Occupational health and safety (OHS), building safety and public safety often overlap but never more so than in the instance of the Grenfell fire of June 2017. The UK Government has just released the final report into the incident and there are many interesting lessons for workplace health and safety and its social role.
On the issue of Industrial Manslaughter laws, Lana Cormie (pictured far right) said:
“Employers need to have motivation to do the right thing, ’cause clearly they don’t do it off their own back. So, if that means, if this’ll be the difference between them making OH&S a high priority and not, then it needs to be done. And I think all the other benefits for the men on the ground, and the women on the ground, will filter down from that. “
Her comments on International Workers Memorial Day emphasises that the introduction of these laws is not so much about new laws but the failure of the existing ones and of their application. Over time, the general commitment to implementing occupational health and safety (OHS) has declined in many workplaces or, at least, has not progressed in the way expected by the safety law makers of the 1970s and 1980s.
Government has relied on the increase of financial penalties as the major deterrent Continue reading “Why are we arguing about Industrial Manslaughter laws?”
This weekend is the International Workers Memorial Day. In Victoria, in particular and in Australia more generally, it is highly likely that the issue of Industrial Manslaughter laws will be raised as part of a trade union campaign.
Dr Gerry Ayers, the OHS&E Manager of one of the branches of the CFMEU, features in an online petition about these laws and it seemed the right time to interview Dr Ayers about these laws but also about workplace health and safety enforcement and practices more generally.
Australia’s Royal Commission into banking and financial services is a few months in and the evidence provided of wrongdoing is so substantial that those who were critical of the need for such an investigation are admitting they were wrong.
SafetyAtWorkBlog is applying the logic that occupational health and safety (OHS) succeeds best when it is part of the organisational culture. Australia has often held its banking and financial services as “world-class” and many of that industry sector’s leaders have been prominent in speaking about the importance of leadership and corporate morality.
The financial and banking industry’s credibility and authority in Australia is gone and the OHS profession can learn much from this failure, even when the failure is in its early stages of exposure.
On April 3, 2018, the University of Sydney launched a new app
”to assist victims and witnesses record information in a way that can help with convictions and prevent miscarriages of justice”.
This immediately sparked my interest in using the app as a record of workplace incidents.
iWitnessed is intended as a tool to assist a person’s memory when confronted by an incident or a traumatic event. The app steps you through the basic evidence-gathering questions of what happened, where, when, who was injured etc.
Journalist Alice Workman drew social media’s attention to a dismissive answer by Australia’s Minister for Small and Family Business, the Workplace and Deregulation, Craig Laundy in Parliament last week. Laundy was asked by the Opposition Labor Party’s Ed Husic about a workplace fatality report and the safety performance of the Work-For-The-Dole scheme. The discussion provides a glimpse into the politics of occupational health and safety (OHS).
According to
Marnie Williams, Executive Director of WorkSafe Victoria launched 2018 with a presentation at a breakfast seminar organised by the Safety Institute of Australia and hosted by Herbert Smith Freehills in Melbourne. Williams illustrated that WorkSafe is very aware of community and business expectations on her authority’s performance and showed WorkSafe is very busy as it restructures around its relocation to Geelong and elsewhere However it could change even more or in different, more sustainable, ways.
Williams’ presentation proposed a positive future where the actions and issues associated with occupational health and safety (OHS) broaden to involve the Victorian community and address safety and health concerns that may no longer fit within the established OHS definitions, approaches and strategies.