Category: workplace

Lessons for everyone in the legal action against France Telecom executives over suicides

In 2009-10, SafetyAtWorkBlog followed the unfolding and tragic story of the spate of suicides at France Telecome that were directly related to the change of work practices and organisational policies instigated after privatisation.  SafetyAtWorkBlog stated that the suicides could be considered to be a case study of poor personnel management and, in more recent parlance, a failure of safety leadership.  This month French authorities have begun investigating France Telecom executives.

According to an AFP report in early July 2012:

“Louis-Pierre Wenes was placed under investigation on Thursday, a day after former France Telecom chief Didier Lombard, for workplace harassment, his lawyer Frederique Beaulieu said.”

At the time of the suicides Wenes was Deputy CEO and Lombard was CEO.

Interestingly and curiously, workplace bullying is not a term used in the France Telecome situation, although it may have met the criteria that Australia applies. Continue reading “Lessons for everyone in the legal action against France Telecom executives over suicides”

Public hearings into Workplace Bullying to commence in Australia

Next week Australia holds public hearings into the issue of workplace bullying. Currently the House Standing Committee on Education and Employment has not yet made any submissions publicly available which handicaps the value of the public hearings for observers but the Trade Unions have released their submissions.  Generally, the suggestions for control measures are progressive but the submissions also indicate the extent of the challenge in “controlling” workplace bullying and some of the challenges facing this inquiry.

The ACTU claims that workplace bullying was given national prominence following a survey of union members in 2000 but that survey is not representative of the broader Australian community and should be treated with caution.  The ACTU submission seeks support for its survey results from more authoritative sources such as Safe Work Australia and the Productivity Commission.  But neither of these sources indicates workplace bullying to be as big an issue as the ACTU claims.

Safe Work Australia’s figures, quoted by the ACTU , say that in

“In 2007/08, 26% of accepted workers compensation claims for mental stress in Australia resulted in 26 or more weeks off work.”

The significance in this quote is that bullying is not mentioned and if one accepts that bullying is a subset of mental stress and psychosocial hazards, bullying should be only a fraction of the 26% figure.  It is also the case that it is common for victims of bullying to eliminate the hazard through resignation rather than lodge workers’ compensation claims.  So one metric may indicate a low bullying rate but another indicates a “hidden” rate.  Accurate measurement, the accumulation of evidence, is a major problem in any study of workplace bullying and is a major challenge for this Parliamentary Inquiry. Continue reading “Public hearings into Workplace Bullying to commence in Australia”

Workplace bullying in the police force illustrates the challenges of change management

There are two newspaper reports in Australia on 21 June 2012 about the Victorian Police Force that illustrate a fractious safety culture and a major organisational and ideological impediment to reducing workplace bullying.

The Australian article ” OPI concedes failure against force’s culture” (only available to subscribers) states that:

‘The Office of Police Integrity has conceded it and other corruption fighting measures have failed to root out the entrenched culture of reprisals and mateship in pockets of the Victoria Police that seriously harms the force….”

“The OPI says current law fails to deal with why whistleblowers are targeted. ‘‘The legislated protections against retaliation do not address the root cause of reprisal — a workplace culture of misguided loyalty,’’ it argues.  “The protections are individualistic and short-term, tending to ‘look after’ victims and potential victims of reprisal rather than address why reprisal occurs.’’

“Despite the subsequent formation of the OPI and the beefing up of the Ombudsman’s powers, police still struggled to break free of the shackles of loyalty and the so-called brotherhood.’

The Age article, “A fifth of police bullied at work“, reports on a government survey circulated to 14,000 people.

‘The figures, provided to The Age, mean about 1250 of the 4200 police staff who completed the survey have seen bullying behaviour, while nearly 900 say they have been bullied.’ Continue reading “Workplace bullying in the police force illustrates the challenges of change management”

Brodie’s Law not being applied. Perhaps a broader context is needed.

Workplace bullying is a hazard that must be recognized, addressed and punished, but above all prevented. “Brodie’s Law” was always going to be a part of this challenge but never the solution.

Today’s Age newspaper bemoans the fact that “Brodie’s Law” has not been applied since its introduction 12 months ago.  This is not surprising and the article provides some clues to why.

The application of this law seems now to be mainly intended for the Victorian Police force and, as with any police force, there are a great many items on their agenda of which workplace bullying is only one.

Policing and harm prevention

It can also be asked why the Victorian Police force is policing a workplace issue?  Workplace safety is principally the responsibility of the employer or, in the new language, person conducting a business or undertaking.  The bullies and employer involved in the bullying of Brodie Panlock were prosecuted under occupational health and safety law, not the Crimes Act. Continue reading “Brodie’s Law not being applied. Perhaps a broader context is needed.”

Where are the safety profession thinkers?

The most successful safety management improvements come from a multi-disciplinary approach. The biggest leaps in safety management have come not from the established safety academic profession of engineering but from those outside that discipline – sociologists (Andrew Hopkins) , psychologists (James Reason)  and, increasingly, philosophers.

Recently philosopher Alain de Botton  was interviewed in the Australian magazine, Dumbo Feather (issue 30, 2012).  When asked whether the discussion of philosophical ideas exists in popular space, he said:

“I care about a mass audience because I somehow believe that the mass is right.  I believe in a democratic sense that if you’re not reaching a broad number of people with your ideas, that there’s probably something wrong with your ideas.  It might not be everything that’ wrong with them, but something presentational or structural.  We live in very open societies, where if your message is a good one it should be able to get out there.

So when the typical academic says, ‘Well, you know, I don’t want to be open to popular scrutiny’ or, ‘I’m not interested in discussing my material with just anyone’, my response is ‘Well, why?’  What is it about your field of study that makes it inevitably beyond a broader public acceptance or recognition or discussion?”

de Botton is not talking about safety, per se, but he is talking about the communication of ideas and communication, or consultation, is a crucial element of successful safety management.

Why is it that the most useful and interesting perspectives on workplace safety are coming from non-traditional safety disciplines?

Kevin Jones

Australian financial newspaper discusses workstation ergonomics

For some time, restricted posture at workstations has been identified as being unhealthy.  The Australian Financial Review on 15 May 2012 takes up the story but the author, Dierdre Macken, points to squatting as an option until “they wait for the occupational health and safety review of chairs to come in”.  She misses the point.  Chairs are not the problem.  The type of work and the design of workplaces is a much more important problem.

We have come to understand that productivity is not always achieved through a restricted focus on a work task based on an eight-hour day and that includes between one and three formal breaks.  A better productivity comes from engagement, interaction and a variety of tasks.  Interestingly workplace safety is also improved through these same elements.

Kevin Jones

Favourable progress could be achieved on OHS if the current reality is accepted

The issue of “control” in Australian OHS law continues to be discussed as industry associations bristle against the introduction of Work Health and Safety laws, frequently on flawed or dubious costings.

Australian safety laws have been moving from the prescriptive tradition for decades. This has been due to various reasons including new workplace hazards that cannot be controlled in defined ways, diminished enforcement resources and confused roles in OHS regulators, the change in labour force dominance from blue- to white-collar occupations but, most of all, repeated demands from business associations for increased flexibility and autonomy on managing workplace safety.

Certainly the degree of control has varied from State to State with New South Wales being considered as having the most business-unfriendly OHS laws but most States are now running under a different set of OHS rules and criticizing the current laws by referring to now-repealed OHS laws in the most extreme State of New South Wales, as Ken Phillips does in today’s The Australian newspaper, is almost sophistry. Continue reading “Favourable progress could be achieved on OHS if the current reality is accepted”

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