workplace – Page 33 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

The meaning of work

A weekly radio program broadcast on Australian community radio station 3CR, Stick Together, broadcast a lecture by Barbara Pocock on the meaning of work.

Barbara Pocock is a leading workplace researcher and remains the voice on work/life balance. She is always worth reading and listening to. It is impossible to management workplace safety without continuing to learn what work is and how people look at work. A podcast of the Stick Together program is available for download.

Pocock says that many of the perspectives on work are negative and is therefore approached as a chore. She talks about how laborious jobs have declined in relation to technology and client demand and discusses

“efficacy, identity, contribution, vocation

social connection

opportunity to learn

positive spillover from work”

Kevin Jones

Global OHS statistics and trends

It is very easy to forget that workplace health and safety is a global issue. The pressures of work and the daily OHS issues can constrict our perspective for so long that we are surprised when we are reminded that people work everywhere and are therefore in danger in some way.

An article (citation below) from the Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health released online on 12 November 2009 is just one of those reminders that we need every so often. The article is called “The global and European work environment – numbers, trends, and strategies” and says

“We have estimated that globally there are 2.3 million deaths annually for reasons attributed to work.”

For the statistics junkies, the article goes on to report that 1.95 million of the annual deaths are due to illness and

“The average rate of disability and absence from work can be some 25% of the workforce in Europe.”

“The biggest causes of work-related illness in Europe are musculoskeletal diseases and psychosocial disorders (mental health)….”

“Work-related stress….affect(ed) an estimated 22% of EU workers in 2005…”

By looking at a variety of statistical records, the authors conclude that

“In the present political situation and serious economic downturn, legal measures need to be supplemented with economic justification and convincing arguments to reduce corner-cutting and avoid long-term disabilities, premature retirement, and corporate closures due to a poor work environment.”

Global OHS pyramid — The relationship between fatalities and other outcomes of work injuries and illnesses

The researchers advocate an integrated approach to managing safety in a workplace and list a “toolbox” of suggested areas. Many of these are already in place in many management systems.

This sort of global data is not going to change the management or operational practices in individual workplaces. That change will mostly come in response to site-specific events or initiatives. Governments need to know these statistics and trends so that they may plan strategic programs or structure their legislation but it is equally important for citizens and OHS professionals to be aware of this data for it is the citizens who hold governments accountable.

Kevin Jones

Takala J, Urrutia M, Hämäläinen P, Saarela KL. The global and European work environment – numbers, trends, and strategies. SJWEH Suppl. 2009;(7):15–23.

PCBUs have begun appearing

A reader has drawn SafetyAtWorkBlog’s attention to one State regulator in Australia who has already begun to apply the broader definition for “employer” in their OHS guidance material.

In September 2009, the ACT Safety Commissioner published a Guidance on “Safe Structures, Systems and Workplaces“. In that guidance, the Commissioner refers to

…”New general duties to ensure work safety by managing risk apply to a person:

…carrying on a business or undertaking;…”

This anticipates the definition put forward in Australia’s OHS model Act in relation to PCBUs (Peek-A-Boos).

The matter of a “business or undertaker” was also used in the ACT’s Work Safety Act 2008 (effective from 1 October 2009) throughout the document but with slight variation. Of most interest here are the definitions of employer, worker and “business or undertaking”:

“employer, of a worker, includes a person who engages the worker to carry out work in the person’s business or undertaking.”

“worker means an individual who carries out work in relation to a business or undertaking, whether for reward or otherwise, under an arrangement with the person conducting the business or undertaking.”

“business or undertaking includes—

(a) a not-for-profit business; and

(b) an activity conducted by a local, state or territory government.”

The logic of such an inclusive term is understandable but needs greater clarity which is likely to some from regulations or supportive documents.

Having a Peek-A-Boo is one thing, let’s just hope that the jargon does not develop to start referring to “undertakers”.

Kevin Jones

Working remotely does not mean it has to be unsafe

Australia is a big country and people work in very remote locations. However OHS obligations do not apply only when it is convenient. The law and duties apply equally wherever work is undertaken.

One example of safety improvements for remote work has been illustrated by the Community & Public Sector Union (CPSU). On 10 November 2009 CPSU informed its members of amendments to the “Remote Travel Standards Operating Protocols”. Some of those changes include

“Travel is twin engine aircraft is usual practise, but staff may be required to fly in single engine aircraft from time to time. Employees will have the choice not to fly on a single engine aircraft if they have legitimate concerns for their personal safety.”

This acknowledges that in the Outback there are not always options but that union members can exercise whatever is available. This also supports the individual’s OHS obligation to keep themselves safe.

Vaccinations for Hep A and B will be offered to employees before their first field trip, during orientation to remote servicing.

This is a standard travel safety option but often applied only for international travel. To offer this domestically is sensible.

The union has also managed to introduce a

Dedicated section in the post trip report for all OH&S issues, including issues in office accommodation, and living quarters.

Traditional wisdom is “be seen, be safe” but this also applies to reporting an OHS matter. If a form does not state that OHS is included, then it is increasingly likely that an incident or issue will not be reported. Organisations also cannot be seen as deterring the reporting of hazards and incidents.

The next option is curious and a trial seems appropriate

Management agreed to a 3 week trial beginning the 6 December 2009 for the use of personal alarms in case employees are confronted with acts of customer aggression, or other dangers in the field. Management will be asking staff for feedback on this, which will inform their decision on whether to provide or not provide personal alarms to employees into the future.

The issues of safety when travelling remotely have been negotiated for many months and the CPSU website posted regular updates on negotiations.

CPSU members and public servants need to travel to remote locations to provide a range of services. For instance, Centrelink’s Annual Report for 2008-09 says that

“Centrelink Mobile Offices, including the Murray-Darling Basin Assistance Bus, continued to travel around rural Australia to provide information and assistance to farmers and small business owners, their families and rural communities.”

These mobile offices covered 40,000 kilometres in one year.

Australia is a big country and urban safety professionals and policy makers need to be regularly reminded that a desk in an office is not a default workplace.

The “Remote Travel Standards Operating Protocols” are not publicly accessible by SafetyAtWorkBlog will provide a link, whenever possible.

Kevin Jones

Behavioural-based safety put into context

Yesterday Associate Professor Tony LaMontagne spoke at the monthly networking meeting of the Central Safety Group in Australia. His presentation was based around his research into job stress and its relationship with mental health.

LaMontagne was talking about the dominant position in personnel management where negative thoughts generate a negative working environment, one of stress, dissatisfaction and lower productivity. SafetyAtWorkBlog asked whether this was the basis for many of the positive attitudinal programs, or behaviour-based safety programs, that are frequently spruiked to the modern corporations.

He said that this was the case and that such programs can have a positive affect on people’s attitudes to work. But LaMontagne then expressed one of those ideas that can only come from outside an audience’s general field of expertise. He said that the limitations of such programs are that they focus on the individual in isolation from their work. He wondered how successful such a program will be in the long-term if a worker returns from a “happiness class” to a persistently large workload or excessive hours. The benefits of the positive training are likely to be short-lived.

This presented the suggestion that positive training programs, those professing resilience, leadership, coping skills and a range of other psychological synonyms, may be the modern equivalent of “blaming the worker”. The big risk of this approach to safety is that it ignores the relationship of the worker with the surrounding work environment and management resources and policies. Even the worker who is furthest from head office does not work in isolation.

It is unclear what the positive training programs aim to achieve. Teaching coping skills provides the worker with ways of coping with work pressures, but what if those pressures are unfair or unreasonable? What if those pressures included bullying, harassment, excessive workloads? Will the employer be meeting their OHS obligations for a safe and healthy working environment by having workers who can cope with these hazards rather than addressing those hazards themselves?

Professor LaMontagne reminded the OHS professionals in attendance yesterday that the aim of OHS is to eliminate the hazards and not to accommodate them. He asked whether an OHS professional would be doing their job properly if they only handed out earplugs and headphones rather than try to make the workplace quieter?

Recently SafetyAtWorkBlog received an email about a new stress management program that involves “performance enhancement, changing the way people view corporate team dynamics”. Evidence was requested on the measurable success of the program. No evidence on the program was available but one selling point was that the company had lots of clients. This type of stress management sales approach came to mind when listening to Professor Montagne.

When preparing to improve the safety performance of one’s company consider the whole of the company’s operations and see what OHS achievements may be possible. Think long-term for structural and organisational change and resist the solutions that have the advantage of being visible to one’s senior executives but short on long-term benefits.

And be cautious of the type of approaches one may receive along the lines of programs that can change

“…high performance habits so employees can operate at 100% engagement and take their achievement to the next level while achieving a healthier culture in the workplace”.

Kevin Jones

Note: Kevin Jones is a life member of the Central Safety Group. The CSG is just finalising its website (http://www.centralsafetygroup.com/)where information of forthcoming meetings will be available.

Australia’s employers’ thoughts on OHS law

The public submission period for commenting on the Australia’s OHS model laws has closed and the submissions are gradually being made available on the Safe Work Australia website.

At the time of writing there are around 15 submissions listed and Safe Work Australia has indicated that there are many more that are being sifted through at the moment.

Each submission had the option for the comments to be confidential. Confidential submitters told SafetyAtWorkBlog that one reason for confidentiality was so that their comments did not reflect on their current employer. This is understandable but also adds an allure to the submission. It will be interesting to note which of the large associations apply confidentiality to their submissions.

One employer association who is “loud and proud” of their submission is the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The ACCI submission is currently available only from its website. Below is what the ACCI’s Director of Workplace Policy, David Gregory, says in a media statement that accompanied the release of the submission

“…[Gregory ] has rejected union claims that business groups are pushing for changes that would reduce health and safety rights for workers.

ACCI also urged Australia’s governments to work towards a truly uniform national OHS system with respect to the approach by OHS inspectors, regulators and the courts.”

“Employers want a model Act that delivers both improved workplace safety outcomes and an effective legislative framework that will encourage employers and workers to be proactive and collaborative in improving the safety of their workplaces. Unnecessary prescription will ultimately serve only to distract and discourage both employers and employees from delivering safer workplaces. ACCI has provided some positive suggestions in its submission that should be adopted to improve the operation of the Act.”

ACCI has strongly backed the reinstatement of a definition of ‘due diligence’ in the model Act, as the absence of a definition will mean that company officers will be unclear about their duty and how compliance may be achieved.

Employers have also identified a number of aspects of the model OHS Act which are open to potential misuse such as union right of entry, persons assisting health and safety representatives, and procedures for establishing multi-employer workgroups, which require redrafting to ensure that they are fair and balanced and do not undermine the safety objectives of the Act.

ACCI in its submission advocates that the maximum penalty for a corporation under the Act should be set at the current Australian maximum of $1.65 million, arguing that the proposed $3 million maximum will simply fuel a litigious and compliance-based approach to OHS.

Gregory’s first point addresses ideology more than anything else. The trade union movement will always be suspicious and uncomfortable with any organisation that is willing to put productivity before safety. The introduction of the ACCI submission makes it clear that the focus of the submission is not on improving safety but on improving the management of safety, two very different OHS approaches.

Recently a new book from Federation Press, “Work and Strife in Paradise“, a history of labour in Queensland illustrated how industrial harmony existed in that state for decades prior to the introduction of Robens-style legislation. For a long time unions and employer groups knew where they stood ideologically and therefore could anticipate responses and could negotiate from stable philosophical platforms. The industrial relations changes from the 1960s onwards complicated negotiations which did have some impact on OHS in that State.

[For the first time, to SafetyAtWorkBlog’s knowledge, a chapter is included in a labour relations book on research into employer associations.]

One would have to expect a definition of “due diligence” to be included in the upcoming OHS Act is the employers are in favour of this. The consensus in many OHS seminars is that such a definition is required.

The concerns over union rights is a hoary chestnut that has not been seen as a problem in Victoria where many of the suggested legislative features have originated.

The issue of penalties is a little hollow. Many corporate executives are covered by Directors’ & Officers’ Liability insurance as much as is possible. And fines do not generate litigation. The neglect of obligations and duties lead to prosecution and then penalties.

The ACCI submission states more clearly that

“…OHS breaches should generally be subject to civil rather than criminal penalties. Such an approach should be taken for the entire model OHS Act and not just selectively applied to aspects such as breaches in relation to union right of entry.”

It would interesting to know what ACCI’s position is on non-financial penalty options.

The impression obtained from the ACCI statement and submission is that they were principally intended for the audience of the ACCI membership. ACCI has a seat at the Safe Work Australia Council discussion table through its representative Annette Bellamy. It is suggested that it is here where the conservative and capitalist arguments on OHS laws will be put.

Kevin Jones

The personal cost of surviving a major hazard explosion

As one gets older, the “where are they now?” columns in the newspapers or the summer magazine supplements become more interesting. The articles of faded pop stars and political one-time wonders are diverting but every so often one makes you stop and think.

OHS is not renowned for “where are they nows?”. The discipline and the profession has few celebrities but there are important people. One such person is Jim Ward. Jim’s story is long and involved but he came to the public’s attention as a survivor of the 1998 gas explosion at the Esso gas plant in Longford Victoria. The blast, which killed 2 workers, crippled the State’s gas supply for almost 2 weeks. A Royal Commission was held into the disaster.

Usually a worker’s evidence may be reported on for a day or two in such an investigation but Jim Ward became more than that primarily due to the attempt, according to some, by Esso Australia (a subsidiary of ExxonMobil) to scapegoat Jim. This attempt was roundly condemned in the Royal Commission.

In the Australasian Mine Safety Journal, Jim Ward has written a short personal account of what happened that day but, more importantly, how that day has changed his life.

After the failure of steel exchanger and before the fatal explosion, Ward writes:

“I raced to a doorway and looked out into the gas plant where I saw a thick white fog rolling down the walkway. This white fog was a cloud of vaporised hydrocarbon. Gas – highly flammable gas.

Out of the fog stumbled two zombie-like creatures. Two men – blackened from head to toe. They were covered in soot which had been blown from the inside of the huge steel exchanger when it violently ruptured. They had their arms out in front of them trying to feel their way through the fog, blinking as if trying to catch some daylight to help guide them to safety.

Over the roar of the jet–engine–like sound of gas spewing into the atmosphere I yelled – I yelled at them to get into the control room. Into the control room and to relative safety. Ninety seconds later the gas found a source of ignition and a second, much louder explosion shook the control room building again.

What followed from that moment on was sheer unadulterated terror.”

In his article he goes on to explain the psychological impact of that day and the diagnosis of his post-traumatic stress syndrome. Ward rightly points out that mental health is poorly understood in the workplace.

Many employers are satisfied if they get through a single day without a problem or complaint but silence is not compliance and there may be mental health issues that require attending to even though they are difficult to identify.

Ward’s article is a timely reminder that the measurement of a successful OHS management system or a more personal “safe system of work” has changed and that business needs to scrutinise OHS auditors on the mental health assessment criteria.

Perhaps, most particularly to Australia, it is necessary to gauge OHS laws through contemporary hazards, such as mental health. The law will exist for decades and need to be able to adapt to emerging hazards, many of them not coming from the physical.

His article also means that workers need to consider colleagues as more than just colleagues and look to their humanity. In the past many of us are inclusive and dismissive when we refer to someone as a work mate. People are more than that.

It may be, as this article is written on 9 November 2009, that Jim Ward’s message has already been learnt by the survivors and emergency workers of the World Trade Center from 2001. But for many outside the United States it is also two days before Armistice Day, the end of the World War which really brought shell-shock or combat stress reaction and post traumatic stress disorder to the public mind.

When remembering the fallen in war and work we should also ask “where are they now?”

Kevin Jones

Tag: workplace

The meaning of work

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Global OHS statistics and trends

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PCBUs have begun appearing

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Working remotely does not mean it has to be unsafe

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Behavioural-based safety put into context

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Australia’s employers’ thoughts on OHS law

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The personal cost of surviving a major hazard explosion

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