On 30 September 2009 the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the United States said in a media statement: A proposed rule to align the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) with provisions of the United Nations Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS) will be published in the … Continue reading “GHS is coming to the United States”
OHS professionals, as with any profession, can easily become out-of-touch with what their profession is all about. This is to improve the safety of people through a professional and competent approach. Some professionals lose touch because they may be dealing with corporate OHS policies all day, they may never get away from head office and … Continue reading “Freshening an OHS career”
Boardroom Radio has hosted a very interesting podcast between two labour lawyers, Andrew Douglas and Michael Tooma, with the participation of Barry Silburn, the National President of the Safety Institute of Australia. The SIA National President’s contributions were quite narrow, dominated by the issue of “suitably qualified” in the new model OHS laws (but he did struggle … Continue reading “OHS law debate and Law Society position”
Respected business commentator, Robert Gottliebsen, has commented on the political and ideological challenge that Julia Gillard, Australia’s Minister for Workplace Relations, faces over the introduction of OHS model legislation. Gottliebsen says there is a risk that the combative OHS structures in New South Wales could spread to the national context and that resisting this movement, funded and promoted by the … Continue reading “Business commentator is concerned over OHS and IR overlap”
RTWMatters, an Australian return-to-work website, has analysed some of the data that has been released through the annual data – Aust & NZ RTW Monitor. The statistics show that the Australian Government’s workers’ compensation insurer, Comcare, has performed well on some performance indicators but others are raising concerns, particularly “The cost of claims has risen … Continue reading “Comcare’s RTW performance has some worrying trends”
Adam Sage has been following the suicides that have occurred in France Telecome for some time. On 23 September 2009 in the TimesOnline (a week later in The Australian newspaper??), Sage provides a useful summary and cogitation on the “cluster”. But although this number of suicides in one company should be alarming, it is not … Continue reading “23rd suicide at France Telecome in 18 months”
Australian safety expert and activist Melody Kemp reported from the annual meeting of the Asian Network for the Rights of Occupational Accident Victims (ANROAV) that was held in late September 2009 in Phnom Penh. The meeting featured many stories about the increasing risk of silicosis in Asia. Melody writes in the 27 September edition of the blog … Continue reading “Increasing risk of silicosis in the majority world”