The strong readership of the article on truck driver safety based on the research of Dr Clare George resulted in one reader remind me of Australian research from 2017 that looked at similar issues. In 2017 Louise Thornthwaite and Sharron O’Neill published “Regulating the work health and safety of Australian road freight transport drivers: summary report“. …
Occupational health and safety (OHS) is often about promises. Employees trust their bosses to provide them with a job and the employer promises to provide a workplace that is as safe as possible. There are also contractual policies which formalise OHS relationships between client and contractor. But OHS is more often about those more personal …
Many have been claiming that the era of neoliberal economics and the associated politics is over or, at least, coughing up blood. However, occupational health and safety (OHS) is rarely discussed in terms of the neoliberal impacts, and vice versa, yet many of the business frustrations with red tape, regulatory enforcement strategies, reporting mechanisms and …
Victoria’s Trades Hall has criticised the Master Builders Association of Victoria (MBAV) over its opposition to Industrial Manslaughter laws. The MBAV’s opposition is described as “tired” by Trades Hall in a small article in the OHS Reps SafetyNet Journal which illustrates how the gap is unbreachable. This is what the OHS Unit of Trades Hall …
Occupational health and safety (OHS), building safety and public safety often overlap but never more so than in the instance of the Grenfell fire of June 2017. The UK Government has just released the final report into the incident and there are many interesting lessons for workplace health and safety and its social role. Dame …
There seems to be a growing community frustration with regulators who hesitate to prosecute about breaches of laws, including occupational health and safety (OHS) laws, and about options that sound reasonable, like Enforceable Undertakings, but still let businesses “off the hook”. The calls for Industrial Manslaughter laws are the most obvious manifestations of the anger …
On the issue of Industrial Manslaughter laws, Lana Cormie (pictured far right) said: “Employers need to have motivation to do the right thing, ’cause clearly they don’t do it off their own back. So, if that means, if this’ll be the difference between them making OH&S a high priority and not, then it needs to … Continue reading “Why are we arguing about Industrial Manslaughter laws?”