OHS – Page 131 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Right information, wrong magazine

The OHS Professional magazine for December 2020 contains a very good article about workplace psychological risks and the occupational health and safety (OHS) strategy to prevent mental harm. The only negative is that it is not published in a Human Resources magazine, or one for company directors. The preventative techniques are well known to the OHS profession and based on independent scientific evidence, but it is other managerial disciplines that need to learn the difference between preventing psychological harm and providing symptomatic relief.

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Here’s to a less crappy 2021

https://youtu.be/GDVrCzndoVA

Thank you to all the SafetyAtWorkBlog subscribers, followers and lurkers (I know you’re out there). Special thanks to the new subscribers in Asia, the United States and Europe and the very important corporate ones in Australia. It is your subscriptions that keep the SafetyAtWorkBlog operating.

2020 has been a shitty year for many reasons, but none so awful as COVID19. It has claimed several important OHS professionals this year, or professionals who were at least important to me.

The world has changed. The world of work has changed and it has made our jobs harder in many ways.

Please stay safe over the holiday break.

Kevin Jones

Australian Safety Magazine continues to improve

The member magazine of the Australian Institute of Health and Safety (AIHS), OHS Professional, continues to improve in the quality of its articles – less advertorial, more authoritative articles. The current edition, December 2020, includes two particularly good articles- one on the manufacturers’ withdrawal of quad bikes in protest and another on psychological health and safety at work. This article will discuss the quad bike article.

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All being well!

This time last year Australia was facing horrendous bushfires and days of thick smoke. Yesterday we, in Melbourne, received over an inch of rainfall. For many Christmas was far less than joyous. At the same time a global incurable coronavirus was spreading.

Occupational health and safety (OHS) took a back seat in many ways but also came to the fore in others, depending on how exposed employers felt their businesses were and whether OHS professionals were sufficiently adaptable; depending on whether one saw public health that affects work as a workplace hazard, or let the public health people get on with their work. In all these circumstances there was a little bit of panic and varying levels of fear and anguish.

‘No Bystanders Rule’ Bullshit

Guest Post by Dr Rebecca Michalak

About couple of weeks ago, the Australian Financial Review (AFR) featured a piece on a law firm that had introduced a mandatory approach to reporting sexual harassment – referred to as a ‘no bystanders’ rule.

To be clear upfront, here is my disclaimer – I am not directly commenting on the law firm in question; there isn’t enough information in the articles to make any objective judgements on that front. The references used from the two media pieces are for illustrative purposes only. Call them ‘conversation starters.’

In the AFR piece, the contractual obligation was outlined to involve:

“…chang(ing) ‘should’ (report) to ‘must’ – so any staff member who experiences, witnesses, or becomes aware of sexual harassment must report it,”

with the affiliated claim being,

“That shift really reinforces that there is zero tolerance – and there are no confidences to be kept; it needs to be outed – bystanders [staying silent] will no longer be tolerated.“

Behind the OHS words in Parliament

On December 11 2020, Senator Deborah O’Neill (ALP) (unsuccessfully) sponsored a motion that, amongst other things, called on the Government to act on the recommendations of the 2018 inquiry in to industrial deaths and the Boland Review, and to introduce Federal industrial manslaughter laws. That last request will probably never occur under a Conservative government, but does not need to for such laws to be introduced across Australia.

It is good that pressure on important occupational health and safety (OHS) matters is maintained, even if the motion was “negatived”. However, perhaps more interesting was a couple of statements that Senator O’Neill’s actions generated, one of which is deconstructed below.

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Alan Jones vs Dan Andrews

The calls continue for the Victorian Premier, Dan Andrews, to be charged with Industrial Manslaughter over COVID19-related deaths that resulted from a poorly-managed hotel quarantine program. This time the topic was picked up be one of Australia’s conservative big guns, Alan Jones.

Jones hyperbolic rhetoric was on full display in his interview with Ken Phillips, who started the Andrews Industrial Manslaughter campaign.

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Category: OHS

Right information, wrong magazine

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Here’s to a less crappy 2021

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Australian Safety Magazine continues to improve

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All being well!

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‘No Bystanders Rule’ Bullshit

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Behind the OHS words in Parliament

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Alan Jones vs Dan Andrews

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