It is not possible to write as many occupational health and safety (OHS) articles as I would like to, and my newspaper clippings files are bulging by the time I get some time to tidy up. The Australian Financial Review (AFR) is an expensive business newspaper that often touches on OHS matters even though OHS …
Australian discussions about workplace bullying and sexual harassment at the moment is in a mess indicating that insufficient work has been spent on clarifying what these terms mean, how the consequences are managed and whether the harm can be prevented. In Parliamentary debate on the 2020 Budget, the Liberal Party’s Sussan Ley, said: “The Morrison …
Occupational health and safety (OHS) has always been part of the politics of industrial relations (IR) but it has rarely understood which part it plays as it has never really stood on its own two feet. In Australia, OHS advocates have been, primarily, from within the trade union movement. And for OHS professionals that was …
A lot of focus is currently on casual workers as their jobs disappear due to the responses to the COVID19 coronavirus. Australia has around 2.6 million of them and there are many more workers who may be classified as Part Time but operate on uncertain rosters and are, in reality, as precarious as casual employees. …
On 2 December 2019, Australia’s Attorney-General, Christian Porter released a discussion paper about workplace relations in the hope of sparking contributions on how cooperative workplaces can create productivity improvements. Any discussion paper on productivity and workplace from the current conservative government is loaded with neoliberal ideology but one of the questions posed is: “What has …
The Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI) has recently published an article about the significant Human Resources trends for 2019. The trends identified include “A Change of Government” “Gig Economy Classification” “Sexual Harassment” “Technology Trends” SafetyAtWorkBlog will be more specific in its occupational health and safety (OHS) “trends” for 2019....
The trade union movement has often been instrumental in affecting and sometimes creating government policy on occupational health and safety (OHS). The latest generation of hazards – psychosocial – can be traced back to a survey late last century of workplace stress conducted by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). This week the ACTU …
