Most safety professionals can tell stories about how workplace injuries are hidden so that bonuses or rewards are still distributed even though they are not warranted. Most of these examples are at the shop-floor level where rewards, although much anticipated, are minor – first aid kits, movie tickets, sometimes money – and where peer pressure can be quite overpowering. But occasionally a situation is revealed where senior executives also rort the system in order to obtain a reward or a bonus. In September 2010, the UK union Unite has revealed just such a case in Network Rail, a case where the chairman has acknowledged that greed played a role. Continue reading “UK case exposes the hypocrisy of leadership commitment”
Tag: Corporate responsibility
The cost of not having first aid
On 30 August 2010, WorkSafe Victoria released a media statement about a case in a Magistrates’ Court concerning the death of a worker. Nothing new in that but in this case first aid gains a prominence that is rarely seen because in this case adequate first aid was not provided. The uniqueness of the case justifies reproducing the media release in full:
“A Melbourne magistrate has described the failure of a Cheltenham company to seek first aid for a worker who hit his head and later died as ‘outrageous’.
Metal products manufacturer Pressfast Industries Pty Ltd was convicted and fined last week after a 2008 incident where a worker fell over and hit his head on concrete after being struck by a forklift.
The 60 year-old man was later found unconscious at work and died in hospital two days later.
“There was no qualified first aider on site, and the company failed to call an ambulance or seek first aid for the worker,” WorkSafe Victoria’s Strategic Programs Director Trevor Martin said. “The only staff member with first aid training was certified in 1984, and wasn’t alerted until it was too late,” he said.
In handing down his sentence, Magistrate Andrew Capell referred to the company’s decision not to seek help from the first aider, despite the expired certificate, as ‘outrageous’. Continue reading “The cost of not having first aid”
A bitter internal dispute at the Safety Institute gets a public airing
A member of the Safety Institute of Australia, Sue Bottrell, has taken offence at some of the content in this SafetyAtWorkBlog article. She has claimed, in a proposed legal action against me, that my blog article, based on an article written by Gavin Waugh and published in Australian Safety Matters Magazine, has defamed her.
Similar legal action is being taken by her against Gavin Waugh, who has indicated that he will be contesting the accusations.
I regret that any element of the SafetyAtWorkBlog article was able to be misinterpreted and caused offence to Sue Bottrell.
Tooma takes aim at the Environment Minister over accountability
Participants at the 2010 Safety In Action conference and the 2010 ASSE Conference will be familiar with lawyer, Michael Tooma‘s faith in due diligence to improve safety management in Australia. In the lead-up to his appearance at another Australian OHS conference in October 2010 he has again restated his faith but this largely ignores the changed political context of OHS harmonisation on which the new Work Health and Safety laws are based.
I have mentioned Australia’s current peculiar political position elsewhere. The uncertainty of Federal politics overlaps and could greatly affect the OHS harmonisation process, or rather, its application. It seems even more likely that the Labour Governments in Queensland and New South Wales will fall at their next State elections rendering the fast becoming an ideal of OHS harmonisation dead.
Tooma (pictured right) makes no mention of the changed political reality in a recent media release concerning his upcoming conference appearance although he is willing to take a pot shot at the Federal Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, over the lack of accountability over the deaths, fires and injuries that resulted from the botched home insulation scheme. Continue reading “Tooma takes aim at the Environment Minister over accountability”
Confusion over bullying and sexual discrimination on display in air traffic controller media reports
The Australian media is providing considerable coverage to the legal claim by two female workers against Airservices Australia over bullying and sexual discrimination. Airservices Australia is a government organisation that control aircraft movement over Australian airspace.
The details of the harassment mentioned in the media are quite offensive and have no place in the modern workplace.
There are a couple of OHS related issues that pertain to the legal action and the media articles. Firstly, the media struggles to differentiate between sexual discrimination, sexual harassment and workplace bullying. Bullying has the most direct relationship to occupational health and safety but the others generate stress in the workplace and therefore the impacts, if not the actions, fall within the OHS purview. The Australian Financial Review (AFR) (page 7, not available online) has a headline “Flight controllers sue for sexual discrimination” yet the article reports on bullying. Continue reading “Confusion over bullying and sexual discrimination on display in air traffic controller media reports”
Safety Cases must become a reality in the US
Some of the media, over the weekend, was critical of BP for not applying a Safety Case to the BP/Deepwater horizon oil rig. The Safety Case is an established method of assessing risk in high-hazard organisations and should have been applied. Whether such a technique would have made any difference is debatable as it is hypothetical.
Safety Case regimes have proven effective and are used as a default risk setting in many corporations but the story is not only one of a specific Safety Case missed opportunity. BP is an example of corporate hypocrisy that supports the cynicism of the community to large corporations whose actions do not reflect their commitment. Continue reading “Safety Cases must become a reality in the US”
Social change through worker dignity
The need for food parcels for those on workers’ compensation seems to continue in South Australia according to a 3 July 2010 report in Adelaide Advertiser. SafetyAtWorkBlog mentioned the service being offered by Rosemary Mackenzie-Ferguson and others in March 2010.
There are many areas of society that are supported by privately provided social services and this situation is likely to persist but just as soup kitchens illustrate a problem of poverty, so the food service mentioned above indicates a problem with workers’ compensation.
As each Australian state reviews its workers’ compensation laws ahead of a national harmonisation, it seems absurd to focus on the laws but not on the social impacts of those laws. It is common to refer to a “whole-of-government” approach to issues but “whole-of-society” seems to be a slower concept to embrace.
Much is being made in Australia’s OHS harmonisation process of the need to look at the enforcement policies that support new legislation. There is also a (flawed) reliance on Courts to provide clarity to the legislation rather than producing clear laws in the first place. But rarely does government look beyond the law, the Courts, or the enforcement policies to assess the potentially negative social impacts of the OHS and workers’ compensation laws. Continue reading “Social change through worker dignity”