On 28 April 2013, New Zealand lawyer, Hazel Armstrong, published a 48-page book on how workplace fatalities and the management of the NZ rail industry has been related to politics and economics. This is an ideological position more than anything else and the evidence is thin in much of this short book but there is considerable power in … Continue reading “New Zealand railways, red tape, politics and workplace deaths”
Yesterday Australia opened its National Workers Memorial in Canberra. The Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten, spoke at the ceremony with, largely, an edited and reduced version of the speech he presented in Brisbane earlier last week. The Canberra speech dropped all the ANZAC Day references and spoke about the importance of remembering. “By erecting this monument, we tie the … Continue reading “National Workers Memorial opens”
On the 28 April edition of the ABC TV show, Insiders, Gerard Henderson displayed a common misunderstanding about the role and existence of regulations. In discussing the childcare industry Henderson, Executive Director of the Sydney Institute, said that regulations always increase business costs, as if regulations are the start of a process when regulations are almost … Continue reading “Safety, business costs and regulation”
Below is a guest post from long time SafetyAtWorkBlog reader, Marian Macdonald. “If you need to use that, you’ll almost certainly die,” says fall prevention expert Carl Sachs, pointing to a guardrail on the rooftop of a multi-storey Melbourne office block. Fixed to flimsy aluminium flashing, the guardrail flies in the face of several mandatory … Continue reading “Fall prevention in Australia needs a major overhaul”
It is common to use a self-commissioned survey to market one’s services but sometimes the evidence does not support some of the marketing statements. The latest survey by St John Ambulance is a good example of this. According to St John Ambulance’s media release on 13 March 2013: “Only 13 per cent of Australian workplaces … Continue reading “First aid marketing exercise requires analysis”
Such are the warning signs It stopped at 2.32 pm of an ordinary day. One string of events ended abruptly at the pinch point of a groaning conveyor belt when his arm was ripped off. Do you think of Swiss cheese models of risk alignment? Of complexity or failure to learn? Of the Moura coal … Continue reading “The smell of ‘corruption’”
For some months Australia’s Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten, has been talking about establishing a Centre for Workplace Leadership. This presents an opportunity for practical progress on OHS but it relies on someone joining the dots of occupational safety, workplace health and productivity – a highly unlikely occurrence. In December 2012, Shorten started looking for a … Continue reading “Shorten’s Centre for Workplace Leadership is likely to ignore OHS”