Category: small business

Australian senator sees OHS consultation as “collusion”

In response to correspondence from an Australian safety professional, Senator Eric Abetz, Federal Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, has displayed his ignorance of occupational health and safety (OHS) laws.  In the  email response, reproduced in full below and dated 26 April 2012, Senator Abetz, accuses “big Government” “big unions and big business” of colluding on the development of Codes of Practice.

Abetz shows his misunderstanding of the status of codes of practice in the regulation of OHS.  He also uses a DRAFT  code of practice to illustrate the absurdity of new OHS laws, a draft that is having a contentious route but is expected to be considerably changed in the final version.

The draft code he chooses is workplace bullying and the senator tries to illustrate how silly this code’s suggestions are by hypothesizing a small business.  He chooses a two person plumbing firm.  How different his perspective could have been should he have chosen a real small business workplace bullying case that resulted in a worker killing herself.  How convenient to avoid the Cafe Vamp example. Continue reading “Australian senator sees OHS consultation as “collusion””

Victoria’s analysis of OHS law costs is unhelpful politics

The Victorian Government has released the PricewaterhouseCooper (PwC) assessment of the potential economic impacts of the introduction of the national Work Health and safety laws.

The government media statement accompanying the report states that

“The proposed laws do not deliver on the intent of the COAG reform agreed to in 2008 which aimed to reduce the cost of regulation and enhance productivity and workforce mobility,” Mr Baillieu said.

“Victoria already has the safest system, the most effective system, the lowest rate of workplace injuries, illnesses and deaths of all states, and the lowest workers’ compensation premiums in the country.  It is estimated that it will cost Victoria $812 million to transition to the new model and $587 million a year in the first five years in ongoing costs to businesses.  Most of those costs will be borne by small enterprises which make up 90 per cent of Victorian businesses…,”

This media statement needs to be seen as, largely, political posturing. PwC has produced a report that confirms many of the suspicions that the conservative politicians in Victoria have held for some time. Continue reading “Victoria’s analysis of OHS law costs is unhelpful politics”

New research on quad bike safety remains academic in a climate of uncertain OHS reform

Dr Tony Lower of the Australian Centre for Agricultural Health & Safety (AgHealth) has released a farm safety research report of curiosity more than influence.  The report, Farm Related Injuries Reported in the Australian Print Media 2011, makes use of the media monitoring services that the centre has been using for over five years.  The accompanying media release, not yet available online, summarises some basic findings:

“According to the report released by the Centre today, the 2011 information illustrates a 60% drop in the number of on‐farm injury deaths when compared to the early 1990’s, where the average number of deaths was 146 per year. “This reduction over the past 20 years is fantastic news, however by our estimates, many more deaths can be prevented by adopting solutions which we know from the evidence work” said Dr Lower.

The study results show that quad bikes (18) were the leading cause and made up 31% of all deaths.

Meanwhile tractors (10) were responsible for 17% of incidents. Tragically, seven of the fatal cases (11%) involved children aged 15yrs and under, with quad bikes (3) and drowning (2) being most frequently involved.”

An understandable limitation of the report is the fact that the social influence of print media is much less than in previous decades and that the report misses multimedia and the new medias.  This is one of those research reports than can genuinely suggest additional research to increase the relevance of the findings.   Continue reading “New research on quad bike safety remains academic in a climate of uncertain OHS reform”

Workplaces are under-prepared for first aid incidents

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) has reported that

“Less than 10% of people are aware they need to cool burn wounds for 20 minutes in cool water as a first aid measure.”

Research* published in the AMA’s Medical Journal of Australia, in October 2011, found that

“Unprompted, 82% of (7320) respondents said they knew to cool the burn with cool or cold water but 41.5% said they didn’t know for how long cold running water should be applied.”

SafetyAtWorkBlog has followed the issue of first aid treatment for burns and the evidence for burn creams.

The application of the recommended treatment for burns continues to be a contentious issue in practice in Australian workplaces.  Part of the reason could be that first aid treatment in many workplaces is seen as little more than a “bandaid treatment” because this is the first aid treatment most seen and most received.  But this perception does not site well with the evidence for burn treatments.

The first aid (band aid) treatments in most workplace is quick and usually does not interrupt work.  To properly treat a burn, a worker must stop work for twenty minutes.  Most workplaces where burns are likely to occur, for instance, construction sites, manufacturing, food preparation, are unlikely to welcome a stoppage of one worker for twenty minutes.  Can one imagine a burger flipper at a fast food restaurant standing with a hand under a running tap for twenty minutes?  It would be unlikely that this absence could be covered. Continue reading “Workplaces are under-prepared for first aid incidents”

Politicians are exploiting proposed OHS laws for their own benefit

South Australia’s Industrial Relations Minister, Rob Lucas, stated in the Adelaide Advertiser on 3 October 2011 that

“The Liberal Party has always supported strong work safety laws which protect workers at work sites.”

This may be the case within the limitations of that sentence but the conservative political parties have not always been supportive of the basis for safety management, the creation of evidence through authoritative research.  According to a 2003 submission by the Australian Council of Trade Unions

“After the election of the Liberal/National Coalition in 1996, the Federal Government decided that:

  • the NOHSC budget must be cut by $5.9 million each year;
  • a further 5% cut was imposed across the board; and
  • redundancies had to be covered from within the NOHSC budget.

This represented a cut of $6.6 million (35-40%) to the NOHSC annual budget……

The April 1996 NOHSC decision on allocation of its $14 million budget cut OHS research and information, and education and training. National standards work was also decreased. These areas are central to a national approach to OHS.” [emphasis added]

Around the time of these severe budget cuts Australia had begun moving to a system of national uniformity in OHS.  The impact of this political decision hamstrung the research efforts of NOHSC just as the uniformity momentum was increasing.  As the National Research Centre for Occupational Health and Safety Regulation has written

“A notable development in standard setting in Australia during the 1990s was the movement towards national uniformity in standards in regulations and codes of practice. The process was overseen by the former NOHSC, which in 1991 established a tripartite National Uniformity Taskforce, which identified several key first order priorities for achieving national uniformity: plant, certification of users and operators of industrial equipment; workplace hazardous substances; occupational noise; manual handling; major hazardous facilities; and storage and handling of dangerous goods.

NOHSC developed standards in the first six of these areas, and the jurisdictions were well on the way towards adopting these standards by the end of 1996, although it should be noted that jurisdictions were quite inconsistent in their adoption, particular in choosing whether to implement the standards in regulations or codes of practice, in their drafting styles and, in some cases, the substance of provisions. The national uniformity process was not complete when the Howard government came to power in 1996, and that government first significantly down-sized and then abolished NOHSC, with the result that the move towards national uniformity slowed dramatically after mid-1996.”

Rob Lucas seems to ignore the history of his own party’s decision. Continue reading “Politicians are exploiting proposed OHS laws for their own benefit”

WorkSafe should explain its role in increasing a small business’ OHS penalty by $50k

In June 2010, SafetyAtWorkBlog discussed the case of company director Peter Angelico and why the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), following a request by WorkSafe Victoria, doubled the financial penalty over an OHS breach.  Peter Angelico is currently working his way through the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) trying to determine how the increased penalty can be justified as in “the public interest”.

The VCAT hearing is set for 7 October 2011 in Melbourne.  Angelico, the proprietor of A Bending Company, is not contesting the original judgement for he says in his applicant statement, seen by SafetyAtWorkBlog, that:

“Releasing information that can help prevent a future accident is always in the public interest. There are no winners from workplace injuries and it is vital that companies are fully aware of their obligations and publishing safety information can only assist in this process.”

Angelico would argue that small business owners, like himself, should also be provided with a more accurate cost of non-compliance with OHS legislation.  That would also be in the public interest. Continue reading “WorkSafe should explain its role in increasing a small business’ OHS penalty by $50k”

Employer association criticises Australia’s new Work Health and Safety laws

On 9 September 2011 The Australian newspaper reported  that the executive director of the Independent Contractors of Australia, Ken Phillips, had serious concerns over the new Work Heath and Safety laws to be introduced in Australia in 2012.

Phillips has received legal advice that identifies serious shortcomings in the new laws compared to the existing Victorian OHS laws. These include eliminating the right to silence and protection against self-incrimination during incident investigations by OHS regulators.  The article says that the ICA’s analysis

“…shows that the new system would also empower workplace inspectors to seize entire businesses without the oversight of a court, something that is currently not permitted in Victoria.”

It also reports that Phillips fears

“…the scheme would lead to a recurrence of what happened under the former workplace safety system in NSW where “ordinary people were prosecuted even if they had no control over the business”. Continue reading “Employer association criticises Australia’s new Work Health and Safety laws”

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