Australia’s Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, has provided a clear indication that, although Julia Gillard may understand OHS, his department does not.
In 2009, several installers of domestic insulation died. One died from heat stress from working in the ceiling space, another was electrocuted as the metal staple he was using to install foil insulation pierced an electricity cable. Now the political heat is on the Australian Government because it was their climate change policy that led to a boom in unregistered and inexperienced insulation installers. Continue reading “Workplace deaths lead to reforms but not of workplace safety”
Recently, SafetyAtWorkBlog received a long anonymous email concerning the death of David Colson, Tasmanian abalone diver who drowned in October 2007. The Coroner completed his inquest into the death and released his investigation findings in early January 2010. An earlier blog article on the findings can be found here
According to the Toronto Police, four workers died on December 24 2009 when the swing stage they were working on collapsed. A fifth man, Dilshod Marupov, is in hospital.
The New Zealand Department of Labour has released a media statement about the prosecution reported on yesterday but
“The Department will not name either the parties or the specific charges until the charges reach court.”
This may be an indication of the political sensitivities of the prosecution.
A representative of the Orewa College Board of Trustees, Phil Pickford,was interviewed by New Zealand Radio on 21 December 2009. The interview is available online.
Pickford states that he is proud of the OHS systems that are in place at Orewa College and places Orewa in the top 10% of schools for OHS performance.
It is difficult for anyone to make public statements on an OHS prosecution without knowing who has been charged and with what.
From SafetyAtWorkBlog’s perspective, regardless of any action taken by the DoL, it would have been expected that both the school and the Education Department would have undertaken their own investigations in to the death of one of their own employees, if for no other reason than to stop a similar occurrence in other schools.
A TV report of the explosion from mid-2009 is available online.
Reports are coming out of New Zealand that representatives of the Education Department are uncomfortable with being charged under the country’s OHS legislation following a fatal boiler explosion at Orewa College.
On 24 June 2009, a boiler exploded at Orewa College in Northland, New Zealand. Initial media reports said that the boiler was being repaired the day after a malfunction. Rough phone video taken by one of the students during the evacuation is available online.
Richard Louis Nel received burns to 90 per cent of his body and later died. A contractor, Robin Tubman, suffered a fractured skull and a shattered face.
The Department of Labour indicated shortly after the event that an investigation had begun but the Board of Trustees chairman Phil Pickford has questioned the delay in the prosecution. According to one media report, Pickford said:
“On December 24 it will be six months since the tragedy and here we are at the 21st… They have to prosecute within six months and they have left it to the last minute. Why? I could surmise why, but I’m sure there’s another way they could have done it.”
SafetyAtWorkBlog contacted the NZ Department of Labour on 21 December 2009 for further information about the prosecution. All the spokesperson would say is that “the outcome of the investigation is still being finalized”.
The belief that schools are not covered by OHS legislation is a common misperception in Australia and, from what one NZ SafetyAtWorkBlog reader says, New Zealand also. Partly this is because the education of children is seen as the principal focus by teachers and educators, to the exclusion of all else. Modern businesses and institutions have slowly learnt that this is not the case and that there are a wealth of obligations, legislative and social, that apply. Educational institutions are often slow to acknowledge this reality.
Another reason, which may stem from the first, is that government departments have been very hesitant to prosecute each other. This may also be supported by the political conflicts that could arise by one politician’s department taking action against another politician’s department. Politicians should not take the credit for departmental achievements and then not be held accountability for failings (although this seems to happen frequently).
In August 2007, The Education Department in Victoria was fined $A8,000 for ignoring the directions of a WorkSafe inspector. The media statement on the case illustrates a dismissive attitude to OHS issues.
Of more significance were issues at Merrilands College where “a Victorian principal accused of bullying has been removed from school and given a job in the Education Department after years of complaints by staff” according to The Age in July 2004. The issues at Merrilands had been occurring for some time:
“It was also revealed that the Education Department – which confirmed there had been “Worksafe (sic) issues” at the school in the past – had known about the allegations since 2000, when 12 teachers wrote to the department after a staff member died of a heart attack that some believed was linked to workplace stress.”
According to the same media report
“WorkCover recently issued an improvement notice against the department following allegations of bullying and harassment at two other schools in the northern suburbs.”
To some extent the Orewa College explosion is a more straightforward prosecution because the incident came from an equipment failure and did not relate to the teaching staff or students. The administrative staff are likely to be asked about maintenance schedules, particularly after other schools in the area had their boilers inspected with several found to be less than perfect. It is likely that the prosecution by NZ DoL will illuminate the plant maintenance procedures of secondary colleges but, perhaps of more long-lasting significance will be the attitudes of the education department and school representatives on show in court.
On 26 November 2009, a contract worker on a New Zealand dairy farm was found seriously injured after his quad bike “flipped over on to him”. The details of the incident according to the New Zealand Police statement are included below.
A Department of Labour spokesperson said he was unable to provide any information about the incident other than that they are investigating.
Our sympathies go to Mr Wilson’s family and all those involved in the incident
“A dairy farm worker was been killed this morning in what appears to be a tragic quad bike accident.
Police were contacted around 7.35 this morning (Thursday, 26 November) when 40-year-old Rhys Mark Wilson, from Alton who is a sharemilker at a farm in Manutahi, near Hawera, was found in a gully on the farm by a co-worker. The worker had gone looking for Mr Wilson because the cows had not been brought in for milking.
CPR was administered and this continued when emergency services arrived on scene but they were unable to revive him.
OSH and police have carried out an investigation and it is believed that the accident happened around 5am when Mr Wilson was rounding up the cows for milking. He had gone down into a gully, probably to retrieve some stray cows and it appears that as he attempted to traverse a steep slope the quad bike he was riding flipped over on to him.
OSH has recovered the bike as part of its investigation and the Police are investigating on behalf of the Coroner.”
Recent a colleague was explaining to me how the cost of a project is ballooning and the project is generating a toxic workplaces by some managers not talking to other managers. The disharmony is doing nothing to control the costs and the juvenile conduct of the managers is spreading the damage throughout the organisation.
My colleague told me that if only the existing, long-standing purchasing and project policies had been followed this situation would not have occurred. One person did not do their job properly and made a decision that was not substantiated by the policy. The decision was not checked, for whatever reason, and the project is in serious jeopardy.
Many readers may recognise a similar scenario but often these become very muddy due to office politics, office allegiances etc. But it is often easier to understand big issues by looking at small cases. Douglas Law firm posts small court decision reports every so often that summarise OHS matters well. One of the latest concerns
There was a documented safety system where before performing excavation work, a number was to be called which provided information on underground pipes and cabling. On the day in question the number was not called and the supervisor merely visually inspected the area. The risk of harm was reasonably foreseeable as electric cables were usually found in orange conduit pipes. The contractor was left unsupervised to cut the pipes, and had no experience in the area.”
This case is a useful thumbnail that illustrates the consequence of small decisions.
Perhaps, OHS professionals should look to ancient wisdom for current enlightenment. An old rhyme that I learnt as a child regularly pops into my head when I read about OHS problems.
