Jordan Barab is a major voice in occupational health and safety (OHS) in the United States. This year he chalks up 20 years of his Confined Spaces blog. His latest year-in-review article includes a political perspective that Australian OHS professionals and institutions should consider.
This week’s Weekly Times, a major Australian agriculture newspaper, is reporting the good news that work-related deaths on farms have declined (not available online). The numbers from Safe Work Australia are positive, but the analysis of the reasons for the decline is thin.
Occupational health and safety (OHS) has never had a profile as high as that of the environmental protection movement. OHS has never had a single, focused advocate like Greenpeace to make it visible. OHS activists do not hang banners off Tower Bridge or throw eggs at politicians (yet). One of the characteristics shared by OHS and environmentalists is the lack of comedy. An existential crisis like climate change is hard to laugh about, just as workers are dying, but some would argue that such black comedy could be productive and promotional. A recent show on the BBC World Service, The Climate Question, looked at environmental humour, but there are OHS parallels.
Continue reading “Can we laugh at workplace health and safety?”On December 29 2023, The Guardian newspaper’s cover story was about doctors in the United Kingdom’s National Health Service experiencing high rates of “moral distress”. It is common for hospitals and health care services to consider themselves as workplaces with unique hazards rather than suffering similar occupational health and safety (OHS) challenges to all other workplaces. What makes the OHS challenge so significant in the NHS is the size of the challenge rather than its nature or cause.
In early December 2023, the Australian Financial Review (AFR) published this (unblurred) photo of a woman, a man, and a child riding a single motorbike in the Australian countryside. Riding in such a way is unsafe, some may say reckless, and contrary to the operational guidelines of motorcycle manufacturers. Should the AFR have used this photo? Should there be a ban on such photos?
The prevention of workplace psychosocial hazards will be an increasing issue of concern and debate in 2024 as more Australian jurisdictions re-emphasize the application of occupational health and safety (OHS) laws to this insidious hazard. That debate requires a broad range of voices to better understand prevention strategies and to assess existing strategies that have failed or impeded progress. Emeritus Professor Michael Quinlan is one such voice, especially in his recent article, “Psychosocial Hazards: An Overview and Industrial Relations Perspective”.
[Note this article discusses work-related suicide]
A holiday video message of thanks from me.
Continue reading “Thanks for a successful 2023”
