Category: lawyers

OHS prosecution request over COVID19 sent to WorkSafe

The Australian newspaper is notoriously supportive of the conservative side of Australian politics, so it is little surprise that one of its business journalists, Robert Gottliebsen, is maintaining his advocacy for Industrial Manslaughter and occupational health and safety (OHS) prosecutions over COVID19-related infections, echoing many of the desires of Ken Phillips, the head of Self-Employed Australian and Independent Contractors Australia.

Phillips wrote to WorkSafe Victoria on September 9, 2020 demanding a prosecution by WorkSafe Victoria of a swathe of Victorian government Ministers, public servants, police, as well as

“All members of the management team known as the State Control Centre………….”!

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Useful look at Victoria’s Industrial Manslaughter laws

Eric Windholz has released a perceptive paper on Industrial Manslaughter (IM) that neatly summarises the risks and rationales behind these legislative changes to Victoria’s occupational health and safety (OHS) laws.

Windholz explains two functions of the amendments – a motivator for employers to improve OHS in their workplaces and to provide a pathway for bereaved families to actively consult with the government.

The mechanism for the families’ input is the Workplace Incidents Consultative Committee. Windholz writes:

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Are OHS laws part of the safety clutter?

A major barrier to change is that Australia, as a whole, has never subjected its occupational health and safety (OHS) laws to a detailed analysis to determine whether the legislation and the supportive documentation works. To be clearer, Australia has never subjected its laws to a “safety clutter” analysis. No one seems to have tried to determine if the laws have any positive benefit on operational safety?

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Call for change on sexual harassment could use support from OHS

Discussion on the sexual harassment allegations against former High Court judge Dyson Heydon continue even though some Australian States’ media have returned to COVID19 clusters and football. On July 6, 2020, five hundred women in the legal profession published an open letter calling for

“… wider reforms to address the high incidence of sexual harassment, assault and misconduct in the legal profession”

The signatories call for an independent complaints body for the Australian judiciary and changes to the appointment of judges. What is missing is Prevention.

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Lancing the boil of sexual harassment

The Australian Institute of Safety and Health’s online national conference offered some big topics this year. One of the most anticipated was the discussion of sexual harassment in the workplace. Luckily the panel discussion included big hitters such as Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins whose week was about to get a lot busier with the revelations of sexual harassment by Australia’s High Court Justice Dyson Heydon.

The Dyson Heydon sexual harassment accusations, which he emphatically denies, were revealed in an independent investigation for the High Court of Australia. The Justice Heydon case has generated copious media attention for many reasons including his prominence in a politically-charged Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption. His sexual harassment offences are awful, but the most startling revelations are not necessarily about one man’s inappropriate actions. Here was an organisational, maybe even a professional, culture that permitted this behaviour to continue unchallenged for many many years. It is this context that, I believe, offers the most significant lessons for the occupational health and safety (OHS) profession and where OHS skills can help others.

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OHS, sexual harassment, HR and the pursuit of prevention

HRDaily unlocked an article concerning workplace sexual harassment on March 6 2020. The article was written by lawyer Fay Calderone and SafetyAtWorkBlog sought clarification from her on a number of points.

Some of the issues raised in the original article and Calderone’s responses will be discussed in a secondary article.

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Is Industrial Manslaughter an empty vessel?

The Australian Institute of Health and Safety (AIHS) has published a long article about Australia’s Industrial Manslaughter (IM) laws. It is a very good article but includes a lot of information that should already be familiar to those who have followed the development of IM laws over the last two decades.

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