Duty of Care – Page 80 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Individual accountability – the Great Leap Backward (and into a legislative maze)

Col Finnie, formerly WorkSafe Victoria’s Principal Legislation Officer, looks at what the notion of individual accountability might look like if it was incorporated in the Work Health and Safety Bill, all done with his tongue firmly jammed in his cheek

It’s a good thing new perspectives about getting Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) right are tossed around. We love that sort of thing in OHS-World. But this sort of stuff, that used to be called “blue sky thinking”, needs the next step: head out of the clouds, feet on the ground and working out whether that ostensibly good idea will actually work, how it will work, and what will be the consequences. That reality-check can have that ostensibly interesting notion turn into no more than a puff of an idea; I think individual accountability is like that.

It seems that individual accountability is being touted as a contemporary “issue” for OHS. The context of the tout would appear to be that OHS will be better if everyone takes more direct responsibility for OHS in the workplace, i.e. everyone was more accountable for “how things are done” around a workplace. And yep, accountability and responsibility are different things, but not by much; clearly ya can’t be held accountable for stuff in the absence of any responsibility for that stuff at all. Continue reading “Individual accountability – the Great Leap Backward (and into a legislative maze)”

Is the trickling down of safety information sufficient?

A recent article in the Journal of Health Safety Research & Practice (JHSRP) quoted the findings of some research into construction and safe design by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). One of the NIOSH recommendations listed was that “… the trickle-down concept is appealing.” The “trickle-down concept” may be appealing in many areas of policy, practice and the advocacy of leadership but its effectiveness is questionable.

It has become a mantra of some areas of the safety professional that safety can only be improved when introduced from the top. A whole sector of safety leadership sellers has been created on this belief and an important element of the salesmanship is that good safety practices will trickle-down. This sounds logical but it is necessary to analyse this concept, a concept that originated well outside of safety management.

Trickle-down has been described as a marketing concept, which seems based, partly, on envy. Wikipedia says that, when applied to fashion,

“…this theory states that when the lowest social class, or simply a perceived lower social class, adopts the fashion, it is no longer desirable to the leaders in the highest social class.”

If this can be applied to safety leadership, it may be that by the time the leadership values reach the shopfloor workers, the leadership advocates, the executives, may be no longer interested. The transience of trickle-down should be considered when leadership is applied. How can safety change be sustained through leadership? What can keep leadership fresh and relevant? Continue reading “Is the trickling down of safety information sufficient?”

Similarities between the regulation of environmental and workplace safety

In June 2011, Victoria’s Environment Protection Authority (EPA) released a revised Compliance and Enforcement (C&E) policy. There seemed to be some similarities to WorkSafe’s C&E policy, developed in 2006, so SafetyAtWorkBlog spoke this afternoon to John Merritt, who became the CEO of the EPA in early 2010 after many years as the executive director of WorkSafe Victoria.

In an exclusive podcast with SafetyAtWorkBlog Merritt, a major participant in the development of both policies, provides a useful insight into

Why a revised C&E policy was necessary
The similarities of environmental and workplace safety enforcement
How WorkSafe enforcement lessons can be applied to environmental protection
The cooperation between government agencies
Balancing transparency and information provision
EPA’s use of social media
Maintaining a local focus in a world of global environmental challenges

The podcast should be of interest to those professionals who need to manage the, often competing, business elements of environmental, safety and health obligations.

Kevin Jones

Near miss incidents are the best opportunities from which to improve safety

One of the most frustrating parts of being a safety professional is that “near misses” or “near hits” or “close calls”, as some refer to them, are often neglected even when these events are often the best to investigate as no one was directly injured.

The significance of the near miss may be illustrated by a court case and penalty from South Australia on 28 July 2011. The media release states that Kyren P/L was fined over $A40,000 after a dogbox fell over 30 metres without anyone being injured. (The full court decision is available online)

“In August 2008 at a building site in Coglin St. Adelaide, an attempt to lift a fully-laden work box (known in the industry as a ‘dog box’) to the seventh floor ended catastrophically when the tower crane failed sending the dog box into a 30-metre freefall. It landed in the laneway separating the site from an adjoining business. A plastic bin beneath was crushed. Some hoarding was damaged, and there was minor structural damage to the guttering of a neighbouring building which housed a law firm.

The prosecution arose after the investigation determined that two employees of the law firm were at risk of harm because their duties required accessing rubbish bins in the laneway. However the defendant had failed to declare Continue reading “Near miss incidents are the best opportunities from which to improve safety”

Fatigue dispute illustrates ideological clash

The Australian newspaper reports today (26 July 2011) of a clash between the Construction Forestry Mining & Energy Union (CFMEU) and BHP Billiton over fatigue management. Fatigue management is one of the workplace hazards scheduled for a draft code of practice under the OHS harmonisation process.

The CFMEU believes that the current mining-related guidance is inadequate.

“The Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union says the government buckled under industry pressure and abandoned plans for binding industry standards that would minimise the risk of workers doing successive 12-hour shifts and then driving long distances on public roads.”

The flaw in the CFMEU’s campaign is that it has been selective in its choice of fatigue documentation. Looking at the industry sector rather than the hazard or risk limits the hazard control options. In the current case the CFMEU is not acknowledging many of the fatigue guidancesand documents that are available from Workplace Health and Safety Queensland or from some of the other States and even from overseas as this Safe Work Australia document from 2006 shows.

In fact the narrow selection of guidance in this instance makes a strong case for greater collaboration in the development of information across industry sectors and State jurisdictions – one of the aims of harmonisation. Continue reading “Fatigue dispute illustrates ideological clash”

Government department fined $285k over prison van death

In January 2011 WorkSafe indicated its intention to prosecute the Department of Corrective Services and others in relation to death of Mr Ward. A $A285,000 penalty was imposed on 7 July 2011.

SafetyAtWorkBlog reported on the WorkSafe actions at the time but an excellent clearinghouse for information on this case is the website of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Four Corners program which examined the 2008 death of Mr Ward in Western Australia.

The Four Corners website has a considerable amount of background information on the case, including the coroner’s findings, which some readers may find confronting and, as the ABC says “This report contains images of the deceased which may disturb Aboriginal viewers”.

Mr Ward was being transported to Perth in the rear of a prison transport vehicle following a traffic offence. The vehicle’s air-conditioning system was not operating, the temperature within the rear of the vehicle increased so much in the Western Australian heat that, according to one commentator, Mr Ward was “cooked”. When Mr Ward’s body was being removed from the prison van at the hospital “the air from the van was “…like a blast from a furnace”” according to one witness. The coroner found that “no effective air-conditioning was being supplied to the rear pod of the vehicle.”

There are many management issues involved with this unnecessary death but some will be familiar. Continue reading “Government department fined $285k over prison van death”

Conservative media begins to examine new OHS laws

Workplace health and safety made the front cover of the Australian Financial Review on 1 July 2011 (once the liftoff financial special cover was thrown away). When this happens there is a serious issue to be dealt with or it is a beat-up. Today’s article entitled “Danger: work safety laws just got stricter” (not accessible online) is a bit of both.

Reporters Fiona Carruthers and John Stensholt reference several cases that should have generated considerable debate in the OHS fraternity. The first is the case where Clean Seas was fined $A27,000 after not preventing an alcohol-affected diver from entering the water where he blacks out and requires hospitalisation. Curiously they also discuss, in a textbox, fines handed out to RailCorp and Esso, events that occurred in 2003 and 1998 respectively.

Perhaps not surprisingly a financial newspaper focuses on the financial penalties of OHS breaches, injuries and deaths but the timing of the article is also curious as the law changes, stemming from the OHS harmonisation process, have been scheduled for some time and do not come into effect across Australia until 1 January 2012. Continue reading “Conservative media begins to examine new OHS laws”

Category: Duty of Care

Individual accountability – the Great Leap Backward (and into a legislative maze)

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Is the trickling down of safety information sufficient?

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Similarities between the regulation of environmental and workplace safety

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Near miss incidents are the best opportunities from which to improve safety

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Fatigue dispute illustrates ideological clash

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Government department fined $285k over prison van death

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Conservative media begins to examine new OHS laws

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