Occupational health and safety has long been viewed by companies as a cost burden, but with legislative reform on the horizon, the time for a more proactive approach by the business community is now.
The full article is available at Business Spectator
In the Australian Financial Review on 17 February 2009 (page 8 but not accessible online) Steven Scott reports that the Western Australian Treasurer Troy Buswell is in a stoush with the Federal government over OHS laws. They are not. Buswell is quoted as saying
“My view is that it’s much more appropriate to make sure you get it right… We will not be supporting the establishment of Safe Work Australia until we are in a position to commit ourselves to the full harmonisation process.”
Buswell wants more time and more information. He is also concerned about the (related) industrial relations changes. Only last week, Buswell was at a Senate Committee supporting West Australian businesses. The Treasurer’s stance is at least consistent and prepared for flexibility.
Michael Tooma, a labour lawyer with Deacons in Sydney, is reported as saying that
“These right of entry provisions could be used for ulterior purposes, either for a recruitment drive or as a way of causing industrial agitation….. It gives unions the right to use OHS as a Trojan Horse for the purpose of entry onto sites.”
In his initial analysis of the final report Tooma wrote
“The Panel took the view that union right of entry contributes in a positive manner to OHS compliance at a workplace level. It recommended that the model Act provide right of entry for OHS purposes to union officials and/or union employees formally authorised for that purpose under the model Act.”
and that
“These recommendations have the potential to industrialise the safety agenda.”
The review panel is acting on the fact that workplace safety is already industrialised and that those who continue to split to two areas are denying reality. OHS cannot be managed successfully without also working with the human capital and industrial relations context.
The right-of-entry provisions in any legislation is a hotly contested ideological battle and there is plenty of evidence through the many submissions to many OHS and IR reviews of this.
Right-of-entry is not a threat of punishment and is readily avoided through workplaces having active and functional methods of consultation and safety management.
Similarly, concerns are being raised over the introduction of Provisional Improvement Notices (PINs) in some jurisdiction. PINs are an acknowlegement of a breakdown in communication and a dysfunctional safety management system in the workplace. In some workplaces PINs are never applied because everyone talks about safety in an open and accountable fashion.
Many of the concerns being raised over this final review panel report can be addressed by safety professionals and advocates publishing examples of how alarming legislative provisions have proven to be non-starters. The power may be on the legal register but are infrequently applied.
When the new right-of-entry provisions were being introduced in Victoria, many lawyers and employer representatives said the world would collapse. It hasn’t and the sensible control and oversight of the process is now recommended across Australia.
It is perhaps time for WorkSafe Victoria to re-emphasise the success of the right-of-entry management process it has operated under for several years. John Merritt, CEO of WorkSafe Victoria has spoken very positively of the process. An information sheet on the issues for employers is also available.
Any inquiry into musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) in any industry is of great interest to OHS professionals as MSD are the bane of the profession.
The New South Wales Dept of Primary Industries (DPI) is requesting public comment on a new MSD guidance for the mining and extractive industries. Below is some text from the media release
Industry comment is being sought by the Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSD) Working Party on the guidance document The Management of Musculoskeletal Disorders in the Mining and Extractives Industry.
The benefits of the guide are that it;
• Facilitates sites taking planned preventative measures;
• Uses the capacities that already exist and;
• Provides effective tools for sites to use.
Comments are welcome on the guidance through the DPI website by close of business 27 March 2009.
Last week, the release of the final report of Australia’s review into National Model OHS Law was touted by many as immediately after the meeting of the Workplace Relations Ministers Council (WRMC). This occurred with the first report in 2008. WRMC met in a teleconference yesterday. When the report is released officially (rumours are that the report is already doing the rounds of the unions and the employer associations), SafetyAtWorkBlog will provide a link to the report and some initial commentary.
However, as reported yesterday, the Australian Financial Review obtained a copy of the report and highlighted several issues of interest. The AFR report held no great surprise for safety professionals but the union movement is going to be ideologically tested.
Early in the review process, the New South Wales union movement was very vocal about the risk of losing their right to initiate prosecutions over OHS breaches. The right was rarely applied and could be a very costly exercise. Since that time there has been silence from that quarter, perhaps because they realised that its contentious right was out-of-step with the rest of the country and the review process is all about legislative harmonisation.
According to media reports this week, the Review Panel’s final report recommends the omission of the right to prosecute but allows an option to instigate prosecutions through the OHS regulators. In effect it keeps the power where it is most cost-effective and through which a similar outcome could be achieved. It gives the unions a seat at the table, just not the same seat but still with a comfy cushion.
Prior to the WRMC meeting, Sharan Burrows issued a media statement on several matters, the source of the ACTU quotes in today’s AFR article, in which she said
Media reports also suggest that the Ministers will tonight discuss the final report of the National Review of OHS Laws.
“It is vital that the national, harmonised health and safety laws are based on the highest possible standards. This should include providing workers with the right, through their unions, to initiate prosecutions against employers when there are serious health and safety breaches.
“In the past, union prosecutions have been few in number but have secured important improvements for employees who work in potentially dangerous situations. We also need a truly tripartite, well resourced national workplace health and safety watchdog that is able to set, monitor and upgrade health and safety standards,” said Ms Burrow.
It seems that Ms Burrows may, pragmatically, welcome the cushion.
Also, the union movement would be well aware of the potential boost to the revenues of OHS training providers, a status many unions and union bodies enjoy. A national five-day training course for Health & Safety Representatives could be financially useful. Also the courses have always been a very good recruiting opportunity.
Professor Michael Quinlan of the University of New South Wales believes that the influence of Australian trade unions in improving OHS conditions should not be underestimated or past achievements, forgotten.
In talking with Kevin Jones in a recent podcast, Quinlan said that the persistent accusation of unions using OHS as an industrial relations tool is “largely an ideological beat-up”. Although he does believe that Australian trade unions have not pursued workplace hazards to the extent they should have, even with the impeding launch of a campaign on cancers.
Professor Quinlan mentioned that
“most health and safety management systems are, in fact, largely management safety systems. They not deal a lot with health….. Their KPIs [Key Performance Indicators] are always expressed in terms of zero-injuries or zero-harm.”
He also emphasised that that more Australian workers are killed as a result of occupational disease than injury.
He also addresses the growing demand for occupational health and safety regulation to move from industrial relations to the area of health. Quinlan believes this will never happen because matters to do with employment, organisational restructuring and others have an OHS impact. He says that running OHS as “an entirely separate agenda…is intellectually and factually flawed.”
Quinlan acknowledges the argument that Robens-style legislation was relevant for the time and where union-presence persists but he said
“where you don’t have effective or worker input, you will have serious problems with health and safety”.
He reminded us that Roben’s also advocated self-regulation, a concept of which there is now great suspicion in a range of business areas.
Quinlan spoke highly of some of the initiatives of OHS regulation, for instance, the adaptation of the inspectorate to duty-of-care matters and a broader operational brief. He also said that the current OHS legislation in Australia “is the best we’ve ever had” and believes some of the recent criticism needs to be supported by evidence. Also none of the critics have proposed a viable alternative.
Professor Quinlan is a keynote speaker on Day 3 of the Safety In Action conference.
Australia’s Productivity Commission has released a report into the national regulation of plastics and chemicals. The supplementary report has additional topicality as it is released a week before the Review Panel into Model OHS Law presents its report to the government. The key points of the Productivity Commission report are
The report recommends that national intergovernmental bodies set policy, the national government coordinates policy and the States enforce it.
The three mechanisms for consistency will be familiar to safety professionals and OHS advocates.
Although the development and implementation of legislation should not be dictated to by economics, the review panel came about through a push to reduce red tape and business costs so it is unlikely that any suggestion that may increase cost to business will appear, particularly as the Prime Minister is reiterating the hard financial challenges we all face.
The risk in an approach where
“reform should only be pursued where there are prospects of material net benefits”
is that important long-term improvements can be ignored or, worse, dismissed.
The last point above seems to support the recent statements by the Minister for Workplace Relations, Julia Gillard, on achieving trade-offs, some would say pay-offs, at state level in order to achieve change through the intergovernmental consultative structures.
It is important to note that the Productivity Commission’s report is not about OHS but industrial regulation. The release of the Commission’s report is likely to be a coincidence but, for some sectors, it can be seen as preparatory for the OHS Law Review Panel’s final report.
Rory O’Neil, editor of Hazards magazine has written in response the SafetyAtWorkBlog posting on workhealth initiatives. His response was posted on one of the many safety-related Internet discussion forums and was brought to my attention by Andrew Cutz and others.
WorkHealth initiatives – it’s about the workers, isn’t it?
The Victorian system is not garnering the necessary support because it is lifestyle focussed and has not answered concerns raised by unions, who want the programme to also address conditions caused or exacerbated by work. Business is annoyed because unions had the audacity to require that workers have a say in measures relating to their health (the poor little things are supposed to be passive recipients, apparently, taking the medicine and behaving like good little children). Below is my little news summary from 1 November.
There’s a rash of these lifestyle related interventions around the industrialised world. The EU is pushing fruit into some workers’ mouths, for example, as part of the ISAFRUIT project. However, two apples a day don’t make a worker as happy and healthy as a pay rise or some constructive participation in decisions about how work is organised, how satisfying that work might be and at what pace and for what reward. Or wage levels that allow healthy dietary choices for the whole family, at home and at work.
The lifestyle-focussed projects tend to be couched in language about making the worker healthier but are frequently more concerned with reducing sickness absence costs and winnowing out all but the superdrones that can work long hours in bad jobs without complaint. If employers cared so much, sickness absence procedures would not include punitive elements and health and safety whistleblowers wouldn’t be an endangered species. The unionisation campaign at Smithfield is a pretty clear case in point – bad jobs, bad pay, runaway strains and injuries and victimisation for those would stood up against it.
I’ve nothing against been given free fruit, free gym membership or anything free for that. But the time to use the gym, eat the fruit and have a life both inside and outside work that is meaningful and fulfilling might make it easier to swallow. This issue is about good jobs, with good conditions of employment and good remuneration. If workplace health policy ignores these factors, then it is an irresponsible diversion.
This is my latest measured contribution on the issue:
You big fat liars [Hazards 104, October-December 2008]
Oh, they say it’s because they care. They’ll weigh us, keep tabs on our bad habits and ask questions when we are sick. And when we fall short of perfection, they label us shirkers, sickos and slobs. Hazards editor Rory O’Neill questions whether all this attention from employers is really for our own good. more
More on this theme: www.hazards.org/workandhealthIf ACOEM is developing policy, then it should consider how work factors dominate our working days and frames the comfort and health of our working lives and beyond. That means integrating better work into any health model and making sure workers are allowed to participate fully in – and influence the design and operation of – any workplace health system.
Rory also points to the Trade Unions Congress posting that quotes the Victorian union response to the WorkHealth program and says this about the major employer group’s position:
The employers’ group, meanwhile, is adamant it will not accept the changes under any circumstances. David Gregory, the head of workplace relations at the Victorian Employers Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said it amounted to making the programme an ‘industrial weapon.’