Category: small business

Australian Governments’ flawed strategy on new OHS laws

Lawyer Andrew Douglas’ latest article for SmartCompany illustrates the conflicting approach to the enforcement of alcohol and drug policies in workplaces.  Douglas illustrates the constant struggle for business operators between employment law and safety law, workplace relations and human resources.  Case law has progressed the management of human capital more quickly than has safety management over the same workplace issue of alcohol and drug use leading to a difficulty in determining the best managerial approach to the hazard.

Douglas’ discussion of the role of case law in changing managerial approaches also has relevance in the OHS harmonisation process currently occurring in Australia.  In the early days of this process, the legal fraternity believed, and often publicly stated, that the operation of the law will be “ironed out” only after several years of prosecutions and case law.  These statements seem to forget that behind almost all OHS prosecutions are one or more injured workers and the reality is often forgotten when part of a lawyer’s motivation is also to seek a precedent or a clarification of the law. Continue reading “Australian Governments’ flawed strategy on new OHS laws”

OHS compliance checklists

For several months some Australian OHS regulators have been providing “Compliance at a glance” checklists. These are not intended to establish compliance, particularly in the small business sector as listed on one regulator’s website , but are more brief indicators of areas for greater improvement.

Nevertheless the items listed in the “red zone” of the checklists establish a benchmark of NON-compliance. These items are listed below:

Australian safety awards are important but require rebooting

The 6th annual Safe Work Australia awards concluded a couple of hours ago.  The event was an opportunity to meet Australians prominent in the safety profession, celebrate innovation and to acknowledge individual efforts.  The winners’ achievements were largely significant but there are problems with the OHS award processes across Australia and the Safe Work Australia Awards reflected some of these.

The event, held at Parliament House, included a good collection of corporate, legal and  government decision-makers in the audience of 350 guests.  The Industrial Relations Minister, Chris Evans, delegated Senator Jacinta Collins (media statement available HERE) to attend the function and she expressed a rudimentary understanding of workplace health and safety.  She,  like many others, stated that “all workplace incidents are preventable”, a statement whose value is becoming dubious.  If safety professionals desire evidence-based decision making, someone needs to research the “preventable” statement as it risks creating unreasonable expectations of safety in the community, if it has not already.

Category 1: Best Workplace Health and Safety Management System

  1. Private Sector – Ballina Bypass Alliance
  2. Public Sector – Courts Administration Authority

Category 2: Best Solution to an Identified Workplace Health and Safety Issue – CSIRO Livestock Industries Continue reading “Australian safety awards are important but require rebooting”

Brodie’s Law on bullying needs more consideration for workplace application

Recent attention on the presentation of the Crimes Amendment (Bullying) Bill 2011 to the Victorian Parliament has, understandably, focussed on the changes to the criminal code. However some of that attention should also have been given to the existing rules and control measures under workplace law, particularly considering that the proposed amendments, commonly referred to as Brodie’s law, are being described in the context of workplace bullying.

WorkSafe Victoria’s 2005 guidance on workplace violence and bullying specifies what elements of the Crimes Act 1958 could be relevant to workplace bullying:

  • Intentionally or Recklessly Causing Serious Injury
  • Intentionally or Recklessly Causing Injury
  • Threats to Kill
  • Threats to Inflict Serious Injury
  • Stalking

The inclusion of the last item may surprise some who have been reading only the newspaper coverage of Brodie’s Law as there was a clear implication that the application of stalking to workplace bullying was new.

Law firm Clayton Utz reminds us that workplace bullying remains undefined in the Crimes Act and that the Bill

“… extends the definition of the pre-existing offence of stalking by expanding the definition of that offence to pick up the type of behaviours that are typical of workplace bullying.”

If the Bill passes the Victorian Parliament, the OHS regulator will need to amend its advice on workplace bullying to reflect the expanded definition of stalking. But as can be seen by the bullet points above, changes to guidance may be minor as stalking is already seen as a potential element of workplace bullying. Continue reading “Brodie’s Law on bullying needs more consideration for workplace application”

Beware OHS statistics quoted in media releases

On 6 April 2011, at the Safety In Action conference in Melbourne, the Safety Institute of Australia and the Australian Institute of Management released the findings of their 2011 Business Survey.  The 2010 survey was discussed in an earlier blog article.

SafetyAtWorkBlog was allowed to see a version of the survey results prior to their public release next week but according to the media release of 6 April:

“More than 40 per cent (41%) of the occupational health and safety (OHS) personnel surveyed did not believe their organisation had a ‘well entrenched OHS culture.’ That view was shared by a quarter of human resources (HR) personnel and senior managers involved in the survey. In contrast, just 11 per cent of CEOs and Board members held that view.

Furthermore, almost half of OHS personnel (49%) who participated in the survey believed that efforts to minimise Continue reading “Beware OHS statistics quoted in media releases”

Workplace safety challenges for the Coffice

What is a workplace?  In Australia, the easy answer is “wherever work takes place”.  This seems sensible and logical but think about it and the impact on businesses and community will be large.  The Sunday Age newspaper reports on one business that is setting down some ground rules for those who are running businesses from their cafe or, what the article describes as “coffices“. Continue reading “Workplace safety challenges for the Coffice”

OHS harmonisation to result in a substantial increase in costs to business

Australian lawyer Andrew Douglas has provided a frank assessment of the OHS harmonisation process instigated by the Australian government to reduce red tape and administrative costs of safety.  In Smart Company on 1 March 2011, Douglas wrote:

“…the Model Act, the regulations and documents that flow from it will dramatically increase state-based businesses legislative compliance, will massively increase the paperwork proving compliance and will inevitably lead to a substantial increase in costs to business in managing safety and OHS.”

Most State governments continue to support the harmonisation process, in almost all its elements, as a positive for business. So what’s the story here?

Andrew Douglas’ opinion needs serious consideration as it is one of the few contrary positions expressed to date. Continue reading “OHS harmonisation to result in a substantial increase in costs to business”

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