manslaughter – Page 29 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Where are the Codes for establishing a safety culture?

Recently a safety professional told me he was investigating an incident on a work site and asked his first question “What do you think caused the incident?” The response was “safety culture”. Of course the next question will always be “what do you mean by safety culture?” and in most cases at this point the investigation will stall.

All workplaces have a safety culture, it is just that most are dysfunctional or immature. In many workplaces, incident causes are handballed to this poorly understood concept of which most take as the latest iteration of “an act of God” or an SEP – “someone else’s problem”.

Safety regulators need to break the use of safety culture as an excuse by developing codes of practice on how to introduce and build an effective safety culture in Australian workplaces.

Continue reading “Where are the Codes for establishing a safety culture?”

WorkSafe Victoria tries humour in safety advertising

For the last few weeks WorkSafe Victoria has been running new injury prevention advertisements based on a game show theme of playing the odds on injuring a worker. The curiosity of this campaign is that humour and a little bit of shame has been employed to communicate.

It is refreshing for an OHS regulator to use humour in the aim of improving workplace safety particularly as this attempt avoids the slapstick humour that has been tried in the past by several safety organisations. Workplace injuries are not a laughing matter but a gentle humour can be used to prick the conscience of those who have safety obligations.

Conversations with OHS peers on these ads has shown a perplexity over these ads. Those who have established a public face or a reputation in the safety field are unsure whether laughing or, at the least, being amused is appropriate. There is a fine line between mockery and amusement so hesitation is understandable. Continue reading “WorkSafe Victoria tries humour in safety advertising”

Election failure, missed opportunities on bullying

Within the last week, Victoria’s State Premier, John Brumby, lost an election allowing the conservative parties in the Australian State to gain power, narrowly, after over a decade in isolation. Election pledges are now only of historic interest but let’s look at a couple.

The crime of workplace bullying

According to the Australian Financial Review on 2 November 2010 (not available without subscription), John Brumby pledged to have a legal review into the “creation of the offence of bullying under the Crimes Act”. The Victorian Chamber of Commerce & Industry‘s (VECCI) Steven Wojtkiw opposed the pledge because existing OHS laws were sufficient. Taking the election context away for a moment indicates a challenge for those anti-bullying advocates. Wojtkiw is quoted as saying

“To introduce a greater level of legislative prescription in the area may only add to the increasing complexities already being confronted by employers in managing a modern workplace.”

It could be argued that if industry had already introduced an appropriate approach to reducing the likelihood of bullying in the workplace John Brumby would never have felt the need to make such a pledge. In many cases, anti-regulation laissez-faire business lobbyists could reduce the “insidious elements of the nanny state” by doing right by their workforce in the first place.

Bullying and harmonisation

Michael Tooma of Norton Rose is quoted in the same article but Tooma uses Brumby’s pledge as an example of another but different nail in the coffin of Federal OHS reform. Continue reading “Election failure, missed opportunities on bullying”

Australian business is outraged over OHS changes but is it all piss and wind?

Australian business groups have written an open letter to the New South Wales Government protesting about the decision to continue with some OHS processes specific to New South Wales regardless of previous commitments to support the harmonisation of OHS laws. As the letter was published as an advertisement (Page 6 of The Australian on 20 October 2010), it is not readily available online but the letter needs a little bit of deconstruction to better understand the politics and ideologies behind the letter and the business associations.

The letter says Australian industry signed on to the national harmonisation process because of the need for an effective way of improving safety, fair legal processes and national consistency. Yes, to some extent but more often industry groups have been calling for a reduction of red tape for the purpose of reducing administrative costs. Reducing the injuries and fatalities of workers is not the same as “improving the safety of Australia’s workplaces”.

The ideological gap is shown in the argument against the national imposition of “reverse onus of proof”. The letter uses Victoria as an example of a jurisdiction without the reverse onus of proof and says

“Victoria, which was used as the model for the new national laws and which does not have union prosecutions or reverse onus, has between 30% and 50% better safety outcomes than NSW depending on the measurement used“. (my emphasis)

What is a “better safety outcome”? Less deaths? Less cost to business? Is it fair to compare NSW to Victoria? And can the variation in “safety outcomes” be directly related to reverse onus of proof? Continue reading “Australian business is outraged over OHS changes but is it all piss and wind?”

Radio National OHS program

On 21 September 2010, Radio Australia’s regular program Australia Talks conducted a live interview concerning occupational safety and health.

For those who have been listening to the show for some time would have been surprised that the program covered much of the same old OHS ground. Similar statistics, similar questions of what are the most dangerous occupations, similar assumptions and the same misunderstanding that discussions about OHS law are the same as discussions on safety management. Continue reading “Radio National OHS program”

Where’s the Sarbanes-Oxley for workplace safety?

In 2002, after several corporate collapses, the United States government signed in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act which was intended to establish business practices on accounting and auditing among other aims. The Western world watched the introduction of this legislation and echoed many of the requirements in their own legislation and corporate oversight agencies.

It is likely in the wake of the global financial crisis that the United States (and Europe to a lesser extent) is entering another wave of corporate regulation or interference, depending on one’s politics.

These laws introduced substantial change to the management of businesses, the disclosure of information and the role of corporate executives. When will this type of change include occupational safety and health?

Firstly, the United States’ safety professionals and regulators need to accept that their system of OHS legislation and enforcement is not “world’s best practice”. There are major deficiencies in high-risk organisations and a misunderstanding of safety obligations at the shopfloor level. These problems exist partly because of the structure and population of the country itself and also because there is so much baggage in its legal system that new perspectives in law are difficult to imagine.

A significant change in OHS law outside the United States is the issue of personal accountability for safety-related decisions. There are few who complain about the jailing of CEOs and executives for the loss of money (their own and that of others) but there is a real barrier to jailing those same people when their management decisions led to a loss of life. Continue reading “Where’s the Sarbanes-Oxley for workplace safety?”

OHS debate is over, says Deputy PM

Deputy Prime minister and Workplace Relations Minister, Julia Gillard, has told the Australian Financial Review (only available online to subscribers) that the OHS law changes were finalised at the recent Workplace Relations Ministers’ Council.

Gillard again rejected the trade union movement’s concerns about weakened worker protection. The Minister emphasised that substantial economic benefits would flow to business as a result of increased administrative efficiencies.

However, the likelihood of a nationally harmonised OHS system seems as far away as ever with the West Australian Government continuing to refuse to apply the new laws which it sees as too friendly to the unions.

Significantly, the Australian Government has backed down from its earlier threat to penalise any governments that do not support the changes. This lets the WA Liberal Government off the hook and provides the New South Wales Liberal Party with an easy platform option for the 2010 State election.

The conservative forces in Australia can take heart but Minister Gillard’s position has the union movement facing difficult decisions. It has strongly funded a campaign against elements of the OHS laws and branded the laws as “second-rate safety”. It now needs to decide whether to give up the campaign totally as a lost cause or to pare it back so that, over time, the campaign fades away, as did the industrial manslaughter campaign of around five years ago.

The ACTU has expressed disappointment but must have realised, privately at least, that some union powers, considered to be extreme by business and industry groups and over which the business complaints have been load and long, were going to be sacrificed in any harmonisation process.

Former Prime Minister and ACTU President Bob Hawke achieved many industrial relations reforms in the early 1980’s by pushing “consensus”. This negotiation process had strong similarities to the current OHS harmonisation however big C Consensus is now rarely spoken by the Australian trade union movement. One of the few contemporary outings was when current ACTU Secretary Jeff Lawrence, who expressed the disappointment above, speaking about industrial relations said on 14 June 2007:

“I’m tough enough but I’m also a person who likes to work by consensus”.

To operate constructively at the big tripartite table of OHS, the unions will need to accept a defeat and gain whatever they can from the new rules. This is doubly important in the lead-up to the planned harmonisation of workers compensation. Australia will see some fiery union rhetoric when harmonisation threatens to reduce the income and entitlements of workers who are already injured.

Kevin Jones

Category: manslaughter

Where are the Codes for establishing a safety culture?

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WorkSafe Victoria tries humour in safety advertising

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Election failure, missed opportunities on bullying

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Australian business is outraged over OHS changes but is it all piss and wind?

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Radio National OHS program

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Where’s the Sarbanes-Oxley for workplace safety?

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OHS debate is over, says Deputy PM

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