law – Page 86 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Too big to change

The strong readership of the article on truck driver safety based on the research of Dr Clare George resulted in one reader remind me of Australian research from 2017 that looked at similar issues.

In 2017 Louise Thornthwaite and Sharron O’Neill published “Regulating the work health and safety of Australian road freight transport drivers: summary report“. The authors wrote:

“Work health and safety (WHS) is a significant issue for the heavy vehicle road freight transport industry. The sector has a history of the highest fatalities and serious injury rates of any industry in Australia. While media focuses on drivers killed in road crashes, these represent only a subset of the hundreds of drivers killed or permanently disabled, and thousands more injured, in and around trucks each and every year.

Jordan Barab provides important OHS insights

I learnt more about the politics of the United States from Doonesbury than I did from television news and analysis. I learn more about the politics of occupational health and safety (OHS) in the United States from Jordan Barab‘s Confined Space newsletter/blog than I do any other media source. Although the US’s OHS legal structures are different from Australia and other Commonwealth countries, the political ideologies and maneuverings, and fads and statistics are noted by political parties outside the United States.

Recently Barab posted a Year in Review article which is obligatory reading. His key issues included:

A New and Improved Congress (or at least the House)
A Headless Agency
Inspectors down, enforcement units down, penalties down
Return of Black Lung
Brett Kavanaugh
Regulatory Rollback
The Fate of the Labor Movement

Anything sound familiar in your own jurisdiction?

HR and Legal have failed to address sexual harassment. Could OHS do better?

2019 is likely to be the year when the deficiencies and advantages of the occupational health and safety (OHS) approach to the prevention and management of the psychological harm produced by work-related sexual harassment will contrast (clash?) with the approach used by the Human Resources (HR) profession. For many, many years OHS has failed to implement the control measures that the available research and guidance recommended. For the same length of time, HR has largely focused on addressing the organisational consequences of accusations of sexual harassment displaying a preference for legal action or to move the accuser out of the organisation.

These approaches persist but there is some hope that recognition of each others’ role and purpose can bridge the ideological demarcations. Australia’s inquiries into work- and non-work-related harassment have the potential to change the way psychological harm is seen, managed and, maybe, prevented.

The Shock of the New

The Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI) has recently published an article about the significant Human Resources trends for 2019. The trends identified include

“A Change of Government”
“Gig Economy Classification”
“Sexual Harassment”
“Technology Trends”

SafetyAtWorkBlog will be more specific in its occupational health and safety (OHS) “trends” for 2019.

Addressing the invisible causes of visible harm

The trade union movement was instrumental in showing that workplace bullying was a pervasive problem in Australian workplaces. Many Codes of Practice and guidances for workplace bullying and occupational violence were written shortly after the action by the Australian Council of Trade Unions almost two decades ago. But, for some reason, although sexual harassment was mentioned in those early documents, it never received the attention in occupational health and safety (OHS) circles that, in hindsight, it should have.

Perhaps a more sustainable and effective strategy would be to focus on the “harassment” rather than the “sexual”, or in

The Government responds to Senate Inquiry into Industrial Deaths

“Put them in jail!” – Industrial Manslaughter laws are not that simple

Several people were surprised when Industrial Manslaughter laws popped up on the agenda on Day 3 of the National Conference of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) this week. To ALP members from Western Australia and the Construction Forestry Mining Maritime and Energy Union, Christy Cain and Thomas French put a resolution on the issue to the Conference, which the delegates endorsed.

Most of the media who mentioned this resolution, and it was not many, focused on Cain’s urging of the delegates to

“Kill a worker, go to jail”.

Even though getting the audience to chant was colourful, and the minute’s silence important, the discussion around Industrial Manslaughter laws was more nuanced.

Category: law

Too big to change

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HR and Legal have failed to address sexual harassment. Could OHS do better?

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The Shock of the New

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Addressing the invisible causes of visible harm

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The Government responds to Senate Inquiry into Industrial Deaths

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“Put them in jail!” – Industrial Manslaughter laws are not that simple

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