Category: politics

Kevin’s “Law of Common Sense” and the Right To Disconnect

This week, the “Right-to-Disconnect” became law in Australia. According to a prominent business newspaper, the Australian Financial Review (AFR), this is the latest example of the risk of the sky falling. It is not. Instead, the right-to-disconnect is a rebalancing of the exploitation of workers’ psychological health and that of their families. But you wouldn’t know this from the mainstream media coverage. There is no mention of mental health in the printed AFR article.

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Weaponising Industrial Manslaughter

Prosecution for Industrial Manslaughter in Australia’s occupational health and safety (OHS) is supposed to deter employers from neglecting the health and safety of their workers, but there is very little evidence of effective deterrence from this type of penalty, or improved safety and healthy working conditions.  Industrial manslaughter seems to have more of a marketing and political impact.  It allows governments to say they are doing something tough on OHS even though the changes have little deterrence and continue to be difficult to apply to the intended corporate targets.

The Queensland Parliament has provided a recent example of the political weaponisation of Industrial Manslaughter.

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“don’t trick people” – Greenwashing and Safewashing

Nobel-prize winner Joseph Stiglitz does not write about occupational health and safety (OHS). However, he does write about the sociopolitical and economic context in which businesses operate and from which worker health and safety decisions are made. In August 2024, Stiglitz is touring Australia. On August 7, 2024, he addressed a packed auditorium in Melbourne.

The topic was Greenwashing. He shared the stage with Senator Sarah Hanson-Young and Polly Hemming. The event, and I think the tour, was sponsored by The Australia Institute. Why was an OHS professional at a greenwashing lecture? The tools, techniques, and preventions of greenwashing are often echoed in OHS.

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ESG and OHS

Recently, Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) conducted a seminar on internal workplace investigations and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) frameworks. Occupational health and safety (OHS) seems to be gaining more attention as an ESG element, but it must compete with so many other elements that it may always be seen as a side issue.

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Trenching deaths and radio report

I am a fan of NPR’s radio program, All Things Considered. Occasionally, it reports on workplace health and safety matters. On July 19, 2024, it reported on the unacceptable number of deaths from trenching activities in the United States. The content was shocking and disappointing (the default setting for many reactions to occupational health and safety (OHS) matters), but the report’s format is an excellent example of journalism.

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Sentencing and OHS prosecutions but few solutions

Most submissions to the inquiry into Sentencing Occupational Health and Safety Offences in Victoria are now publicly available.  They raise a lot of different issues and some grumbles even though the Sentencing Advisory Council provided some structure to the topics it wanted addressed.

A major purpose of any penalty is to deter harmful and damaging actions from being repeated.  SAC reiterates that any sentence 

  • deters the offender and others from committing similar offences;
  • punishes the offender in a just manner;
  • facilitates the rehabilitation of the offender;
  • denounces the behaviour that the offender engaged in, and
  • protects the community from the offender. (page 7)

The CFMEU’s Dr Gerry Ayers opens his submission with Deterrence by quoting Gunningham and Johnstone from 1999, who wrote:

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The Human Rights of workers strengthens

Work health and safety is a fundamental human right. Last year, I asked “so what?” Australia is strengthening the relevance of this international human right at the local level, but you wouldn’t notice unless you looked hard.

The federal government’s Joint Standing Committee on Treaties has been receiving public submissions on the ratification of ILO Conventions 191 and 187. It’s such a hot topic that it received only two submissions!!; neither opposed the ratification, but they provide some useful context to the aims of occupational health and safety (OHS) in Australia.

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