research – Page 33 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Employers’ continuing “intolerable laxity”

Recently a discussion of occupational health and safety (OHS) in Australia’s construction industry during COVID-19 lockdowns was published. “What’s it going to take? Lessons Learned from COVID-19 and worker mental health in the Australian construction industry” is thankfully “open access” and well worth reading for its strong and controversial OHS recommendations, but it could have paid more attention to the role of the employers or Persons Conducting a Business or Undertaking (PCBU) in applying legislative OHS obligations and how their resistance continues to harm workers.

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The continuation of engineered stone can no longer be supported

The Housing Industry Association (HIA) is an effective government lobbyist for its members who can be relied on to make a submission to whatever opportunity the governments offer. The HIA does not provide details of membership numbers or names, but it does list its sponsors and partners. Recently HIA made a submission on “the prohibition on the use of engineered stone”. Its position held few surprises.

Perhaps also unsurprising is Kate Cole’s justification for a ban on engineered stone.

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The cultural impediments to OHS improvement in agriculture need to be confronted

Recently Western Australia concluded its WorkSafe inquiry into the Agricultural Industry. The recommendations for improvements in occupational health and safety (OHS) are remarkably dull as they largely fit with business as usual. It is much more useful to file this as a reference document which offers some safety insights.

The inquiry was established after a spate of farm deaths (Don’t all OHS inquiries come from disasters!?). Most of the terms of reference relate to the collation of data, which, in itself, is an implied criticism of the past OHS Commissioners and governments (and national leadership).

The inquiry report is an excellent analysis of the cultural relationships between farming and OHS regulation, with some brutally honest findings that other States and OHS professionals should heed.

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Mental health at work – “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”

Psychological health in the workplace seems to be a recent phenomenon because various Australian jurisdictions are strengthening prevention and management strategies through legislative amendments. This is supported by the World Health Organization’s definition of burnout as an occupational phenomenon. But psychological or psychosocial health and safety at work was a concern last century. In fact, The Australian Psychological Society conducted the First National Conference on Occupational Stress in June 1994, and the book, edited by the late Dr Peter Cotton, based on the papers and presentations from the conference, remains remarkably topical and absent of the well-being language and spin that we have been exposed to since.

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Stress reenters the research vocabulary and we are all better for it

Work is making people sicker, according to a recently published research report from the University of Melbourne. The “2023 State of the Future Work – A Work Futures Hallmark Research Initiative Report” said:

“Critically, we find almost three-quarters of people with a chronic illness (73 percent) say that their health condition was caused or worsened by the stress associated with their job.”
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It is good to see the various incarnations of work-related mental health conditions being brought back to the collective and specific term of Stress.

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A European counter to the United States’ OHS propaganda

One of the most useful occupational health and safety (OHS) publications is HesaMag, “the health and safety magazine with a European view”. (It is a hard copy, free and excellent. A must-have) Its latest edition has a feature on psychosocial risks (PSR) at work. I know that some of us are “over it”, but it is unavoidable and, as COVID did recently, may become the OHS matter that dominates our work. We must understand the risks to control them and prevent harm.

Anyway, back to HesaMag. One of its features is that much of its data relies on sources other than workers’ compensation and, so, is more accurate about trends. One example in the current issue, Pierre Bérastégui writes:

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Grosvenor Fire Case Study – Hopkins

It is always good to start a piece of writing with an attention-grabbing punch. Professor Andrew Hopkins‘ latest research paper does just that in his analysis of the 2020 Anglo-American Grosvenor coal mine explosion. He wrote:

“Senior management at Anglo believed that safety was never sacrificed to production. Their view was safety and productivity went hand in hand and that safety was “just not negotiable”. And yet the Board of Inquiry into the accident found that Grosvenor was producing coal at a rate that consistently exceeded the capacity of the drainage system to cope with the methane gas being released, with the result that “coal mine workers were repeatedly subject to an unacceptable level of risk”. How could senior managers believe that they were so safety conscious and yet be so blind to the most serious hazard facing underground coal miners?”
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Category: research

Employers’ continuing “intolerable laxity”

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The continuation of engineered stone can no longer be supported

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The cultural impediments to OHS improvement in agriculture need to be confronted

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Mental health at work – “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”

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Stress reenters the research vocabulary and we are all better for it

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A European counter to the United States’ OHS propaganda

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Grosvenor Fire Case Study – Hopkins

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