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Accident Comp changes put to Victorian Parliament
According to the WorkSafe Victoria website, changes to the Accident Compensation Act were introduced to the Victorian Parliament on 10 December 2009. WorkSafe is very confident that the changes will be...
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Coordinated raid on illegal workers in Australia
Illegal migrant workers are not a big problem in Australia. Those who are caught are usually working outside of the allowances of their tourist or student visas. Being an island nation and the bottom...
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2010 International Day of Mourning
Tomorrow, 28 April 2010, is the International Day of Mourning, a remembrance day for those who have died at work. In Australia most of the focus will be on the memorial event in Sydney as the...
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Only an OHS expert can deal with the problem
Occupational health and safety is supposed to be a skill that anyone can obtain and apply but it is often complicated by experts. This is not to say that OHS is “common sense”. The notion of common...
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Harmonious fragility or fragile harmony – OHS and politics in Australia
Less than 24 hours after mentioning the fragility of Australia’s OHS harmonisation process, confirmation comes from an unexpected source, Kristina Keneally, Premier of New South Wales (pictured right)....
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Only animals should die in abattoirs
The Sunday Age of 30 January 2011 ran an article about the status of workplace safety in some of Victoria’s abattoirs. The article has some similarities to the landmark investigations by Eric...
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WorkSafe Victoria provides insight into bullying investigations
It has been known for some time that OHS regulators struggle with handling reports of workplace bullying. Investigation of these hazards requires new inspectorate skills and take considerable time....
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Bullying has many causes and too many avenues of appeal
On 18 October 2011, there was a brief discussion on workplace bullying in the ACT Legislative Assembly of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). The question to Chief Minister Katy Gallagher,...
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“Do some good” sounds more effective than achieving “zero harm”
The April 2012 edition of the UK magazine Training Journal makes a statement that is so simple, safety professionals should be kicking themselves. The safety profession is trying to change the...
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Workplace bullying in the police force illustrates the challenges of change...
There are two newspaper reports in Australia on 21 June 2012 about the Victorian Police Force that illustrate a fractious safety culture and a major organisational and ideological impediment to...
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Is safe work a basic, or fundamental, human right?
Early this century, according to a draft conference paper* in the SafetyAtWorkBlog archives, the late Eric Wigglesworth OAM posed the following question: “In addition to our basic human rights of...
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Principled pragmatism – Human Rights included in OHS Due Diligence
On 16 August 2012, Australia’s Workplace Relations Minister, Bill Shorten, said in Parliament, in relation to new asbestos management initiatives, that” “On 14 March this year, in my first ministerial...
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Sex, work, liability and safety
There is a constant tension between occupational health and safety (OHS) and workers compensation. OHS is intended to prevent harm and workers compensation is available for when harm cannot be, or has...
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“Put the human being first”
One of the most contentious issues in safety management is the treatment of workers compensation claimants. On 18 August 2014, a small qualitative research report into this area was launched in...
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Book review: Business, Environment, and Society – Themes and Cases
Australia’s Royal Commission into the Home Insulation Program (HIP) spent a great deal of time looking at the design of what started as an environmental initiative delivered in one way to an economic...
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Sex trafficking and brothels
Every employee has the right to a safe and healthy work environment. It was this statement and belief that pushed me to providing OHS advice to the legal brothel industry in Victoria. The industry is...
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Morality in business
A good safety manager is one who is aware of the social context of the job and the social consequences of injury on employees. The manager also needs to consider the operational parameters of the...
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April 28 – Workers’ Memorial Day
This annual event seems to receive more attention in Europe than elsewhere although over the years several Australian capital cities have erected workers’ memorial stones. It is usually here that...
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OHS and Corporate Responsibility in Asia
In 2000, Melody Kemp was interviewed for Safety At Work magazine about her experience monitoring Western corporations’ workplace safety in Asia. Below is an extract of that interview. The full...
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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...
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