The latest awards night for WorkSafe Victoria achieved its scope – present awards for people and organisations who do occupational health and safety (OHS) well. Some categories are for extraordinary effort, achievements or innovation, and winning any award from WorkSafe is important to the winners, but some were flat.
The calls for banning engineered stone‘s importation are curious and likely to be acted on later this week.
Politicians, unions and some OHS associations have undertaken a risk assessment and determined that elimination is the most effective harm prevention strategy. Previous risk assessments of silicosis have been reported on in this blog for some time without banning the material. The risks have not changed even with increased inspection and enforcement. So what has changed? Politics.
An employment dispute over working hours has entered the mainstream media as it relates to the office of one of the crossbench independent members of parliament, a favourite target of some of the media. The dispute over the meaning of additional reasonable working hours illustrates several occupational health and safety (OHS) issues.
Last week, the Institute for Safety, Compensation and Recovery Research (ISCRR) conducted presentations of its latest research programs. Those projects included:
This year the South Australian Parliament will likely pass that State’s Industrial Manslaughter (IM) legislation as the introduction of these laws was an election commitment of the new Labor government. The consultation period on the draft Bill closes on February 10 2023 after being open for just over two months.
New South Wales may follow if the Labor Party wins the March 2023 election
Industrial Manslaughter laws under the broader occupational health and safety (OHS) continue to be contentious as a new research paper by Professor Richard Johnstone shows. However, the introduction of IM laws will forever be a political act at its core.
Continue reading “Industrial Manslaughter laws are spreading in Australia but are inconsistent [Open Access]”Australia’s newspapers have recently reported on the moves by the Federal Government to review the safety and working conditions of the country’s truck drivers. As expected, The Australian newspaper is painting this as the Government paying back its ideological and financial backers – the trade unions – and the resurrection of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal (RSRT), even though the Government denies this will happen.
Occupational health and safety (OHS) sits behind some elements of the debate. As with most things OHS, it will not be a game-changer in a discussion over pay rates and minimum standards, but it is a serious consideration, and deservedly so.
Global warming is affecting how we work just as much as how we live. Working in Heat policies are designed based on experience rather than meteorological and climate forecasts, meaning these documents are always chasing reality and not getting ahead of the occupational hazard.
On January 19, 2023, Steven Greenhouse (coincidental name) looked at the topic of working in extreme for Nieman Reports writing that:
“High heat can be a big problem for the nation’s workers, not just farmworkers and construction workers, but delivery workers, utility workers, landscaping workers, and warehouse workers.”
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