Already a member? Log in here
Category: Premium
WorkSafe enters battle over quadbike safety
A decision by WorkSafe Victoria about the fitting of crush protection devices (CPD) to quad-bikes (All Terrain Vehicles/ATV) gained the major prominence in the latest edition of a major Australian farming newspaper, The Weekly Times. The newspaper reports that
“WorkSafe Victoria is tightening rules around quad bikes that will see them banned in workplaces unless appropriate rollover protection is fitted.”
Some of the argument over the last 24 hours has been around whether this means that CPDs are mandatory and, as always, cost.
Already a member? Log in here
Victoria announces a new OHS review
On 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?
Already a member? Log in here
Just Culture and Restorative Justice
Sometimes it is better to read Sidney Dekker than listen to him. His presentation style is lively but his research and thoughts deserve more measured analysis than a conference or seminar presentation allows. A recent research paper, “‘Just culture:’ Improving safety by achieving substantive, procedural and restorative justice“, shows the advantage of reading over watching.
Already a member? Log in here
Australian politicians not “playing well together” on OHS
Occupational health and safety (OHS) returned to the Australian
Already a member? Log in here
Extracting good from maps of death
Ever since I read the London Encyclopaedia during my honeymoon in England, I have waited for a similar encyclopaedia based on workplace safety. However, the world has changed since then and such an encyclopaedia would most likely to be created as an app.
The London Encyclopaedia is indexed by places, streets and addresses, and so should a “Safety Encyclopaedia” app through a localised map of workplace fatalities.
Already a member? Log in here
Safety is the highest priority. Really?
Workplace safety can have a bizarre logic. A recent example can be seen in the continuing controversy about the deaths of two workers on a construction site in Western Australia.
In November 2015 two workers Joe McDermott and Gerard Bradley were crushed to death by a concrete slab while on a break at a Jaxon Construction site in East Perth. The Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) concerns about the site have been discussed on ABC television last week and on the union’s social media. WorkSafe WA is investigating.
Some of the statements by Kim Richardson, the construction director of the Master Builders Association of Western Australia (MBAWA) seem ill-timed but reflect many of the perspectives held by employers towards occupational health and safety (OHS).
Shortly after the the incident Richardson stated that
“All workers have the right to go to work and have the expectation and the right to come home safely,…. That did not happen.
There’s been a move to have a tremendous amount of paperwork where people will tick boxes to say they have a safe system in place. But that doesn’t guarantee safe systems of work. The way the work is performed is where the focus needs to be.”
Richardson’s complaints seem to be that
- occupational health and safety has too much paperwork
- the paperwork misrepresents the level of safety at the workplace
- greater attention should be given to how work is performed.
Few OHS professionals in Australia would argue these points but there are some uncomfortable implications in these complaints.
Already a member? Log in here