The Victorian trade union movement is preparing for the November 2018 State Election with one element of that campaign being the advocacy of Industrial Manslaughter laws.
At the end of January 2018, the unions “kicked off” their campaign with a meeting which reviewed the challenges and wins for injured workers in 2017 and outlined their intentions for 2018. The Industrial Manslaughter Action Kit included a petition which says: Continue reading “Victoria is ripe for Industrial Manslaughter laws”
The Victorian (Labor) Government promised a review of WorkSafe Victoria’s enforcement policies in its 2014 campaign pledges as per the quote below. The independent occupational health and safety (OHS) review was conducted in 2016 with a lot of public submissions. The review’s final report was presented to the Victorian Minister for Finance, Robin Scott in December 2016. Everything has been quiet since. Continue reading “Will we ever get to see Victoria’s latest OHS review?”
Australia’s emergency services have had several reviews into accusations of workplace bullying, harassment, mental health or suicides. Melbourne’s Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB) is the latest to undergo this type of review but the United Firefighters Union (UFU) is not happy about the release of the final report, which was due out today. If the final report is consistent, a dysfunctional safety culture will be found.
According to a report in the ABC news website, the review was
“…headed by clinical psychologist Dr Peter Cotton, who wrote a similar report for Victoria Police.” [link added]
SafetyAtWorkBlog readers may recall that an earlier article on psychologically healthy workplaces included this mention of Dr Cotton
“[Dr Chris] Stevens is not blind to the shortcomings of some of the trends in the area of psychologically healthy workplaces. He agreed that the modern workplaces and workers are subject to over-diagnosis of mental health issues and paraphrased some of the work of Dr Peter Cotton who estimated around 30% of workers compensation claims for psychological injury relate to low morale and not psychiatric diagnosis.”
Continue reading “Work-related suicides in another militarily-structured organisation”
On 11 February 2016, the Victorian Government announced a review into occupational health and safety (OHS) but you would hardly have noticed. The media release gained little attention in any of the mainstream press and yet its terms of reference are quite broad. It will be interesting to see how the review panel sets its agenda.
But, hang on, wasn’t there already some sort of review into WorkSafe Victoria?
In 2014 during an election campaign (now Premier of Victoria) Daniel Andrews stated:
“Labor will introduce random breath testing for all Members of Parliament during sitting weeks” and
“Labor will also legislate to give the Chief Justice, the Chief Judge and the Chief Magistrate the power to require these random tests of the judiciary.”
At the time potential drug and alcohol testing on Victorian construction sites was topical.
This week the first pledge was dropped and the second was obfuscated. Where was the safety justification for this pledge in the first place? What was Andrews thinking?