politics – Page 188 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Safe Work Bill and Parliament

It has always seemed an odd timetable for the Australian Government to introduce a Bill for replacing the Australian Safety & Compensation Council with Safe Work Australia when there is also an active national review into the laws that the authority may end up managing.

This week the Minister for Workplace Relations, Julia Gillard, set aside the Safe Work Bill because she would not accept amendments by the Opposition or she had to verify changes through the Workplace Relations Ministerial Council, depending on your political leanings.

Parliament has ended for 2008 so the reintroduction of the Bill will wait till 2009. This allows the government to make another pitch by including the recommendations of the National Review. The Review has consulted broadly across the political spectrum and should present legalistic sweeteners to all. This also allows the government to say that they didn’t get cross and arrogant but have been able to be more inclusive and consultative.

The amendments proposed by the Opposition don’t have a great deal to do with safe workplaces but a lot to do with limiting union influence in the decision-making of the new OHS body. Some amendments are just unnecessarily provocative by trying to limit ministerial interference. The alternative jargon to this is the exercising of ministerial discretion. It’s the same thing except to those on the receiving end or who feel excluded from the process.

Of course, the government is not obliged to accept all the recommendations of the review panel and over the next few months it will be closely watching the reception of its industrial relations legislative platform to perhaps indicate a more successful pathway for its Safe Work Bill.

A sticking point, and overlap of the two legislations, is the right of entry. Currently there is a political stink about how much access unions are entitled to in workplaces, some of which does seem unnecessarily intrusive, but frequently workplace safety is the impetus for entry requests, as per the recent intrusion to the desalination plant in New South Wales. Right of entry will not go away as a political issue over the Christmas break while there are large infrastructure projects in New South Wales and Western Australia, in particular.

Leading from the top on impairment

Advocates of safety culture regularly profess that it must be lead from the top of the corporate structure down. This applies a false definition of leadership. Leadership is innovation, understanding and support regardless of one’s position on the corporate ladder.

It is true that professing leadership and corporate goals should be supported by the appropriate actions but that is often the avoidance of hypocrisy rather than seeking active change. It must be acknowledged that leadership can also come from below – in the mail rooms, the cellars, the janitors and from the shopfloors.

Workers in many industries are subjected to random drug and alcohol tests. Often these apply to those workers who operate machinery or drive transport vehicles. And rightly so. These workers must undertake their tasks without any impairment of their cognitive functions. Impairment is a concept that the Australian union movement has struggled with for well over a decade mainly because in the industrial relations world this is close to being “fit for work” and how does one define that? It also has some relationship to “blaming the worker”. In occupational health and safety, it is seen as looking after one’s self whilst looking after others and the obligation to do this has existed for decades in OHS legislation.

Impairment is commonly discussed now in terms of driving while drunk or stoned or while using a mobile phone. But long before this there was “impaired judgement”. As well as being fit-for-work, people needed to be fit-to-think.

On 4 December 2008, the New South Wales Health Minister (and former Industrial Relations Minister) John Della Bosca rejected a proposal from the Rail, Bus & Tram Union (RTBU) to “to make breath-test kits available on a voluntary basis to MPs wanting to check their blood alcohol levels before they turn up for late night votes.”

It is reported that the RTBU secretary Nick Lewocki has said

“All rail workers are subjected to random drug and alcohol tests, an infringement on their personal lives that they are told is necessary due to the safety critical nature of their work. But driving the state is every bit as safety critical, and decisions our politicians make on issues as diverse as health, education and transport policy do affect public lives.”

Ignoring the political devilment of the RTBU, the comment focuses on being unimpaired when making decisions, regardless of the occupation, work task or corporate position. The Minister has been put in a difficult position where he can’t be seen as responding to union naughtiness but there is merit in leading from the top and making breath-test kits available. They are not suggesting random testing or mandatory testing but it is reasonable to expect important decision-makers to be fit-to-think and fit-to-decide.

Perhaps drug testing in the workplace would not be seen as the contentious issue it is if it had already been introduced in the boardroom. The gesture would not be as empty as the corporate leaders may think particularly leading into the season when sauce and ganders were traditionally eaten.

Fair Work and OHS

Last week the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Workplace Relations, Julia Gillard, delivered on some of the government’s promises by presenting the Fair Work Australia Bill into the Australian Parliament. This does not present a revolution but is a solid rollback of some of the excesses of the previous (conservative) government. The responses from employer groups and trade unions were in the tones and on the topics that were expected.

The National Review into Model OHS Laws rolls on towards its January 2009 deadline. The OHS law review was not something urgent for the government, even though it was an election pledge, and it does not indicate a commitment by the government to improving the level of safety in Australia. The aim is to provide an easier way of managing safety across state borders in Australia with the hope that this will flow to benefit the safety of workers.

It is important to remember that this review came after years of concern about the perception(?) that OHS was part of the red tape of managing businesses, and therefore an unacceptable cost burden. The danger in this review is that the recommendations will reduce the business costs with no discernible improvement in safety.

There are many OHS professionals and organisations who are hoping for some grand review of workplace safety. It is a review of law and business bureaucracy, not safety. Those who will most benefit will be large companies that operate in multiple States. It will provide no change to small business. It will not increase safety in the vast majority of workplaces. It may improve the bottom line company results in 2009 when profit growth is declining but that just means that managerial bonuses are less than normal. It does not mean that the cost savings will be used to improve safety.

The Fair Work Australia Bill and the National OHS Law Review may change some of the ways in which corporates approach OHS but they will have little, if any, benefit to individual workers.

It is important to remember that any legal changes always benefit legal practitioners, as well. And OHS lawyers are almost always there after the incident in order to minimise company damage. Policies and procedures are largely determined without legal involvement. Machine guarding is not installed by lawyers. Abusive supervisors are not tempered by legal threats. Safety is the manager’s job in partnership with the employees, and it will always be so.

When too many graphic ads is never enough

Coming to the end of Australia’s school year, the government is going overboard with confronting advertisements for young people, be they related to work safety or binge drinking.

At least the OHS regulators watched other regulators information campaign and reduced their costs by resisting promoting the same message in the same way to the same demographic. WorkSafe Victoria‘s Homecoming campaign has been phenomenally popular and influential.

Sadly, the health promotion sector doesn’t coordinate their effort (or have exhaustive budgets). The Minister for Health, Nicola Roxon, has launched the latest set of confronting ads for teenagers, this time on binge drinking. With such a lack of coordination, the target audience is going to be quickly turned off the ads, instead of turning off the bad behaviour.

Each time this graphic approach is used, the message, regardless of the topic, is severely weakened.

Sadly, we’ve seen it all before (and only a month ago).

Sexual harassment and politicians

Bernard Keane, political columnist with Crikey.com, wrote on 20 November 2008 about the unacceptable conduct of Australian politicians. He wrote:

We’re not talking here about ordinary poor behaviour. There are boors and fools and thugs in workplaces across the country. It’s the sense of entitlement that seems to motivate many MPs to treat other people — whether they are staff, or waiters, or anyone who happens to cross them — with contempt. It’s a sense of entitlement encouraged by the job — one with a large salary, expenses, vehicles, travel and public profile. Most MPs manage to prevent it from going to their heads. But a lot don’t, and they make other people’s lives hell. Particularly because MPs aren’t under the same workplace laws as everyone else.

SafetyAtWorkBlog believes that, as the sexual harassment is occurring in workplaces, predominantly, that MP’s ARE “under the same workplace laws as everyone else”.

Keane refers to one case where a Minister who was sexually harassing a staff member was relocated to another ministry. The case recalls the Catholic Church’s risk control measure with paedophile priests.

Workplace safety regulators have been trying to emphasise for years that unacceptable behaviour in workplaces is more serious than a “bad day” or a “bad mood” and that this can be symptomatic of a sick workplace culture.

It is hoped that Crikey readers get to realise that inappropriate conduct at work can be criminal, a breach of OHS legislation or, even, a contravention of our Human Rights obligations. That the Australian political parties tolerate such behaviour is shameful

Important victory for aircraft maintenance workers

The Department of Veterans’ Affairs may have to pay compensation to the maintenance crews of F-111 fighter planes. In the 1970s employees worked within the fuel tanks of the fighters with little, if any, PPE. In 2004 these workers were excluded from a healthcare and compensation scheme even though, according to one media report, evidence was presented that the workers had

a 50% increased risk of cancer
a two-fold increase in obstructive lung disease;
a two-and-a-half fold increase in sexual dysfunction; and
a two-fold increase in anxiety and depression.

One of the reasons the maintenance crews were denied compensation was that the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) had destroyed the maintenance records from before 1992.

An inquiry into the affair has received a submission from the commonwealth Ombudsman, John McMillan, and Labor MP, Arch Bevis, that strongly criticised the destruction and inadequacy of records.

In safety management, record-keeping is often seen, and dismissed, as “red tape”. The reduction of red tape is not the elimination of red tape and the reality of Australia’s increasing litigious legal system is that more records need to be kept, and for longer, than ever before.

Perhaps, the government, in its pledge to reduce red tape and business costs, should look at the lawyers’ insistence to business that the first port-of-call after an industrial incident is to call them so that everything becomes covered by legal-client privilege.

Perhaps it is the pressure to create paperwork than the paperwork itself that is the problem. In the case of the F-111 maintenance crews, regardless of the lack of paperwork, justice seems to be happening. It is just sad that so much pain and suffering had to be endured before getting close to a resolution.

Click HERE for a personal reflection on the health issues of the workers from one of Australian Rugby League’s champions, Tommy Raudonikis.

The right time to do something, or union shortsightedness

The title of this blog is deliberately positive because I find it hard to understand why, when union right-of-entry is such a hot political topic, a New South Wales Minister would defy Federal Court action and accompany union organisers onto a construction site against the wishes of the company who operates the site.

The legal action has been considerably drawn-out but Minister Phil Costa’s seems purposely inflammatory. In a report on the visit in The Australian on 12 November 2008, the Minister said he was given permission by Sydney Water and a building contractor. This confirms the confusion over control of a workplace that is being worked through as part of the National OHS Law Review panel. Who is the principal contractor? Who runs the site?

The minister says that permission was obtained from John Holland Construction and the company was accommodating. The media report did not say if there was any particular reason the minister visited although a media handler said it was a PR visit.

The CFMEU assistance secretary said the only way the union could get on site Was “as a visitor with the minister” and that OHS issues have been raised including dust, wetness and falling from heights.

The minister’s visit just confirms the beliefs of the New South Wales employers that the Labor government’s relationship with the unions is too friendly. There is some support for this perspective when the government chooses to keep Sydney Ferries out of the credit-rating fire sale, “after intense pressure from union leaders” according to one media report.

In a national context, Minister Costa’s visit illustrates the need for clarity on national OHS laws as John Holland moved from the state workers’ compensation system to the national version, Comcare, a couple of years ago. So not only did the visit raise matters of workplace control, there was jurisdictional problems.

Unless you are a construction union member in New South Wales, minister Costa’s actions had no positive result.

I have been a union member for several decades and support many of their initiatives but occasionally some in the union movement take short term gains and narrow interest over the bigger picture and the best interest of the whole union movement. Isn’t short-term gain over long-term benefit what the unions accuse the banks and the corporations of?

Category: politics

Safe Work Bill and Parliament

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Leading from the top on impairment

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Fair Work and OHS

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When too many graphic ads is never enough

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Sexual harassment and politicians

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Important victory for aircraft maintenance workers

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The right time to do something, or union shortsightedness

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