It is common for workers, particularly trade union members, to insist that workers have a right to a safe and healthy workplace and work. Often this is said to be a Human Right. But does occupational health and safety (OHS) involve Human Rights or is the claim simply trade union hyperbole? Continue reading “Do workers have a human right to workplace health and safety?”
Category: human rights
OHS and the Trans-Pacific Partnership
Several weeks ago I was asked by a trade unionist to make a submission to the Australian Government explaining how the impending Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) would be bad for worker safety. I acknowledged concerns over labour relations but pointed out that no matter who is working in an Australian workplace, their safety must be managed. Whether they are a migrant worker or full-time employee was not relevant to the management of their occupational health and safety (OHS). The trade unionist was disappointed.
Now the
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Book review: Business, Environment, and Society – Themes and Cases
Australia’s Royal Commission into the Home Insulation Program (HIP) spent a great deal of time looking at the design of what started as an environmental initiative delivered in one way to an economic stimulus package delivered another way. The HIP, and the people working with it, struggled to accommodate these changes. A new book from Baywood Publishing in the United States, coincidentally, looks at the growth in ‘green jobs” and, among many issues, discusses how such jobs can affect worker health.
In “Business, Environment, and Society – Themes and Cases” Vesela R Veleva writes
“Green jobs, however, are not necessarily safe jobs, and, any of the current green technologies pose significant health and safety risks to workers. A life-cycle approach and greater emphasis on worker health and safety is necessary when promoting future policies and practices. (Page 7)
The advantage of looking at the HIP inquiries as green jobs is that it provides a broader, even global, context to the scheme. Veleva writes:
“While there is no universally accepted definition of a green job, several organisations have proposed working definitions. The United Nations Environmental Program defines a green job as “work in agriculture, manufacturing, research and development, administrative and service activities that contribute substantially to preserving and restoring environmental quality”…. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics defines green jobs as jobs involved in producing green products and services and increasing the use of clean energy, energy efficiency and mitigating negative impacts on the environment…” (page 9)
Continue reading “Book review: Business, Environment, and Society – Themes and Cases”
“Put the human being first”
One of the most contentious issues in safety management is the treatment of workers compensation claimants. On 18 August 2014, a small qualitative research report into this area was launched in Melbourne. The report, “Filling the Dark Spot: fifteen injured workers shine a light on the workers compensation system to improve it for others”* identified four themes in the workers’ stories:
- a sense of injustice
- a lack of control and agency
- loss of trust, and
- loss of identity.
These themes, or at least some of them, are increasingly appearing on the occupational health and safety (OHS) literature. To establish a successful sustainable workplace culture, one needs to establish and maintain trust. Workers also seem to need some degree of control, or at least influence, over their working conditions and environment. Also workers, and managers, need to receive a fair hearing, what most would describe as “natural justice”.
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Sex, work, liability and safety
There is a constant tension between occupational health and safety (OHS) and workers compensation. OHS is intended to prevent harm and workers compensation is available for when harm cannot be, or has not been, prevented. In Australia, these two elements of safety are administered by different organisations under different legislation but it is a distinction that baffles many. The recent discussion about a sex-related workers compensation claim illustrates this bafflement to some degree.
This time last year Comcare filed an appeal over a Federal Court decision regarding
“A Commonwealth employee is seeking workers’ compensation for injuries sustained after a light fitting was pulled from the wall of a motel during sex, on a business trip.”
(A good summary of most of the legal proceedings is provided by Herbert Geer.)
The case has received wide media attention mostly for the salacious matter of the case, and some political attention, but the purpose of the appeal, according to Comcare, was
“… to seek a High Court ruling on the boundaries between private
Continue reading “Sex, work, liability and safety”
Principled pragmatism – Human Rights included in OHS Due Diligence
On 16 August 2012, Australia’s Workplace Relations Minister, Bill Shorten, said in Parliament, in relation to new asbestos management initiatives, that”
“On 14 March this year, in my first ministerial statement on workplace health and safety in this place, I said that every Australian who goes to work should return home safely. I know both sides of the House endorse this universal human right and today I reaffirm our commitment to this principle…” (page 13, Hansard. emphasis added)
It is very common to hear safety professionals and company executives echo the statement that workers should return home in an uninjured state. But few would be aware or, perhaps, agree that this is a human rights statement.
Following an earlier blog post, one reader has pointed us to the United Nations Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights that were released in 2011. According to the author, John Ruggie, these principles:
“… highlight what steps States should take to foster business respect for human rights; provide a blueprint for companies to know and show that they respect human rights, and reduce the risk of causing or contributing to human rights harm; and constitute a set of benchmarks for stakeholders to assess business respect for human rights. Continue reading “Principled pragmatism – Human Rights included in OHS Due Diligence”
Is safe work a basic, or fundamental, human right?
Early this century, according to a draft conference paper* in the SafetyAtWorkBlog archives, the late Eric Wigglesworth OAM posed the following question:
“In addition to our basic human rights of freedom of speech and freedom of religion, should there also be freedom from injury as a basic human right?”
The expectation of a safe and healthy work environment and a workplace without risk is often expressed as a human right, but is OHS a “human right” and what does it mean?
According to one website
“on June 29, 2008, the XVIII World Congress on Safety and Health at Work signed the Seoul Declaration on Safety and Health at Work.”
According to the International Labour Organisation
“…the Declaration also emphasizes that the right to a safe and healthy working environment should be recognized as a fundamental human right.”
The Seoul Declaration mentions human rights only in passing but the reference exists. It is one thing to make a statement and to do so on a global platform but to make this applicable at specific industrial or national levels seems different.
Continue reading “Is safe work a basic, or fundamental, human right?”