Michael Tooma, of the Australian law firm Deacons, is often the first labour lawyer to comment on Australia OHS Law matters and this week was no different. While many of us are continuing to digest the draft OHS Act, Tooma has identified several issues of interest. Some are discussed below. [Tooma’s full legal update is available HERE] … Continue reading “Deacons are first with harmonised OHS law comments”
Safe Work Australia was released four statistical reports into worker health in Australia. These are important and useful reports that will assist many companies and safety professionals to better address workplace hazards. This report is a comparison of two data sets in the hope that the report provides a more accurate picture of workplace injury … Continue reading “Australian Statistics – Part 3 – Injury data comparison”
Safe Work Australia was released four statistical reports into worker health in Australia. These are important and useful reports that will assist many companies and safety professionals to better address workplace hazards. SafetyAtWorkBlog is going to present some of the data in four blog articles, without commentary or interpretation, which is the usual approach. Each … Continue reading “Australian Statistics – Part 1 – Employment Conditions”
The Australian newspaper of 1 September 2009 epitomised the ideological problems with OHS in a business management context. Page 5 has two articles next to each other: “Renewed pledge to cut business regulation” and “Building chief ‘spat on an abused‘”. The first article reports on a speech by the Competition Minister, Craig Emerson, where it … Continue reading “In Australia OHS management is red tape”
On 19 August 2009, the Australian Financial Review (AFR) published an article (not available online) about the lack of success of OHS regulators meeting their agreed performance target. The article is based on the information provided by Safe Work Australia in its 2006-07 progress report. Below is a chart that WorkSafe’s John Merritt showed at a … Continue reading “Why OHS performance targets don’t equal safe workplaces”
The South Australian Industrial Court made three decisions in late July 2009 that are useful cases to look at in order to promote improved health and safety practices but also, in one particular case, to note the approval and endorsement of the judge in the post-incident actions of the employer. As the SafeWork SA media notice … Continue reading “Three OHS case studies”
At the Australian Labor Party conference currently happening in Sydney, the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, announced a program to create “green” jobs or jobs from the renewable energy and environmental sectors. The program sounds a lot like the previous (Conservative) government’s Jobs for the Dole scheme – same unemployment sector different focus. Rudd’s program is … Continue reading “The safety of “green” jobs”