Category: Andrews

Work-related suicides in another militarily-structured organisation

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”

Victoria announces a new OHS review

Cover of -Improving-Workplace-Safety-For-VictoriansOn 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?

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Political disregard for OHS…. again

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?

Continue reading “Political disregard for OHS…. again”

Drug and alcohol testing does not improve workplace safety, so why have it?

cover of EN455_NCETA_2011-2 Testing for drug and alcohol effects in workplaces sounds sensible but what do you do when there is no evidence that it improves worker safety or reduces risk? Apparently ignore the evidence, create industrial tension and impose unnecessary costs on industry.

The Australian national government and the Victorian (State) government have both pledged to introduce drug and alcohol testing for the construction sector.  The Victorian Government also promised to introduce drug and alcohol testing for parliamentarians but everyone expects a backdown on that election pledge.

Recently two researchers in Adelaide, Ken Pidd and Anne Roche published a research paper in Accident Analysis & Prevention asking “how effective is drug testing as a workplace safety strategy?“.  The abstract states:

“…the evidence base for the effectiveness of testing in improving workplace safety is at best tenuous.”

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Workplace bullying report lost in the political frenzy

Earlier this year Victorian MP and Minister for Small Business, Adem Somyurek, was accused of bullying his Chief of Staff, Dimity Paul.  This week, Somyurek resigned from his Cabinet position but not without a press conference in which he stated that the issue was political payback and that his resignation is no admission of guilt.

As you can see from this very brief summary, party politics has infested this instance of workplace bullying, and to such an extent that the important and solid investigation report into the incident is being missed.  The reports are publicly available and deserve to be carefully considered rather than relying on some of the current media coverage. Continue reading “Workplace bullying report lost in the political frenzy”

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