Calling something an accident hides the truth

Jessie Singer published her book called “There Are No Accidents” last year. It is a pivotal book about safety and our understanding of the social and legal impacts of calling tragic events “accidents”. On June 13 2023, Singer spoke on Carnegie Council’s From Another Angle podcast about her book and the consequences of its publication. …

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Chalk and Cheese – legal seminars on mental health at work

Over the last few months, various seminars from law firms and others have focussed on how to comply with new and impending occupational health and safety regulations related to psychosocial hazards at work. Over the last fortnight, I attended two such seminars; they were as different as chalk and cheese, even though both had strong …

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OHS and management courses

Research findings that a sample of business and management courses have little to no OHS content are not surprising and match what has now become fashionable to call “lived experience”. Part of the reason for the findings is that the number of undergraduate courses in OHS has declined, and those that did exist were not …

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Grosvenor Fire Case Study – Hopkins

It is always good to start a piece of writing with an attention-grabbing punch. Professor Andrew Hopkins‘ latest research paper does just that in his analysis of the 2020 Anglo-American Grosvenor coal mine explosion. He wrote: “Senior management at Anglo believed that safety was never sacrificed to production. Their view was safety and productivity went …

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Don’t mention profit

The primacy of profit to employers is an accepted truth. However, the size of the profit and the pathway to those profits are not absolutes, and it is in this latter context that occupational health and safety (OHS) lives. Even though profit is a business truth, it is often a word that business representatives seem …

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How could OHS have helped manage Chris Smith?

SkyNews and radio host, Chris Smith, has been dismissed due to inappropriate behaviour at a company Christmas party. This type of behaviour has been on the occupational health and safety (OHS) and Industrial Relations radar for a long, long time. Recently the psychological impacts of this type of behaviour have come to the fore, placing …

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OHS legal changes you might have missed

If you needed confirmation that the mainstream media is disinterested in occupational health and safety (OHS) unless there is a disaster or the incident can be narrowly categorised as sexual harassment, bullying or suicide, last week, the Australian Parliament passed important amendments to the Model Work Health and Safety laws. It seems OHS cannot compete …

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