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Category: death
“Put them in jail!” – Industrial Manslaughter laws are not that simple
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.
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Safety radicalism needed for farm safety in Victoria
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”
AI Group responds to media report on apprentice’s death
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”
Many safety lessons from one workplace death
The Coronial Finding in to the death of Jorge Castillo-Riffo is an important occupational health and safety (OHS) document. It discusses, amongst other matters,
- A curious attitude from SafeWorkSA
- The role of Safe Work Method Statements and risk assessments
- Using the right plant for the right task
- Contractual relationships
- Construction methodology.
More issues than these are raised in the Finding and I urge all OHS people to read the document and reflect on the OHS management in their workplaces.
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Scissor Lift death findings clarify the context of OHS
If all you knew about occupational health and safety (OHS) was what you read in the physical or online newspapers , you would not know anything about safety management – or maybe anything positive. It takes being involved with managing safety in the real world to understand how OHS operates in the real world. But even then we only learn from our own experiences.
The 92-page coronial finding into the death of Jorge Castello-Riffo, released last week, is a tragic and detailed case study of OHS in the real world and should be obligatory reading for OHS professionals and those trying to understand the push for increased OHS, penalties and corporate accountability. Below I look at just one section of the Coronial Findings in this article – the Coroner’s responses to a set of proposed recommendations.
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The challenge of Crown vs Crown prosecutions
Recently the West Australian Department of Corrections was prosecuted over the work-related death of an inmate. It was fined $100,000 plus costs over the death of a remand prisoner crushed between a truck and a wall at Hakea Prison in 2015. The WorkSafe WA media release provides a level of detail rare in these sorts of incidents and it is recommended reading.
The incident and the prosecution raise enforcement issues that would be familiar to many occupational health and safety (OHS) regulators but also to businesses.
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