Last year SafetyAtWorkBlog reported its failure at gaining the release of the Victorian Government’s full cost analysis of the introduction of the national Work Health and Safety laws. In November 2014 the Victorian Government changed from conservative Liberal to traditionally more worker-friendly Labor Party. So I submitted another request, with the same result, the report…
Today Australia’s Employment Minister, Senator Eric Abetz, released a statement concerning a change to the renewal of Comcare licences in the spirit of reducing business red tape but there are two mentions of workplace safety that are curious.
In the statement entitled “Comcare self-insurance licence change“, Senator Abetz has welcomed:
“…a reform that will see businesses save more than $1 million a year which can be reinvested in Work Health and Safety and jobs.”
and states
“This reform will reduce the regulatory burden, remove the cost of licence extensions in years two and four, and push back the costs of audit until year eight as well as ensure safer workplaces.”
The argument on reducing OHS red tape is that the cost savings can be reinvested into occupational health and safety measures but there seems to be no independent evidence to support this belief.
At a remembrance service in December 2014, the founder and outgoing deputy director of the Creative Ministries Network (CMN), John Bottomley, explained his refusal of funding from the Victorian WorkCover Authority (VWA) for CMN’s work-related grief support services (now called GriefWork). VWA has a different take on his comments.
In discussing the relevance of the Book of Isaiah to the motivations of the CMN to help people, Bottomley said that
“… it is God’s response to injustice and suffering that has planted this same spirit at the heart of our endeavours to transform work-related harm.
So CMN rejected VWA’s contract in April this year, after WorkSafe had funded our agency for over ten years to provide grief support services. My reason for rejecting the new contract was that VWA wanted to hide bereaved families grief from the public domain of injustice at work. The contract brief treated grief as an individual psychological problem to be addressed behind the closed doors of a clinic shut off from the rest of society. The contract wanted to treat work-related grief like an illness, and treat grieving families as sick and lacking the ability to ‘cope’. This heaps injustice upon injustice.”
One of the most effective ways of learning is by listening to or reading stories. This has been an accepted truth since well before the printed word, even though modern training educators sometimes justify the importance of storytelling through pseudo-neurology-speak. It is the purpose of research to verify and question truths and to, hopefully, through this process to expand our knowledge and understanding but research into the telling of safety stories seems rare.
One recent article* of research (not freely available) into storytelling and the construction industry has been written by Jodith Leung and Patrick Fong of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and although it is not overtly about occupational health and safety (OHS), the high risk nature of construction makes safety inseparable from the stories.
On 25 November 2014 the Federal Minister for Employment, Eric Abetz, attacked the Victorian Labor Party over its pledge to revoke the Construction Compliance Code which, primarily, deals with industrial relations but also has some occupational health and safety (OHS) requirements.
Abetz states that
“the Victorian Shadow Industrial Relations Minister [Natalie Hutchins] falsely claimed that the Code would not improve workplace safety, despite the numerous improved safety standards that it contains.”
The claim, apparently in the Herald-Sun newspaper, cannot be verified except through a reference in a news.com.au article. The original quote seems unavailable.
It is curious that this OHS criticism has come from a Federal Parliamentarian instead of from Victoria’s own Industrial Relations Minister and Attorney-General,
Later this month, Victoria is conducting its regular State election. Workplace safety has not been mentioned by any of the candidates but at least one industry association has mentioned occupational health and safety in its pre-election statement. The Australian Industry Group (AiGroup) has recommended
“The next Victorian Government should immediately commit to the harmonised OHS laws as the state remains the only jurisdiction not to do so.” (page 5)
The AiGroup does not expand on the reasons for this recommendation other than seeing OHS has part of its general call for harmonisation and that it is part of “reducing costs of doing business”. SafetyAtWorkBlog was able to fill in some of the AiGroup’s reasoning by talking, exclusively, with
The recent launch of several new chapters of the OHS Body of Knowledge (OHSBoK), associated with the Safety Institute of Australia, did not allow for questions from the audience but I was able to catch up with the coordinator of the project, Pam Pryor, and put my questions directly. (My thanks go to Pam for her honesty and time.)
One of the intentions of the OSHBoK has been to maintain currency and relevance. Was there a plan to review and revise the existing chapters? Pryor advised that there is a seven-year review schedule for all chapters. Some chapters may need reviewing earlier, particularly if there are references to specific legislation and that legislation has changed.
Is there a plan to establish an index or to improve searchability?