Rumours of a TV report on the increasing hazards of silicosis have floated around for a week or so. On October 10 2018, the show appeared on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s 7.30 program. But the story is much bigger than the ten minutes or so on that program.
The focus is understandably on silica but perhaps that is too specific. Maybe the issue of dust, in general, needs more attention.
However,
SafetyAtWorkBlog has dipped into the occupational health and safety (OHS) and political issues around the death of Jorge Castillo-Riffo in Adelaide in 2014. On October 4 2018, the CFMEU issued a media release outlining the recommendations it made to the Coronial inquest into Castillo-Riffo’s death. They deserve serious consideration:
- Mandatory coronial inquests should be held into all deaths at work, with a mandatory requirement for the reporting of any action taken, or proposed to be taken, in consequence of any findings and recommendations made;
- Families should receive funding to be represented;
- An independent safety commissioner should be established in SA whose duty it is to review, comment and provide recommendations concerning the safety record of companies who tender for government construction contracts work over $5 million;
A reader recently asked why I haven’t written about the recent retirement of Professor Michael Quinlan. Michael has featured in many SafetyAtWorkBlog articles over many years and has been a major supporter for industrial, labour relations and occupational health and safety research in Australia and elsewhere for a long time.
He has many legacies but this article will focus on one tool he developed with his associate Phillip Bohle – the Pressure, Disorganisation and Regulatory Failure (PDR) model. PDR is explained at length in this excellent 2011 research paper written with Elsa Underhill and is summarised in the table below:
Tonight, SafetyAtWorkBlog will be attending the launch of a new book that includes personal stories about the 1998 Esso Longford explosion – Workers’ Inferno. The book is being released on the 2oth anniversary of the explosion that killed two workers, injured many others, disrupted gas supplies to the State of Victoria, resulted in a then-record fine for occupational health and safety (OHS) breaches and generated a Royal Commission. It is also, perhaps, the best example of a company trying to blame the worker for a major incident.
The Federal Opposition leader, Bill Shorten, was an official of the Australian Workers Union at the time and today he published an opinion piece Continue reading “Bill Shorten reflects on the Esso Longford disaster”
Australian Human Rights Commissioner, Kate Jenkins, has released the findings of the Commission’s latest survey on sexual harassment in workplaces. It is an important analysis of an improving dataset that should make actions to prevent sexual harassment more effective.
The statistical report is separate from the Commission’s National Inquiry into Sexual Harassment in Australian Workplaces and does not emphasise the role of harm prevention but it does contain references to prevention that are worth considering.
Conversations about occupational health and safety (ohs) occur very rarely unless you are an educator who talks about this stuff every day. We manage health and safety and advise on it but rarely get a chance just to talk about safety with peers. This is where documents like the recent transcripts of Australia’s Senate inquiry into industrial deaths can be helpful. For instance Andrea Madeley said this on August 29 2018 in Adelaide:
“I do not think that the Robens model of work health and safety was ever based on anything beyond encouragement. It was a model designed to lift and encourage employers, not to enforce laws, and we see that today, still. The guiding principles, even today, on enforcing work health and safety laws really are more about encouraging and educating. I don’t have a problem with that as long as we’re not treating the people that are suffering in the process like outcasts. Their loss is virtually ignored unless you happen to be a financial dependant.”
Given that it occurred almost fifty years ago, it is easy to forget the times in which Lord Robens issued his report into the management of workplace health and safety. It was controversial in its day and the Australian iterations of his OHS principles were similarly opposed when they were introduced in the 1980s.
South Australia’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) conducted its last public hearing into SafeWork SA on August 31 2018. The Counsel Assisting, Holly Stanley, made several recommendations for improving SafeWork SA’s performance and governance, including body cameras for inspectors. Rather than wrapping up the inquiry with this public hearing, Commission Bruce Lander has asked for further submissions about these latest recommendations.
Stanley clearly stated the conditions from which she was making her recommendation such as resource restrictions, previous