Often immediately following an incident, the safety manager receives a brief phone call “There’s been an accident.” Information is scarce and, in my experience, often wrong or more fairly inadequate. in OHS there will always be an assumption that an injury or death is work-related as that is our patch but people die every day … Continue reading “Death at work differs from work-related death”
On 27 May 2010, a worker at the Foxconn factory in died from overwork, according to a statement released on 4 June 2010 by SACOM. This coincides with a statement by Hon Hai Precision Industry on 6 June 2002, Hon Hai owns the Foxconn facility in Shenzhen. The SACOM statement reports: “Yan Li, 27, is … Continue reading “Foxconn worker dies of exhaustion – focus on working hours”
Tom von Aschwege has provided SafetyAtWorkBlog with a long article that was intended as a comment on recent articles concerning the safety culture of BP. The comment deserved to be an article in order to provide more prominence to von Aschwege’s views. Links, where appropriate, have been added and format has been tweaked. “I came by Ross … Continue reading “BP, safety culture and integrity management”
A regular SafetyAtWorkBlog reader emailed in a comment this morning that we believe is justified as including it as a post itself. The Upper Big Branch Mine disaster is out of the news outside of the United States but as the Australian reader shows below, there are important lessons from how this disaster occurred and its aftermath as there is … Continue reading “Post-Disaster PR/Risk Management – Upper Big Branch”
In 2008, a New South Wales Parliamentary Committee reported to the Government on problems with that State’s Ambulance Services. The problems included bullying, harassment and a dysfunctional management. A review into the Ambulance Services progress on the recommendations two years later has found : “…the general feedback received from ambulance officers is that despite the new initiatives, little has changed, and significant management and … Continue reading “The struggle to achieve cultural change on OHS”
On 18 March 2010, the last sitting day of that session of Australia’s Parliament, Labor Member of Parliament , Bill Shorten, spoke about workplace bullying and the OHS prosecutions that stemmed from the bullying and suicide of Brodie Panlock. Some of his short speech rehashed details of the workplace bullying prosecutions but, according to the draft … Continue reading “Australian MP mentions workplace bullying but is short on practical controls”
A feature article on workplace bullying in The Age newspaper on 10 March 2010 has the additional or secondary benefit of again raising the relevance of “restorative justice” to the issue of occupational safety and health. The main element of the article is the McGregor family who had two children commit suicide over related issues. The son, Stuart … Continue reading “Workplace bullying and restorative justice – how to help the families left behind”