This week, the Australian Parliament debates further workplace relations legislative system changes. These will have occupational health and safety (OHS) impacts, usually indirectly; however, one clear OHS element in the proposed legislation is the Right-to-Disconnect. This change has been a long time coming and has clear and proven mental health and social benefits for workers, …
The Australian Labor Party (ALP) conference has endorsed the concept of the right-to-disconnect, according to an article in The Australian. Sadly, the reporting on the change has a dismissive tone on what is an attempt to address the increasing costs of mental health at work. Readily accessible and recent survey data on the right-to-disconnect could …
Reading Safe Work Australia’s latest ten-year strategy forced me to think creatively. SWA’s discussion of Persistent Challenges suggests controls that are almost all at the Administrative Control level – education, awareness, knowledge, training, understanding, support, communication and more. This is after admitting that: “Injury and fatality rates have fallen significantly over the last decade. However, progress has slowed.” Page 5 How can …
Recently the Australian government released the interim report of the Select Committee on Work and Care. This committee is one to watch for many reasons; the least is that it is chaired by Senator Barabara Pocock, a leading researcher and writer on issues related to work/life balance and workplace equity. The report does not address …
Many companies are starting to settle into hybrid working arrangements where workers are in the office for part of their time and at home for others. The occupational health and safety (OHS) impacts are still being discovered and refined. The flexibility of these hybrid arrangements is both good and bad, as identified recently by the …
If there was only one way available to improve the health and safety of workers in Australia, it would be to limit and enforce working hours to those in the official Awards and job descriptions. This situation which would really be simply a case of working-to-rule, would need to be supported by other not unreasonable …
In May 2020, “work to rule” was touched on in a long article about the future of work. “Work To Rule” is a phrase that is rarely heard now, as the industrial relations (IR) conversation has changed, but it is more relevant than ever. The industrial relations context for working to the rules is illustrated …
