On 28 January 2010, three men walked away from the helicopter that crashed in Northern New South Wales on the lip of a 1,000 metre cliff. The Australian media covered it fairly extensively. What is curious about this air crash is that there is no government investigation into the possible cause of the crash. OHS professionals advocate … Continue reading “Near miss but no government action”
Depression as an occupational illness is one of the most difficult hazards faced by managers and safety professionals. Depression is hard to understand and it is often difficult to recognise an employee who suffers from the condition, let alone, figuring out how the workplace may contribute to the illness. [Mental health issues are going to … Continue reading “Prevention of depression is better than treatment”
On 11 January 2010, the Tasmanian Workplace Relations Minister, Lisa Singh, announced a new safety focus on the abalone industry following the findings of a coronial inquest into the death of David Colson in 2007. There are several interesting elements to the Minister’s decision. Firstly and, perhaps, most importantly, the decision shows the significant role that Coroners in … Continue reading “Risk/Reward trade-off”
According to the Toronto Police, four workers died on December 24 2009 when the swing stage they were working on collapsed. A fifth man, Dilshod Marupov, is in hospital. Media reports have identified the five workers as migrant workers and although the swing stage was at the thirteenth floor of an apartment complex, no-one was wearing safety harnesses.
In late October 2009, there were several OHS court cases in Australia that raise issues that need to be kept at the forefront of the thoughts of safety managers, safety professionals, workers and business owners. Amputation One case in South Australia identified the need to have sufficient detail in policies and procedures for workers to be safe. The comment of Industrial … Continue reading “Amputations, shocks and burns – court cases”
Recently SafetyAtWorkBlog reported the umbrage that the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) felt about executive accountability, particularly in relation to OHS legislation. On 25 October 2009 the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) provided an example that should stop generalisations about employer associations , at least for a little while. Below are extracts of the significant statements … Continue reading “Not all employers are the same”
The research statistics quoted in an earlier blog article have finally been located. It is important to understand the limitations of the study. Firstly, these are not statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics so they do not have the same weight as the regularly issued Labour Force statistics. It would be great if the government began collating this … Continue reading “More on leave retention and mental health”