politics – Page 61 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

No OHS voice in this paper

Occupational health and safety (OHS) has always been part of the politics of industrial relations (IR) but it has rarely understood which part it plays as it has never really stood on its own two feet. In Australia, OHS advocates have been, primarily, from within the trade union movement. And for OHS professionals that was okay, as it allowed us to stay within our box, having others fight our battles. When those others weren’t as successful as we wanted, we remained content with the small achievements because they were achieved with minimal effort from us.

Australia, as it emerges from the COVID19 pandemic, is hoping to bring the camaraderie shared by the business groups, government and trade union to a new consensual IR strategy. OHS is an historical element of this discussion, but it needs to be more, and an OHS analysis of the Australian Industry Group’s IR reform paper released on June 6 2020 (but not yet publicly) may provide some clues on what to do about OHS influence.

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All jobs are now more dangerous

The COVID19 pandemic has shone a spotlight on the government agencies that regulate and enforce occupational health and safety (OHS) laws. These regulators are not the lead agencies in pandemic control but as some countries relax lock-down protocols and people return to work in changed work environments, the role and actions of the OHS regulators are being re-evaluated.

Sarah O’Connor, in the Financial Times, opened her 26 May 2020 article brilliantly with

” Covid-19 has upended our notion of what a dangerous job looks like”

Office were often dismissed as low-risk workplaces with many site safety walks, if they happened, reporting on torn carpet and other similar hazards. That way of assessing risk should have been replaced, or supplemented, with assessments of the psychosocial risks of stress, bullying, a harassment, excessive workloads and many more harmful practices. So, offices may have a low risk of traumatic physical injuries but a higher level of risk of psychological harm. On top of this reassessment comes an infection risk that can be spread by workers showing no symptoms. Office-based risk has increased again and made the workplace itself dangerous.

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Safety wins

The saga of the safety of all-terrain vehicles (ATV) in Australia is coming to a close with Honda announcing that it will not be selling its ATVs in Australia after 10th October 2021. However Honda, one of the most strident opponents of increased safety standards, is belligerent to the end.

In the media announcement of its decision, Honda says that the new safety Standard is impossible to meet on any ATV. This may be true but the quad bike manufacturers refused to accept that rider safety could be improved by redesigning the quad bike, or adding additional safety devices, to reduce the risk of rolling over. Most occupational health and safety (OHS) advocates did not argue about the validity of the safety items and actions recommended by the manufacturers – helmets, dynamic riding training etc – but saw these as supplements to after-sales crush protection devices (CPDs). The manufacturers did not.

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Victoria’s Workplace Manslaughter laws are a misdirection

On July 1, 2020, Victoria receives the Workplace Manslaughter laws that it missed out on by a bee’s whatsit in 2002. Premier Daniel Andrews will complete another election pledge and will be seen as a champion for Victoria’s workers. The Workplace Manslaughter laws will provide some bereaved relatives with comfort and a belief that bad employers will be punished for neglecting their occupational health and safety (OHS) duties to provide safe and healthy work environments. Punishment is possible, but unlikely.

The first thing that Victorians need to understand is that Workplace Manslaughter laws are not about OHS, they are about politics. It is no coincidence that both Queensland and Victoria’s Workplace Manslaughter laws emerged during election campaigns. Both branches of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) needed to say something about workplace relations that did not involve the hotbed of industrial relations, especially when so much IR change would bring in National politics.

OHS allows people to talk about IR without the trade union politics. OHS is not about money, it is about quality of life and who, in politics or elsewhere, will say that deaths at work are an acceptable consequence? The ALP leaders were on a winner and were able to take some moral high ground and criticise business groups on an issue against which business leaders could not argue.

To understand Industrial Manslaughter, look at the politics

On May 20, 2020 Industrial Manslaughter became an offence applicable to Queensland’s mining and resources sector, sometime after the offence was applied to all other Queensland businesses. Industrial Manslaughter (IM) laws have always been as much about politics as they are about penalties, deterrence and occupational health and safety (OHS).

Some of the politics is shown by the responses from Queensland business groups (sounding like spoken through gritted teeth) but to really understand these laws, it is worth looking at the Second Reading of the omnibus Bill that included the IM amendments as politicians in several other Australian jurisdictions will face the same issues. It is also useful for OHS people to understand the political and legislative context of the penalties their employers may face.

Also, in the last week of May 2020, the first company to be successfully prosecuted under the IM laws will be sentenced, Brisbane Auto Recycling. The company’s two directors have pleaded guilty to reckless conduct and will also be sentenced.

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Running before you can walk on COVID19 and Mental Health

On May 15 2020, the Australian Government released a National Mental Health and Wellbeing Pandemic Response Plan. Mental Health has been on Prime Minister Morrison’s agenda since his election a year ago and the mental health sector is not going to be starved of government funds during his tenure.

Mental ill-health has been talked about throughout the current COVID19 Pandemic and has been forecast to increase due to the economic disruption and the requirements for social isolation. To some extent, the low numbers of COVID19 deaths in Australia has allowed it a “luxury” of addressing mental health, but some of the justifications seem not as strong as claimed and the National Mental Health Plan omits any consideration of occupational health and safety (OHS) other than for those in the health industry; the so-called “frontline workers”.

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Work that is meaningful, secure and safe

Occupational health and safety (OHS) is integral to how work and job should be designed in the post-COVID19 world, but you wouldn’t know it from the current discussions in the media. On May 13, 2020, the day after a major economic statement from Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, Jennifer Westacott, Chief Executive of the Business Council of Australia, told ABC Radio that:

“…. there’s some pretty sobering numbers that the Treasurer gave yesterday and fundamentally I think we’ve all got to come back to basics here. This is about people’s lives and so what we have to do, as the kind of leadership dynamic, is to focus on getting people back to work and getting them into secure and meaningful work.
emphasis added

It is not unreasonable to add safety to that “secure and meaningful work”.

OHS fits into this phrase in many ways, but one of particular note is job security and its links to mental health, especially as mental health has been a policy priority repeatedly identified by Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, and others.

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Category: politics

No OHS voice in this paper

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All jobs are now more dangerous

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Safety wins

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Victoria’s Workplace Manslaughter laws are a misdirection

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To understand Industrial Manslaughter, look at the politics

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Running before you can walk on COVID19 and Mental Health

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Work that is meaningful, secure and safe

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