Category Archive for : ‘WHS’

10 ‘Pattern’ Causes of Workplace Disasters

Renowned OHS academic Professor Michael Quinlan has identified 10 “pattern causes” that repeatedly recur in workplace disasters – and worker behaviour isn’t one of them.

The evidence doesn’t support the notion that worker behaviour or unsafe acts are a “predominant or pattern cause” of mining disasters, oil-rig explosions, factory fires, airplane crashes and other fatal work incidents, Quinlan says in his new book, Ten Pathways to Death and Disaster: Learning from Fatal Incidents in Mines and Other High Hazard Workplaces.

Prior to the New Zealand Pike River

New Online System to send Safety Message to Employees
Does your business need one?

Two employers have committed to spending a total of $600,000 on an online documentation management system, safety email alerts and other programs, after being accused of WHS breaches.

In the first case, Cape Cod Australia Pty Ltd entered into an enforceable undertaking with SafeWork NSW after two apprentices of contractor High Performance Constructions Pty Ltd were injured when a staircase fell on them in November 2012.

The apprentices and two other workers were trying to manually move the 2.7 metre-high

Safety Observations Drive Down TRIFR

An employer has reduced its total-recordable injury frequency rate by 24 per cent by increasing managers’ visibility in the field, rewarding safety-conscious workers and introducing an HSE “action program”, its latest sustainability report says.

Origin Energy’s 2015 report shows the company recorded a TRIFR of 3.8 per million hours worked in the 2015 financial year, down from five the year before.

The energy giant – which has 6900 employees and several thousand contractors – also recorded fewer lost-time cases and work days lost in 2014-15, while its lost-time

New Amendment to WHS Laws

The national model WHS laws are being amended to clarify the reach of provisional improvement notices (PINs), increase penalties for WHS entry breaches and reduce “unnecessary regulatory burden”.

Safe Work Australia CEO Michelle Baxter told Senate Estimates last week that under the May 2014 COAG plan to reduce “red tape” in the model laws, a range of proposed changes were drafted and approved by SWA’s tripartite members early this month.

An SWA spokesperson today told OHS Alert that COAG asked state and territory work health and safety ministers to examine

How Sleep Deprivation is harming your workforce!

Sleep deprivation contributes to “numerous negative occupational outcomes”, such as increased risk of injury and costly presenteeism, but few workplace wellbeing programs include sleep improvement initiatives, US researchers say.

“Among the employers offering a lifestyle management program in their employee wellness program (EWP), most of them target nutrition/weight management (79%), smoking (77%), and fitness (72%),” they say.

The University of Pennsylvania researchers say their study of 11,698 EWP participants in 2008, and 5636 in a 2009 follow-up, confirmed previous research on the association between the sleep disorders

A lack of safety training has caused a death

A young worker who died after being left to operate a forklift alone in an industrial freezer hadn’t received OHS or forklift training, the NSW Coroner has found.

Coroner Carmel Forbes found the employer didn’t have a freezer safety policy or a policy that prohibited employees from working on their own.

In April 2013, 23-year-old Vijay Singh died from complications of hypothermia that developed while he was trapped for about an hour in a large freezer warehouse in one of Laurent D Pty Ltd’s Matraville,

OHS / WHS Compliance

Safe Work Australia is a national body responsible for leading the development of policy related to work safety in Australia (OHS / WHS). They also set national policy on worker compensation for the nation by creating model codes and practices and developing broad policies. Safe Work Australia does not regulate the policies it makes; this is the role of the states, territories and commonwealth. The agency is designed to be a partnership between trades, unions and the government with the overall goal of worker safety

New WHS legislation takes effect January
Are you ready?

National

As of January brand new WHS legislation will be brought in across Australia. As flagged by the Federal Government in October, employers are no longer required to obtain AS/NZS 4801:2001 certification before tendering for Commonwealth construction projects.

Employment Minister Eric Abetz said at the time that this and other changes to the Australian Government Building and Construction OHS Accreditation Scheme, including extending the maximum accreditation period from three to six years for “consistent high performers”, will free up the Federal Safety Commissioner to target

What are Contractors WHS Responsibilities

For many organisations, working with contractors and subcontractors is part and parcel of daily life. More and more organisations are seeking the services of specialist contractors to assist them with  projects or simply day-to-day maintenance tasks. This can make life easier for everyone in many respects, but it can also create a number of issues when it comes to managing work health and safety. Therefore understanding contractors WHS responsibilities can make everyones job easier.

What does the law say about contractors?

For certain construction work over $250,000, the model

NEW NSW WHS Mining Legislation
Changes effective as of 01/02/2015

Finally, the new work health and safety (WHS) laws for the NSW mining industry – the Work Health and Safety (Mines) Act 2013 (NSW) and Work Health and Safety (Mines) Regulation 2014 (NSW) (New Mining Laws) – will commence on 1 February 2015.

What does this mean?

The New Mining Laws will repeal and replace the existing Coal Mine Health and Safety Act 2002 (NSW) and the Mine Health and Safety Act 2004 (NSW) and the respective regulations. This means that coal mining and other mining