Several years ago I attended a safety seminar hosted by Seacare. Maritime safety is not part of my “brief” but safety is, and I was seeking alternate perspectives on my specialist area. Seacare conducted a session where the treatment and management of an injured worker was work-shopped from incident to return-to-work. It was the first time … Continue reading “Why isn’t safety and health a continuum in a worker’s life?”
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 public comment phase of Australia’s review of its OHS law harmonisation process begins in September 2009. To a large degree it is at this stage that the stakeholders can start refining their horse-trading. It will also be interesting to watch as the distraction of the new industrial relations legislation has gone since that … Continue reading “Who is all this OHS harmonisation for?”
David Michaels has been nominated by President Obama as the new Assistant Secretary for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the Department of Labor. (A brief profile of Michaels is available HERE.) A posting at a US Workers’ Compensation website links through to a discussion on the potential impacts of the Michaels’ appointment. There … Continue reading “Do health professionals make the best OHS leaders?”
On 4 August 2009, John Merritt, Executive Director of WorkSafe Victoria, spoke at an OHS function hosted by the Australian Human Resources Institute in Melbourne. John is a lively speaker whose passion for workplace safety is obvious. I had the opportunity to ask the following question “How is reasonably practicable NOT a ‘get-out-jail-free card’?” Many … Continue reading “John Merritt and ‘reasonably practicable’”
As part of the Australian government’s program of national OHS harmonisation, Safe Work Australia has released “Proposed revisions to the workplace chemicals regulatory framework“. This has been a long time coming. This is not yet open for public comment but is a great indication of what Australian workplaces that handle chemicals may be in for. … Continue reading “OHS harmonisation – chemicals draft”
Further to the recent blog article on New South Wales WorkCover statistics, SafetyAtWorkBlog has been provided with a copy of the official Comparative Performance Monitoring (CPM) report that was released in August 2008. These figures are used to measure performance against the National OHS Strategy 2002-2012. SafeWorkAustralia has told SafetyAtWorkBlog that the next edition is due … Continue reading “Aspirational targets are next to useless put politically expedient”