Some readers have asked for more information about the “Share Solutions” program mentioned in a previous article. The initiative started in 1988 but this article is based on the second edition from 1995.
In 1995, pre-internet, the precursor to WorkSafe Victoria, the Health and Safety Organisation Victoria produced a Share Solutions manual (with an unfortunate sex doll-like graphic). This hard copy folders included single page solutions to common workplace hazards. These solutions were submitted usually by those workers or Health and Safety Representatives who had developed a solution to a hazard particular to their workplace. The solutions were shared with the program participants with acknowledgement of the origin. Continue reading “Share Solutions could be resurrected”
There have been many inquiries and investigation in Australia and elsewhere about the “future of work” but rarely about the “future of the worker”. Research often looks at how work may be transformed by technology and new labour/employment structures with an assumption that the worker is a passive and static element in this change. Those in occupational health and safety (OHS) and workers’ rehabilitation know that this is not the case.
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.
On the corner of Lygon and Victoria Streets in Melbourne is a monument to the 8 Hour Day. This represents a social structure of work that equates to
