Shipbreaking Explosion

In September 2009 several workers were killed and burnt when cutting up an old tanker that still had chemical residue.  The National Labor Committee (NLC)  has released a a ten minute video interview with the NLC Executive Director, Charles Kernaghan.

According to an 11 January 2010 NLC notice:

“Eight more workers in Bangladesh were burned to death on December 26, 2009, when the ship they were dismantling exploded.   The workers had been told that the gas tanks on the Agate oil tanker had been cleaned.   It was a lie.   Continue reading “Shipbreaking Explosion”

Forklift death and safety posters

Twelve days in 2010 and Victoria has experienced its first workplace death and it was due to the use of a forklift.  A 60-year-old man was crushed after a load being removed from a truck by forklift fell.

According to WorkSafe Victoria:

“…the man was guiding a forklift driver who was to remove the computer equipment weighing some 200kg and standing about 2m high, from the back of a semi-trailer.  The equipment was on castors and not mounted on a pallet.”

As part of WorkSafe ongoing campaign on forklift safety, it has issued two safety posters.  Originals should be available through the local WorkSafe Victoria offices.

Risk/Reward trade-off

On 11 January 2010, the Tasmanian Workplace Relations Minister, Lisa Singh, announced a  new safety focus on the abalone industry following the findings of a coronial inquest into the death of David Colson in 2007.

There are several interesting elements to the Minister’s decision.  Firstly and, perhaps, most importantly, the decision shows the significant role that Coroners in Australia play in improving workplace safety.  For legislative change, it is difficult to see any more effective political motivator.

Also, the Coroner can express opinions based on evidence in a way that few other courts do. The findings are not yet publicly available. Continue reading “Risk/Reward trade-off”

Migrant workers’ deaths on Christmas Eve

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.

Media reports have identified the five workers as migrant workers and although the swing stage was at the thirteenth floor of an apartment complex, no-one was wearing safety harnesses. Continue reading “Migrant workers’ deaths on Christmas Eve”

Orewa College explosion update

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.

Kevin Jones

John Holland prosecution

The John Holland Group has featured several times in the SafetyAtWorkBlog in 2009.  Any organisation as large as this Australian conglomerate who promotes their commitment to safety and whose Board Chair, Janet Holmes a Court, has such a high profile is going to draw media scrutiny.  In fact, the evolution of the John Holland safety culture and the struggle to maintain such a culture as a company grows in profitability and complexity would make a fascinating case study.

On 18 December 2009, Comcare released details of its latest successful prosecution of John Holland.  This time the company was fined $A180,000 over the death of a worker, Mark McCallum, at the Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal in Queensland in May 2008.  According to the media statement:

“Justice Collier stated that “It is clear that, despite the efforts taken by the respondent to implement a safe working environment, the operation involving the transportation unit was flawed in its original conception. The dangers were obvious from the start, relatively simple to avoid, but unrecognised and unaddressed in a manner which raises the objective gravity of the offence in these proceedings towards the higher end of the scale.” [emphasis added]

When a judge determines that the process was flawed from the very start, one’s expertise in managing an established practice safely should be critically reviewed.  Such fundamental failures in a safety management system should cause any company to realise something is wrong in the way it is addressing safety needs, particularly in an economic climate that is bursting with new infrastructure projects for which one is competing.

The circumstances of the fatality are that

“A team of five John Holland workers were involved in moving large precast concrete decks to the end of a jetty under construction.  The precast concrete decks were being transported on two jinkers that were being pushed by a front end loader.  During this procedure, a worker’s foot became trapped under wooden scaffolding planks on the jetty, and he was fatally injured when he was run over by the wheels of the jinker.”

The Federal Court judgement listed the safety deficiencies that John Holland acknowledged

“The respondent acknowledges that:

(a) its work method statement did not adequately identify the risks associated with the relevant work process, and did not adequately identify suitable control measures to remove or minimise those risks; and

(b) it did not carry out a plant hazard assessment with respect to the front and rear jinkers, which may have identified a requirement for a remote braking system or other controls on the jinkers for use by spotters and others; and

(c) it did not have in place a formal system whereby employees were certified as being competent in the use of jinkers; and

(d) it did not have in place a formal protocol or procedure for the use of radios to ensure that the transmitter of a radio message was able to be informed that the message had been received by its intended recipient and understood; and

(e) it did not have sufficient communication mechanisms in place to ensure that employees working out of sight of the loader operator and the rear spotter were able to communicate directly with spotters and the loader operator; and

(f) it did not ensure that an observer of a trainee jinker operator was also issued with a radio to directly communicate with the other members of the transportation crew responsible for the propulsion of the load; and

(g) it did not provide workers who were working out of sight of the loader operator or rear spotter with any form of alarm or safety device, other than a radio to alert other workers of the occurrence of an emergency situation; and

(h) it did not ensure that the clearance of obstacles in the path of the loader was done in a timely or effective manner, thereby requiring the front jinker operator to perform that duty during the progress of the transportation unit and whilst out of the line of sight of the loader operator.”

Mark McCallum’s death gained even greater media attention when unions challenged John Holland’s nomination for a safety award shortly after McCallum’s death.

Kevin Jones

Boiler death puts OHS spotlight on New Zealand Education Department

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.

Kevin Jones

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