A recent occupational health and safety (OHS) prosecution in New Zealand illustrates many issues and attitudes to safety held by small business operators around the world.
Prominent Australian actor, Craig McLachlan, has been accused of indecent assault by cast members of the Rocky Horror Show, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and Fairfax media (paywalled). One actress, Erika Heynatz, has identified this behaviour as a workplace safety issue:
“Heynatz went immediately to the head mechanic, whose job it was to ensure safety. She recalled that he was laughing “uncomfortably”. But she told him that McLachlan had to be spoken to, that this was a safety issue.”
Articles in both media outlets relate the anguish that actors felt after the alleged events and how this affected their work performance. Continue reading “McLachlan accusations place more focus on the OHS of sexual harassment”
Victoria is the latest Australian State to introduce laws into Parliament that establish a licencing scheme for labour hire operators. The Labour Hire Licensing Bill 2017 was read into Parliament on 14 December 2017 (Hansard, pages 55-61)
The Bill is compatible with the laws passed recently in Queensland and South Australia which apply a universal licencing scheme rather than a sectoral one as preferred by some organisations. This should make the scheme easier to administer as it removes demarcation disputes and, as pointed out by the Minister for Roads and Road Safety, Luke Donnellan, removes loopholes of opportunity for avoiding obligations – a critical consideration in a sector that has shown such disregard for legal obligations. Continue reading “Victoria joins the push for licencing labour hire”
On 12 December 2017, part of Australia’s screen and television industry held a forum in Sydney about sexual harassment in the sector and what could be done to reduce this workplace hazard. This initiative occurred a day before an open letter was published about sexual harassment in the music industry. There is a momentum for change on sexual harassment in the workplace, but it is at risk of resulting in a fragmented approach which will generate turf wars, confusion and, ultimately, ineffectiveness.
The
In support of the recent SafetyAtWorkBlog article “Detention Royal Commission touches on workplace safety”, WorkSafe NT was contacted with a series of questions about the role of the Northern Territory’s occupational health and safety (OHS) regulator in detention centres. Those questions comprised:
• Has WorkSafe ever undertaken any inspection activities at detention centres in the Northern Territory? If so, what was there a specific request, incident or other catalyst for this?
• Is there a specific group/team of inspectors under whom responsibility for inspecting detention centres would sit?
• Does NTWorkSafe coordinate any WHS inspection activities with other government agencies and authorities?
• Has the Northern Territory Correctional Services ever requested NTWorkSafe’s assistance in safety reviews of their facilities?
In June 2016, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation showed an investigation report into the detention of children who had broken the law in the Northern Territory. The revelations of maltreatment were so confronting that a Royal Commission was announced by the Australian Government very shortly after. The Commission’s final report was tabled in Parliament on November 17 2017.
All Australian workplaces are subject to clear occupational health and safety duties and obligations that relate to workers and to those who may be affected by the workplace and activities. (The SafetyAtWorkBlog article “Royal Commission into juvenile detention should include OHS” discusses this at length.)
A brief search of the Final Report of the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory shows an acknowledgement of the OHS perspective but with little discussion of it. Continue reading “Detention Royal Commission touches on workplace safety”
Workplace injury statistics are always less than reality as they are based on the number of workers’ compensation claims lodged with occupational health and safety (OHS) regulators or insurance agents. The nature of occupational illnesses is that there may be many years before their presence is physically identified making them more contestable by insurers and less likely to appear in compensation data. The frustration with this lack of data was voiced on November 13 2017 in an article in the Medical Journal of Australia (not publicly available).
A summary of the research article includes this alarming statistic:
“Occupational exposures are an important determinant of respiratory health. International estimates note that about 15% of adult-onset asthma, 15% of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and 10–30% of lung cancer may be attributable to hazardous occupational exposures.”