A reader recently asked why I haven’t written about the recent retirement of Professor Michael Quinlan. Michael has featured in many SafetyAtWorkBlog articles over many years and has been a major supporter for industrial, labour relations and occupational health and safety research in Australia and elsewhere for a long time. He has many legacies but …
The Australia Institute has released a “factbook” about The Dimensions of Insecure Work. It is little more than a snapshot of some of the labour situations in Australia centring on the fact that “Less than half of employed Australians now hold a “standard” job: that is, a permanent full-time paid job with leave entitlements” This …
The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) often sets the occupational health and safety (OHS) agenda, as it did on workplace stress and bullying. On 21 May 2018 the ACTU released a research report entitled “Australia’s insecure work crisis: Fixing it for the future“. The opening paragraph provides a clear indication of the report’s tone: …
Each year thousands of people express support for International Workers Memorial Day and the World Day for Safety and Health at Work publicly and through social media. This is a statement of their commitment to occupational health and safety (OHS) as well as a call to continue action in improving workplace health and safety. However, …
Another Australian Government inquiry into workplace health and safety (WHS) was announced on March 26 2018. According to the Senate Hansard, the Senate’s Education and Employment References Committee will report on a range of occupational health and safety (OHS) matters by the end of September 2018....
On 12 December 2017, part of Australia’s screen and television industry held a forum in Sydney about sexual harassment in the sector and what could be done to reduce this workplace hazard. This initiative occurred a day before an open letter was published about sexual harassment in the music industry. There is a momentum for …
Jim Ward is hardly known outside the Australian trade union movement but many people over the age of thirty, or in the occupational health and safety (OHS) profession, may remember the person Esso blamed for the Esso Longford explosion in 1998. Just after the nineteenth anniversary of the incident that killed two workers and injured …