Starting January 1, 2025, Australia will have new laws and penalties for intentional wage theft beginning January 1, 2025. The usual business lobby groups are bleating about the unfair imposition of costs and time on their members. But what about the significant impact on workers’ health, safety and dignity?
Many of the prominent Australian mining companies are in the process of changing their cultures to minimise the risk of sexual assaults and harassment after several recent damning inquiries into worker health and safety. Everyone seems to agree that cultural change can take a long time. I am not convinced. Change will take time if one operates within the existing organisational and operational parameters and structures. But sometimes, the harm to workers is so great that a long time exacerbates unfairness and injustice.
Over the last few weeks, the media has been reporting on legal action taken by Blake Lively over accusations of sexual harassment on the film set of her movie “It Ends With Us”. The focus has been on the allegations of post-incident public relations manipulation, but this is obscuring the primary cause of the legal action – sexual harassment.
Self-help books often include a nugget of useful information related to occupational health and safety. Paul Taylor‘s “Death by Confort – How Modern Life is Killing Us and What We Can Do About It” offers a recent example.
Occupational health and safety (OHS) continues to have a credibility problem and a poor social profile. Some of this is due to OHS peddling nonsense, but probably no more than any other discipline. Some of it is due to employers and other corporate leaders using OHS as camouflage for inaction or as a distraction from a different workplace issue. Some of it is due to ignorance.
It is up to all of us to strengthen the discipline’s credibility. To help with this, here are three words commonly used by leaders that we need to question and challenge whenever they are used.
Continue reading “Red flags for OHS misunderstandings”The Victoria Premier, Jacinta Allan, reshuffled her Cabinet and recently allocated responsibility for the Workcover and Transport Accident Commission portfolios to Deputy Premier Ben Carroll. This may be the first time a politician of that position has been given these portfolios. But what should Ben Carroll do now?
Continue reading “What should Victoria’s new WorkSafe Minister do now?”Effectiveness is critical in assessing one’s occupational health and safety (OHS) management system. One must be sure that the system works and to repair or improve that system when a deficiency is identified. We must create and maintain a safe system of work, and we must trust it and respect it.
So why do we feel the need to remind our colleagues of their OHS obligations, which the system has already educated them about? Indeed, they are grown-ups who know what they need to do and appreciate the importance of their own safety and the safety of their teams. Part of growing up is learning from one’s mistakes by experiencing the consequences of one’s decisions and actions. A large part of OHS management is keeping people from harm and recognising and accepting that people are integral to the management system.
