state of knowledge – Page 6

Any OHS strategy needs to generate spillovers

Reading Safe Work Australia’s latest ten-year strategy forced me to think creatively.

SWA’s discussion of Persistent Challenges suggests controls that are almost all at the Administrative Control level – education, awareness, knowledge, training, understanding, support, communication and more. This is after admitting that:

“Injury and fatality rates have fallen significantly over the last decade. However, progress has slowed.”
Page 5

How can we increase the use of the Hierarchy of Controls (HoC) in determining safety-related policy? How can we get organisations to progress up the control hierarchy to show others that it is possible to prevent all of the incidents that everyone agrees are preventable? (Refer to WorkSafe Victoria’s Colin Radford for a recent example of this belief:

“Every workplace incident, every injury, every illness, every death is entirely unequivocally preventable.”)

Odd OHS comments from the Master Builders

Every year the Australian government releases a budget explaining what it plans to do over the next 12 months or longer. Business groups and trade unions often release documents submitted to the government, although whether the government requests this is unclear. Recently the Master Builders of Australia (MBA) sent through its submission (not yet publicly available). It has some interesting comments on the responsibility for occupational health and safety (OHS) and responsibility.

Engineered stone and deadly silica risks seem here to stay

So Australia did not ban the importation of engineered stone. The Heads of Workplace Safety Authorities (HWSA) have issued a Communique and a joint media release outlining their decision. It’s a political slap in the face to the trade unions who went hard on the ban.

Many organisations supported the call to ban the importation and use of engineered stone due to the unacceptable risk associated with cutting the product. Many were strident in need for the ban. Even the Federal Minister for Workplace Relations, Tony Burke, was talking tough on the morning of the critical meeting of the Heads of Workplace Safety Authorities. So what went wrong?

Plenty of sparkle but little spark

The latest awards night for WorkSafe Victoria achieved its scope – present awards for people and organisations who do occupational health and safety (OHS) well. Some categories are for extraordinary effort, achievements or innovation, and winning any award from WorkSafe is important to the winners, but some were flat.

Silicosis campaign is about safety but is also about politics

The calls for banning engineered stone‘s importation are curious and likely to be acted on later this week.

Politicians, unions and some OHS associations have undertaken a risk assessment and determined that elimination is the most effective harm prevention strategy. Previous risk assessments of silicosis have been reported on in this blog for some time without banning the material. The risks have not changed even with increased inspection and enforcement. So what has changed? Politics.

Good construction and mental health article that fails to go far enough

A recent article by Aurora B. Le, Doug Trout, Ann Marie Dale, and Scott Earnest is a good introduction to the psychosocial hazards faced by construction workers in the United States. It is typical of many articles written about work health and safety generally – good information but with weak or timid solutions.

The next stage of OHS analysis?

“One of our key roles as the regulator is to understand why workplace injuries happen” –
Dr Natassia Goode. Worksafe Victoria, February 9, 2023.

Dr Goode made this statement at a research seminar for the Institute for Safety, Compensation and Recovery Research. She went on to explain those “widely acknowledged” causes in an expansive discussion about “systems thinking“.

Category: state of knowledge

Any OHS strategy needs to generate spillovers

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Odd OHS comments from the Master Builders

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Engineered stone and deadly silica risks seem here to stay

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Plenty of sparkle but little spark

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Silicosis campaign is about safety but is also about politics

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Good construction and mental health article that fails to go far enough

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The next stage of OHS analysis?

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