I always separate the books I have yet to read from those I have read, or else I lose track and can miss important books. Below is a list of those books in the hope that subscribers could tell me which they found to be useful and important if they have read any of them.
I have provided links to the books, usually publishers’ pages or reviews if you are interested, and check for special offers. Not all the books are new but new to me.
The earlier Chris Smith article mentioned the earlier incidents that, given his recidivism, the control measures implemented failed or were inadequate. If these incidents had involved occupational health and safety (OHS) concepts and investigations, the latest incident may never have occurred.
OHS is big on investigations and contributory factors but usually after an incident. OHS tends to identify faults and failures after the event. However, this has become the norm because OHS and employers are less able or interested in investigating incidents with lesser consequences or what OHS call Near Misses. Chris Smith had no near misses, each of the earlier “misbehaviours’ were incidents that seem not to have been investigated to the standard or depth intended in OHS.
It’s the end of 2022 and a busy year for the SafetyAtWorkBlog. As of the time of writing, there have been 192 articles this year, totalling 191,000 words ($1.40 per article for annual subscribers). 56,000 views, over 270 corporate and individual subscribers, and over 4,000 followers on Twitter and LinkedIn is a pretty good online profile for an activity produced in my “spare time”.
I hope you, my subscribers, have been informed and challenged by my contributions to the occupational health and safety state of knowledge. After a Christmas break, the SafetyAtWorkBlog will be back from mid-January 2023
SkyNews and radio host, Chris Smith, has been dismissed due to inappropriate behaviour at a company Christmas party. This type of behaviour has been on the occupational health and safety (OHS) and Industrial Relations radar for a long, long time. Recently the psychological impacts of this type of behaviour have come to the fore, placing the issue clearly in the OHS realm.
It is useful to look at the Chris Smith saga through the “new” OHS perspective.
A New Work Relations Architecture is a radical book for Australia. Radical because its authors are proposing industrial relations reform, and Australia has had very little of this since Prime Minister John Howard‘s attempt with Workchoices in 2005. Radical also because it has taken inspiration from the Robens approach to occupational health and safety (OHS) laws.
The new “architecture” (thankfully, the cliche of “ecosystem” was not used) is described as:
A new Australian book has been structured around a “new work relations architecture“. Amazingly, a whole chapter is devoted to the role of occupational health and safety (OHS) in this new structure.
This chapter is written by prominent law academic Ron McCallum AO, offers a good summary of OHS laws and identifies the challenges to those laws in the near future, but its discussion is more reserved than it could be.
McCallum sticks to the suitability of the Robens model of OHS laws which McCallum describes as a type of “managed decentralism”. He highlights challenges to the laws and their operations that will be familiar to readers:
The end-of-year reviews are starting to emerge from Australia’s law firms. The most recent release is from Maddocks, who have released several short reports on occupational health and safety (OHS) hazards and suggested controls for employers to apply. So this is a year-in-review for 2022, but it is also a forecast of what needs to be changed in 2023.
