guidance – Page 46 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

John Merritt and ‘reasonably practicable’

On 4 August 2009, John Merritt, Executive Director of WorkSafe Victoria, spoke at an OHS function hosted by the Australian Human Resources Institute in Melbourne. John is a lively speaker whose passion for workplace safety is obvious. I had the opportunity to ask the following question

“How is reasonably practicable NOT a ‘get-out-jail-free card’?”

Many readers will know that I am skeptical about “reasonably practicable” as is evident from the question. However John’s response was the first from a non-lawyer that saw some positives in the concept. John said

“I do think [the concept] is a real strength in the law. In trying to move people to embrace this issue, for those who are in that denial phase, they often think we are asking them to do the impossible, and I find it really useful to say “no we’re not. We’re asking you to do that which is reasonably practicable.

Our job, if we say what you’re doing is not reasonably practicable, all we have to do is go and find someone who is just like you who is doing it. We’re not asking you to do anything that somebody else, and usually in some critical mass of numbers, isn’t already doing, so why can’t you do it?” And I think that’s a reasonably sophisticated law.

You’ve got to have really good teams of investigators and lawyers and inspectors and all that sort of stuff to make that sort of law work. But that’s good, that’s doable …. but I do think, in our field, its a reasonable proposition.

The alternative, which is an absolute duty – you must have a safe workplace and if someone is hurt, prima facie, you’ve failed and you need to prove to us that you’re innocent – can be made to work as well and most of the research is …. but in trying to move that hearts and minds of, particularly, our target audience, I think it’s the right way to go.”

It was refreshing to hear that “reasonably practicable” can be used as a tool for good instead of evil through illustrating an example of a control measure that has already been found to be reasonably practicable. Tangible examples have been missing from OHS in Australia for a long time, ever since the OHS Solutions databases fell over in the 1990s.

If WorkSafe finds such examples useful for businesses, it would be good to see such databases resurrected. The images below show some pages from “Share Solutions” a hard copy database produced by WorkSafe’s predecessor, the Occupational Health and Safety Authority, in the late 1980’s. It would be a good idea if someone like Safe Work Australia investigated the feasability of resurrecting this initiative.

Kevin Jones

Leadership, stress and performance reviews – interview

Graham Winter is an Australian psychologist who was the chief psychologist for the Australian Olympic team and is now an author and business adviser. In August 2009 he has a book released entitled “The Man Who Cured the Performance Review”.

SafetyAtWorkBlog managed to interview Graham last week about the book, stress and safety leadership. The SafetyAtWorkBlog podcast is available for download.

SafetyAtWorkBlog Graham Winter Interview

Kevin Jones

OHS harmonisation – chemicals draft

As part of the Australian government’s program of national OHS harmonisation, Safe Work Australia has released “Proposed revisions to the workplace chemicals regulatory framework“. This has been a long time coming.

This is not yet open for public comment but is a great indication of what Australian workplaces that handle chemicals may be in for. Not being experts in dangerous goods, SafetyAtWorkBlog will let the document speak for itself.

“This National Standard marks a significant change in the approach to the classification and communication of chemical hazards in the workplace. The National Standard adopts the principles of the Globally Harmonised System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS) published by the United Nations. The adoption of the GHS in the workplace chemicals framework serves two important purposes:

it represents best practice in the classification of chemicals and the communication of hazards using a standardised approach that will allow harmonisation amongst international trading partners; and

it allows the promulgation of a streamlined framework for identifying, assessing and controlling chemical hazards in the workplace, where hazards may be related to health or physical effects.

The previous national framework for managing chemical hazards in the workplace was based on a distinction between hazardous substances and dangerous goods. Hazardous substances were associated with human health effects (for example acute toxicity or carcinogenicity) and dangerous goods were predominantly associated with physical effects (for example corrosivity, flammability). In many cases, a single chemical would be classified as both a dangerous goods and a hazardous substance, triggering the need to comply with two distinct regulatory frameworks.

This National Standard provides a consolidated basis for the control of health hazards and physical hazards arising from the presence of chemicals in the workplace. In this framework chemical substances, mixtures and articles can be classified as “hazardous chemicals”― a term that includes both health hazards and physical hazards.”

From a brief look, it is noted that MSDS loses a letter to become SDS, Safety Data Sheets. The principal reference codes and guidelines such as those below are now being reviewed and the public comment period began on 31 July 2009.

Approved Criteria for Classifying Hazardous Chemicals.
National Code of Practice for the Labelling of Workplace Hazardous Chemicals
National Code of Practice for the Preparation of Safety Data Sheets
National Standard for the Synthetic Mineral Fibres
National Standard for the Control of Inorganic Lead at Work

Because Australia will follow the guidelines of the Globally Harmonised System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals, the issue of environmental impact of work-related chemicals will also become relevant. The proposal says

“A full implementation of the GHS would require the provision of appropriate information on labels and safety data sheets (SDS) where a chemical is classified as an environmental hazard.”

All of this sounds like a big shake-up for many Australian businesses and safety advisers but there is still time for the government and Safe Work Australia to provide enough information to minimise its impact. The release of the proposed revisions prior to public comment is a positive sign.

Kevin Jones

Occupational violence in fast food restaurants and petrol stations

The Australian media has been abuzz over the last couple of days on several issues concerning violence. Attention increases whenever there is video involved and the latest film of a bashing in Melbourne in a Hungry Jack’s store in the early hours of 13 July 2009 is getting a considerable run.

Most commentators are taking the bashing of 19-year-old Luke Adams as an example of “street violence”. SafetyAtWorkBlog believes that the fact that this event occurred between customers in a workplace, raises questions about the obligations of retail store owners towards health and safety.

The case of Luke Adams again illustrates the reality that surveillance cameras can assist in the apprehension of criminals but does little to reduce the harm to employees and customers. This seems to be contrary to the OHS principles in Australian OHS legislation.

SafetyAtWorkBlog would ask any retailers who choose to operate, particularly, during nighttime

Are the stores designed to reduce (hopefully eliminate) the risk of violent contact between customers and staff?
Are there restrictions on the age or gender of staff who work nightshift?
Is the first aid training provided to staff designed to accommodate the emergency treatment of severely injured customers?
Has the presence of a security guard been tried during nightshifts?
Would the company consider closing a store if the risks to staff and customers became unacceptable?

SafetyAtWorkBlog knows of at least one fast food restaurant in Melbourne that removed its public toilets because of the number of drug overdoses that occurred in the cubicles. This store eventually closed its 24-hour store, partly, because of the unacceptable risk that developed.

The unfortunate linking of fast food restaurants with violent attacks is an issue of all-night trading as much as any other reason. It was just over two weeks ago that a fight in the grounds of a Hungry Jacks restaurant in suburban Melbourne was reported and wrapped into the current topic of supposedly racist-based attacks against Indian students.

The attacks are not limited to Melbourne though. A 19-year-old Korean student, Lee Joon–yub, was killed in Sydney in 2008 after being stabbed at a fast-food restaurant

The risk of occupational violence, as it is more traditionally understood, is increasing according to findings released on 16 July 2009 by the Australian Institute of Criminology. Its report, which also received some media attention from radio, finds that

“The incidence of service station armed robbery has steadily increased over the past decade. ….. This opportunistic targeting of service stations has been attributed to their extended opening hours, their sale of cigarettes and other exchangeable goods, their high volume of cash transactions and their isolation from other businesses. Widespread adoption of crime prevention measures by service stations, such as transfer trays, could help reduce their risk of being robbed…..”

The full report is worth reading closely from an OHS perspective as it identifies the characteristics of services stations (and maybe other all-night retail outlets) that are attractive to the opportunistic robber. We should not dismiss armed robberies as only involving monetary loss to retailers as the study showed that “one-third of armed robbery victims…were individual”.

The AIC report also states that

“…minimal staffing on night shift is seen to increase the risk of armed robbery victimization for service stations.”

This brings in all the OHS advice and research concerning working alone or in isolation. However there must be some sympathy for employers trying to recruit night shift workers for industries where violence is an increasing risk.

The mention of the hazard control measure of transfer trays is gratifying as it fits with a higher order of control measure in OHS parlance by providing an engineering control. However this needs to be backed up by specific training for employees on what to do when required to render assistance outside the enclosed booth.

The application of transfer trays may be valid for fast food stores at nighttime by only offering a drive-thru service and further reducing the risk of customer violence against employees.

Regardless of the physical harm from work tasks arising from working in retail, WorkSafe Victoria advises of four control measures for what it describes as the psychological system of stress, bullying and harassment:

Your workplace culture and management should encourage open and effective communication.

Develop, implement and enforce clear policies and procedures that address bullying, occupational violence, harassment and work pressure in consultation with workers (including young workers) and management.

Where money is handled, put in place security measures to reduce the risk of occupational violence.

Training and procedures should include all staff at risk, including any casual or on hire workers.

Kevin Jones

Latest Code of Practice on Scaffolding

Australia has had some awful scaffolding collapses and swing-stage incidents over recent times. (At least four articles on the issue can be found in SafetyAtWorkBlog by using the search function on the right). Sometimes, some would say often, Australian OHS regulators can respond quickly to a workplace situation.

The Queensland Government commissioned a review of suspended, or swing stage, scaffolding by Dr Andrew Baigent. The report was finalised in August 2008. A new scaffolding code of practice was released in early July 2009.

OHS crime alert

In late June 2009, WorkSafe Victoria tried a new approach to raising the awareness of the criminal status of OHS breaches through producing a formatted media alert and placing an ad in the daily newspapers.

It is unclear how else the “flyer” will be distributed other than through the WorkSafe website. Indications are that a hard copy of the alert for distribution through WorkSafe offices is not planned.

The ad, pictured right, refers to the prosecution of Rapid Roller over the second serious lathe incident at that workplace in 12 months, the most recent resulting in a death.

Kevin Jones

2006 interview with Dr Jukka Takala of EU-OSHA

In October 2006, I interviewed Dr Jukka Takala for the SafetyAtWork podcast. Jukka had just taken over as director of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work from Hans-Horst Konkolewsky.

The agency has continued its important work but seems since 2006 to focus more on the EU internal requirements rather than reaching out globally as before. This is understandable given the influx of new EU member states over that time but it is disappointing when an OHS “regulator’s” website has so many dead links to its former international partners.

The 2006 podcast is available for download.

The transcript of an earlier interview I conducted with Jukka in his ILO days is available by clicking the cover image below.

Kevin Jones

Category: guidance

John Merritt and ‘reasonably practicable’

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