Next week in Australia is Safe Work Australia Week in which each State jurisdiction undertakes information and promotional activities in support of occupational health and safety. In Sydney, the Safety Institute of Australia (SIA) is hosting a Safety Conference. A major theme, understandably, is Australia’s OHS law harmonisation and there are excellent speakers at the … Continue reading “Getting the OHS message out there”
Australia and New Zealand have a small strategic organisation called the Heads of Workers’ Compensation Authorities (HWCA, pronounced “howca” by those in the know). It is a regular meeting (some say “love-in”, others say “coven”) of the CEOs of the various workers’ compensation bodies in Australia and New Zealand. Over the next five years, as the Australian Government … Continue reading “HWCA could be influential in Australia’s workers’ compensation reforms”
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”
In early July 2009, the Chair of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Judith Hackitt spoke in favour of an accreditation system for OHS professionals. This has particular relevance for those countries and professionals associations which follow some of the UK initiatives. Hackitt is quoted in the HSE media release said: “We do believe that there … Continue reading “UK’s HSE wants OHS professionals to be accredited”
The trade union movement is an important element in the management of safety in workplaces but over the last twenty years, with the exception of a couple of industry sectors, the membership numbers have waned. Until recently in Australia, the union movement was able to maintain a level of influence in the government decision-making process … Continue reading “Does union presence improve OHS?”
WorkSafe and the Safety Institute of Australia are at the forefront of pushing for a defined level of competence for the safety professional. WorkSafe identified this need many years ago and has been working on establishing alliances with safety professions since then to achieve its aims. Significantly similar issues have been discussed in the United … Continue reading “Should OHS regulators be involved in the competence of professionals?”
In early February 2009, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare released a statistical report on eye injuries in Australia. There was a small chapter on eye injuries that occurred in workplaces. Seeing as how the readers of SafetyAtWorkBlog love statistical reports, some of the data is presented below. For further data, and graphs, it is … Continue reading “Eye injury statistics for workplaces”