There are more work health and safety lessons from a Near Miss incident than a workplace death. There is also more information about how occupational health and safety (OHS) should be managed in an Enforceable Undertaking (EU) than there is from a prosecution. Recently there were several EU’s in Queensland that illustrated these OHS management …
Global warming will affect the way we work. This was acknowledged in the most recent report from the International Panel on Climate Change. The 3,676-page report cited several research papers related to these changes. Below is a list of those papers and comments on the abstracts, where available. Vanos, J., D. J. Vecellio and T. …
Yesterday the Central Safety Group (CSG) invited me to talk at its monthly lunchtime seminar. The topic was New Perspectives on OHS. These perspectives are likely to be familiar to subscribers of this blog but were intended to be provocative and foster reflection and discussion. Below is a substantially edited version. Thanks for inviting me …
Vaccines are currently the most effective tool available to minimise the spread of COVID-19 to large populations. Fortunately, effective vaccines have been able to be manufactured at such a rapid pace. But previous pandemics have not had vaccines and have had to rely, primarily, on hygiene and isolation. Part of the hygiene practice was to …
Australia has commenced its consultation process for the development of its next ten-year national occupational health and safety (OHS) strategy. These are peculiar documents as no one ever seems to be punished for not achieving the targets or the performance targets are so narrow or general that it is impossible to not achieve them. One …
The Hazelwood Mine Fire was a public health tragedy with an occupational context beyond the prosecution by WorkSafe Victoria. A clear example of the workplace risks was the fire-fighting efforts and the subsequent health impacts of David Briggs. According to a media release from the Maurice Blackburn law firm, Briggs had his successful WorkCover claim …
Many large and small Australian businesses have been exposed as underpaying staff. This exploitation is gradually being addressed in law firms, according to a report this morning in the Australian Financial Review (paywalled). In the context of occupational health and safety (OHS) though, the description in the first paragraph of “crippling workloads” is an important …
