Further to yesterday’s article about the Model Health and Safety Management Plan (MHSMP) being required by the Construction Compliance Code Unit (CCCU) in the Victorian Government, SafetyAtWorkBlog was provided with a copy of the submission of the Victorian Construction Safety Alliance* (VCSA). Tony Marino, the Chair of the VCSA, has granted permission for the covering …
Modern workers rarely stay in jobs longer than six or seven years because they choose to move on or are working on projects that have a short lifespan. Sometimes opportunities arise that can steer people in unpredictable directions, sometimes to positions of influence. One example of this type of journey could be Ian Markos. One … Continue reading “Interesting new appointment at South Australia’s Master Builders”
The Australian media has given workplace bullying the front page, probably because it is a slow news period and there have been no major disasters this Christmas period. However the coverage is of the new rules and opportunities for assistance offered by changes to the Fair Work Act that commence on 1 January 2014, rather … Continue reading “Media coverage on workplace bullying needs more depth and analysis”
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”
Mental health, happiness, well being, safety, red tape …. each of these have been linked to productivity recently in Australian discourses but, as has been mentioned previously, productivity has a flexible definition depending on one’s politics and political agenda. There is multi-factor productivity and labour productivity. Each measure provides different results. So where does OHS … Continue reading “Labour productivity is “soaring” in a period of IR/OHS variability”
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”
There is a logic being applied to workplace safety and public policy that does not ring true. The argument seems to be that productivity levels in Australia are low, that part of the reason for this low productivity is excessive business paperwork and that workplace safety regulators are a major contributor. (SafetyAtWorkBlog has written … Continue reading “Safety should not be the red tape bastard of productivity”