Excessive working hours are a known occupational health and safety (OHS) hazard, both physically and psychologically. But when the excessive, excessive? When do these excessive hours start to create harm?
A recent article by the Centre for Work Health and Safety clarifies, confuses and may startle.
Jessie Singer published her book called “There Are No Accidents” last year. It is a pivotal book about safety and our understanding of the social and legal impacts of calling tragic events “accidents”. On June 13 2023, Singer spoke on Carnegie Council’s From Another Angle podcast about her book and the consequences of its publication.
“Accident” is less used in modern media descriptions of incidents involving serious injuries and fatalities than in the past. The term implies an unavoidable consequence or undeterminable cause of a tragic event. The traditional use absolves anyone of responsibility or accountability and, consequently, stymies the deep analysis of causes required if such incidents are to be prevented in the future. The term is the antithesis of occupational health and safety (OHS) approaches which should always start from the aim of harm prevention.
Recently the annual Truck Drivers’ Memorial was held at Alexandra in Central Victoria. Worksafe Victoria’s Executive Director of Health and Safety, Dr Narelle Beer (pictured above at the memorial), spoke at the event. Her presence was welcome and important, for it reinforces the occupational health and safety (OHS) regulators’ commitment to the safety of truck drivers and not just to the risks associated with the loads there are carting.
Dr Beer said little that was new, but that is okay, as WorkSafe’s presence at workers’ memorials is about reassurance and remembrance. There were elements of her speech that should be noted by employers, and that also illustrate the difficult enforcement position of such organisations.
This blog has been critical of many current strategies to reduce workplace mental health risks. Many strategies continue to be based on changing the worker rather than changing the system of work. The well-being advocates who have almost entirely focussed on individual-level interventions are broadening their scope to organisational or systemic resilience, but they still fail to meet the harm prevention aim of amendments to the occupational health and safety (OHS) legislation in Australia.
Dr Lucy Ryan of the University of East London recently wrote about burnout and systemic resilience.
Julian Baggini is a philosopher less well-known in Australia than in the United Kingdom but his writings can add to some of the current discussions about occupational health and safety (OHS) and business ethics.
In his 2010 book, Complaint, he analyses our grievance culture and how complaints can and should result in positive outcomes. OHS often seems to run on complaints and to understand how to respond to complaints, it is necessary to understand who is responsible for that response and why.
Work-related harm is often generated by exploitation, but exploitation is a term rarely used by the occupational health and safety (OHS) profession. If it was, the OHS approach to harm prevention may be very different, especially now that a safe and healthy working environment is a fundamental right.
Perhaps the omission of exploitation is not that surprising. It is often seen through the lens of industrial relations, and a flexible demarcation often exists between IR and OHS. It is important to note that the International Labour Organisation’s Glossary of OSH terms also fails to include exploitation though it is from 1993.
However, a recent report from the Grattan Institute, Short-changed: How to stop the exploitation of migrant workers in Australia, does discuss workplace health and safety as an element of worker exploitation.
Much of the discussion about working from home (WFH) focuses on the number of workers in the office, at home or working a combination of both. The production issues of connection, collaboration, management supervision, and productivity are also the focus, particularly of media articles based on some small survey that is principally a marketing exercise. (The need to provide your contact details before downloading is a dead giveaway) However, occupational health and safety (OHS) occasionally garners a mention.
One recent example of this was an article in the United Kingdom’s The Telegraph, which also turned up last week in the Australian Financial Review.
