Category: insurance

The intersection of OHS and public liability becomes more urgent

In mid-November 2010, a gymnasium in Queensland was fined A$70,000 following the death of a 19-year-old Michelle Maitland.  Ms Maitland fell and hit her head on a part of the floor that was not covered by a safety mat.  The case has been regularly reported in Queensland media since the death in June 2009 and the reports provide additional details of the fall and the hazard control measures that could be considered.

Workplace Health & Safety Queensland was unable to provide SafetyAtWorkBlog with details of the case or comment as the gymnasium has lodged an appeal against the judgement.

This tragic death is the latest illustration of a challenge that businesses and OHS regulators have faced regularly – the line between public liability and occupational health and safety law.   Businesses have applied a rule of thumb where injuries related to work activities are OHS matters but risks presented to customers or visitors who are in the workplace have been dealt with through public liability insurance.  The Maitland case shows that businesses may face an insurance payout as well as an OHS prosecution.

The significance of this demarcation will greatly increase with the introduction in Australia of new laws that redefine a “workplace” as wherever work is being undertaken.   Continue reading “The intersection of OHS and public liability becomes more urgent”

Never admitting guilt is contrary to OHS principles

Many companies plead guilty to breaches of OHS legislation but remain convinced that they have done nothing wrong.

Employers have been constantly frustrated by never being sure that they are complying with OHS law because compliance is now a very grey area and one that  few people are brave enough to say has been achieved.  So it is no surprise when an employer responds to a workplace incident by saying “I’ve done nothing wrong”.  In their experience this statement is true but if they had a basic understanding of safety and OHS law (two very different things), they would know that if an incident occurs something must have gone wrong. Continue reading “Never admitting guilt is contrary to OHS principles”

IOSH responds to OHS misperceptions

If ever there was an indication that the UK’s Institute of Occupational Safety & Health (IOSH) is the leading OHS organisation around the world, its entry into the OHS debate generated by the new UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, and the inquiry into OHS by Lord Young confirms it.  “Rebalancing Act?” is a terrific summary of the major points of contention in the debate.

But, IOSH is also pursuing a reform that should have a much greater impact on the OHS profession.  It is establishing a professional accreditation scheme that should set the benchmark for other OHS professional associations elsewhere, particularly in Australia.  The scheme is not revolutionary but the process IOSH has used to build the scheme is admirable, especially when compared with the Australian HaSPA program that has stagnated, apparently, due to organisational politics. Continue reading “IOSH responds to OHS misperceptions”

The potential of Safety Impact Assessments

For some time, several countries have had legislation that require Environment Impact Assessments.  Why don’t we have Safety Impact Assessments?

Often safety issues are applied retrospectively in project development.  Often the application is impeded by actions or pathways that are already in place, although embryonic.

There is evidence that safety performance can be greatly improved by having safety considerations at the very early design stages of projects.  Perhaps, rather than simply stating “safety is important”, the commitment to safety be more overtly stated in a formal manner at the project design stage. Continue reading “The potential of Safety Impact Assessments”

Death at work differs from work-related death

Often immediately following an incident, the safety manager receives a brief phone call “There’s been an accident.” Information is scarce and, in my experience, often wrong or more fairly inadequate. in OHS there will always be an assumption that an injury or death is work-related as that is our patch but people die every day and they can die anywhere, even in your workplace. Is this a workplace incident? Yes. Is it an occupational incident? not necessarily.

It is vital in those first moments of confusion and panic, not to jump to conclusions and rush out to the incident site. If it is your responsibility you will become involved but often, by asking a few simple questions, you are able to avoid this confusion and avoid worsening the situation by “butting in” where you are not needed.

I was reminded of this when reading about a coronial inquest into two suicides that occurred at an Australian shooting range in October 2008. These two incidents occurred at a workplace but not from work-related activities. There may have been some workplace management issues that, in hindsight, relate to supervision or security but these are the type of issues that the Coroner will investigate.

The deaths are reportable to the OHS regulators as they occurred on a workplace but it is unlikely that the regulator will put a lot of resources into the investigation given the Police and Coroner are investigating.

Social change through worker dignity

The need for food parcels for those on workers’ compensation seems to continue in South Australia according to a 3 July 2010 report in Adelaide Advertiser.  SafetyAtWorkBlog mentioned the service being offered by Rosemary Mackenzie-Ferguson and others in March 2010.

There are many areas of society that are supported by privately provided social services and this situation is likely to persist but just as soup kitchens illustrate a problem of poverty, so the food service mentioned above indicates a problem with workers’ compensation.

As each Australian state reviews its workers’ compensation laws ahead of a national harmonisation, it seems absurd to focus on the laws but not on the social impacts of those laws.  It is common to refer to a “whole-of-government” approach to issues but “whole-of-society” seems to be a slower concept to embrace.

Much is being made in Australia’s OHS harmonisation process of the need to look at the enforcement policies that support new legislation.  There is also a (flawed) reliance on Courts to provide clarity to the legislation rather than producing clear laws in the first place.  But rarely does government look beyond the law, the Courts, or the enforcement policies to assess the potentially negative social impacts of the OHS and workers’ compensation laws. Continue reading “Social change through worker dignity”

BBC podcast on UK’s OHS review

The BBC’s radio program, Politics UK, for 18 June 2010 includes an uncredited discussion on the OHS review announced by Prime Minister Cameron recently.  The discussion occurs at the 20 minute mark of the podcast which is available to download for a short time.

Much of the content seems to reflect the thoughts and comments of The Telegraph article by Philip Johnston but at least the BBC reporter acknowledges that the issue is not really health and safety but the “fear of litigation”.

There is an interesting reference to the “goldplating” of European Union directions and the issue of food safety and cheese is mentioned.  The impression given is that the more significant and, perhaps, the more difficult challenge for Lord Young is not OHS but the “compensation culture”.  If this is the case, OHS may come off the worse of the two as it may be given a secondary priority.

Kevin Jones

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