hazards – Page 57 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

WorkSafe enters battle over quadbike safety

A decision by WorkSafe Victoria about the fitting of crush protection devices (CPD) to quad-bikes (All Terrain Vehicles/ATV) gained the major prominence in the latest edition of a major Australian farming newspaper, The Weekly Times. The newspaper reports that

“WorkSafe Victoria is tightening rules around quad bikes that will see them banned in workplaces unless appropriate rollover protection is fitted.”

Some of the argument over the last 24 hours has been around whether this means that CPDs are mandatory and, as always, cost.

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Sex Work regulations review safety obligations

SafetyatworkV2I7-cover — 2000 edition of SafetyATWORK magazine addressing some of the OHS issues in brothels

Consumer Affairs Victoria (CAV) is seeking public comment on some proposed revisions of the Sex Work Regulations. Several revisions specifically address workplace safety issues but also indicate out-of-date thinking on worker safety and safety management.

Victoria licences its brothels and, as such, the occupational health and safety (OHS) laws apply as they do to all workplaces. However, the regulators of the sex industry seem to perceive OHS usually in terms of sexual health and hygiene even though statistics have shown that these issues are low risk hazards. This perception has lasted well over a decade as this 2000 article from National Safety magazine shows. Continue reading “Sex Work regulations review safety obligations”

Extracting good from maps of death

Ever since I read the London Encyclopaedia during my honeymoon in England, I have waited for a similar encyclopaedia based on workplace safety. However, the world has changed since then and such an encyclopaedia would most likely to be created as an app.

The London Encyclopaedia is indexed by places, streets and addresses, and so should a “Safety Encyclopaedia” app through a localised map of workplace fatalities.

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Stats show quadbikes remain the leading cause of deaths on Australian farms

Dr Tony Lower, Director of the Australian Centre for Agricultural Health and Safety has released his review of farm safety incident statistics for 2015. According to a media release (not yet online), Dr Lower found

“…there were 69 on‐farm injury deaths. The main causes continued to be quads, accounting for 15 cases (22%), with two of these involving children. This is the fifth year in a row where quads have been the leading cause of non‐intentional injury deaths on Australian farms.” Continue reading “Stats show quadbikes remain the leading cause of deaths on Australian farms”

Safety and The Three Little Pigs – WTF?

One of the benefits of the Internet is that people are able to distribute their thoughts in a variety of formats. (I am surely not the first to see some parallels with pamphleteering in the 1700s.) In November 2015, Australian safety professional Faith Eeson published Safety & The Three Little Pigs as an e-book.

The book is not a manual or a deep analysis of a particular safety topic. It is a rumination on various safety-related issues with each chapter being no more than a couple of pages each. Eeson peppers the e-book with references to fresh contemporary incidents in Australia, such as the Lindt Cafe siege last year in Sydney or the community prevalence of methamphetamine. It may just the type of e-book that some small business owners made need for reassurance and guidance Continue reading “Safety and The Three Little Pigs – WTF?”

Red tape as a force for good?

“Red Tape” is often mentioned as a scourge on business growth and occupational health and safety (OHS) is frequently mentioned. But this week on Australian radio, red tape was described as a positive. It was a peculiar comment that should be noted in the red tape debate.

On ABC Radio’s AM program on 30 December 2015, in a discussion about vaccinations, Professor Raina MacIntyre, Head of the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of New South Wales, stated: Continue reading “Red tape as a force for good?”

Where workplace bullying sits in Australia’s IR review

Australia’s Productivity Commission (PC) has released its final report into the Workplace Relations Framework. Almost all media discussion has been about potential changes to penalty rates but, as mentioned in an earlier blog post, workplace bullying is part of the inquiry’s terms of reference, submissions were sought on this and the final report identifies one view on the current state of play.

The Australian newspaper has summarised the report as rubbish while The Age has described it as a “fair assessment“. These polarised interpretations say more about mainstream media ideologies than they do about the report, but they reflect the dichotomy between unions and business and the Left and the Right, and need to be remembered when reading their articles about occupational health and safety (OHS).

Volume 2 of the PC’s report includes a chapter (19) specifically addressing workplace bullying but the issue crops up throughout Volume 1 to illustrate the Fair Work Commission’s operations, where bullying fits in the workplace relations framework and even as bullying relates to breastfeeding.

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Category: hazards

WorkSafe enters battle over quadbike safety

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Sex Work regulations review safety obligations

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Extracting good from maps of death

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Stats show quadbikes remain the leading cause of deaths on Australian farms

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Safety and The Three Little Pigs – WTF?

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Red tape as a force for good?

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Where workplace bullying sits in Australia’s IR review

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