Category: research

“show me the bodies”

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.

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Digitalisation, Artificial Intelligence, OHS and Work

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.

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“don’t trick people” – Greenwashing and Safewashing

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.

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Male Loneliness and Work

Recent Australian research into male loneliness revealed some interesting work-related factors that employers may want to consider as part of their wellbeing and psychosocial change programs.

The research includes that among some social factors, like the persistent belief by men of having a breadwinner role:

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Sentencing and OHS prosecutions but few solutions

Most submissions to the inquiry into Sentencing Occupational Health and Safety Offences in Victoria are now publicly available.  They raise a lot of different issues and some grumbles even though the Sentencing Advisory Council provided some structure to the topics it wanted addressed.

A major purpose of any penalty is to deter harmful and damaging actions from being repeated.  SAC reiterates that any sentence 

  • deters the offender and others from committing similar offences;
  • punishes the offender in a just manner;
  • facilitates the rehabilitation of the offender;
  • denounces the behaviour that the offender engaged in, and
  • protects the community from the offender. (page 7)

The CFMEU’s Dr Gerry Ayers opens his submission with Deterrence by quoting Gunningham and Johnstone from 1999, who wrote:

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Keep away from Leadership and start to progress

Lately I have been thinking a lot about Leadership and how it dominates, and unchallenged, how occupational health and safety is managed in Australia. Of the three OHS/business books I bought this week, one included a page about Leadership and how we should move away from it.

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The Human Rights of workers strengthens

Work health and safety is a fundamental human right. Last year, I asked “so what?” Australia is strengthening the relevance of this international human right at the local level, but you wouldn’t notice unless you looked hard.

The federal government’s Joint Standing Committee on Treaties has been receiving public submissions on the ratification of ILO Conventions 191 and 187. It’s such a hot topic that it received only two submissions!!; neither opposed the ratification, but they provide some useful context to the aims of occupational health and safety (OHS) in Australia.

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