The Australian Safety & Compensation Council has issued an alert about a safety publication, Workplace Safety Review. Apparently this publication is misusing content from the ASCC website.
More information on this matter is available at http://www.ascc.gov.au/ascc/AboutUs/Publications/
Last week, the release of the final report of Australia’s review into National Model OHS Law was touted by many as immediately after the meeting of the Workplace Relations Ministers Council (WRMC). This occurred with the first report in 2008. WRMC met in a teleconference yesterday. When the report is released officially (rumours are that the report is already doing the rounds of the unions and the employer associations), SafetyAtWorkBlog will provide a link to the report and some initial commentary.
However, as reported yesterday, the Australian Financial Review obtained a copy of the report and highlighted several issues of interest. The AFR report held no great surprise for safety professionals but the union movement is going to be ideologically tested.
Early in the review process, the New South Wales union movement was very vocal about the risk of losing their right to initiate prosecutions over OHS breaches. The right was rarely applied and could be a very costly exercise. Since that time there has been silence from that quarter, perhaps because they realised that its contentious right was out-of-step with the rest of the country and the review process is all about legislative harmonisation.
According to media reports this week, the Review Panel’s final report recommends the omission of the right to prosecute but allows an option to instigate prosecutions through the OHS regulators. In effect it keeps the power where it is most cost-effective and through which a similar outcome could be achieved. It gives the unions a seat at the table, just not the same seat but still with a comfy cushion.
Prior to the WRMC meeting, Sharan Burrows issued a media statement on several matters, the source of the ACTU quotes in today’s AFR article, in which she said
Media reports also suggest that the Ministers will tonight discuss the final report of the National Review of OHS Laws.
“It is vital that the national, harmonised health and safety laws are based on the highest possible standards. This should include providing workers with the right, through their unions, to initiate prosecutions against employers when there are serious health and safety breaches.
“In the past, union prosecutions have been few in number but have secured important improvements for employees who work in potentially dangerous situations. We also need a truly tripartite, well resourced national workplace health and safety watchdog that is able to set, monitor and upgrade health and safety standards,” said Ms Burrow.
It seems that Ms Burrows may, pragmatically, welcome the cushion.
Also, the union movement would be well aware of the potential boost to the revenues of OHS training providers, a status many unions and union bodies enjoy. A national five-day training course for Health & Safety Representatives could be financially useful. Also the courses have always been a very good recruiting opportunity.
The Australian Financial Review has obtained a copy of the 470-page report of the Review Panel into OHS Model Law prior to its release by the Australian government.
The most significant recommendation reported by the paper is that unions will not be allowed to prosecute for OHS offences. This entitlement by unions in New South Wales has been a constant source of industrial tension in that State. However the panel did suggest that anyone can request OHS regulators to undertake a prosecution or they can appeal a regulator’s decision not to prosecute.
Employers across Australia will be obliged to provide paid leave for employees to attend health and safety representative training courses – probably five days.
The proposed legislation also allows for common law rights to stop work if it is deemed unsafe.
The full AFR article is not available online but can be found on page 3 of the hard copy.
SafetyAtWorkBlog has previously referred to safety videos produced by the US Chemical Safety Board (CSB). The latest safety message from Chairman John Bresland relates to combustible dust explosion risks, a hazard that exists around the world and one that has been mentioned in this blog.
A curious element in this very good video is that he is lobbying the “incoming leadership at OSHA” to act on the CSB’s combustible gas recommendations. John’s video was released on 4 February 2009. The confirmation of a new Labor Secretary is still to occur and the latest nominee, Hilda Solis, has become embroiled in a taxation “scandal” relating to her husband’s auto repair business.
Bresland’s messages are always of good general safety relevance, a major reason why they are embedded in SafetyAtWorkBlog, but the latest one has some peculiar tones given the current US political circumstances. In Australia, we rarely have Chairman or CEOs of government agencies making such statements. It is indeed curious.
At the end of March 2009, the Safety Institute of Australia (Victoria Division) is conducting its annual Safety In Action conference. In order to help promote the conference the SIA organised for several conference speakers to be filmed.
The filming occurred in early-February 2009 and the short 10-minute
videos will be available at the Safety In Action website in a couple of week’s time. The subjects of the videos are:
Jill MCabe of WorkSafe Victoria who talks about the research WorkSafe has undertaken in order to establish a better profile of their clients so as to improve assistance and advice. Jill has long experience in industrial relations and now focuses on health and safety.
Helen Marshall was appointed Australia’s Federal Safety Commissioner in August 2008. Helen discusses her experiences in dealing with a national system for safety on building and construction sites and reveals her first ever “real” job.
Dr Martyn Newman explains what he means by describing some leaders as “emotional capitalists”. He sees that as a good thing to be but isn’t ego an emotion and greed an emotion? And aren’t those the emotions that that have generated a lot of our social and financial heartbreak? Is there is such a thing as an “emotional socialist”? Dr Newman’s presentation at the conference will be popular but it’s application may be obscure or challenging.
John Merritt, the CEO of WorkSafe, is genuinely passionate about improving society and seems to feel that OHS is a valuable way to improve the quality of people’s lives. [I first spoke with John in the early 1990s while he was in the ACTU. The only thing I knew about him was that he had written a book about shearers. I spoke next with him while he was CEO of the National Safety Council and now (twice) while he is at WorkSafe. If our paths continue to cross, he owes me a beer and two hours of unrecorded conversation in a comfortable bar.]
Barry Sherriff, a lawyer with Freehills, has just come off nine months of serving on the National OHS Review panel and is hamstrung in what he can say as the government is yet to release the final report. His presentation was measured and cautious.
The videos provide an interesting cross-section of OHS approaches in Australia, several overlap and some are “out there” but the best that can be said is that one learns. This makes for a terrific Safety In Action conference.
Part 2 of Risk & Reason book review from SafetyAtWork magazine 2003
Sunstein closes the chapter “Thinking About Risks” with a short reference to September 11 2001 with which he says that “acts of terrorism show an acute appreciation of the psychological phenomena..”
Throughout the book, there are snippets that can be related to safety management. For instance, he writes of “dreaded deaths” with 3 points:
These points relate to HIV and cancer principally, but can’t we obtain some constructive advantage from having our employees dread workplace or traumatic deaths? First aid training often raises safety awareness because the First Aiders dread having to apply their skills. We drive cautiously because we dread traumatic injuries to our family and ourselves. Dread can lead to caution which leads to safe work.
Sunstein chooses not to deal with the relationship between risk and culture and directs us to “Risk & Culture” by Douglas and Wildavsky (1992). It is fair to acknowledge intellectual limitations but the whole book operates through, predominantly, the concerns of the United States culture and values. The cultural values of the US are not universal and some admission of this variation would have been useful, particularly given that the Douglas and Wildavsky book was published well over 10 years ago.
The illustration of eight propositions for cost-benefit analysis and government decision-making is very useful. They support the integration of qualitative measurements and a broad application of “costs”. One proposition is that “agencies should be required to show that the benefits justify the costs. If they do not, they should be required to show that the action is nonetheless reasonable…” Accountability is now an essential element of all business areas.
Risk and Reason may prove to be invaluable to United States readers but information for others was difficult to extract. (The testimonials on the dust jacket are glowing but are all academic, although one is from outside the US). There is no obligation for writers to include readers outside of their own marketplace but on an issue like risk and in a context of environmental management, it is disappointing that the book does not acknowledge the global readership. As mentioned above even very well known risk experts are not even referenced. The book is parochial and does not acknowledge that international standards do affect the US legal system even if it is less than in other jurisdictions. Environmental issues cross territorial boundaries and are becoming more involved with global legal structures and obligations.
Cass Sunstein has a good writing style and it is not difficult to read. We can only hope that the publishers encourage Mr Sunstein to write a complementary book focussing on risk and reason outside the United States.
The best pathway to Cass Sunstein information and writings is through his listing at Wikipedia. However, I did enjoy reading this article.
The scuttlebutt in some Australian OHS circles is that Australia’s Comcare agency will be given a major upgrade through the National OHS Review recommendations that is nearing completion.
Although the Minister for Workplace Relations, Julia Gillard, did not name the new agency that she intends to introduce through the Coalition of Australian Governments process, SafetyAtWorkBlog believes that Comcare will be upgraded to a fully functional national OHS authority.
Coincidentally, Comcare has begun promoting a series of national seminars for the month of March 2009. According to the promotional blurb:
“During the seminar, participants will engage in workshops and listen to presentations from speakers from across the Comcare scheme as well as Comcare’s OHS Compliance Assistance and Prevention & Injury Management Services teams.”
If Comcare’s new status is announced prior to the seminars, I would suggest the seminars will be sold-out quickly.