The topic of culture is a critical consideration in the improvement of occupational health and safety (OHS). Each company should be aiming for a an active and healthy workplace and safety culture but the term “culture” continues to be difficult to define and poorly understood by the community.
SafetyAtWorkBlog has written about the culture discussion as it relates to
The politics of industrial relations will be a crucial element of Australia’s Federal election due later this year. The Federal Government has already used workplace safety as a reason for the reintroduction of the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC). The trade union movement’s latest response is a campaign launched on April 10, 2016 accompanied by an online video. Continue reading “Trade unions temper language on ABCC safety role”
During last week’s conference session on occupational health and safety and industrial relations, Innes Willox of the Australian Industry Group also spoke but was not included in the previous SafetyAtWorkBlog article. However, his speech notes for that session have just been released and deserve consideration. Continue reading “A moderate entry in the IR/OHS conflict”
The new Andrews Government in Victoria has followed through on its election pledge to abolish the Construction Compliance Code Unit (CCCU) of the Department of Treasury and Finance. It announced this in a peculiar manner within a media release on whooping cough, a process that Senator Abetz went to town on. But Premier Andrews’ decision raises the question of, if the Code is gone, what replaces it? The simply answer is nothing.
A spokesperson for the Premier advised SafetyAtWorkBlog that
“The Andrews Labor Government has delivered on its election commitment to scrap the Victorian Code of Practice for the Building and Construction Industry and its monitoring body the Construction Code Compliance Unit (CCCU).
Contractors bidding for Victorian Government work and applying for pre-qualification on construction registers will still need to meet safety and industrial relations management criteria. Contractors must also have occupational health and safety policies and procedures to meet legislative and regulatory requirements.”
Continue reading “Abolition of Construction Code is a return to the past on OHS”
This weekend the Australian people voted for the conservative Liberal Party to be the next Federal government. Workplace safety has been largely absent from the pre-election campaign but when it has been mentioned it has almost always been couched in terms of productivity. In the next few years, workplace safety issues must be couched in terms of productivity to have any hope of gaining the ear of the new government and, particularly, the ear of Senator Eric Abetz, the most likely candidate for the ministry of workplace relations.
Workplace Bullying
Recent changes to workplace bullying laws which provide a prominent role of the Fair Work Commission are unlikely to be rolled back but Abetz has promised Continue reading “New political challenges for OHS in Australia”
Victoria’s Minister for WorkCover, Assistant Treasurer Gordon Rich-Phillips, obviously felt obliged to get in early for the 2012 WorkSafe Week by stating, in a media release, that:
“Victoria is the safest state in Australia in which to work”
Rich-Phillips quotes a range of statistics based on a recent report by Safe Work Australia (SWA) – the Fourteenth Edition of the Comparative Performance Monitoring. His claims may be correct, but he is selective. He mentions his State’s workers’ compensation claims performance:
“Victoria had nine serious injury and disease claims for every 1,000 employees, far fewer than the national average of 12.2 claims. It was also well ahead of the Northern Territory (11.2 claims), Western Australia (12), South Australia (12.3), Australian Capital Territory (13), New South Wales (13.7), Queensland (14.7) and Tasmania (15.6).”
However, it is well-known that workers’ compensation statistics indicate the performance of the workers’ compensation scheme and claims, and not the real workplace injury rate. The SWA report provides information on both safety performance and workers’ compensation claims. The Minister extrapolates the performance of one element and applies it to the other.
The Comparative Performance Monitoring report also measures each State’s regulatory safety performance against the agreed National OHS Strategy. Against the Injury and Musculoskeletal measure, again based on claims data, only South Australia exceeded the “36% improvement required to meet the long-term target of a 40% improvement by 30 June 2012.”
Victoria came third, after New South Wales, with a 31% improvement rate.
Safe Work Australia stated that
” It is unlikely that Australia will meet the target.” (page 2)
The targets of the OHS National Strategy established in 2012 have been aspirational for some time and without any fear of sanction or reward for attainment, the worth of any National OHS Strategy is dubious.
SWA’s report also includes very positive national statistics on fatalities but still insists that:
“The volatility in this measure means that this improvement should be interpreted with caution and consistent improvement is still required to ensure the target is actually achieved.” (page 3)
This caution is missing from the statements of Gordon Rich-Phillips. Continue reading “Victorian Minister claims “safest state in Australia””
In late August 2012 at a breakfast seminar, the Director of Construction Code Compliance, Nigel Hadgkiss outlined the 1999 Victorian Code of Practice for the Building and Construction Industry, which complements a 1997 National Code, and recently released implementation guidelines being imposed on many Victorian construction companies by the Liberal Government. The Code and implementation guidelines are ostensibly about industrial relations or, as Australia is increasingly calling them, workplace relations but do contain some interesting safety elements.
An intriguing element of the Code and guidelines is the introduction of a workplace culture through contract obligations and how this may affect workplace safety.
Hadgkiss stated, according to a copy of his presentation, that
“Where a party tenders for public work called for after 1 July 2012, the party is required to comply on any subsequent privately funded work.”
This quote means that any company that applies for a Victorian Government contract, of specific costs and other criteria, must comply with the Code. Any client is entitled to impose their own contractual conditions. The obligation that “the party is required to comply on any subsequent privately funded work” means that even if the contractor or party fails to win the contract it tendered for its management of any subsequent project, even one from non-government funding, must also comply with the Code.
One of the four priority elements of the Code is occupational health and safety, so OHS requirements will spread from principal contractor, or tenderer, to contractor, sub-contractors and sub-sub-contractors like a virus or an “ITI”, an industry-transmitted infection. Continue reading “Safety culture change through a regulatory-based market mechanism”