The Minerals Council of Australia has released its 2019 policy platform called “The Next Frontier: Australian Mining Policy Priorities”. The mainstream media will focus on taxation and jobs data given that Australia will face an election in the first half of 2019 but there is a specific chapter on occupational health and safety (OHS).
Some media reports on the recent suicide of another Australian Federal Police (AFP) officer indicate a change away from the dominant perspective of addressing the individual worker rather than institutional factors.
This article is not denying that suicide is a personal decision. It is an act that most of us do not understand and struggle to do so; this is partly because, unless a note is left or the person spoke to another about their intentions, we can never be sure why someone takes their own life. As a colleague explained to me, we try to rationalise an irrational act, or at least an act that seemed rational to the person at the time.
The Australian Federal Police has had several
The trade union movement was instrumental in showing that workplace bullying was a pervasive problem in Australian workplaces. Many Codes of Practice and guidances for workplace bullying and occupational violence were written shortly after the action by the Australian Council of Trade Unions almost two decades ago. But, for some reason, although sexual harassment was mentioned in those early documents, it never received the attention in occupational health and safety (OHS) circles that, in hindsight, it should have.
Perhaps a more sustainable and effective strategy would be to focus on the “harassment” rather than the “sexual”, or in
Several people were surprised when Industrial Manslaughter laws popped up on the agenda on Day 3 of the National Conference of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) this week. To ALP members from Western Australia and the Construction Forestry Mining Maritime and Energy Union, Christy Cain and Thomas French put a resolution on the issue to the Conference, which the delegates endorsed.
Most of the media who mentioned this resolution, and it was not many, focused on Cain’s urging of the delegates to
“Kill a worker, go to jail”.
Even though getting the audience to chant was colourful, and the minute’s silence important, the discussion around Industrial Manslaughter laws was more nuanced.
The latest paper from OHSIntros has been released, focusing on work-related fatalities in Victoria for 2017. These papers are produced independently but with good analysis. It’s not on the scale of “big data” but it does not need to be.
This article looks at the farm deaths data in the report, asks some long-overdue questions and offers radical safety scenarios. Continue reading “Safety radicalism needed for farm safety in Victoria”
The Australian Industry Group and its Chief Executive Innes Willox have been criticised on social media in Australia today as a result of an ABC report into a workplace fatality that occurred during the AI Group’s apprenticeship program. The criticism has come as the AI Group is very active on matters of occupational health and safety policy to its members and government
The AI Group provided SafetyAtWorkBlog with this statement concerning the report: Continue reading “AI Group responds to media report on apprentice’s death”