Occupational health and safety (OHS) eyebrows were raised in Australia recently as a State Government suspended the application of three construction-related codes of practice, principally, on the basis that compliance will cost too much. The decision by South Australia’s Minister for Industrial Relations, John Rau, following a report by the Small Business Commissioner, Mike Sinkunas, … Continue reading “Politics before safety in South Australia”
Official statistics on workplace bullying in Australia are notoriously unreliable. The Productivity Commission estimated the cost of workplace bullying with a huge margin of variation, between A$6 billion and A$36 billion annually. WorkSafe Victoria has indicated in the past that the number of interventions on workplace bullying is way below the number of workplace bullying … Continue reading “Fair Work Commission girds its loins for workplace bullying complaints”
Many years ago the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) won a WorkSafe Victoria award for a colouring in book. From memory the book depicted construction work so that children could understand what their parents do while the kids are at school. Since that time many companies have produced safety calendars from children’s drawings … Continue reading “Truth, justice and the safe way”
As the 1 January 2014 implementation date for new workplace bullying processes approaches there is an increasing amount of legal, HR, and safety seminars, and newsletters and alerts being produced. Most reiterate the amendments to Australia’s Fair Work Act but occasionally there is additional information. In a recent seminar, it was suggested that the draft … Continue reading “No code of practice for workplace bullying but hope remains”
The harmonisation of Australia’s occupational health and safety (OHS) laws has stagnated since the West Australian government’s tepid response to the strategy and Victoria’s belligerent and ill-founded rejection. But some continue to examine the harmonisation process. Eric Windholz is one of those researchers. Windholz is a former executive of Victoria’s WorkSafe and is now with … Continue reading “Australian research on OHS harmonisation’s progress, success and errors”
In the next edition of the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA), Dr Tony Lower, Director of Australian Centre for Agricultural Health and Safety and Monash University researchers ( Angela J Clapperton and Emily L Herde) will be providing more evidence about the death and injury rate associated with the use of All-Terrain Vehicles (ATV) and … Continue reading “New quadbike safety research in a time of political change”
This weekend the Australian people voted for the conservative Liberal Party to be the next Federal government. Workplace safety has been largely absent from the pre-election campaign but when it has been mentioned it has almost always been couched in terms of productivity. In the next few years, workplace safety issues must be couched … Continue reading “New political challenges for OHS in Australia”