Category: OHS

Increasing risk of silicosis in the majority world

Australian safety expert and activist Melody Kemp reported from the annual meeting of the Asian Network for the Rights of Occupational Accident Victims (ANROAV) that was held in late September 2009 in Phnom Penh.

The meeting featured many stories about the increasing risk of silicosis in Asia.  Melody writes in the 27 September edition of the blog “In These Times”:

“Silicosis afflicts workers working with gems, ceramics, rock blasting, drilling and crushing, and mining. It haunts unprotected workers in glassworks, mines and foundries, as well as those who live within reach of the dust. It’s usually fatal by the time it is diagnosed.

Largely eradicated in the economic North, silicosis is now the scourge of the Global South. Millions die from the illness each year.”

The size of the growing occupational and community threat is frightening.

“China alone reports over 100,000 new cases of industrial lung disease per year, and has more than 4 million existing cases. And those are just the official figures. Even industrially advanced South Korea sees over 1,000 new cases of occupational chest disease each year, reported Dr. Domyung Paek, a pulmonary specialist from Seoul National University.”

Melody has contacted SafetyAtWorkBlog asking for assistance in attracting occupational medical experts to Cambodia and other countries undergoing rapid industrialisation.  She can be contacted by clicking HERE.

Kevin Jones

Harmonisation documents available but path is far from settled

On 25 September 2009, Australia’s Workplace Relations Ministers Council
(WRMC) agreed to release the draft legislation for public comment.

According to one media report, the New South Wales Finance Minister, Joe Tripodi,

“…moved at the [WRMC] meeting to have union prosecutions included in the new laws and was defeated by eight votes to one.”

Pages from Discussionpaper_ExposureDraft_ModelActforOHS_PDFThe documents are now available for download HERE.

According to Safe Work Australia’s media statement:

“The suite of documents available for public comment includes a model Act, administrative Regulations and consultation Regulation Impact Statement (RIS). The RIS will allow individuals and organisations to comment on the potential costs and benefits of the proposed Regulations. The RIS has been prepared by Access Economics.”

Curiously, it also says that Access Economics is

“…surveying businesses across a range of sizes, industries and regions in an effort to obtain primary data on compliance costs and safety benefits.”

It is odd that this has not been done earlier to, perhaps, substantiate the claims that the OHS law changes will reduce costs and “red tape”.

At the Comcare Conference in Canberra in late September 2009, Geoff Fary, illustrated very effectively the small sector of business that would be affected by the national laws.  Fary estimates that only around 1% of Australian businesses are likely to be liable to the “red tape” argument.  Many of these companies could be expected to already have some form of national OHS management systems, perhaps through Australian management standards.

Whether the percentage of affected 1% or 5% it is hoped that the Access Economics survey does not focus only on this sector.  Previous surveys have indicated a large ignorance or apathy about national harmonisation.  This is likely because the vast majority of Australian businesses operate within a single jurisdiction so the harmonisation is considered irrelevant.  The sad reality is that the OHS legislative structures in Australia for the next 10 to 20 years will be determined by the corporate sector, the regulators themselves, and the labour law firms and not necessarily by the small to medium-sized businesses for whom OHS can be the most burdensome.

SafetyAtWorkBlog had the chance to ask Geoff Fary, the assistant secretary of the ACTU, of his thoughts on the continuing opposition to harmonisation expressed by Troy Buswell, the Western Australia Treasurer.  Fary said that harmonisation

“…could occur without Western Australia being involved.  It couldn’t occur, I believe, without Victoria or New South Wales or Queensland being involved but because of the nature of the place and the geography of the place it could occur without Western Australia, and I think there is probably a strong possibility….that harmonisation will proceed in the absence of Western Australia.”

If this evenuates the harmonisation process becomes an academic exercise yet again.

Kevin Jones

Buswell sniffs union conspiracies

Troy Buswell, the Western Australia minister responsible for OHS, has dug in his heels in over opposition to the Federal Government’s move for harmonised OHS legislation.

Ahead of the Workplace Relations Minister’s meeting on 25 September 2009, Buswell has reiterated his government’s opposition to changes to OHS law.  He argues that the OHS changes are not necessary for Western Australia as the existing laws ar fair and balanced.

This may be the case but it is significant that the opposition has only come as a result of a change of government to the conservatives.  The proposed OHS laws haven’t changed over that time.  Buswell goes on to accuse the unions of having the opportunity to have backroom deals with the Australian (Labor) government which allow unacceptable union access.  There is no doubt that unions have more access to the current Federal government than under the previous conservative but, as has been reported in SafetyAtWorkBlog and elsewhere, the unions are as frustrated over access as other lobbyists.

Rather than letting the 25 September meeting slide by with a “communique” coming out next week, Buswell has given the meeting some prominence.  He has also put himself in a difficult position from where compromise may be uncomfortable.

Many observers have been focusing on the opposition to the OHS laws from the New South Wales union sector but that State has a Labor government.  The passionate opposition is obviously on the other side of the country, an areas that those in the East Coast States often ignore.  But not at the moment.

Kevin Jones

Safety Institute gets a seat at the OHSAC table

SafetyAtWorkBlog has been informed that the current CEO of the Safety Institute of Australia (SIA), Gary Lawson-Smith, has accepted an invitation to join the WorkSafe Victoria’s OHS Advisory Committee (OHSAC), as a representative of the SIA.  This is a terrific win for the SIA as it adds a degree of legitimacy to the organisation’s developing professionalism.

Lawson-Smith has had a long administrative role in the airline and air safety sectors and was a Carlton footballer for a short time.  He has no formal OHS qualifications but an OHS qualification is not a prerequisite for OHSAC.

Also, it is understood that the OHSAC position is conditional on Lawson-Smith keeping the CEO role with the SIA.  If he leaves, the SIA could nominate someone else for the role.  SafetyAtWorkBlog notes that Lawson-Smith had advised the SIA National Board previously that he was not renewing his contract at the end of 2009 but he is believed to have been talked out of this decision.

Several other OHSAC appointments have also been rumoured.  It is understood that the “tenure” of one of the two independent representatives, both who have been on the committee since its inception, has not been renewed.  It seems odd that one independent representative is “let go” and the other retained.  It would be interesting to know the reasons for departures from the Committee as much as the reasons for new members.

Whether the SIA appointment is a direct replacement is unclear.  Whether the SIA is to be one of the two independent representatives (as required under the Victorian OHS Act 2004 (Division 6 Section 19) is also unclear.

The Act requires

“2 independent persons who the Minister considers have appropriate expertise and experience in occupational health and safety”

The SIA Victoria Division has a number of very prominent OHS academics and practitioners but, even though OHSAC reports to a Victorian administrative agency, it is understood that the Victorian WorkCover Minister, Tim Holding’s, letter was to the Safety Institute’s CEO, a national position.

Prominent ergonomist, Professor David Caple, is an independent OHSAC member well known to SafetyAtWorkBlog.  Caple takes his advisory role seriously by encouraging Australian safety professionals to raise any OHS concerns with him so that he may be able to provide a broader experiential context to some of the WorkSafe Board’s initiatives.  He makes an annual appearance at the Central Safety Group in Victoria to encourage a broad range of input.

One of OHSAC’s legislative  functions is to

“to enquire into and report to the Authority’s Board of Management on any matters referred to it by the Board in accordance with the terms of reference given by the Board; and

advise the Board in relation to:

  • Promoting health and safe working environments: and
  • The operation and administration of this [OHS] Act and the regulations…”

The significant element of OHSAC is that it is only reactive to the WorkCover Board.  If the Board does not seek opinions, effectively, OHSAC has nothing to do.  The Victorian Trades Hall Council, in its 2008 submission to the Model OHS Law Review, expressed great concern about OHSAC

“The Occupational Health and Safety Advisory Committee (OHSAC) is established by s 19 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (OHSA 2004).  However, this body has limited functions and no reporting line to the Minister.  Other than a specific role for OHSAC in the development of ARREO training, the OHSAC is limited to reporting to the Board on matters referred by the Board.  It has no capacity to ‘set the agenda’.”

“The Committee has met only 9 times since March 2005 and other than resolving the training issues relating to ARREOs, which is a specific requirement of OHSA 2004, the Committee has not been given the opportunity to deal with any strategic issue in any meaningful way.”

“Decisions of the Board on OHS are not transparent. The Board operates without the involvement of key stakeholders and relies on the “good will” of the Chair and CEO to relay information to the Board and back to the OHSAC. It is unacceptable for decisions relating to the VWA as a regulator of OHS to be inaccessible to scrutiny.”

SafetyAtWorkBlog is always concerned about the transparency of organisations associated with the promotion of safety and there is very little public information available about OHSAC.  Even the membership of the committee is taking SafetyAtWorkBlog some time to put together.  This may be due to the committee membership being updated, as indicated by the SIA’s inclusion, but even the previous committee membership is proving hard to collate form public sources.

The issue of transparency and communication is directly relevant to the OHSAC participation of the Safety Institute of Australia.  SafetyAtWorkBlog has heard that all committee representatives of the SIA, nationally and divisionally, are obliged to sign a Deed of Confidentiality.  Whether this applies to the SIA’s CEO is unclear as Gary Lawson-Smith is not listed as an official member on the National Board.

Some would assert that even if OHSAC did report to OHS stakeholders and members of the OHSAC representatives, they do not do anything of real interest.

The concerns over OHSAC are not restricted to Trades Hall, one of the few public members of OHSAC.  Parliamentarian Bob Stensholt undertook an administrative review of the 2004 OHS Act and expressed the following thoughts about OHSAC:

“Although I note WorkSafe’s comments that OHSAC has not been frequently required to consider key strategic issues because they have not arisen, I am of the view that the Committee is not operating as well as it could be.  There is a lack of conviction regarding the potential effectiveness of OHSAC from all stakeholders.  This impedes the Committee’s ability to work effectively as a representative stakeholder group.”

“It seems OHSAC has primarily been treated as an ‘information sharing’ committee by WorkSafe.  I do not believe this is what was intended by Parliament when the Bill became law.  Rather than merely providing OHSAC with its business plan for any particular financial year after it has been settled (for example), WorkSafe should also be prepared to engage OHSAC on key strategic issues as they arise in the rolling out of Strategy 2012, rather than just providing the Committee with updates as to how Strategy 2012 is tracking.  A primary consideration for WorkSafe in making OHSAC more effective should be to ensure it adopts”

If the WorkCover Minister, Tim Holding, is reviewing the membership of OHSAC in response to some of these concerns, his action is to be applauded, but, at the moment, OHSAC looks ineffective and of limited use.

The Victorian Government’s response to the Stensholt report referred Stensholt’s recommendations on OHSAC to the Victorian WorkCover Authority’s Board of Management for consideration.  OHSAC works to the direction of this very Board.

Gaining a seat at the OHSAC table remains a major feather in the cap of the SIA and the years of lobbying undertaken by a number of SIA officials should not be dismissed.  The size of the feather in the cap, however, depends on who one talks to.

Kevin Jones

Leadership, MBAs and Community

The G20 summit in Pittsburgh, United States, this week will include a lot of analysis of the global financial crisis and various stimulus packages.  Some, such as Professor Henry Mintzberg,  have pointed the finger at business courses, such as the Master of Business Administration, that have encouraged personal greed.  Some in the executive industry describe (rationalise?) this as creating “shareholder value”.  Regardless of which ideological side one takes, MBA’s are getting a makeover.

In a recent article Professor Rakesh Khurana of Harvard University has argued that

“…the shareholder model is too blunt and does not capture the reality of business”.

But before one categorises Khurana as an advocate of the left, Khurana operates within a bigger context.  Khurana argues that

“…a professional ideology of “service to the greater good” is not at odds with the principal of shareholder value creation.  It actually grounds shareholder value morally and integrates it in a richer multidisciplinary context.”

The multidisciplinary approach to management is familiar to anyone who has studied risk management but it seems to be radical in the financial sector.  Professor John Toohey of RMIT University’s Graduate School of business  has said in the same article as referenced above

“We fail as a business school if we don’t excite and frighten our students, and get them to think about the bigger issues, what sort of moral footprint they will be leaving… We do this by emphasising ‘work-integrated learning’, by trying to give our students experience of how complex issues are considered and managed in reality.”

Earlier this year Professor Toohey chaired an event that discussed the role of science and business.

But that integrated approach to business management requires a receptive audience.  Henry Mintzberg, mentioned above, wrote an article on leadership for the  Harvard Business Review for July/August 2009  that seems to talk about workplace culture without using that term.  Mintzberg talks about reestablishing a sense of “community” in corporations.  By community he means:

“…caring about our work, our colleagues, and our place in the world, geographic and otherwise, and in turn being inspired by this caring.”

Some would see this as “engagement”, others could compare this approach to establishing a social consciousness for the workplace.  Many OHS professionals will see elements of community in many of their activities around a workplace safety culture.

The full/longer article is well worth obtaining (it was reprinted in the September edition of the AFR Boss magazine in Australia) as it lists the following lessons, amongst others:

Community building in an organisations may best begin with small groups of committed managers.

The sense of community takes root as the managers in these groups reflect on the experiences they have shared in the organisation.

The insights generated by these reflections naturally trigger small initiatives that can grow into big strategies.

The discussion about “communityship” seems to have strong echoes in other business management strategies.  At the core are the same concepts being discussed in different terms.  The trick is to ignore the competitive claims of ownership or intellectual property to get to the useful truths that lie within.

Kevin Jones

Early worker health statistics from WorkHealth

WorkHealth has released some data on the results of its first wave of free health checks (not yet available online)

“Recent results from tests of 3500 workers conducted as part of the ….WorkHealth program found more than half were overweight and/or had high blood pressure while a quarter had high levels of blood cholesterol.”

These figures are not as “surprising” as WorkHealth makes out as the health check program is free to all workers in the State of Victoria and is likely to be the first time that many of the workers would have undergone such checks.  Indeed, WorkHealth acknowledges this fact for its blue-collar male workers.

The data is summarised by WorkHealth below:

  • Male workers were more likely to have high blood pressure;
  • Female workers were more likely to have higher levels of cholesterol in their blood;
  • The majority tested eat less than the recommended five serves of vegetables each day; and
  • The majority of people tested eat at least two pieces of fruit each day.

A health profile of the general Australian population from 2008 found the following statistics, amongst others:

Coronary heart disease is the largest single contributor to the burden of disease
in Australia, followed by anxiety and depression.

Coronary heart disease is the largest single contributor to the burden of disease in Australia, followed by anxiety and depression.

Cardiovascular diseases, cancers and respiratory diseases remain the leading causes of death overall.  However, injury is by far the most common cause of death in the first half of life.

Many Australians live with long-term health conditions. Most of these conditions are not major causes of death, but they are common causes of disability and reduced quality of life.

WorkHealth may be a turning point in the health management for some of the participants, and even if this is a tiny minority, the WorkHealth program could be claimed as a success.

Now if we could only do more about the smoking, dust, fumes, forklifts, sedentary work, fatigues, shiftwork, depression, stress, alcoholism and anxiety…..

Kevin Jones

New ISO risk management standard

I am old enough to remember the world of management before it had a risk management standard.  In fact I was studying risk management in OHS when the Australian Standard 4360 was released.  It substantially changed the way OHS was managed in Australia (and lined the pockets of the publishers).  It increased the significance of management standards beyond Quality and helped considerably in progressing an integrated approach to managing a broad range of workplace risks.

[The process also instilled in me a distrust of the standards development process when I sat through a seminar from one of the risk management standards committee members where he spruiked a PC-based management system that “anticipated” the new standard…….. at $30,000 setup fee???  Clearly in this case, and I have been told in almost all cases, the participants always have one eye on the commercial benefits of participation]

Grant Purdy recently discussed the new international risk management standard ISO 31000:2009.  At one of his presentations he said that the new standard has a definition of risk that “shifts the emphasis from “the event” to “the effect” and, in particular, the effect on objectives.”

The previous risk management standard overlapped with auditable elements in other management standards – OHS, environment, and quality.  This new definition may cause problems across these sectors.

Purdy said that risk is now not only perceived as a negative.

“Risk has in th past been regarded solely as a negative concept….[but] it is now recognised that risk is simply a fact of life that cannot be avoided or denied.”

He speaks of the traditional way of measuring risk as sometimes creating “phantom risks” due to an overstated likelihood.  This seems particularly relevant to OHS and may be part of the reason that some OHS issues are seen as excessive or, at worst, a joke.

Purdy stated that there are 11 statements of effective risk management. [Modern management writers love numbers.  I should write a book called “The hundredth time I have had to sit through a numbered list of strategies at conferences before walking out”]  The statements are that risk management

  • creates and protects value
  • is an integrated part of all organisational processes
  • is part of decision making
  • explicitly addresses uncertainty
  • is systematic, structure and timely
  • is based on the best available information
  • is tailored
  • takes human and cultural factors into account
  • is transparent and inclusive
  • is dynamic, iterative and responsive to change
  • facilitates continual improvement of the organisation.

The implementation of this standard and other international standards is going to be confusing, initially, for Australian managers but the choice is easy.  Why follow an Australian standard that needs explaining overseas when there is already an international standard that requires no explanation?  Go global and expand your auditing and accountability options.

[Please note that ISO31000 is not an auditable standard but I suspect you will not have to wait long for one.]

Kevin Jones


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