The Melbourne ceremony for International Workers Memorial Day was held on 27 April 2018 and had a good turnout. The standout “speaker” was Lana Cormie (pictured right), whose husband, Charlie Howkins in a trench collapse in March 2018, a work colleague died later in hospital from injuries from the incident. Victorian Trades Hall’s Luke Hilakari was …
This weekend is the International Workers Memorial Day. In Victoria, in particular and in Australia more generally, it is highly likely that the issue of Industrial Manslaughter laws will be raised as part of a trade union campaign. Dr Gerry Ayers, the OHS&E Manager of one of the branches of the CFMEU, features in an … Continue reading “Interview with Dr Gerry Ayers”
Australia’s Royal Commission into banking and financial services is a few months in and the evidence provided of wrongdoing is so substantial that those who were critical of the need for such an investigation are admitting they were wrong. SafetyAtWorkBlog is applying the logic that occupational health and safety (OHS) succeeds best when it is …
Australia continues to develop various Codes and Guidances for the prevention and management of sexual harassment, particularly in the creative industries. America’s Screen Actor’s Guild (SAG) released some guidance about its Code of Conduct on April 12 2018. It is educative but Australia can do better. A positive in SAG’s announcement is that it clearly places …
Effective consultation is a core element of building a functional safety management system in any workplace. This involves talking and listening. Various occupational health and safety (OHS) regulators have pushed this point in the past usually with static images of mouths and ears but WorkSafe New Zealand has released a series of videos in support …
Australia’s Fair Work Commission (FWC) has released the latest (March 2018) edition of its Anti-Bullying Benchbook. This is a regularly published document that offers background to its decisions and definitions used by the FWC through case studies and plain-English explanations. The Benchbook clearly states that any occupational health and safety (OHS) issues are to be …
Australia’s independent review of the work health and safety laws is handicapped by performance criteria not being included in the original harmonisation process. This lack of forethought is not unique and many infrastructure projects, in particular, fail to include research opportunities and priorities in the design of the project. These omissions provide more significance to …