“The conference inside is a bit of a sham” claimed Brian Boyd, Victorian Trades Hall Secretary at the first meeting into the harmonisation of Australia’s workers compensation laws.
“It’s really another hidden agenda about trying to harmonise workers comp after we fully know already, they’ve messed up harmonisation of OHS.”
Continue reading “The first workers’ compensation harmonisation meeting a sham: unions”
In January 2010, Today Tonight in South Australia aired a disturbing report about the workers compensation reforms in that State. It talks to two widows who blame WorkCover SA as contributing to their husbands’ suicides. One man left a suicide note explicitly blaming WorkCover SA, emphasising his point by jumping to his death from the sixth floor of the WorkCover office building.
The video report is available HERE under the title WorkCover Suicide.
One of those interviewed in the story is Kevin Purse who undertook a report into the SA workers’ compensation system on behalf of SA Unions. Continue reading “Some families in South Australia blame WorkCover for their partners’ suicides”
The Queensland Government has released a public discussion paper into its workers’ compensation scheme. Obviously this was part of the reason for the political argy-bargy in the State in late February 2010 over a report by Deloitte.
A major question posed in the discussion paper concerns the application of Whole Person Impairment (WPI) or Work-Related Impairment (WRI) as the assessment process. Currently only Queensland applies WRI and so the submissions to this discussion process may be quite useful in anticipation of the any review into the national workers’ compensation arrangements. Continue reading “Discussion paper on Queensland workers compensation released”
Deputy Prime minister and Workplace Relations Minister, Julia Gillard, has told the Australian Financial Review (only available online to subscribers) that the OHS law changes were finalised at the recent Workplace Relations Ministers’ Council.
Gillard again rejected the trade union movement’s concerns about weakened worker protection. The Minister emphasised that substantial economic benefits would flow to business as a result of increased administrative efficiencies.
However, the likelihood of a nationally harmonised OHS system seems as far away as ever with the West Australian Government continuing to refuse to apply the new laws which it sees as too friendly to the unions.
Significantly, the Australian Government has backed down from its earlier threat to penalise any governments that do not support the changes. This lets the WA Liberal Government off the hook and provides the New South Wales Liberal Party with an easy platform option for the 2010 State election.
The conservative forces in Australia can take heart but Minister Gillard’s position has the union movement facing difficult decisions. It has strongly funded a campaign against elements of the OHS laws and branded the laws as “second-rate safety”. It now needs to decide whether to give up the campaign totally as a lost cause or to pare it back so that, over time, the campaign fades away, as did the industrial manslaughter campaign of around five years ago.
The ACTU has expressed disappointment but must have realised, privately at least, that some union powers, considered to be extreme by business and industry groups and over which the business complaints have been load and long, were going to be sacrificed in any harmonisation process.
Former Prime Minister and ACTU President Bob Hawke achieved many industrial relations reforms in the early 1980’s by pushing “consensus”. This negotiation process had strong similarities to the current OHS harmonisation however big C Consensus is now rarely spoken by the Australian trade union movement. One of the few contemporary outings was when current ACTU Secretary Jeff Lawrence, who expressed the disappointment above, speaking about industrial relations said on 14 June 2007:
“I’m tough enough but I’m also a person who likes to work by consensus”.
To operate constructively at the big tripartite table of OHS, the unions will need to accept a defeat and gain whatever they can from the new rules. This is doubly important in the lead-up to the planned harmonisation of workers compensation. Australia will see some fiery union rhetoric when harmonisation threatens to reduce the income and entitlements of workers who are already injured.
According to the WorkSafe Victoria website, changes to the Accident Compensation Act were introduced to the Victorian Parliament on 10 December 2009.
WorkSafe is very confident that the changes will be passed. The summary only talks about “when” the bill is passed. There is every likelihood it will be passed but the summary has a tinge of arrogance to it.
A summary of the proposed changes is available online.
It all sounds positive and most of it seems about financial improvements. There are always concerns when a government move from prescriptive- to performance-based practices. The summary describes the Return-To-Work benefit:
“Prescriptive return to work requirements will be reframed as performance based duties to improve flexibility.”
Usually this sort of change is a red flag for rorts and abuse.
The summary does say that enforcement activities will be increased:
“The Return to Work Inspectorate will have a wider range of tools to improve the effectiveness of compliance activities in relation to return to work obligations, maintaining a fair and consistent application of the law.”
However with the government’s recent spate of administrative mistakes, sloppiness and oversights exposed through the Auditor-General’s reports, accountability in this important area will need to be carefully watched.
The Minister for Workcover, Tim Holding‘s speech to the Bill’s second reading concluded (according to the draft Hansard):
“This bill providers (sic) fairer and better benefits to injured workers and their dependents, recognises that getting injured workers back to work is a central pillar of the scheme, and provides greater transparency for employers in their interactions with the scheme. The benefit enhancements in this bill are financially responsible, affordable, and consolidate Victoria’s position as the leader in workers compensation in Australia.”
According to a several media reports in the United States, a private investigator, Matthew Brady, who was investigating a workers compensation case whilst hiding in the woods was mistaken for a turkey and shot by the man he was investigating. Brady was operated on in the local hospital.
As the Workers Comp Insider Blog states:
“Investigator Brady was hit in the side, back and legs. He underwent surgery and presumably filed his own workers comp claim for what is surely a work-related – if highly unusual – disability.”
For decades OHS professionals have known that the Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR) does not accurately measure the safety performance of an organisation. LTIFR can be manipulated and is responsive to single catastrophic events. The consensus has always been that LTIFR is one indicator of safety improvement but should not be relied upon at that same time as acknowledging there is no real alternative to the LTIFR.
From an Australian Senate inquiry that is currently running and sparked, to some extent, from an ABC current affairs report in September 2009, it seems that the Australian postal service, Australia Post, is doing just that.
One of the attractive managerial elements of LTIFR is that it provides a figure from which incentives and rewards can be provided. This is attractive to both OHS managers and employers because LTIFR provides a tangible benchmark.
Safety incentives and rewards have been contentious for decades but have come to the fore in this inquiry due to this type of accusation from one of the Australian trade unions, the CEPU ( Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union):
Australia Post boasts that Lost Time Injury records are the lowest they’ve ever been. But those results haven’t been achieved by a safer workplace – rather by manipulating the injury management process to force people back to work and deny employees their rights.
Meanwhile, the same managers receive cash bonuses for reducing Lost Time Injuries in their sections.
The CEPU has documented extensive abuse of the injury management process.
Facility Nominated Doctors
Workers are being bullied into attending company-paid Facility Nominated Doctors.
FNDs are instructed to get people eligible for workers compensation straight back to work, before they’ve had to time to recover.
Australia Post has a commercial contract with InjuryNET, a private organisation, which gives Post access to a network of doctors.
InjuryNET guarantees it will reduce Lost Time Injury rates, lost hours and duration until return to pre-injury duties.
Where workers are not eligible for workers compensation, company doctors are instructed to find them unfit for duties, so Australia Post can direct them off work without pay, or sack them.
The CEPU has obtained email evidence that managers use the injury management process to get rid of ‘undesireable’ (sic) employees.
This is the language Australia Post management uses to describe injured workers.
Many of the attachment the CEPU has provided to the Senate Inquiry are not being publicly released because they include details of many cases of alleged mismanagement. The CEPU has posted an example of Australia Post’s approach to injured workers on Youtube.
The Australian Government responded to pressure from unions and elsewhere and established the Senate inquiry with the following terms of reference.
“The practices and procedures of Australia Post over the past three years in relation to the treatment of injured and ill workers, including but not limited to:
- allegations that injured staff have been forced back to work in inappropriate duties before they have recovered from workplace injuries:
- the desirability of salary bonus policies that reward managers based on lost time injury management and the extent to which this policy may impact on return to work recommendations of managers to achieve bonus targets:
- the commercial arrangements that exist between Australia Post and InjuryNet and the quality of the service provided by the organisation:
- allegations of Compensation Delegates using fitness for duty assessments from Facility Nominated doctors to justify refusal of compensation claims and whether the practice is in breach of the Privacy Act 1988 and Comcare policies:
- allegations that Australia Post has no legal authority to demand medical assessments of injured workers when they are clearly workers’ compensation matters:
- the frequency of referrals to InjuryNet Doctors and the policies and circumstances behind the practices:
- the comparison of outcomes arising from circumstances when an injured worker attends a facility nominated doctor, their own doctor and when an employee attends both, the practices in place to manage conflicting medical recommendations in the workplace; and
- any related matters.”
Some submissions to the inquiry have been made publicly available, including a submission by Australia Post. The company responds to each of the allegations included in the terms of reference. A frequent response from Australia Post is that its actions do not breach the law be it privacy legislation, workers’ compensation or its own policies. This defence is common for companies and organisations but it is often contrary to many of the arguments from the workers.
In the video above Brett Griffin describes the treatment from his managers at Australia Post as “wrong”. It may be wrong but is it illegal? This is the question that most Courts and judges face.
However this inquiry ends, the management of its employees seems not to have been to an acceptable level. The safety and HR Management system seems not to have been working properly. The evidence for this is the number of disgruntled employees and ex-workers and the existence of the Senate inquiry.
Clearly Australia Post’s conduct was not “best practice”. In the company’s recently released annual Corporate Responsibility Report it says this under the section for People Management:
“The effective management of our human resources is, therefore, of vital importance to our brand strength, community engagement, service performance and financial returns. Over several decades, we have developed a set of policies and programs that are designed to protect and reward our people – including progressive industrial relations policies; proactive management of occupational health and safety; continuation of our successful injury management, rehabilitation and return-to-work programs; a strong commitment to diversity; structured workplace learning; and effective grievance procedures.”
RTWMatters said in an article on its website (subscriber access only) in late September 2009 this about Australia Post:
“Some of our team have had first-hand experience with Australia Post’s return to work. In the select number of cases they have dealt with the Australia Post system has been found to be frustrating and seemingly lacking in genuine interest in the employee. Perhaps our team has seen only isolated examples, not representative of the general approach – if so our opinion may be swayed by the appropriate data. Our experience is that the Australia Post system focuses on ‘process before people’.”
The “Senate Inquiry into Australia Post’s treatment of injured and ill workers” will undoubtedly provide important lessons that will be relevant globally on safety incentives, LTIFRs, return-to-work practices in a large organisation, rehabilitation provider conduct, and, most importantly, how to manage injured staff. What should not be lost in any inquiry of this type is that the inquiry exists because people have been hurt and, they feel, unfairly treated.
[Kevin Jones is a feature writer for RTWMatters]
All non-confidential submissions can be accessed as they are uploaded at http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/eca_ctte/aust_post/submissions.htm