Category: Leadership

Two OHS regulators under investigation

Almost all the government agencies that regulate occupational health and safety (OHS) in Australia have been subjected to various independent inquiries. These inquiries have been a mix of political, financial and cultural. The review of SafeworkSA closes submissions at the end of this week. SafeWorkNSW is to have a six-month audit (paywalled) of its performance by the NSW Auditor-General, according to Adele Ferguson in the Sydney Morning Herald.

The Auditor-General is yet to release a media statement on the audit, but Ferguson identifies several serious concerns.

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Rebuilding the “Duty TO Care”

Decades ago, the occupational health and safety (OHS) conferences had speakers regularly urging us to focus on the “H” in OHS. The “H” was often “Health”, but it was also the “Human”. OHS professionals have long acknowledged that the profession, and the OHS regulators, focussed for too long on traumatic physical injuries and less on health risks, often related to dust, or human risks associated with bullying, harassment and other psychosocial harms. Those days have gone by, but employers and institutions are yet to catch up.

Part of the reason for this lag is the intransigence of the neoliberal ideology and economics epitomised by Margaret Thatcher in the UK, Ronald Reagan in the USA, and Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Howard in Australia. (Australia’s neoliberalism was sneakier than in other countries and not just nationally. Jeff Kennett, I am talking about you). Neoliberalism is on the decline, although slower than it should be.

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More bravery is needed on workplace mental health

The bookshops I visit often have two sections of books marked Business and Management. These categories are interchangeable for occupational health and safety (OHS) purposes, but the shopowners and/or publishers differentiate. Both categories have self-help books – leadership varieties, how to be a better manager, how to make lots of money really quickly (without apparently anyone being exploited!!). Books discussing mental health are in both categories, and three, in particular, seem to show the potential for improvement in mental health and the self-imposed limitations to achieving this.

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Pressure on local government over procurement and OHS

On a chilly night in Ballarat, over a hundred people gathered outside the Town Hall, within which the City Council was meeting, to let the Council know that the awarding of millions of dollars of ratepayers’ money to a local company that admitted to breaching occupational health and safety (OHS) laws and that led to the deaths of two local workers was not acceptable.

The event seem coordinated by the local Trades Hall Council, for the usual inflatable rat and fat cat were next to the ute, which was blasting out protest songs. Almost all the speakers were trade unionists, although one was Andy Meddick from the Animal Justice Party. The protest may not have achieved the changes that many speakers called for, but as is the case with these types of events, Council has given some ground with a likely review of the OHS procurement criteria.

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Workplace suicide at one of the “Big 4” consulting firms

Warning: this article discusses suicide

Discussions about workplace mental health are everywhere, including this blog, but workplace suicides are less discussed, even though there is a direct connection between the two themes. This is due to the continuing stigmatisation of suicide, legal caution, reputational preservation and other factors. It is difficult to write about but necessary to do so.

Recently an EY (formerly Ernst Young) employee died at work after a work function. Some media has reported on this tragic incident, but EY has been under media scrutiny for some time about its workplace culture.

Continue reading “Workplace suicide at one of the “Big 4” consulting firms”

SafeWorkSA’s approach to psychological harm is as much as it can do but doesn’t have to be

The harm presented by working in Australia’s mining sector has been a concern for a long time. Over the last decade or two, the psychosocial harm from the same work has come to the fore. The occupational health and safety (OHS) responsibility sits clearly with the employers who, in Australia, are often well-resourced national and international corporations. Recently SafeWorkSA issued a media release entitled “Sexual harassment in mining sparks campaign“. SafetyAtWorkBlog took the opportunity to put some questions to the South Australia OHS agency, to which it has responded.

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Ballarat Council responds

Ballarat City Council has provided a short statement in response to the nine questions put to it about the awarding of a $2 million construction contract to Pipecon, a company that was recently convicted and penalised over the deaths of two of its workers as mentioned in a blog article earlier this week.

A spokesperson for the council wrote:

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