OHS – Page 186 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Cost of occupational injuries and illnesses rise

According to a report in the Australian Financial Review (page 5, not available online) on 14 April 2009, the costs of work-related injury and disease has increased to $A57.5 billion. This represents 5.9% of the country’s gross domestic product, up from 5% in 2000-01.

Of perhaps more concern is the sectors of society which are estiimated to bear these increasing costs. 49% of costs are borne by workers, 47% by the community and 3% by the employers. Even if the insurance costs were allocated to employers, this would only amount to 18% of the injury and diseases costs.

The figures from the report conducted by the Australian Safety & Compensation Council could justify the push by some in the OHS profession to move workplace safety into the area of public health. Regardless, the spread of the cost should be borne in mind when OHS organisations lobby government for more support and attention.

Kevin Jones

Unions step-up OHS concerns over nanotechnology

The Australian Council of Trade Unions has updated its campaign over nanotechnology concerns. Geoff Fary, Assistant Secretary, said in a media statement

“With animal tests showing some nanomaterials share the same characteristics and reactions as asbestos fibres, governments and business must not repeat the painful lessons of the past and allow another tragedy to occur again.

“Existing laws and regulations were not designed with the unique properties of nanoscale materials in mind. A recent report from the NSW Parliament recommended this be addressed and we believe it should be done nationally too.

“Until we know more about nano materials, we should regulate as if it is dangerous to human health. It is the only safe option.

“Workers in manufacturing, retail, health, laboratories, textiles, and outdoor workers are potentially exposed to nanomaterials, and the list will grow as the industry grows.”

These comments are reminiscent of the Luddites of the Industrial Revolution however the Luddites had not experienced pernicious widespread hazards such as asbestos. The modern society and workplace has benefited from a better understanding of occupational hazards and the union campaign deserves an audience.

The union concerns are outlined in a factsheet available through this link actufactsheet0904-nanotech

Kevin Jones

An interview that SafetyAtWorkBlog conducted with the ACTU OHS Officer, Steve Mullins, is available HERE. A podcast with an award-winning nanotechnology researcher is available HERE

Australian trade unions hijack the World Day of Safety

Every year the ILO sponsors the World Day for Health and Safety At Work on 28 April 2009. This day is a day of remembrance for most countries where people reflect on those who have died at work in the previous year. Each year, these days are full of tears and grief, and motivation for safety professionals to work harder.

When handled well these are days of sorrow and dignity. Sadly, occasionally, these days are hijacked by the trade union movement in their industrial campaigns that only indirectly relate to workplace safety.

A couple of years ago, at the height of the union campaign to oust the Howard Government in Australia, the Victorian Trades Hall spokesperson, Brian Boyd, spoke passionately in support of the campaign. His political calls did not relate to the memories of the dead workers who people were there to remember and mourn.

For 2009, the Construction Forestry, Mining and Energy Union has imposed their campaign against the Australia Building & Construction Commission on the World Day for Health and Safety At Work, or Workers’ Memorial Day, whichever matches one’s political leanings. This demeans the original intention of the day and should be criticised.

The tenuousness of the ABCC campaign and safety is discussed elsewhere but it is inappropriate for the CFMEU Construction Division National Secretary, Dave Noonan, to link in a media statement the two issues:

“Each week on an Australian construction sites, statistics show that a worker will die. We cannot let this go on for another week let alone for another five years. Construction workers and unions are today making a stand for safety. If that means we have to have stop work meetings for safety or refuse to cooperate with the ABCC, then that’s what we’ll do.”

It is believed that there are no restrictions for meetings to discuss OHS matters on construction sites but there are conditions for union right-of-entry on OHS matters as listed below. The processes seem reasonable and are similar to the processes applied for several years in the Victorian jurisdiction.

It is disappointing to the OHS profession to link safety with a non-safety-related industrial campaign. What is more disturbing is the misuse of a memorial day to dead workers for political ends.

Kevin Jones

According to the website of the ABCC:

“1. A union official must have one of the following valid reasons to enter your site:

Investigate, on reasonable grounds, a suspected breach of the Workplace Relations Act 1996, a collective agreement, an award, an AWA or an order of the AIRC

Hold discussions with members or workers eligible to be members of the union

Perform inspections and functions under an OHS law *

If none of these reasons apply you have the right to refuse entry.”

Also

“Union officials must comply with your reasonable requests about:

The rooms or areas they may use on the site for holding discussions

The route they should take to access those rooms or areas

Occupational health and safety”

* Under the Workplace Relations Act 1996 union officials who enter a worksite for OHS purposes must hold a valid federal permit, produce that permit on request, exercise those rights during working hours and comply with reasonable OHS requirements.

Roadwork zone speed limit enforcement

At the Safety In Action Conference recently, Geoff Knox, CEO of Downer EDI spoke about the need to respect speed limits on roadwork sites. He mentioned this because his company conducts a lot of this type of work, but anyone who has driven through such a zone at the reduced speed limit sees many cars and truck travelling much faster, and only metres away from workers.

Crikey.com included a rumour in its 9 April 2009 bulletin that says on a stretch of the Monash Freeway that is being widened, that

“..within the Vic State Government that there is a tacit understanding not to police this stretch of road outside of peak hours and that between 50% & 60% of drivers are speeding. “

There are many instances where “tacit understandings” evolve into, or are considered, corruption and it is very disappointing that speed cameras, or other speed enforcement tactics, are not being applied in a circumstance where the need has never been more obvious.

Police threatened a blitz on the Monash in November 2008 if speed was not reduced.

In typical Crikey styles, there is a suggestion that there is a political advantage in this for nearby shaky electorates but the rumourmonger’s final comment brought the rumour into our context.

“Vicroads are known to be particularly concerned about worker safety, particularly at night when work is being undertaken. There is a tragedy waiting to happen, and the finger pointing after the fact will be most interesting.”

Kevin Jones

WorkSafe Victoria’s plans for the future

At the Safety In Action Conference in Melbourne last week the CEO Of WorkSafe Victoria, John Merritt, told the delegates that over the coming weeks and months we will see the following:

The “Homecomings” series of workplace safety ads have been purchased by Washington State and will be broadcast shortly. Merritt expects the campaign to spread across the United States and, maybe, into Canada;
WorkSafe has developed fake vending machines for use at exhibitions and trade displays which display replacement body parts, fingers as USB sticks (pictured below);
WorkSafe will be introducing an advisory support scheme for the medium-sized businesses, modelled on the Small Business scheme;
A team of advisers is targeting poor-performing large employers. Merritt said that “50 large employers account for 11% of all injuries WorkSafe sees”;
A major street art campaign will be launched by the end of April 2009
A new series of ads to be run on regional and rural television based on local sporting legends as part of the country football and netball sponsorship;
The graphic young worker advertisements will be re-run at appropriate times. Merritt acknowledged that the ads have generated many complaints but are transmitting the right message to the target audience.

WorkSafe will also maintain their focus on the “jugglers” those business people or administrative staff that are essential to each organisation because they are in charge of dozens of business processes. WorkSafe surveys of the jugglers have shown that less than 10% of their time is spent on OHS matters, around 30% of them are trained in their tasks and most operate without support.

Kevin Jones

Stolen blog articles

Dear Readers

It is fairly clear that I write for a living. Recently there have been several cases of bloggers and websites using my postings without permission. This used to be called stealing.

I frequently share my work with magazines, websites and others, if they ask first and tell me why they want it.

If you like what you read and want to tell your colleagues, that’s great. It’s even better if you commission work from me. But please ask for reuse of my articles. Thieves never get permission.

Kevin Jones

The misuse of OHS in industrial relations campaigns

Workplace safety and industrial relations are undeniably tied together in terms of policy development, legislation and implementation. This week the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) used the occupational safety record of the Australian construction industry to criticise the Australian Building & Construction Commission (ABCC).

wilcoxreportmarch2009-cover It should be stated here that SafetyAtWorkBlog does not support the ABCC. The Commission is a travesty and a political construct of the conservative side of politics. That the Rudd Labor government has allowed the Commission to persist is atrocious. However, the ABCC was established because of the perception that the Australian building and construction industry was corrupt, regardless of the absence of evidence through the Cole Royal Commission. Has the construction unions addressed this perception? No.

In the 3 April 2009 media statement issued by Dave Noonan, CFMEU Construction Division National Secretary, there are the following comments

“The right of construction workers to have a safe working environment is a glaring hole in the report. Justice Wilcox has skimmed over the issue of safety, which is a basic right of construction workers.

Safety was not part of the scope of the inquiry for Justice Wilcox. Action may have been taken by the ABCC on union representatives who were on construction sites to discuss safety but it is the presence on the site and the way that presence was achieved that is the issue, not whether the site is safe or not.

“It is shameful that the two employers used to prop up arguments for the retention of the powers of the ABCC, BHP Billiton and John Holland, have had a worker die on site in the last fortnight,” said Dave Noonan.

SafetyAtWorkBlog has elsewhere mentioned the poor safety record of BHP Billiton and the campaign on worker safety by the unions against John Holland. However, these two companies are operating within their legal rights even if one does not agree with their decisions. The focus of attention should be given to the current government which has chosen to act slowly on the ABCC, an organisation the Australian Labor Party, in opposition, opposed.

The difficulty for the union movement is that the ALP requires the ongoing support of the Australian labour movement to provide it with membership and finance (not to mention a career path for the trade union secretaries). The trade unions need the political influence of the ALP and are obliged to criticise politely but not too overtly.

“The 154 page report does not mention the safety record of the construction industry or the fact that one worker dies on average each week.”

Safety was outside Justice Wilcox’s terms of reference.

“The so called ‘industrial harmony’ brought about by the ABCC and heralded by Justice Wilcox comes at the expense of the lives of construction workers. We have deteriorating safety on construction site across Australia. At the very time Justice Wilcox was finalising his report, BHP and John Holland had a construction worker killed on their project,” said Mr Noonan.

Noonan does not offer evidence of the link between the operation of the ABCC and “deteriorating safety”. It is suspected that such research would indicate that the correlation is not that clear and that there are many other factors affecting safety management.

“Industrial harmony” is an unfair description as even totalitarian regimes can claim harmony.

“The report also fails to deal with breaches to International law by the building and construction laws. Australia has been criticised by the International Labor Organisation six times for undermining workers rights.”

This is again outside the inquiry’s scope. The ILO criticism is valid but the capacity to change is not with Justice Wilcox or the ABCC but with Australia’s politicians, who should be the union’s real targets.

“Australia’s construction unions will continue with the campaign for rights on site, using the full strength of the union movement.”

This is no more than what the union movement was established for. The union movement needs to remind itself that it is a member organisation and that worker rights are not necessarily the same as union rights. Not all union activity benefits its members.

“Workers rights to a safe workplace and equality before the law are core Labor principles. Construction workers, their unions and 10,000 working Australian’s will continue to campaign for rights on site, so all Australian worker [sic] are equal before the law,” said Mr Noonan

There are two issues here that Noonan has lumped together – workplace safety and worker equality. Regardless of union action or union presence, every Australian worker has the right to a safe and healthy work environment. Equality is harder to achieve but just as much a human right.

Above, the perception of corruption in the construction industry was mentioned. The exploitation of OHS in an industrial campaign against John Holland and the ABCC is unfair and insulting and may indicate that the union movement is not gaining traction on the industrial campaign.

It may just be that the media statement from the CFMEU is an expression of frustration and disappointment with the government that the union movement campaigned hard to bring to power and who is not providing the expected return on investment.

The union movement in Australia needs to realise that the industrial relations environment, like the upcoming OHS legislation, cannot be wound back but that a new future is possible. There is no vision in Noonan’s media statement only a complaint that the Rudd government is breaking its promise and, in the general populace, noone outside the union movement seems to care.

Kevin Jones

UPDATE ON ABCC – 6 April 2009

The Australian Greens issued a statement in early April 2009 questioning the government’s choice to retain industrial relations rules introduced by the previous, conservative, government.

Senator Rachel Siewert said

“We do not, however, support his recommendations for the separate division within the Fair Work Ombudsman to retain compulsory interrogation powers and the ability to deny workers their right to silence.”

“There is no justification to continue this discrimination against building workers. The building industry must be regulated just like any other industry – in a fair and just manner that balances the needs of productivity and the economy with the health, safety and democratic rights of workers.”

Tag: OHS

Cost of occupational injuries and illnesses rise

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Unions step-up OHS concerns over nanotechnology

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Australian trade unions hijack the World Day of Safety

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Roadwork zone speed limit enforcement

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WorkSafe Victoria’s plans for the future

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Stolen blog articles

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The misuse of OHS in industrial relations campaigns

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