Category: wellness

Safety professionals and regulators must think more broadly and for the future

The European Agency for Occupational Safety & Health at Work has released its Annual Report for 2009/10.  Most of the content should be familiar to those who follow EU-OSHA through their blogs and publications but it provides a good indication of the future of OHS in Europe and the methods that will applied in that future.

Annual Report - Full

One significant achievement of EU-OSHA is its anticipation of workplace hazards.  Few OHS regulators and agencies have had the resources or will to forecast the next set of hazards.  The nature of regulators has been reactive possibly because they remain largely uncertain of how to step beyond the factory fence to acknowledge OHS as a broad social element and, after decades of compartmentalising safety and health to the workplace, to try to catch up with the spread of new varieties of workplaces. Continue reading “Safety professionals and regulators must think more broadly and for the future”

Suicide advice shows reactive thinking

Workplace suicides are in the news at the moment due to Foxconn and, to a lesser extent, France Telecome.  There is enough media attention for companies to start to evaluate their own risk exposures.

Through LinkedIn, Tom Boudreau of R&R Insurance Services, issued the following advice under the title “Do Employers Have a Duty to Prevent Workplace Suicides?”:

“A tech company in China has recently been plagued with a rash of worker suicides (and attempted suicides). Nine workers (all of them young) died and two others suffered serious injuries. These workers have not only killed or tried to kill themselves, they’ve done so in the workplace itself. …..

Some labor groups have blamed the company for the suicides, claiming it runs military-style factories and abuses workers. Regardless of the cause, these tragic deaths do raise an interesting question: what duty do employers have—if any—to prevent workplace suicides? Continue reading “Suicide advice shows reactive thinking”

Foxconn worker dies of exhaustion – focus on working hours

On 27 May 2010, a worker at the Foxconn factory in died from overwork, according to a statement released on 4 June 2010 by SACOM.  This coincides with a statement by Hon Hai Precision Industry on 6 June 2002, Hon Hai owns the Foxconn facility in Shenzhen.

The SACOM statement reports:

“Yan Li, 27, is the latest victim of Foxconn, the manufacturer of iPads and other high-tech items that has experienced a recent rash of worker suicides.  He collapsed and died from exhaustion on 27 May after having worked continuously for 34 hours.  His wife said Yan had been on the night shift for a month and in that time had worked overtime every night…”

There is clearly something structurally wrong with the working hours basis of the Foxconn factory.  Foxconn is a contractor or supplier of high-tech devices to major Western corporations who claim to have stringent oversight regimes.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) (not available online except for iPad users)  reports the 4 June Hon Hai statement in which wage increases are announced with the intention of improving worker health or, in Western terms, work-life balance.   Continue reading “Foxconn worker dies of exhaustion – focus on working hours”

The Toowong cancer cluster and risk communication

The latest edition of the Medical Journal of Australia (eMJA) has published an investigation into the possible cancer cluster at the Toowong television studios of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in late 2006.

Not surprisingly, given previous reports, the investigation has found that

“No statistically significant excess risk of breast cancer in ABC female employees was found across the Australian states and territories as a whole compared with their respective population incidences.  A statistically significant increased risk of breast cancer was found among ABC female employees in Queensland, consistent with the findings in an earlier report.”

The Toowong incident created considerable concern amongst staff, to such an extent that the corporation decided to close the entire facility and relocate all the broadcasting processes.  Unless this was already a corporate strategy the decision was brave, particularly when the initial investigations showed that the concern was not justified for Toowong specifically.

The ABC has an excellent timeline of media statements about the incident online.

Several issues from the latest report are worth noting.   Continue reading “The Toowong cancer cluster and risk communication”

Prisons are another world when implementing workplace safety

The new report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) into prisoner health and welfare makes no mention of workplace safety, even though most prisons in Australia have formal work programs for commercial gain.

The report “The health of Australia’s prisoners 2009” details the health and welfare status of Australian prisoners with some very confronting statistics that should be of more general concern to the community.  The media release summarises some of the report’s findings:

“The report highlights a number of significant health issues.  It shows that rates of chronic conditions, such as asthma, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and communicable diseases such as hepatitis B and hepatitis C, are significantly higher among prisoners than among the general population.

‘Of particular concern is the number of people who enter prison with mental health issues and high levels of psychological distress,’ said Ingrid Johnston of the AIHW’s Social and Indigenous Group. Continue reading “Prisons are another world when implementing workplace safety”

Looking for the causes of workplace harm can change one’s world view

The New York Times reported on 17 May 2010 that psychologists have started considering the causes of workplace stress.  About time!

The report says that

“Employees are unhappy about the design of their jobs, the health of their organizations and the quality of their managers..”

and that unhappy workers have a high risk of heart attacks and depression.

The article is principally an interview with the author of a new personnel management book that identifies that performance reviews are a generator of unhappiness and stress.  This concept has been circulating for some time and goes part way to making workplaces safer.

Job design, mentioned above, can be broadened to include how people are managed.  Personnel management and human resources (HR) are a crucial element of any business but the NYT article indicates a growing realisation that the foundations of this management, how jobs are designed, have generated some of the hazards that HR is now tasked to control. Continue reading “Looking for the causes of workplace harm can change one’s world view”

Eliminate the safety risk – sack the worker

A curious workplace safety and industrial relations issue has appeared in the Golden Circle factory in Queensland as reported in the Courier-Mail.  57-year-old forklift driver, Lance Pedersen has been sacked because he was found to be morbidly obese and with osteoarthritis in his knees.

The newspaper article raises many personnel management issues and there are sure to be more issues that have not been reported but a remarkable quote is reported from a company spokesperson:

“Golden Circle has an obligation to ensure the health and safety of all our employees,” the spokesman said. “We are therefore unable to continue to employ Mr Pedersen.” Continue reading “Eliminate the safety risk – sack the worker”

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