The new report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) into prisoner health and welfare makes no mention of workplace safety, even though most prisons in Australia have formal work programs for commercial gain. The report “The health of Australia’s prisoners 2009” details the health and welfare status of Australian prisoners with some … Continue reading “Prisons are another world when implementing workplace safety”
The last sixty years’ of research into the effects of hours of work, shiftwork, associated workload, fatigue and affects on social life and families has produced many findings, but no general detailed agreements. There are interesting debates about who and what to research, what methods to use, what to measure and how to interpret results. … Continue reading “All exposure standards must consider hours of work”
Dr Yossi Berger of the Australian Workers Union has been reading some of the debate in SafetyAtWorkBlog and offered the article below for publication. He said to SafetyAtWorkBlog “…in relation to BP’s OHS catastrophes and comments about their management style, their managers and this aspirational, easily-bandied-about notion of workplace culture. Two things stimulated me to … Continue reading “The Astonished Manager: Not in my wildest dreams”
Caffeine is a commonly used stimulant in many workplaces around the world. As such, it is often considered to be the friend of the shift worker and a new analysis of research findings may make that friendship stronger. According to a new study from Cochrane researchers: “The results of this systematic review suggest that caffeine … Continue reading “Shiftwork saviour? – Caffeine (sort of)”
More information is coming to light about the treatment of survivors of the explosion on the Transocean oil rig. According to an article (and podcast) on National Public Radio on 6 May 2010, company lawyers for Transocean had survivors sign waivers within hours of the disaster. The article says: “The form that they made them sign had, ‘I … Continue reading “Treatment of workers from Transocean oil rig”
In 2003, emergency responders attended a major rail incident at Waterfall in New South Wales, in which multiple passengers were injured and seven died. According to a 14 April 2010 article in The Australian (page 7, not yet(?) available online): “The officers [David Wicks and Philip Sheehan] were among the first at the scene of the … Continue reading “Compensation denied because police officers only saw the aftermath of fatal incident”
On 9 April 2010, according to media reports, an investigating magistrate was appointed to investigate the more than 30 suicides that have occurred in the France Telecom (FT) workforce. This follows the November 2009 court finding that management policy could generate harassment. An inspectors report in February 2010 identified that “pathogenic” management methods were applied to achieve a job reduction target of 22,000 between 2006 and … Continue reading “Important lessons from France Telecom suicide investigations”