Our understanding of stress continues to evolve even though it seems to be splintering into mental health. mental illness, psychosocial harm, mental well-being and more. Recently Orla T. Muldoon of the University of Limerick published “The Social Psychology of Trauma- Connecting the Personal and the Political”. I dipped into this book and found some information pertinent to the occupational health and safety (OHS) approach to post-traumatic stress.
For many years, occupational health and safety (OHS) has been fixated on “Culture” as an encompassing term for what management activity does not work and what does. The focus has faded slightly since the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, Culture made an important reappearance this week with the delivery of the final report of Australia’s Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide. However, some of the most telling analyses of the safety culture in the Australian Defence Forces occurred in 2021 with the work of Samantha Crompvoets.
NOTE: this article discusses suicides
The inquiry report into the Grenfell Tower fire has yet to be seriously considered from the other side of the world. However, the report is being mentioned in Australia’s emergency services and fire sectors. The inquiry has been thoroughly followed and analysed in the United Kingdom, and many excellent summaries have been published in newspapers, books, and podcasts. Australia’s cladding debate has not been to the same extent as the UK. Still, the UK’s structures, policies, processes, business ethics and neglect are certainly mirrored in Australia, which directly impacts how workplace health and safety operates here.
To understand occupational health and safety (OHS), you must understand the broader topic of work. Work is not necessarily more complex than OHS, but there are more opportunities to be distracted.
Earlier this year, Andrea Komlosy‘s excellent analysis of work—”Work—The last 1,000 years“—was published in English for the first time. The book hardly discusses OHS, but Komlosy’s feminist and European perspective is refreshing after reading narrow and insular analyses from the United States.
Significant changes in occupational health and safety result from one or more work-related fatalities. To my knowledge, this has not been labelled anyone’s “rule”, but it is a sad truism, and there are examples everywhere.
Episode One of the BBC’s excellent Grenfell podcast series references the phrase “show me the bodies” as having been said by a British bureaucrat requesting more evidence of the risks of external cladding on high-rise apartments. Such a thoughtless request implies that nothing needs to be done until there is evidence of a significant likelihood of death.
However, this article is not about Grenfell Tower (which will be coming soon) but about occupational health and safety (OHS) consultation and its failure.
What do Safe Work Australia (SWA) executives do outside National Safe Work Month? Several times each year, they appear before Senate committees. Recently, SWA’s CEO Marie Boland, Sinead McHugh, and Katherine Taylor spoke at a Senate Inquiry into the Digital Transformation of Workplaces.
Nobel-prize winner Joseph Stiglitz does not write about occupational health and safety (OHS). However, he does write about the sociopolitical and economic context in which businesses operate and from which worker health and safety decisions are made. In August 2024, Stiglitz is touring Australia. On August 7, 2024, he addressed a packed auditorium in Melbourne.
The topic was Greenwashing. He shared the stage with Senator Sarah Hanson-Young and Polly Hemming. The event, and I think the tour, was sponsored by The Australia Institute. Why was an OHS professional at a greenwashing lecture? The tools, techniques, and preventions of greenwashing are often echoed in OHS.
