Enforceable Undertakings (EU) are a relatively new phenomenon in the occupational health and safety (OHS) world. They are, fundamentally, a legal process that allows organisations to avoid a prosecution for breaching OHS laws. The issue has garnered some attention recently due to application of an EU to a New Zealand school after two student actors …
On 26 May 2017, NT WorkSafe announced that Austral Fisheries Pty Ltd was charged over health and safety breaches that resulted in the electrocution of Ryan Donoghue. Enforcement of occupational health and safety breaches should be welcomed but Donoghue died in 2013! Why so long? NT WorkSafe regret the delay: “The location of the vessel meant the …
Several readers have expressed curiosity over the WorkSafe Legislative Amendment Bill currently in the Victorian Parliament and mentioned by lawyer Steve Bell last week. Bell pointed to a couple of issues in the Bill and gave the impression that the Bill was aimed at tidying up some administration. Several of the issues raised in the …
Recently the Victorian Women Lawyers conducted a seminar into the outcomes of Victoria’s Royal Commission into Family Violence. SafetyAtWorkBlog attended even though the topic seems, initially, to have a tenuous link to occupational health and safety (OHS). Family violence is relevant to OHS through its influence on workplace mental ill-health, productivity and the need for cultural …
Two recent occupational health and safety (OHS) prosecutions in South Australia related to labour hire employees and providers indicate changes in enforcement approach and clues for change as they illustrate how some people and companies have almost no regard for the safety of its employees. According to a SafeWorkSA media release dated 28 May 2016 … Continue reading “Miserable failures in OHS of labour hire workers”
A major motivation for occupational health and safety (OHS) improvements in many businesses is the potential damage to a company’s reputation if someone is injured or killed from the company’s operations. Usually such an event would result in a prosecution by an OHS regulator but prosecution rates are variable and there are an increasing range of …
Victoria’s occupational health and safety (OHS) strategy has been in a bit of a mess since the previous (conservative) government opted out of the harmonised work health and safety law process and brands were changed and changed again. It lost its claim to be leading Australian in OHS, or needed to explain its position, where before … Continue reading “Victoria increases OHS penalty three-fold”