Category: training

Forklift incident costs NZ company over $34,000

New Zealand’s Department of Labour (DoL) has released a statement that illustrates a classic scenario for forklift safety.  According to the statement :

“The employee was walking in a freezer when he was hit from behind by a forklift carrying a 10-carton-high pallet of packed meat.  The Department’s investigation showed the height of the load impeded the driver’s view and contributed to the incident.

The employee’s hip and thigh were fractured. He was in hospital for three weeks and has only recently returned to full-time work.”

The incident occurred in April 2009 with the company being fined $NZ34,000. Continue reading “Forklift incident costs NZ company over $34,000”

Does OHS training work?

Businesses thrive on the concept of return on investment (ROI) but it has been very hard to apply this to training in workplace safety and SafetyatWorkBlog can only provide clues to this relationship.

Training is an important component in any company’s safety management program but it will not solve all OHS ills, regardless of  the claims of some training providers.  Specific training to achieve licences is one type of training where skills become directly practical but other training, such as First Aid, Health & Safety Representative (HSR) training or general OHS training, is more difficult to quantify. Continue reading “Does OHS training work?”

The “suitably qualified” challenge on OHS

A quick survey of some of the public submissions on the development of Australia’s model OHS Act illustrates the challenges facing the government after it decided not to include a requirement for only people who are “suitably qualified” in OHS to provide advice to business on workplace safety.

Organisations across the political spectrum have spoken in favour of including “suitably qualified” but “suitably qualified” is in the eye of the beholder.  Several labour and trade union organisations believe that health and safety representatives (HSRs) are “suitably qualified” or “suitable qualified” people should assist HSRs in their work.

The Queensland Council of Unions says

“The WRMC [Workplace Relations Ministers Council] committed itself to a Model Act of the highest possible standards. In order to achieve this, the appointment of suitably qualified persons based on the Queensland model should be reconsidered and the recommendations of the Review implemented.”

Queensland’s OHS legislation had a system of Workplace Health and Safety Officers who were required by every company that had over 30 employees.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions said a PCBU [person conducting a business or undertaking] should

“…employ or engage persons who are suitably qualified in relation to occupational health and safety to provide advice to the PCBU concerning the health and safety of workers of the PCBU.”

The Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union says there should be an “employer obligation to engage a suitably qualified person to assist in H&S”.

Others see “suitably qualified” as a criterion that limits who would qualify for an OHS Entry Permit and what their powers can be.  Wesfarmers Industrial Safety wrote:

“We contend that OHS Permit Holders must be competent to provide OHS advice and must provide a valid reason to justify entry, the only valid entry criteria being to assist the resolution of a reasonably suspected, specified contravention of the Health and Safety Act.   To be effective they must comply with and support site/organisational procedures to enhance site health and safety outcomes and must not intentionally and unreasonably hinder or obstruct any business/undertaking or intentionally intimidate or threaten any business/undertaking or employee.

Suitably qualified in this context must also contemplate that they must not disclose information obtained in accordance with the OHS permit for any purpose other than to assist the resolution of the suspected contravention and must not take copies of documents: if serious concerns exist the Regulator can be requested to attend the site, they will request copies of relevant documents if required.

Additionally, the OHS permit holder and any organisation they represent must be held accountable for the actions taken by the OHS Permit holder.”

There are several challenges for the Australian Government on this issue of “suitably qualified”.  Firstly, it needs to decide whether it can reverse its decision not to include a “suitably qualified” element into the legislation.  To do this it would need to acknowledge that the reasons for exclusion do not match the sensitivities of the community.  This could be embarrassing but also indicate a flexibility and capacity to respond to community concerns.

The government also needs to determine where “suitably qualified” fits.  Should and HSR be suitably qualified or should this only reflect the OHS professionals?  In both cases it puts the governmental up against the commercial training organisations and the university educators (the OHS professional associations have far less clout).

Some academics see the lack of the inclusion of “suitably qualified” as providing a lower level of workplace safety.  Many of these submissions see “suitably qualified” as existing well above the level of HSRs to the professional level.

Professor Mike Capra of the University of Queensland, and other tertiary educators made the following plea:

“We the undersigned Professors of Occupational Health and Safety strongly recommend that the words “suitably qualified”* be inserted as appropriate in the model legislation in relation to the acquisition of advice regarding the health and safety of workers.

Our recommendation is based on the continuing high cost to the community in dollar terms and human suffering in relation to both work place (sic) injury and workplace induced illness which often has long latency and serious medical consequences.

Addressing such serious issues requires properly qualified professionals. The professional practice of OHS management requires skilled professionals with a sound foundation in the physical and health sciences as well as a strong knowledge base in the core OHS areas of health, safety, ergonomics, law, hygiene and toxicology and OHS management systems.

The universities across the country are offering professional entry programs at undergraduate and post graduate levels that are developing the OHS workforce. To sustain this workforce and ensure continued reduction in the societal cost of workplace injury, illness and death there must be recognition of the professional basis of OHS practice and it is imperative that this recognition is reflected in the harmonised legislation.

* Suitably qualified to be determined, as in other professions, by the relevant professional association and industry standards.”

Mike is very committed to improving health and safety of the Australian workforce and it is clear that the moral imperative is king.  But it must also be noted that education thrives on the recognition of qualifications and a legislative requirement for suitably qualified OHS professionals would strengthen the case for the viability of tertiary OHS courses which, according to some sources, are in a perilous state.

One submission questioned the sense or practicality of having an HSR trained in safety beyond the skills of the PCBU.  Shaw Idea wrote

“….the Model Act should require PCBUs to obtain advice from suitably qualified advisers. It is inconsistent to require HSRs to be trained, but not require PCBUs to either be trained or be advised by those with competence in relevant areas. The OHS consequences of incompetent or ill-informed actions by employers are far greater than the consequences of HSR actions.”

The OHS training industry has done themselves a disservice for decades by not having a formal OHS management course for safety or business managers.  There is a big difference between training an HSR to manage upward to the employer and training a manager to manage the safety of a workforce.  Leaving executive training to the tertiary sector has exposed a large vocational hole in business management of workplace safety.

It must also be stated that the editor of SafetyAtWorkBlog also made a submission to the Australian Government in which “suitably qualified” was discussed.  Below is the relevant section:

“Many safety professionals are concerned that “suitably qualified” has been omitted for the proposed legislation.  I think the reason given for its omission is poor but I do not support those who advocate the inclusion of the concept.  The push has been particularly strong from Victoria and through a couple of OHS professional associations.  No evidence has been made publicly available for the need for such a concept.  It is something Victoria has had and it is loathe (sic) to relinquish. Good OHS advice is available from good OHS advisers and caveat emptor should apply on OHS advice as with any other.

The “suitably qualified” advocates like to compare themselves to other professions like medicine yet it is recommended even from within the medical profession that second opinions be sought.  The safety profession does not advocate this very sensible suggestion.”

Kevin Jones

Safe Work Australia Week 2009 begins

The last week of October 2009 is Safe Work Australia Week.  The federal OHS authority sets an overall framework for the States’ OHS promotional activities.

A media statement in support of the week, reiterated the statistics –

“More than 260 Australians die as a result of work related injuries and over 135,000 are seriously injured every year.”

Below is a list of the links for each Australian State’s acitivities.

SWAW_generic_WEB

Unintended consequences of inadequate preparation

The Australian Government instigated a rebate scheme for ceiling insulation for domestic homes in order to the climatic impacts of heating one’s home.  The rebates effectively make insulation free and, as a result, there is a boom in insulation installation.

As with any boom in any industry, there is an influx of new workers.  The Australian newspaper reports the death of an installer in Brisbane in mid-October 2009 and the shortcomings this death illustrates.

The article says that the rebate scheme has been so popular that fibreglass batts are not available so installers are using foil-based reflective insulation.

“Master Electricians Association president Malcolm Richards said the foil-based products should be banned in established homes because untrained installers were stapling foil on to live electricity wires.  He said the practice was the cause of last week’s tragedy in Brisbane and electricians were being increasingly called on to repair dodgy work.”

Firstly, electricians are always being called on to repair the botched electrical work of others.  Secondly, it’s not the fault of the foil suppliers so it seems unfair to ban a legitimate insulation product.

The Master Electricians Association is facing the problem that others face every day, unqualified workers doing the work normally undertaken by qualified workers.

The political opportunism by some in this article is regrettable.

The Australian Government should have learnt from its computers-in-schools initiative/debacle that there are ancillary costs with any government program and that these costs should be considered in the policy development and/or have relevant organisations consulted so that the necessary support services are prepared for the plan’s launch and operation.

The computers-in-schools program did not consider the software costs to use on the free computer for ever secondary school student.  The LPG conversion rebate did not consider the scale of demand.  The solar panel rebate scheme was cancelled even though the demand was great.  The home insulation scheme has drawn inexperienced installers into the industry.  All good intentions harmed through poor planning and some of that harm can be the death of workers.

Kevin Jones

Accusations of poor nuclear safety

Australia does not (yet) have nuclear power but its most prominent nuclear reactor is at Lucas Heights in Sydney.  On 21 October 2009, the Australian Greens Senator Scott Ludlam was told that several incidents had occurred at the reactor since 2008.

According to a media release from the Greens, Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) revealed that

  • “A major recent event involving a vial being dropped and left unreported for up to three hours leading to exposure by workers.
  • An internal audit found gross deficiencies in safety procedures.
  • Management was unaware some workers present during the incident had not completed OHS induction training or a radiation safety course.
  • Procedures required upgrading since the incident.
  • Other incidents have occurred since and procedures are constantly being upgraded.”

A short AAP article on the comments is also available online.  The article is likely to gain considerable media attention through the inclusion of the following comment

“A spokesman for Senator Ludlam told AAP that if safety procedures could not be followed at Australia’s nuclear reactor, “God help” Australia if ANSTO was put in charge of a full scale nuclear power facility.”

It seems unfair to put out this story without some response from ANSTO.  Late this afternoon ANSTO released a detailed response to the Greens claims and AAP story which it claims were full of inaccuracies.  Below are some extracts of the statement which is available here in full.

“No incident of the type reported took place at the OPAL reactor.  An incident did take place on 28 August 2008 at ANSTO’s radiopharmaceutical production facility.   This was not a spill and no staff were exposed to significant radiation doses.   The incident took place in a shielded manufacturing enclosure.”

“ANSTO acknowledges that conservative decision making was not used at the start of this incident. Procedures have improved since as acknowledged in the Greens’ press release.”

“The quantity of medical isotope in the vial was 1/10 of a teaspoon and when the vial was dislodged the worker initially attempted to retrieve it and notified his supervisor within 30 minutes of the initial incident.   The vial was finally retrieved after three hours.   Molybdenum-99 production did not continue following the incident.”

“Incident reporting is a standard practice in the radiopharmaceutical manufacturing environment.   Senator Ludlam appears to have confused the reporting of incidents with an assumption of these incidents being severe or hazardous to workers.  This is not the case.”

Nuclear issues always need to be taken seriously and, as with any incident, must be investigated appropriately.  The Greens have made, understandable, political mileage out of the information revealed in the Senate hearings.  The comments match the interests of its constituents and members.

What it also indicates is that Australia has yet to enter a nuclear energy debate that has already been experienced in Europe and elsewhere over the last thirty years or so.  As nuclear energy becomes an increasingly important option for Australia in response to climate change, the debate is likely to be furious.

Kevin Jones

Safe Work Bill, suitably qualified and professional plans

Dr Geoff Dell of Protocol Safety Management and a prominent member of the

Dr Geoff Dell
Dr Geoff Dell

Safety Institute of Australia (SIA), believes that the most crucial issue facing the safety profession in Australia is the lack of the requirement to use a “suitably qualified” safety adviser.

The Australian Government was recommended to include such a requirement in its draft OHS model laws but rejected the recommendation because

“an unintended consequence could be that persons conducting a business or undertaking would be encouraged to delegate their responsibilities”.

This is odd because the Safe Work Bill includes seemingly clear duties:

“The person who has management or control of a workplace must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that the workplace, the means of entering and exiting the workplace and anything arising from the workplace are safe and without risks to the health of any person.”

Unless the “suitably qualified” person (undefined in the Safe Work Bill) is also the “person who has management or control of a workplace”  who has to ensure safety, it is hard to see how the Government’s concerns about abrogated responsibility are relevant.

Dr Dell wrote to the Workplace Relations Minister, Julia Gillard, on behalf of the SIA.

“Our motivation for urging you for inclusion of a “suitably qualified” requirement in the model OHS legislation should not be misinterpreted as any desire on our part to diminish or eliminate the equally important requirement for companies to consult their workers, or the workers’ elected representatives, on issues and decisions relating to the workers’ health and safety. Collaboration of employers and workers in the delivery of appropriate workplace health and safety outcomes is an essential precept.

Rather, it is our strong view that when those workplace collaboration processes need the OHS advice of others, there is an important need to ensure the persons providing that advice have the appropriate credentials to deliver that advice to the maximum benefit of those involved at the workplace.”

Pages from Geoff_Dells_letter_to_Julia_GillardThe argument is repeatedly expressed as a comparison between a suitably qualified safety advisor and doctors or plumbers or other licensed or registered occupations.  But the Government has twice now indicated that it sees no the risks of abusing such a formalised position outweigh the benefits – the first in not accepting a review panel recommendation and second by omitting the issue in the Safe Work Bill.

Should the safety profession, as a whole, continue to push the issue with an unsupportive government or should it accept that the battle is lost and begin a Plan B? A plan where, perhaps, the market begins to demand certainty about the skill level of their safety advisors to such an extent that a scheme of accredited safety professionals is an indispensable business resource?

This may be the tactic of the SIA in its support of  an elite level of safety professional who must have a tertiary OHS qualification.  It is certainly devoting considerable resources to the program, supported by hundreds of thousands of dollars from WorkSafe Victoria.  The caveat of this approach is that the SIA gets control of the profession.

This is not the case with the professions with which the SIA likes to compare itself.  Those professions have independent assessment bodies, ethics bodies and sometimes industry/profession ombudsmen.

What the safety profession needs to counter is the argument that the Government has accepted from somewhere, that business is highly likely to push its OHS responsibility to others if it can.  The profession, and the SIA, needs to convince the Government that business will accept its OHS duties.

Dr Dell told SafetyAtWorkBlog that the Safe Work Bill has been written for lawyers by lawyers and seems aimed at what to do after an incident has occurred.  It is about harm minimisation and not safety.  He says that the preventative aim of OHS legislation has been severely diluted.  In this he echoes some of the  SafetyAtWorkBlog position that the new laws are not about safety management but about safety law, and have little bearing on the shop floor where hazards are most often faced and controlled.

It is also important to remember that OHS law was intended to be a law that could be understood by the layman and implemented by the layman.  The new Safe Work Bill will be incomprehensible to anyone other than lawyers and even then, as seen from recent blog articles about Mike Hammond, Michael Tooma and others, the lawyers are unlikely to agree on interpretation and application.

Kevin Jones

[Note: Kevin Jones is a Fellow of the Safety Institute of Australia]

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