Category: safety

The OHS recommendations the Australian Government rejected

According to the Communiqué of the Workplace Relations Ministers’ Council on 18 May 2009, the following issues should be considered when drafting the new OHS legislation

“Application of the primary duty of care to any person conducting a business or undertaking

The panel recommends that the primary duty of care should be owed by any person conducting a business or undertaking.  The objective of this recommendation is to move away from the traditional emphasis on the employment relationship as the determiner of the primary duty, to provide greater health and safety protection for all persons involved in, or affected by, work activity.  Care needs to be taken during drafting to ensure that the scope of the duty is limited to matters of occupational health and safety and does not further extend into areas of public safety that are not related to the workplace activity. “

The first part of this is recognition of the variety of workplaces Australia now has, the number of people within worksites who are not employees and the previous issues of OHS and unpaid volunteers.  It seems to expand to matters of public liability but then, curiously, pulls back to emphasise occupational health and safety.  As Michael Tooma has noted, circumstances seem to have passed beyond the arbitrariness of the occupational categorisation. Continue reading “The OHS recommendations the Australian Government rejected”

Radio interview on harmonisation of OHS law

Last week, I had the pleasure of being interviewed byElanor McInerney of the 3CR radio program, Stick Together.  The interview concerned the harmonisation law in Australia and my thoughts on the risks and impacts it would have on Australian business and workers.

The radio program is now available as a podcast  (My part is around the 19 minute mark.) 

Please let me know if I am totally off the beam with my applications of the OHS laws and the political issues.

I thank Elanor and the producers of Stick Together for making this available so soon after the broadcast on 17 May 2009.

Kevin Jones

New Youth@Work website

The South Australian government has launched a website focusing on young people at work, not surprisingly called Youth@Work.  

South Australia has a habit of marching to a slightly different beat to the dominant Australian States on OHS.  They did not follow WorkSafe Victoria’s “Homecomings” ads and they have been well ahead of anyone in researching and explaining the relevance of wellness as an OHS issue.

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“Homecomings” safety ads reach the US

As mentioned last month in SafetyAtWorkBlog, the Victoria-designed “Homecomings” advertisements are to be launched on United States television.  The Department of Labor & Industries for Washington State announced the ads on 19 May 2009.  According to the DL&I media release

“These ads are particularly effective at bringing home the importance of safety in the workplace and the effects it can have on so many people,” said Don Brunell, president of the Association of Washington Business. “When an accident happens at work, it affects everyone – family, friends and co-workers.”

One ad is available for viewing at http://www.lni.wa.gov/main/worksafe/ 

[It looks like parts needed to be re-filmed to show left-hand drive vehicles and obviously the music rights for Dido’s song couldn’t apply in the US]

Kevin Jones

Decency at work

In 2001 the House of Lords was presented with a Dignity At Work Bill.  This seemed a great idea for unifying different elements of the workplace that can contribute to psychosocial hazards.  This would be a similar approach to using “impairment” to cover drugs, alcohol, fatigue and distraction.  However, it never progressed.

Regular readers of SafetyAtWorkBlog would note an undercurrent of humanism in many of the articles but it is heartening to see this in other articles and blogs.  Maud Purcell of Greenwich Times provides an article from early May 2009 on dignity in the workplace in a time of economic turmoil that you may find of interest and use.

Kevin Jones

More last minute lobbying but with compromise

The Business Council of Australia is the latest employer group to actively lobby Australian industrial relations ministers over harmonised OHS laws on the eve of the crucial Workplace Relations Ministers’ Council (WRMC) meeting.  BCA’s CEO Kate Lahey is reported in today’s Age newspaper as saying that the rejection of OHS law reform would say to investors that the States were not interested.

The Mineral Council of Australia has stated in the same article that 

“… a uniform OHS act will enable all businesses to focus on improving health and safety outcomes…”

Outcomes can be many things but much of the commentary over the last week seems to misunderstand the aims of the government’s review.  As I tried to emphasise on an interview on 17 May 2009 on radio 3CR, it was a review of OHS law not OHS management.  Satisfactory levels of safety have already been achievable under existing OHS law.  A change of law does not equate to a change of  approach or commitment.

The chance of the OHS reforms not going through was weakened on the weekend when the New South Wales Industrial Relations Minister, Joe Tripodi,

“signalled a compromise on the absolute duty of care that requires employers to prove a workplace is safe…”

New South Wales was the crucial sticking point in national negotiations and and the minister’s compromise is likely to be that the reverse onus only applies to corporations and that individuals be exempt.

If the WRMC decides to follow the National OHS Model Law Review Panel reports, OHS Law will be streamlined for lawyers, the Courts and OHS regulators.  This will benefit those businesses that operate across State borders but it will make little difference to the vast majority of workplaces in Australia.

 The recommendations of the Reports were not that radical.  The recommendations were, as expected, a copy of the Victorian OHS Act with bits added.  In fact, some lawyers question whether the OHS Model Law Review was really necessary given the bland predictable outcomes.

Many were wishing for an OHS revolution like that achieved by Lord Robens in the 1970s.  The fact is that the review was given limited resources and limited time to reach a conclusion.  The recommendations seem to be acceptable to the government and unsurprising.

The main game in Australian politics at the moment is industrial relations.  Any OHS changes will best understood through analysis of their IR implications.

Kevin Jones

WorkHealth concerns increase

Victoria’s WorkHealth program is due to roll-out its next stage of worker health assessments.  However, the program has been seriously curtailed by the failure of its funding model.  According to The Age  newspaper on 18 may 2009, employer associations have begun to withdraw their support compounding the embarrassment to the Premier, John Brumby, who lauded the program in March 2008.

The Master Builders Association will not be supporting the program due to WorkHealth’s connection with WorkSafe.  The Victorian Automobile Chamber of Commerce (VACC) thinks likewise.  There are concerns over the privacy of worker health records and that data from health checks may affect worker’s compensation arrangements or future claims.

The VACC is also concerned that employers will be blamed for issues over which they have little control – the health of their workers.

Many of these concerns could have been addressed by locating WorkHealth in the Department of Health, where health promotion already has a strong role and presence.  It is understood that the funding of WorkHealth from workers compensation premium returns on investment caused the program to reside within the Victorian WorkCover Authority.  There has also been the suggestion that WorkHealth was a pet program of the WorkCover board.

The program aims of free health checks for all Victorian workers was admirable and still achievable but the program was poorly introduced, poorly explained, based on a flawed funding model and now seems to be, if not dead, coughing up blood.

Kevin Jones

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