. Construction workers, their unions and 10,000 working Australian’s will continue to campaign for rights on site, so all Australian worker [sic] are equal before the law,” said Mr Noonan

There are two issues here that Noonan has lumped together – workplace safety and worker equality. Regardless of union action or union presence, every Australian worker has the right to a safe and healthy work environment. Equality is harder to achieve but just as much a human right.

Above, the perception of corruption in the construction industry was mentioned. The exploitation of OHS in an industrial campaign against John Holland and the ABCC is unfair and insulting and may indicate that the union movement is not gaining traction on the industrial campaign.

It may just be that the media statement from the CFMEU is an expression of frustration and disappointment with the government that the union movement campaigned hard to bring to power and who is not providing the expected return on investment.

The union movement in Australia needs to realise that the industrial relations environment, like the upcoming OHS legislation, cannot be wound back but that a new future is possible. There is no vision in Noonan’s media statement only a complaint that the Rudd government is breaking its promise and, in the general populace, noone outside the union movement seems to care.

Kevin Jones

UPDATE ON ABCC – 6 April 2009

The Australian Greens issued a statement in early April 2009 questioning the government’s choice to retain industrial relations rules introduced by the previous, conservative, government.

Senator Rachel Siewert said

“We do not, however, support his recommendations for the separate division within the Fair Work Ombudsman to retain compulsory interrogation powers and the ability to deny workers their right to silence.”

“There is no justification to continue this discrimination against building workers. The building industry must be regulated just like any other industry – in a fair and just manner that balances the needs of productivity and the economy with the health, safety and democratic rights of workers.”

Role of OHS Inspectors

There have been several incidents recently that illustrate the unenviable pressures on inspectors and Australian OHS regulators.

The Tasmanian Coroner found that the mining inspectorate of Workplace Standards Tasmania was “inadequate” and incapable of “of carrying out its core function of inspecting and enforcing best safety practices within the mining industry.” Two inspectors for that State’s mining sector- a sector that in 2007/08 was 621 mining leases strong, according to the Annual Report of Mineral Resources Tasmania.

The construction union (CFMEU) in Victoria was highly critical of WorkSafe Victoria following a scaffolding collapse in a main street of the suburb, Prahran. A similar event occurred in Sydney a couple of days later.

However, OHS legislation clearly states the employer is responsible for safety in workplaces, as WorkSafe reiterated in a press statement. TV an press reports did not quote the construction union official criticising the construction company or project manager for having the scaffold collapse on their worksite.

(The CFMEU provides a scaffolding checklist on its website.)

In the scaffolding situation a union criticising the OHS regulator is a peculiar distraction from the obvious failure of the organisation that has control of the worksite, the employer. In the Beaconsfield case, the distraction is just as effective and allows the employer to feel that less attention, less criticism, equates to the incident or the fatality being considered of a lesser significance.

The days of government certification for scaffolding, boilers & Pressure vessels, and a raft of other work items disappeared almost twenty years ago in many Australian States. One of the reasons this occurred was that regulators realised that by certifying something, by granting official approval, the regulator took on some of the responsibility for the work item. Most regulators, with government support, realised that it was in their interest to re-emphasise the employers’ legislative obligations that had existed in law for some time.

One does not need to physically visit worksites to encourage “best practice”. No inspectorate would expect every workplace to be visited by inspectors but high-risk workplaces, such as mines, may have this expectation.

It seems increasingly popular for the OHS inspectorate to be called in early on high hazard organisations (HHO) projects. (HHO is a concept most recently discussed by Jan Hayes and discussed elsewhere in the works of Professor Andrew Hopkins) This enables projects to meet high safety standards in the planning stage.

OHS regulators have a delicate balancing act between consultation and enforcement. This is a balance that is constantly being tweaked as political, economic and social pressures fluctuate. The process is not helped b y fingers being pointed in the wrong directions.

Kevin Jones

[NOTE:Professor Michael Quinlan of UNSW, Middlesex University and University of Sydney) will be a keynote speaker at the upcoming Safety in Action 2009 Conference on 2 April 2009 concerning the results of a five-year research report into what OHS Inspectors do and the implications for employers and safety professionals.]

Safety Interviews

A couple of weeks ago I conducted interviews with several speakers in the Safety In Action Conference to be held in Melbourne, Australia at the end of March 2009. The finalised videos are below.

Helen Marshall is Australia’s Federal Safety Commissioner who has a challenging job monitoring major government construction sites.

Dr Martyn Newman is a a fascinating speaker on the issues of leadership and emotional intelligence and how safety professionals can benefit for applying these concepts to their corporate aims.

Jill McCabe is a recent member of WorkSafe Victoria who provides quite startling survey information on the attitudes of supervisors to workplace safety.

Barry Sherriff is a partner with law firm Freehills and was recently also one of the review panellists into Australia’s OHS law review. Since this video, the final report of the panel has been publicly released and Barry will be discussing harmonisation at the Safety In Action conference.

John Merritt is the Executive Director of WorkSafe and a strong advocate of workplace safety.

Although part of my job is to help promote the Safety In Action conference, I have tried to provide a resource that will not be temporary and is actually useful to safety professionals everywhere.

Tip: Use the high quality YouTube settings if you can. It makes these much easier to view but does not improve the appearance of the interviewer.

Kevin Jones

Upcoming OHS Videos

At the end of March 2009, the Safety Institute of Australia (Victoria Division) is conducting its annual Safety In Action conference. In order to help promote the conference the SIA organised for several conference speakers to be filmed.

The filming occurred in early-February 2009 and the short 10-minutevideos will be available at the Safety In Action website in a couple of week’s time. The subjects of the videos are:

Jill MCabe of WorkSafe Victoria who talks about the research WorkSafe has undertaken in order to establish a better profile of their clients so as to improve assistance and advice. Jill has long experience in industrial relations and now focuses on health and safety.

Helen Marshall was appointed Australia’s Federal Safety Commissioner in August 2008. Helen discusses her experiences in dealing with a national system for safety on building and construction sites and reveals her first ever “real” job.

Dr Martyn Newman explains what he means by describing some leaders as “emotional capitalists”. He sees that as a good thing to be but isn’t ego an emotion and greed an emotion? And aren’t those the emotions that that have generated a lot of our social and financial heartbreak? Is there is such a thing as an “emotional socialist”? Dr Newman’s presentation at the conference will be popular but it’s application may be obscure or challenging.

John Merritt, the CEO of WorkSafe, is genuinely passionate about improving society and seems to feel that OHS is a valuable way to improve the quality of people’s lives. [I first spoke with John in the early 1990s while he was in the ACTU. The only thing I knew about him was that he had written a book about shearers. I spoke next with him while he was CEO of the National Safety Council and now (twice) while he is at WorkSafe. If our paths continue to cross, he owes me a beer and two hours of unrecorded conversation in a comfortable bar.]

Barry Sherriff, a lawyer with Freehills, has just come off nine months of serving on the National OHS Review panel and is hamstrung in what he can say as the government is yet to release the final report. His presentation was measured and cautious.

The videos provide an interesting cross-section of OHS approaches in Australia, several overlap and some are “out there” but the best that can be said is that one learns. This makes for a terrific Safety In Action conference.

Kevin Jones

Category: construction

Union movement misdirects on OHS

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Workplace safety can be funny

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Australian trade unions hijack the World Day of Safety

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The misuse of OHS in industrial relations campaigns

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Role of OHS Inspectors

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Safety Interviews

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Upcoming OHS Videos

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