WorkSafe – Page 77 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Teenage worker’s death

AAP and The Australian newspaper today reported on the death of an 18-year-old in a factory located just north of SafetyAtWorkBlog’s office on 18 February 2009.

Initial reports say that the man was “dragged head first into a box-printing machine” when his clothing was caught. Firefighters took 45 minutes to extract the worker who died later in hospital.

It will be interesting to follow this case as the investigation and potential prosecution proceeds. It fits all the elements of safety campaigns over the last few years – young workers, inadequately guarded machines, risk assessments, risk controls, unnecessary deaths.

It is only a couple of months until International Workers’ Memorial Day when this worker’s name will be added to the annual roll-call of the dead.

Kevin Jones

Upcoming OHS Videos

At the end of March 2009, the Safety Institute of Australia (Victoria Division) is conducting its annual Safety In Action conference. In order to help promote the conference the SIA organised for several conference speakers to be filmed.

The filming occurred in early-February 2009 and the short 10-minutevideos will be available at the Safety In Action website in a couple of week’s time. The subjects of the videos are:

Jill MCabe of WorkSafe Victoria who talks about the research WorkSafe has undertaken in order to establish a better profile of their clients so as to improve assistance and advice. Jill has long experience in industrial relations and now focuses on health and safety.

Helen Marshall was appointed Australia’s Federal Safety Commissioner in August 2008. Helen discusses her experiences in dealing with a national system for safety on building and construction sites and reveals her first ever “real” job.

Dr Martyn Newman explains what he means by describing some leaders as “emotional capitalists”. He sees that as a good thing to be but isn’t ego an emotion and greed an emotion? And aren’t those the emotions that that have generated a lot of our social and financial heartbreak? Is there is such a thing as an “emotional socialist”? Dr Newman’s presentation at the conference will be popular but it’s application may be obscure or challenging.

John Merritt, the CEO of WorkSafe, is genuinely passionate about improving society and seems to feel that OHS is a valuable way to improve the quality of people’s lives. [I first spoke with John in the early 1990s while he was in the ACTU. The only thing I knew about him was that he had written a book about shearers. I spoke next with him while he was CEO of the National Safety Council and now (twice) while he is at WorkSafe. If our paths continue to cross, he owes me a beer and two hours of unrecorded conversation in a comfortable bar.]

Barry Sherriff, a lawyer with Freehills, has just come off nine months of serving on the National OHS Review panel and is hamstrung in what he can say as the government is yet to release the final report. His presentation was measured and cautious.

The videos provide an interesting cross-section of OHS approaches in Australia, several overlap and some are “out there” but the best that can be said is that one learns. This makes for a terrific Safety In Action conference.

Kevin Jones

Evidence of horse racing risks

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) has commented on an article in the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) entitled “The incidence of race-day jockey falls in Australia, 2002-2006”. The AMA summarises the report’s statistics

“Falls occurred at a rate of 0.42% in flat racing and 5.26% in jumps racing. Although most falls occurred pre- or post-race, falls occurring during the race resulted in the most severe injuries.”

However, the statistics, that can only be accessed fully by subscribers, should be looked at more closely in order to investigated the most appropriate control measures. It should be noted that the risks for horses is not part of the report.

The report finds

“There were 3360 jockey falls from 748 367 rides. Falls occurred at a rate of 0.42 per 100 rides in flat races and 5.26 per 100 rides in jumps races. In flat racing, 54.6% (1694/3101) of falls occurred before the start of the race and 11.1% (344/3101) of falls occurred post-race. The 34.3% (1063/3101) of falls that occurred during flat races resulted in 61.7% (516/836) of the injuries sustained. In jumps racing, most falls occurred at a jump and 9.7% (25/259) of jockeys who fell were transported to hospital and/or declared unfit to ride. There were five fatalities resulting from falls during the study period, all in flat racing. Fall and injury rates were comparable with those found in the United Kingdom, Ireland, France and Japan.”

The authors found that

“Being a jockey carries a substantial risk of injury and death. Although rates of injury in Australia are not exceptional by international standards, there can be improvement to safety standards in the Australian racing industry.”

Most reports end with statements that seem blatantly obvious but it is worth considering the findings that the five jockey fatalities were “all in flat racing”. These finding would question the strategy of some safety lobbyists who focus on jumps racing.

The available information says that 85% of falls resulted from the jockey being dislodged. More useful information would come from looking at the specific causes of the injuries – head trauma, shoulder injury, back… This information is not publicly available but is crucial in determining what type of PPE jockey’s should wear, if any. Much work is aimed at helmets and protective vests, and banning jumps racing with which the statistics from this report may assist.

WorkSafe Victoria’s guide on track safety mentions some track or barrier design changes. It would be useful to know what injuries resulted from jockeys falling on railings in order to verify the value of the redesign recommendations. Granted the WorkSafe recommendations don’t specifically address race day conditions but in terms of track design the situation is not relevant.

Specific information on jockey injuries in Victoria was reported to WorkSafe in 2006. The report found

67% of falls injuries recorded in the RVL [Racing Victoria Limited] data set are suffered by jockeys at race events;
33% of falls injuries recorded in the RVL data set are to licensed jockeys at track work;
43% of falls injuries recorded in the VWA [Victorian WorkCover Authority] data set are to track work riders (excluding licensed jockeys) at track work.

Control measures are recommended in the WorkSafe report, a report that was not referenced in the MJA article even though other work by one of the report’s authors, Steve Cowley, is mentioned.

All reports and investigations have their limitations and specific aims but it is disappointing that the MJA article was more interested in benchmarking than proposing safety solutions. The researcher’s aims for the MJA report was stated as

“… to determine the incidence of falls, injuries and fatalities occurring at race meetings in Australia, and to compare them with overseas rates.”

An opportunity was missed to provide some information on the safety changes that could reduce the injuries to, and fatalities of, jockeys.

Kevin Jones

Safety promotion needs backup

WorkSafe Victoria has had considerable advertising success by focusing on the social impact of workplace injuries and death. In the newspapers and television over Christmas 2008, WorkSafe ads, like the billboard above, were on high rotation but, after the high number of workplace fatalities in January 2009, the strategy must be needing a review.

In terms of OHS promotion generally, branding and awareness strategies are valid however, when the messages of the strategies continue to be ignored, alternatives need to be developed. The fatality figures imply that family is “the most important reason for safety” but only for a short time or in limited circumstances. When you return to work the work environment or your approach to the work tasks are worse than before Christmas.

The reality of advertising is that it is often cheaper to raise awareness than change the behaviour of clients, in terms of OHS, this would be both the workers and the employers. Raising safety as a business priority requires considerably legwork by regulators on-site and through industry associations. Few OHS authorities around the world seem to be applying hands-on approaches to the extent required.

Part of the reason is that trade unions used to be the shopfloor safety police, as anticipated by Robens in the early 1970s, but trade union membership is at record low levels. The deficiency in the safety profile on the shopfloor or at the office watercooler is not being picked up by the employers.

Media campaigns are the public face of safety promotion but they should not be a veneer. Regulators need to provide more information on the alternative strategies they already employ, or plan to introduce, so that promotion is not seen as an end in itself.

Direct business and CEO visits have been used in the past but given up because these were short term initiatives. In Victoria, high level visits by regulators to CEOs, board members and directors had a considerable impact in the 1990s but there was no follow-up strategy to maintain that profile. Ten years on there are a new set of senior managers who could do with a bit of prodding.

Kevin Jones

Australian 2008 workplace statistics

Every year newspapers and organisations undertake a “year in review”. OHS regulators are no different. As more statistics become available of the next few weeks, SafetyAtWorkBlog will provide the latest OHS statistics for 2008. The most recent are below.

Western Australia

According to a media release by WorkSafe WA:

“In 2005/06, WA recorded 12 traumatic work-related deaths and 25 in 2006/07. There were 27 fatalities in 2007/08. In addition, every year around 19,000 Western Australians suffer an injury or illness serious enough to have to take time off work.”

Eleven of these fatalities have occurred since 1 July 2008

Victoria

According to information provided to SafetyAtWorkBlog by WorkSafe Victoria:

There were 21 work-related deaths in calendar 2008 compared with 22 in 2007 and 29 in 2006.
Deaths in 2008 occurred in building construction (four), transport and agriculture (three each), timber, electrical linesmen (two each). There were also fatalities involving forklifts, the meat industry, retail, firefighting, roadworks, warehousing and manufacturing (one each).
The 10 year average is 28.4 deaths/calendar year. There were 39 fatalities in 1999, the highest in that period. Lowest was 2004 with 18.
The 5 year average is 24 with a high of 30 in 2004, the highest in that period.
29,087 [WorkCover] claims last financial year compared with 28,550 in the previous. There were 77 life threatening injuries in the last financial year compared with 66 in 06/07.

Kevin Jones

UPDATE – 7 January 2009

A spokesperson for WorkSafe WA has told SafetyAtWorkBlog that WorkSafe’s statistical experience varies from that in Victoria in the context of workplace injuries over the Summer break. January is historically a month with a low rate of workplace injuries. This may be due to the number and type of West Australian industries that close down for January or that workers are on leave for around two weeks in January.

Statistics on workplace injuries are notoriously difficult to compare from one Australian State to another and SafetyAtWorkBlog would argue OHS would be seen as more directly relevant by the community if statistics accurately reflected the level of work-related injuries and illnesses rather than being based on workers compensation claims and fatalities. It certainly would change the strategic targets and enforcement processes if illness was accurately assessed.

Various Federal governments have promised to attend to statistical incompatibility over decades and it is hoped that the potential national consistency of OHS laws may also resolve the need for accurate and relevant workplace statistics.

Managing Safety After A Vacation

On 4 January 2009, the Sunday Age contained a curious article based around some quotes from Eric Windholz, acting executive director of WorkSafe Victoria. The article reports Eric as saying that when workers return to work after a holiday break they can be careless.

“People come back, they’ve taken their mind off the job, they’ve had a well-earned holiday and sometimes it takes them a little while to do the basics of making sure they’re working safe….. Recommissioning their equipment, starting plant, starting at construction sites again, people may not have their minds on the job and they get hurt.”

WorkSafe has advised SafetyAtWorkBlog (and provided the original media statement) that

Latest WorkSafe ad – now online

The Christmas ad campaign by WorkSafe Victoria is now available for viewing on line.

I saw it with my family for the first time last night on television and it had a terrific impact on my wife. The hug from the teenage daughter is the clincher. My teenage son had seen the ad previously and thought it was very effective.

A major change in the campaign is dialogue. Refreshingly the conversation is not about safety and there is an undercurrent of fear of injury to the normal/banal family conversation that locate the action into our own homes.

The Homecoming ad made good use of the Dido music, for the time, but that campaign relied on visuals. The latest ad hits the core family values and concerns and deserves a wide audience.

Category: WorkSafe

Teenage worker’s death

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Upcoming OHS Videos

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Evidence of horse racing risks

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Safety promotion needs backup

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Australian 2008 workplace statistics

Western Australia

Victoria

UPDATE – 7 January 2009

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Managing Safety After A Vacation

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Latest WorkSafe ad – now online

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Western Australia

Victoria

UPDATE – 7 January 2009

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