ethics – Page 12 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Legal Professional Privilege is the OHS equivalent of the Non-Disclosure Agreement

Pam Gurner-Hall is no stranger to this blog. Recently she appeared in an article by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) about access to information from South Australia’s occupational health and safety (OHS) regulator, SafeWorkSA.

SafeWorkSA has been under considerable scrutiny for the last few years. A “root and branch” review conducted by John Merritt is the latest inquiry. [Note: this article was written before the release of the Merritt report and the Government’s interim response last weekend. More on that report shortly]

Gurner-Hall’s concerns seem more about the government’s response to the inquiry and the application of Legal Professional Privilege (LPP). She is quoted saying:

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ChatGPT article on psychosocial hazards at work

I am uncertain about using Artificial Intelligence (AI), like ChatGPT, to produce articles related to occupational health and safety (OHS), but thought I better familiarise myself with the process. So, I asked ChatGPT to

“Create a 400-word document discussing psychosocial hazards in the workplace and the most effective methods to prevent them happening.”

Below is the article and a discussion of its deficiencies:

Mental health book should be influential due to lack of bullshit

Some of the recent guidance on mental health at work from occupational health and safety (OHS) regulators is not scintillating or even engaging. Their purpose is to provide information with the hope it is presented in a workplace by someone super-communicative and influential. (C’mon, really? We’re talking about OHS here.)

Luckily there is a recent easy-to-read book of fewer than 150 pages that reads like a conversation over a single afternoon with the reader about Mental Health At Work.

Don’t mention profit

The primacy of profit to employers is an accepted truth. However, the size of the profit and the pathway to those profits are not absolutes, and it is in this latter context that occupational health and safety (OHS) lives.

Even though profit is a business truth, it is often a word that business representatives seem to fear. They speak of profit through synonyms like “productivity” and “competitiveness”. An example of this timidity or wariness was displayed recently by prominent businessman Michael Angwin in an opinion piece in the Australian Financial Review (paywalled) that contained many other cautious words of business jargon. Angwin misses the harm to workers and others generated by the world as he sees it.

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Notable books on safety and work

This end-of-year list is more complex than one of unread books because of the qualitative elements. In writing this article, off-the-cuff, I thought of the three or four books that I could readily remember reading in 2022; those that stuck in my mind for several reasons.

The book that most readily comes to mind from 2022 is the Jessie Singer book “There are no Accidents“. Singer makes the same point as many occupational health and safety (OHS) people have – accidents are not an “act of God”. There is always a cause IF we choose to look. There is always a social, corporate, economic of ethical environment that either encourages or fails to discourage decisions that can lead to harm.

How could OHS have helped manage Chris Smith?

SkyNews and radio host, Chris Smith, has been dismissed due to inappropriate behaviour at a company Christmas party. This type of behaviour has been on the occupational health and safety (OHS) and Industrial Relations radar for a long, long time. Recently the psychological impacts of this type of behaviour have come to the fore, placing the issue clearly in the OHS realm.

It is useful to look at the Chris Smith saga through the “new” OHS perspective.

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Old working hours concepts persist as subtext in new debates

One of the most contentious occupational health and safety (OHS) elements of industrial relations negotiations is the issue of working hours. And one of the most effective ways to prevent physical and psychological harm is by talking about working hours. The evidence for harm from excessive and often unpaid hours is clear, but some assumptions crop up in the debate every so often.

Two recent books, one by David Graeber & David Wengrow and another by Daniel Susskind, offer reminders of these issues and are useful adjuncts to the Australian research on precarious work by Michael Quinlan, Phillip Bohle and others. ( A Guardian review of Graeber & Wengrow is available here with one from The Atlantic here, Susskind here and here)

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Category: ethics

Legal Professional Privilege is the OHS equivalent of the Non-Disclosure Agreement

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ChatGPT article on psychosocial hazards at work

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Mental health book should be influential due to lack of bullshit

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Notable books on safety and work

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How could OHS have helped manage Chris Smith?

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Old working hours concepts persist as subtext in new debates

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