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OHS Podcast with Andrew Douglas

One of the services that Workplace Safety Services (the company behind SafetyAtWorkBlog) provides to its clients are podcasts.

The Safety Institute of Australia had a podcast produced principally to promote its Safety In Action Conference, which is in Melbourne Australia on 31 March to 2 April 2009, that includes an interview with Andrew Douglas. Andrew is speaking at the SIA09 conference and is a director of Douglas Workplace and Litigation Lawyers.

In the podcast he discusses making OHS a core business function, the OHS role in small business and the not-for-profit sector, and how important it was for him personally and professionally to be involved with the Safety In Action conference.

The podcast is a short promotional one but you may find Andrew’s comments of interest and use.

Managing Safety After A Vacation

On 4 January 2009, the Sunday Age contained a curious article based around some quotes from Eric Windholz, acting executive director of WorkSafe Victoria. The article reports Eric as saying that when workers return to work after a holiday break they can be careless.

“People come back, they’ve taken their mind off the job, they’ve had a well-earned holiday and sometimes it takes them a little while to do the basics of making sure they’re working safe….. Recommissioning their equipment, starting plant, starting at construction sites again, people may not have their minds on the job and they get hurt.”

WorkSafe has advised SafetyAtWorkBlog (and provided the original media statement) that

Mental support research

In SafetyAtWorkBlog in 2008 there have been several posts concerning suicide. There is a growing research base on the matter and The Lancet adds to this through an article published in December 2008.

Researchers have found that the type of mental health services provided to the community can affect the rate of suicide. This is important research even though SafetyAtWorkBlog regularly questions the applicability of research undertaken in Scandinavian countries to the rest of the world. Bearing the cultural differences in mind, the research will stir debate and, hopefully, localised research along the same lines.

Below is the text of the press release about the research:

WELL-DEVELOPED COMMUNITY MENTAL-HEALTH SERVICES ARE ASSOCIATED WITH LOWER SUICIDE RATES

Well-developed community mental-health services are associated with lower suicide rates than are services oriented towards inpatient treatment provision in hospitals. Thus population mental health can be improved by the use of multi-faceted, community-based, specialised mental-health services. These are the conclusions of authors of an Article published Online first and in an upcoming edition of The Lancet, written by Dr Sami Pirkola, Department of Psychiatry, Helsinki University, Finland, and colleagues.

Worldwide, the organisation of mental-health services varies considerably, only partly because of available resources. In most developed countries, mental-health services have been transformed from hospital-centred to integrated community-based services. However, there is no decisive evidence either way to support or challenge this change.

The authors did a nationwide comprehensive survey of Finnish adult mental-health service units between September 2004 and March 2005. From health-care or social-care officers of 428 regions, information was obtained about adult mental-health services, and for each of the regions the authors measured age-adjusted and sex-adjusted suicide risk, pooled between 2000 and 2004 – and then adjusted for socioeconomic factors.

They found that, in Finland, the widest variety of outpatient services and the highest outpatient to inpatient service ratio were associated with a significantly reduced risk of death by suicide compared to the national average. Emergency services operating 24 hours were associated with a risk reduction of 16%. After adjustment for socioeconomic factors, the prominence of outpatient mental-health services was still associated with a generally lower suicide rate.

The authors conclude: “We have shown that different types of mental-health services are associated with variation in population mental health, even when adjusting for local socioeconomic and demographic factors. We propose that the provision of multifaceted community-based services is important to develop modern, effective mental-health services.”

In an accompanying Comment, Dr Keith Hawton and Dr Kate Saunders, University of Oxford Department of Psychiatry, UK, say: “The message to take from these findings must be that while well thought out and carefully planned new developments that increase access to secondary care services for mental-health patients are to be encouraged, measured progress towards flexible community care, not rapid ongoing change, should be the order of the day.”

Workplace Choirs

As workplaces approach the winter break or Christmas, there will be in increase in communal singing. One Australian has started to establish workplace choirs.

Tania de Jong makes some good arguments about the benefits of greater worker contact and understanding through communal singing. It sounds logical and I am sure there is evidence to show positive benefits, just as there is to show the stress management benefits of laughing.

There are parallels everywhere with this not-wholly-original concept and one I am reminded of is the Fortune Battle of the Corporate Bands. (Maybe the economic downturn will cause an increase in trios and duets)

I foresee lots of niggly problems such as the singing of religious songs during Christmas, and singing ironic songs that obliquely criticise corporate strategies and performances. I can think of many and ask that SafetyAtWorkBlog readers suggest others through comments below.

Suggestions already include

Money, Money, Money – ABBA

I Wanna Be a Boss – Stan Ridgway

Nine to Five – Dolly Parton

Kevin Jones

George W Bush and workplace safety

In 2001, one of the first legislative actions of George W Bush was to repeal the United States ergonomics standard. At the end of his presidency there are indications that he is thinking about the regulatory impost of OHS on businesses again.

Crikey.com and others have reminded us of the Bush Administration’s plans concerning the exposure of workers to chemicals

“David Michaels, an epidemiologist and workplace safety professor at George Washington University‘s School of Public Health, said the rule would add another barrier to creating safety standards, in the name of improving them.

“This is a guarantee to keep any more worker safety regulation from ever coming out of OSHA,” Michaels said. “This is being done in secrecy, to be sprung before President Bush leaves office, to cripple the next administration.””

Propublica has reported that new rules that seem to run counter to current fatigue management guidelines elsewhere have been finalised.

“The Department of Transportation has finalized an interim rule for the number of hours a truck driver may spend on the road per day and per week. The rule, which has essentially been in effect since 2004, allows truckers to drive for 11 hours and work no more than 14 consecutive hours each day. They must rest 10 hours between shifts, and may not work more than 60 hours a week.”

An audio report from 2007 on the issue of working hours is available at NPR

It is hard to see the justification for these safety rule changes but these are just two of many changes in place or being finalised in a rush. Perhaps there is a grander strategy that the bigger perspective will show.

The actions are disappointing but not without precedent. It should be remembered that Democrat President, Bill Clinton, took full advantage of the opportunity.

In Australia and elsewhere, the movement to “cut red tape” gathers strength, it just seems that no one yet is applying the US solution of eliminating the regulatory need.

It is sad to see that throughout Bush’s tenure safety advocates and lobbyists were not able to gain concessions. It will be doubly difficulty to gain anything that may involve a cost to business in the current economic problems.

The challenge will be even greater in Australia where the Safe Work Bill has been withdrawn from Parliament and the Government is willing to weaken election commitments, such as on climate change, due to the economic context.

In just over a month’s time, we will see how new President Barack Obama acts on safety; Australia has much longer to wait.

Passport to Safety in Australia

Around the turn of the century a father told me this

“My son was 19 years old and he was killed in an accident in a small warehouse in a suburb of Toronto. In this little shop, it was a small business with only 4 or 5 people there. He got the job through a friend whose Father ran the business. It was the second or third day on the job and he was asked to go back and decant some fluid from a large drum to some small vessels. The action violated every OHS regulation in the book. There were multiple ignition sources, there was no grounding. A spark went off and lit up the fumes that went back in the drum and it exploded over my son. He died 24 hours later.”

That father was Canadian, Paul Kells, and this traumatic event set him on a journey to improve safety for young workers. Paul established the Safe Communities Foundation.

Paul has travelled to Australia several times and he has been granted audiences with many OHS regulators but it seems that government of South Australia is the most ardent supporter of Paul’s Passport to Safety program.

Over 5000 students in South Australia have completed the program since 2005 and the government is trying to reach the target of 20,000 teenage students. A sponsorship form is available for download.

SafetyAtWorkBlog supports Paul’s work and the sponsorship initiative of the South Australian government.

This is what the workplace safety ads in Australia are missing, a passionate advocate who speaks about the reality of workplace death and personal loss – someone who has turned grief into a social entrepreneurship. If only this type of inspiration could happen without the cost of a life.

My 2000 interview with Paul is available by clicking on this link kell-interview. It was originally published in SafetyAtWork magazine in February 2001.

Deaths in isolated work camp from tropical storm

It is relatively easy to manage a workplace in an urban environment. The buildings stay in one place, the neighbours are almost always the same and the weather bureau provides plenty of warnings. But in isolated areas, particularly in Australia, it seems the work environment is often more exposed. Certainly this was the case in mid-March 2007 when Cyclone George hit a railway construction camp killing several workers and injuring twenty.

The camp accommodation of demountable units, called dongas, were supposedly cyclone-proof. At the time, the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union said that administrative staff were evacuated but construction workers were directed to the dongas.

The owner of the worksite, Fortescue Metals Groups said on 11 December 2008 that it will fight 40 charges brought by Worksafe WA under the West Australian Occupational Health and Safety Act.

According to one media report:

“The charges include the failure to provide a safe work environment, failure to design and construct temporary accommodation and other buildings capable of withstanding a cyclone and failure to properly instruct and train workers.”

The installer of the demountable buildings, Sunbrood, had all charges dismissed.

The court case will continue in Western Australia in February and March next year.

Tag: workplace

OHS Podcast with Andrew Douglas

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Managing Safety After A Vacation

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Mental support research

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Workplace Choirs

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George W Bush and workplace safety

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Passport to Safety in Australia

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Deaths in isolated work camp from tropical storm

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