Category: economics

New OHS infringement notices for WorkSafe Victoria, according to Budget Papers

The Victorian Government released its State Budget on May 27, 2019. The Budget Papers include some references to occupational health and safety (OHS).

Infringement Notices

The Budget Papers state that new infringement notices will be available for WorkSafe Victoria to use.

“Workplace safety will be improved through the introduction of infringement notices for a range of occupational health and safety offences, adding to the suite of compliance and enforcement tools available to WorkSafe Victoria.”

page 88 – Budget Paper 3 – Service Delivery
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The political cycle of OHS irrelevance

So, the Australian Labor Party (ALP), the political arm of the trade union movement, the friend of all Australian workers, failed to win government from the Conservative parties. Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) improvements are likely to be left to the magnanimity of the employers, Persons in Control of a Business or Undertaking (PCBUs) and those ideologically opposed to regulatory impositions.

But does the OHS future under Conservative governments mean that workers will be worse off? Sadly, Yes, if the experience of the United States is anything to go by, as illustrated in the analysis of the “Laissez-Faire Revival” by Thomas O. McGarity.

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WA Budget

Western Australia’s transition to harmonising with the Model Work Health and Safety laws is progressing, according the recently released Budget Papers for 2019/20.

Volume 1 of Budget Paper No 2 lists some significant issues for the Government and specifically the Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety:

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The party politics of safety

The democracy sausage

The Safety Institute of Australia, commendably, approached the major political parties running in Australia’s current federal election campaign. Only the Australian Labor Party (ALP) responded to the SIA, but the policy documents of the Australian Greens and Liberal and National Parties are available online and their relevance to occupational health and safety (OHS) deserves attention.

The ALP information should be familiar to SafetyAtWorkBlog readers:

• “Show national leadership and meet with work, health and safety ministers from across Australia in the second half of this year to decide on the best course of action of the recommendations to come out of the Boland review.
• Work with state and territory governments to implement a harmonised industrial manslaughter offence.
• Establish a national advisory committee made up of representatives from each state and territory who have been personally impacted by a serious workplace injury or death to develop recommendations for federal, state and territory governments to act upon.”

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The biggest OHS challenge is greed

As the world approaches World Day for Safety and Health at Work and International Workers Memorial Day this coming Sunday it is worth reminding ourselves of some of the immorality that unregulated Capitalism allows. A company in one of the last remaining exporters of asbestos, Russia, has used President Donald Trump’s words and image to support its production and export of asbestos*, a product known for over a century to cause fatal illnesses.

Why is asbestos still mind if the evidence of its fatality is incontrovertible? Greed, or as it has been called in the past – “good business sense”. Many authors have written about the history of asbestos globally and locally. Many have written about the injustice in denying victims compensation from exposure to a known harmful chemical. But few have written about the core support for asbestos production, export and sale – Greed.

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Be clear on what is meant by productivity

Productivity, like Safety, is one of those words that is used frequently without a clear and uniform definition.  This causes confusion when advocating for occupational health and safety (OHS) interventions that improve productivity.

Safety does not increase productivity but it can minimize lost productivity. Let me try to explain by focusing on labour productivity.  Every worker has a certain level of productivity, that is, the creation of a product or the delivery of a service.  This level can be affected by family issues, work stressors, poor working conditions and environment.  This distraction and discomfort lowers a worker’s productivity. OHS aims to reinstate the worker’s optimum productivity through various operational and procedural changes.  OHS tries to close the gap between low labour productivity and peak productivity.

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In order to grow, OHS needs economists, philosophers, ethicists and gender specialists

The occupational health and safety (OHS) profession is being affected by demographic changes as much as any other profession. Younger people seem to have a very different expectation on how to interpret and apply OHS, and older people are tired of being lectured to, and this is putting pressure on those who organise events, seminars and conferences and those who mentor and educate in a range of ways.

Some organisations and conferences are responding by reconfiguring the provision of information away from the lecture format of an expert to a mix of communication methods. This blog has written about some of those that occurred in the last two years. These conferences are less academic than in earlier days. Rarely is a conference accompanied by a handbook of research-based conference papers; some provide no papers at all and slideshows delivered a fortnight after the event are devoid of context and next to useless.

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