Last week at the Safety In Action Trade Show I participated in a live web interview on safety. The video of my interview is available below. Many thanks to Digicast for making this and other OHS videos available.
Other video interviews are available with:
Last week Professor Rod McClure of the Monash Injury Research Institute urged Australian safety professionals to look at the ecology of safety and injury prevention. By using the term “ecology” outside of the colloquial, he was advocating that we search for a universal theory of injury prevention. In short, he urged us to broaden our understanding of safety to embrace new perspectives. It could also be argued that he wanted to break the safety profession out of its malaise and generate some social activism on injury prevention – a philosophical kick in the pants.
Before discussing the latest research Australia’s Barbara Pocock has undertaken, with her colleagues Natalie Skinner and Philippa Williams, the challenge of achieving some degree of balance between the two social activities of work and non-work can be indicated by a graph provided by Dick Bryan and Mike Rafferty in a recent DISSENT magazine article about financial risk.
In 2008 people in Australian households were working over 50 hours per week. The reasons for this are of less relevance than the fact that Australian workers are well beyond the 40-hour work week, not including any travel time. Work has a social cost as well as a social benefit and any discussion (debate?) over productivity, as is currently occurring in Australia, must also consider the social cost of this productivity. The graph above is a symptom of the challenge of achieving a decent quality of life and a functional level of productivity – the challenge that Pocock, Skinner and Williams have undertaken. Continue reading “Evidence of the need to change how and why we work”
Overall the Safety In Action Conference, currently occurring in Melbourne, has been consistent but without any standout moments. However there have been nuggets of interest from the speakers and insight from some of the participants.
Andrew Douglas of M+K Lawyers was blunt in describing some of the actions between State Governments and the Federal Government over the harmonisation of occupational health and safety laws as “extortion” that is impeding much-needed growth. Also, he was clear that the most effective people to undertake investigations of workplace incidents were OHS professionals as safety is their expertise. He was adamant that lawyers are experts in law and safety professionals in safety but that they must work cooperatively.
Gerard Forlin was an enormously entertaining presenter who should have been a keynote speaker as, he himself said, he was only warming up after his half hour. His comparisons between Australian and UK OHS law were insightful. Industrial manslaughter laws are out of vogue in Australia but Forlin stated that corporate manslaughter laws have contributed to an increased focus on safety by senior executives, even though prosecutions under those laws have been curiously targeted. Continue reading “Zero Harm is a “fallacious deception” – thoughts on the 2012 Safety In Action Conference”
WorkSafe Victoria has released a video of an experiment that shows that people will undertake unsafe acts if asked to do so. This video is part of the OHS regulator’s campaign to increase focus on the OHS obligations of supervisors but it has generated serious complaints from safety professionals and advocates.
WorkSafe Victoria has been advised that the video sends “mixed messages” about electrical safety. Safety professionals have decried that the video is meant to be funny with its jaunty whistling soundtrack yet it shows an apprentice pretending to receive a shock. One participant giggles when she realises it is a joke, in the same way people are relieved after being “punk’d” or laugh after seeing the “candid camera” even though their participation was alarming. The video has been described as a “stunt” that fails to illustrate the serious consequences of the action of handling live electric cables. Continue reading “WorkSafe Victoria missteps on its venture with “Candid Camera” approach”
In The Australian newspaper on 3 April 2012, Judith Sloan presents a useful summary of the status of the OHS harmonisation process. Many of her criticisms are valid but she has not realised that the new Work Health and Safety laws stopped being occupational health and safety laws some time ago. It is easier to understand the proposed changes if one accepts that these laws have broadened beyond the workplace to operate more as public health and safety laws.
It is possible to accept Sloan’s assertion of the “demise”of OHS harmonisation but if seen in the light of an integrated public/workplace health and safety law, the harmonisation process may be a welcome beginning to a broader application of safety in public and occupational lives.
The acceptance of this interpretation provides very different comparisons and linkages. For instance, the shopper tripping on a mat in the vegetable section of a supermarket was likely, in the past, to receive recompense through public liability insurance. Now it could equally be under OHS laws. The regulation of potential legionella sources was through the Health Department, even though many of these are in workplaces and often affect workers first. Should cooling towers have been assessed by hygienists or occupational hygienists? Should these be managed under an employer’s OHS management system or through the facilities manager or landlord?
Continue reading “Is OHS harmonisation a dead parrot or is it just pining?”
The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) advocates for workers’ rights and entitlements with occupational safety being one of those entitlements but sometimes the safety message from ACTU is a little narrow.
On 14 March 2012, the ACTU issued a media release responding to the release of important workplace safety data by Safe Work Australia. The release quotes ACTU President Ged Kearney emphasising very important data:
“This report has found that the cost of each workplace incident is around $99,100 and of this workers pay $73,300, the community $20,800 and employers $5100…”
and
“We think we are a clever country but it isn’t so smart to forgo almost 5% of our nation’s GDP on the cost of preventable workplace injury and illness…”
But what does the ACTU propose to address this economic cost of poor safety management? Continue reading “Innovative thinking needed if Australia is to save lives and improve the economy”
In February 2012, the Institute for Safety, Compensation and Recovery Research (ISCRR) released a research report into the efficacy of crush protection devices (CPDs) on all-terrain vehicles or, more accurately, quad-bikes. The report summary states that
“Experimental tests conducted by the University of Southern Queensland indicate that the Quad Bar CPD is capable of either preventing a complete roll, or modifying the roll event to reduce the risk and severity of injury to the rider for both side roll and back flip scenarios. These results highlight the potential for CPDs such the Quad Bar to reduce rider injuries and fatalities resulting from low speed roll over incidents;”
Great news for the manufacturer of the Quad Bar. However the report is damning of some research into quad bike rollovers, particularly that which has been relied on by the quad bike manufacturers to resist the application of CPDs. Continue reading “An Australian research review blasts US quad bike research”