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”
Recently, the issue of Safe Work Method Statements was discussed at a construction safety conference in Canberra. SafetyAtWorkBlog reported that: “Several delegates stated their belief that the Office of the Federal Safety Commissioner (OFSC) is largely to blame for the over-emphasis on SWMS in the construction sector and for the bloating of SWMS into a … Continue reading “Federal Safety Commissioner begins review of SWMS info”
The lower house (thanks, Rex) of the Australian Parliament has passed amendments to its industrial relations laws, the Fair Work Act, to allow for matters concerning workplace bullying to be heard in its Commission, once the laws pass the Senate.. But recent media and parliamentary discussion on this action seems to forgotten the welfare of … Continue reading “Legal changes on workplace bullying are forgetting the workers”
Safe Work Australia has released its latest draft code of practice for preventing and responding to workplace bullying for public comment. There are many useful and practical strategies in the draft code but workplace bullying is only a small element of the more sustainable strategy of developing a safe and respectful organisational culture. The definition … Continue reading “Draft bullying code and cultural measurement”
Last week the Institute for Safety, Compensation and Recovery Research (ISCRR) released a review of the WorkHealth program. The results are very positive and deserve detailed analysis. However these analyses do not seem to address all the expectations of the Victorian Government when the program was launched several years ago. Premier John Brumby said at the … Continue reading “WorkHealth raises health awareness but only so far”
On 28 April 2013, New Zealand lawyer, Hazel Armstrong, published a 48-page book on how workplace fatalities and the management of the NZ rail industry has been related to politics and economics. This is an ideological position more than anything else and the evidence is thin in much of this short book but there is considerable power in … Continue reading “New Zealand railways, red tape, politics and workplace deaths”
This week in Australia the conservative Liberal Party released its much-anticipated industrial relations policy. Most commentary is that the policy is thin but in terms of occupational health and safety, the Liberal Party is supportive of the changes made concerning workplace bullying. Sadly, the commentary is often lazy. Media Misunderstanding One example of a careless headline is … Continue reading “Prevention of harm is lost in the debate over workplace bullying”