This week a national scaffolding safety campaign was launched in Australia. There are several sources for new and useful information about the campaign, two are below. Mike Hammond of law firm, Deacons, has written a backgrounder on the need for the campaign and how to prepare for the compliance visits. Hammond lists the key messages … Continue reading “National scaffolding campaign”
The fragility of Australia’s agreement for OHS harmonisation is illustrated in an article by Michael Stutchbury of The Australian. He mentions the potential domino effect resulting from the West Australian Treasurer’s desire to keep his options open. New South Wales and Queensland see that a (politically unpalatable) out is possible. The freshest information in his … Continue reading “Union abuse of workplace safety”
New UK workplace fatality data was released by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) this week. It provides an interesting comparison to the recent Australian data. The HSE says that “The provisional figure for the number of workers fatally injured in 2008/09 is 180, and corresponds to a rate of fatal injury of 0.6 per … Continue reading “UK workplace fatality data”
Safe Work Australia released two OHS statistical reports in June 2009 – Mesothelioma in Australia, Incidence 1982 to 2005, Deaths 1997 to 2006 and Notified Fatalities Statistical Report, July 2008 to December 2008. Both reports are recommended for those statistic junkies out there as the analysis and trends are sadly illustrative, however some of the … Continue reading “New Australian OHS statistics”
SafetyAtWorkBlog reported on a scaffolding incident in Queensland in mid-2008. Charges have now been laid but not manslaughter charges as were called for at the time by the unions. The workers were fatally injured on 21 June 2008 when the swing stage scaffold they were using to carry out concrete patchwork on the Pegasus high-rise, then … Continue reading “Charges laid on swing stage collapse”
At the Safe Work Australia Awards ceremony in Canberra last week, the host Adam Spencer, noted that many of the nominees were dressed as ostentatiously as those who attend the Oscars. “Frocked-up” was the term he used. It seems to SafetyAtWorkBlog that a major element missing from these important national awards is a useful name … Continue reading “A name for the Safe Work Australia Awards”
Recently one of the Australian boutique labour law firms ran a seminar on employment issues related to migrant workers. Australia has a history of using workers from the Pacific Islands, principally, in agriculture. Chinese have been working in Australia since the goldfields of the 1800s. New Zealanders are so frequent that the countries almost share … Continue reading “Migrant worker safety”