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CEO loses job over safety failures

Health funding and management is a constant political issue. The attention increases hugely during election campaigns like the one that is currently occurring in the Australian state of Queensland.

This week the leader of the opposition parties, Lawrence Springborg, called for the release of a government report into the sexual attack on a nurse and security in Torres Strait islands. SafetyAtWorkBlog has written repeatedly on OHS issues associated with the attack in February 2008. Springborg has pledged increased safety resources for remote area nurses.

Queensland Health reports on 25 February 2009 that the CEO of the Torres Strait District’s health service CEO has been stood aside as a result of the government’s investigation. The statement reads

“Director-General Michael Reid said the Crime and Misconduct Commission had reviewed the report by the Ethical Standards Unit and was satisfied with the investigation.
“Some allegations that members of the Torres Strait and Northern Peninsula Health Service District executive did not act appropriately were upheld by this investigation,” he said. “We accept this investigation has found serious faults in the way Queensland Health staff responded to this critical incident and we are taking immediate action.”
The CEO of the Torres Strait-Northern Peninsula District has been stood down, effective immediately, while her role with Queensland Health is under further consideration.”

Many of the issues raised relate to possible corruption and improper behaviour by the Queensland Health and others. These are the political points that Springborg is likely to chase.

In terms of occupational health and safety, the focus of this blog, Queensland Health says

“There is substantial evidence that there has been a systemic failure by the Torres Strait and Northern Peninsula Health Service District to acknowledge and address workplace health and safety issues within the District over a long period of time.”

“There is sufficient evidence to conclude, on the balance of probabilities, that members of the Torres Strait and Northern Peninsula Health Service District (TSNPHSD)
Executive responded inappropriately and insensitively when notified of the alleged rape of a Remote Island Nurse on Mabuiag Island on or around 5 February 2008.”

“Further, there is sufficient evidence exists to find, on the balance of probabilities, that the repatriation of the remote area nurse from the outer islands as not managed or coordinated at a level cognisant with the seriousness of the events which had occurred.”

It is no wonder the CEO of the health service has lost her job. It is a little surprising that more, and more prominent, heads have not rolled. It is suspected that this may be one of the aims of the opposition politicians during the current election campaign.

To return to our core issue of OHS and accountability, this result clearly indicates that senior executives, particularly in the public sector in this instance, must take a preventative approach to the health, safety and security of their staff, wherever the employee is located.

Kevin Jones

Beaconsfield Mine Collapse – Coroner’s Report Released

On 26 February 2009, the Tasmanian Coroner, Rod Chandler, released his findings in to the death of Larry Knight in the Beaconsfield mine collapse of April 2006

The Coroner found that

“the evidence does not permit me to make a positive finding that any person, corporation or other entity, by their conduct, directly contributed to Mr Knight’s death.”

The report is available for download HERE

SafetyAtWorkBlog will bring more information on this important decision over the next few days.

UPDATE

The brother of Larry Knight, Shane, and union representative Paul Howe, have expressed their disappointment with the findings of the Tasmanian Coroner. In an interview with journalists there was mention of the inadequacies in the risk assessment process, the poor resources of Workplace Standards Tasmania, the lack of attention given to safety advice from multiple consultants.

Shane Knight continues to believe that the mine management was responsible for the death of his brother.

Paul Howes called on the government to end the approach of self-regulation and called on business to not put profit before safety.

Safety Awards

Awards for safety have always been an odd beast. Any award is an acknowledgement for effort and should be valued but frequently eligibility and the judging criteria are not clear.

Last year WorkCover NSW released this criteria in the booklet that they produced about the award finalists and winners. This provided the winners with a clear indication of why they won, not just the fact that they did win.

Anyone who doubts that a lot of effort goes into nominating for these awards should be reminded of the dance that Joe Jurisic made across the stage years ago in Victoria or the long kiss that one of the award winners shared on stage in New South Wales last year.

The awards are important and are valued. However an assessment process that is not open and accountable calls into question this value.

Today the Construction Forestry Mining & Energy Union released a statement “celebrating” the disqualification of John Holland Rail from the Safe Work Australia Awards. The statement reads

“John Holland Rail Pty Ltd was listed among nine finalists for one of Australia’s premier national awards for workplace safety, the Safe Work Australia Awards. But Federal Court proceedings against John Holland Pty Ltd over the death of an employee on a Queensland site last year meant the company was disqualified at the last minute.

Mark McCallum, 34, died after being run over by machinery while working at the Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal in north Queensland, when his foot became trapped under wooden scaffolding planks while moving precast concrete decks.”

The inclusion of John Holland Rail did always seem peculiar.

The rest of the media release covers the ongoing dissatisfaction of the trade union with the legally legitimate business decision for John Holland to move to the Federal workers’ compensation system

Award Ceremonies

The question about safety award ceremonies should also be reconsidered in the light of the move to a nationally harmonised system of OHS regulation.

Over the years, many of the State awards nights have become huge and glamourous affairs with well over 1000 attendees. They are also costly affairs that have a remarkably short shelf life. It will be very interesting to see which OHS regulatory agency will cut back on their awards expenditure first in this economic climate that questions the duplication of events.

It was also odd that such a small country like Australia had so many safety award processes. State awards are principally a marketing tool to promote the local OHS agency with the added benefit of being able to talk about safety in a positive, preventative light rather than through fatalities and the annual counting of the dead. Interestingly the 2009 national awards ceremony is scheduled for World Day for Health and Safety at Work on 28 April 2009 – a day the union movement commemorates as International Workers Memorial Day.

Safety awards tend to generate very little media attention, partly because the media is unsure of which awards they should cover – State or National. Award winners are lucky to get a paragraph in the next edition of a daily newspaper. Local media attention is better as local business makes good and the direct benefit to the community is easier to see.

Running such events are always a balance between cost and benefits that should be reviewed each year. Let’s see if the OHS regulators review the awards on both a state and federal level so that there will be a future for such events that we can all support and value.

[It may be useful to note that the CFMEU has received several OHS awards over the years. I seem to recollect one award for a safety colouring book over a decade ago in Victoria]

Kevin Jones

Ethics & Safety

Ethics is gaining an increased level of attention in the safety profession in Australia but remains way behind other professions and the business community in general.

The UK’s Ethical Corporation Institute has made available a “pubcast” with one of the authors of a report entitled “Best Practices for Designing Effective Ethics Programmes”. The report itself is only for sale so I recommend you gain as much information from the podcast as possible or request a summary.

Interestingly a world-class ethics expert has returned recently to Australia after many years on the international stage. Howard Whitton will be conducting a workshop in Melbourne on 30 March 2009 concerning “Managing Ethics and Values: Beyond the Code of Conduct”. Below is an article I wrote about a seminar I attended early in 2008

Kevin Jones, BA, FSIA

Howard Whitton is one of those Australians who are obscure but when brought to one’s attention you feel guilty that you did not know of him. I first heard Howard speak at an ethics seminar in Melbourne in early 2008.
I attended from curiosity because the safety profession, by and large, in Australia has paid lip-service to professional ethics, and still does. I attended an Ergonomics Society conference almost ten years ago in Sydney where one of the speakers, a member of the society, spoke about professional ethics. Apparently that it was the first time that the Ergonomics conference had ever “discussed” ethics.

Other organizations profess to have an ethics procedure but this is shrouded in secrecy making it difficult for members to know the ethical parameters of a profession. Professional ethics come from open and active discussion of issues such as conflict of interest, confidentiality, whistleblowing, rather than developing a few sheets on professional conduct and thinking the process has ended.

Howard’s presentation in Melbourne surprised. It was in plain English, and overwhelmingly relevant. Howard had a professional film scenario that he based his presentation on. The film involved all the elements of a road construction program from political pressure, safety compliance, environmental considerations, resource allocation, and personal choice. It showed the decision-making processes that safety professional frequently face themselves or have an active role in. It was a microcosm of the project manager’s contemporary role.

The moments I remember are when bones are discovered in the construction project. This echoed the need to manage a project in sensitive environmental areas. One of the workers takes photos of each stage of the project as a hobby, without realizing the photos could be evidence. The project manager is already working within the project parameters when a political (undocumented) element appears that substantially affects the project.

I had half-expected a dry academic discussion and ended up in a fascinating safety-themed debate. If there was one SIA seminar that I would attend this year it would be one of Howard’s workshops being held in late-March in Melbourne, prior to the Safety In Action Conference.

For those members who, like me, weren’t aware of Howard Whitton, I would strongly recommend you look at the online resources listed below.

According to the Ethicos website:

“Following a career as a public servant in Australia, Howard has worked since 1999 in 11 countries as a specialist consultant on Public Sector Ethics, Conflict of Interest, Whistleblower Protection, institutional integrity systems, ethics codes, disciplinary investigations, and training/capacity-building in ‘Ethical Competence’, both for public services and international organisations. After completing a three-year term at the OECD’s Public Governance and Territorial Development Directorate in Paris, Howard was asked to serve as one of two independent specialists helping to establish the new Ethics Office for the UN Secretariat. Since 2006 Howard has been Team Leader on various Ethics/Integrity/Anti-corruption capacity-building projects for national governments, UN specialist agencies, and international NGOs.”

Lucky for us Howard is spending some time at home in Queensland.

International Women’s Day (of safety)

The global theme for the 2009 International Women’s Day (8 March 2009) is

“Women and men united to end violence against women and girls”

The organising committee is at pains to stress that although this is a global theme, individual nations, individual states and organisations are able to set their own themes. Some themes already chosen include

Australia, UNIFEM: Unite to End Violence Against Women
Australia, QLD Office for Women: Our Women, Our State
Australia, WA Department for Communities: Sharing the Caring for the Future
UK, Doncaster Council: Women’s Voices and Influence
UK, Welsh Assembly Government: Bridging the Generational Gap

Given that Australian health care workers suffer occupational violence, amongst many other sectors, and that employers are obliged to assist workers who may be subjected to violence at work or the consequences of non-work-related violence, it seems odd that so often the major advocates of International Women’s Day remain the unions.

It is also regrettable that many of the themes internationally and locally are responding to negatives rather than motivating action from strengths.

As is indicated from the list above, the public sector agencies are keen to develop programs around the international day. The societal and career disadvantages of women are integral to how safety is managed.

Stress, violence, adequate leave entitlements, security, work/life balance, chronic illness – all of these issues are dealt with by good safety professionals. Perhaps a safety organisation or agency in Australia could take up the theme of “Safe work for women” and look at these issues this year using gender as the key to controlling these hazards in a coordinated and cross-gender fashion.

In support of women’s OHS (if there can be such a specific category), readers are reminded of an excellent (and FREE) resource written by Melody Kemp called Working for Life: Sourcebook on Occupational Health for Women

Kevin Jones

Safety Interviews

A couple of weeks ago I conducted interviews with several speakers in the Safety In Action Conference to be held in Melbourne, Australia at the end of March 2009. The finalised videos are below.

Helen Marshall is Australia’s Federal Safety Commissioner who has a challenging job monitoring major government construction sites.

Dr Martyn Newman is a a fascinating speaker on the issues of leadership and emotional intelligence and how safety professionals can benefit for applying these concepts to their corporate aims.

Jill McCabe is a recent member of WorkSafe Victoria who provides quite startling survey information on the attitudes of supervisors to workplace safety.

Barry Sherriff is a partner with law firm Freehills and was recently also one of the review panellists into Australia’s OHS law review. Since this video, the final report of the panel has been publicly released and Barry will be discussing harmonisation at the Safety In Action conference.

John Merritt is the Executive Director of WorkSafe and a strong advocate of workplace safety.

Although part of my job is to help promote the Safety In Action conference, I have tried to provide a resource that will not be temporary and is actually useful to safety professionals everywhere.

Tip: Use the high quality YouTube settings if you can. It makes these much easier to view but does not improve the appearance of the interviewer.

Kevin Jones

First Aid and Burns

The correct and established treatment for burns is

“.. to hold the burn under cool running water for at least 20 minutes”.

This reduces the continuing damage generated by burning tissue.

This has been the advice for decades and was recently reemphasised by the Victorian Government. So why are burn creams still on the market?

Perhaps there is a place for burn creams – when 20 minutes’ supply of cool running water is not available.

In December 2008, the Australian Defence Forces used burn cream. According to a media release

The ADF has been advised that four Iraqi civilian vehicles were damaged and two Iraqi men received superficial burns to their hands when they reportedly attempted to remove hot debris from their cars.

The Iraqi men were treated at the scene by Coalition Forces with burn cream.

Child Safety Australia recommends burn cream in a domestic first aid kit for the treatment of blisters.

The Australian Red Cross are emphatic, but allow room to move:

“NEVER use burn cream as an initial treatment. This should only be used a doctor’s recommendation.”

In 2003 (reference not publicly available), the Mayo Clinic in Rochester advised the following first aid treatments for burns

With chemical burns, make sure the chemical and any clothing or jewelry in contact with the chemical are removed.

Cool the burn under running water long enough to reduce the pain, usually 15 to 20 minutes. If this isn’t possible, immerse the burn in cold water or cover with cold compresses. Don’t put ice directly on the burn. Ice can cause frostbite and further damage.

Once the burn is cooled, apply a lotion or moisturizer to soothe the area and prevent dryness. Don’t apply butter. It holds heat in the tissues and may cause more damage.

Cover the burn with a sterile gauze bandage. Wrap loosely. Bandaging keeps air off the burn and reduces the pain.

Take an over-the-counter pain medication unless your doctor has told you to avoid these medications.

Don’t break blisters. If the blister is broken, wash with antibacterial soap and water, apply an antibiotic ointment and bandage.

No mention of burn cream and only an antibiotic cream in relation to blisters.

Safety professionals seek evidence, from which solid and valid decisions can be made. Why then does the initial treatment of burns have such a variety of advice? Can we simply put it down to the commercial desires of cream manufacturers? Or the lack of explanation from the defence forces?

I am old enough to have experienced my mother applying butter to my burns. We have had generational change in this treatment but how much more change would have occurred if workplace first aiders, and parents, had not had burn creams advocated as a legitimate first aid treatment?

Kevin Jones

Category: workplace

CEO loses job over safety failures

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