Chronic disease risk factors are costing employers one million in lost working days per fortnight, a new study has found.

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) research, ‘Risk factors and participation in work’, published in 2010, compared the working patterns of people who did and did not report health risk factors.

The risk factors were smoking, risky alcohol consumption, obesity, inadequate fruit consumption, inadequate vegetable consumption, physical inactivity, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol.

One million working days were lost per fortnight for people with any chronic disease risk factors, which equated to nearly 112,000 years of lost full-time work, the AIHW research said.

Combined with the findings of AIHW’s 2009 report, in which chronic diseases accounted for 57,000 years of lost full-time work, the overall net effect of risk factors and chronic disease was a loss of 193,000 years of full-time work annually.

‘Absentee rates were significantly greater for males and females (4.0 times and 2.5 times as high, respectively) among those with at least one risk factor and at least one chronic disease, compared with those with no risk factors or chronic disease,’ AIHW’s 2010 report said.

For more details, visit AIHW

Work emails are encroaching on home life, causing stress, anxiety, the inability to switch off and internet addiction, new research has found.

The study, ‘Working from home: New media technology, workplace culture and the changing nature of domesticity’, was part of an Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship project conduced by Dr Melissa Gregg from the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney.

Gregg said using technology had become part of the job for office workers. ‘And largely this has happened without any discussion at the workplace about implications for workload.’

Gregg interviewed 26 information workers from large organisations across different industry groups over three years.

Gregg found that many of the interviewees would check emails in bed at night and at 6am, but they did not believe this was work.

Part-time workers would keep email accounts open on days off to avoid ‘holding up’ full-time workers.

Signs of internet addiction were noted too. ‘We found some surprising stories from people who said they were concerned that their children were addicted to the internet, but who were actually showing signs of addiction themselves,’ Gregg said.

‘But these people didn’t see their use of computers as a problem because it was to do with work.’

Gregg said many participants also reported increased signs of stress and anxiety.

Gregg concluded that the evidence showed the problem was structural, not individual, but participants thought it was ‘their own individual failing that they can’t keep up both with the technology and the amount of communication they are having to deal with’.

For more details, contact Dr Melissa Gregg

Comcare has apologised for workers’ compensation underpayments highlighted in a recently released Commonwealth Ombudsman’s report.

Acting Commonwealth Ombudsman Ron Brent said two federal Government workers experienced significant financial hardship over a number of years due to Comcare’s miscalculations.

Brent said, despite one worker complaining several times about underpayments, Comcare failed to act because it didn’t receive the complaint in writing.

Further, neither Comcare nor the Department of Finance and Deregulation (DFD) had a mechanism in place to compensate for such underpayments.

However, Brent said the law didn’t allow injured workers to make claims under the Compensation for Detriment caused by Defective Administration (CDDA) scheme that covers most Australian Government agencies or apply to the DFD for an act of grace payment.

That being said, ‘there are some circumstances in which it is entirely reasonable to expect a person to be able to seek compensation outside the confines of the review options currently available,’ he added.

Comcare welcomed the Ombudsman’s findings. ‘Comcare again apologises to the people affected – we recognise that coping with injury and disability has major challenges and the right level of support compensation is important,’ said Comcare CEO Paul O’Connor.

In response to the Ombudsman’s investigation, Comcare is arranging for the two workers to be compensated.

Comcare and the DFD are also working together to establish a scheme similar to CDDA to cover workers.

For more details, visit Commonwealth Ombudsman and Comcare

A steelworker who will never work again has been awarded more than $1 million in compensation in the Supreme Court of Victoria.

Steelworker, Dong Pham, injured his back while continuously lifting heavy steel beams from a conveyor belt at Stramit’s Scoresby manufacturing site, said Slater & Gordon lawyer John Karantzis.

Pham first injured his back in 2003. He underwent a failed spinal fusion, and uncontested evidence provided in court said he would never work again, added Karantzis.

‘Mr Pham complained to his employer for 18 months that his back was hurting, but he was ignored and had to keep on working,’ said Karantzis.

‘He was also given no training in a task which was clearly beyond the ability of one or two men.’

Pham was awarded $250,000 for pain and suffering, and $817,000 for pecuniary loss.

WorkCover Victoria will pay Pham’s medical expenses for the rest of his life.

For more details, visit Slater & Gordon

Only a small proportion of people can correctly identify the speed limit and younger males with post-high school education are least supportive of reducing the speed limit, recent road safety research reveals.

Approximately 4,100 people participated in the Monash University online road safety survey conducted in Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania.

Participants were questioned about speed limits related to local streets in residential areas, main undivided streets in urban areas, two-lane undivided rural roads and rural gravel roads.

‘Only 8 per cent of respondents correctly identified the current speed limit across the four investigated road types,’ the study said.

Those least supportive of reductions in the speed limit were more likely to be wealthier, have full-time jobs, have a post-high-school education, drive greater weekly distances, and be younger and male than those more supportive of speed limit reductions.

Those least supportive of speed limit reductions ‘more commonly reported driving over the speed limit’, the study added.

For more details, visit Monash University

Pilots in conversation and air traffic control complacency were among the reasons US Northwest Airlines flight 188 overflew its destination and failed to maintain radio contact.

Northwest Airlines flight 188, an Airbus A320, was flying between San Diego and Minneapolis when it failed to communicate with air traffic control (ATC) for one hour and 17 minutes and overflew its destination by 100 miles in October last year.

ATC had made repeated but failed attempts to contact the pilots. Contact was only re-established when a flight attendant inquired about the progress of the flight.

The flight eventually landed in Minneapolis without further incident.

The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation into the incident found the pilots had become distracted by a conversation unrelated to the flight and were using their personal laptop computers, which was contrary to company policy.

The NTSB also found, among other reasons, the ATC ‘may have become complacent in completing necessary NORDO [no radio communications] actions and required notifications in a timely manner’ because an airplane out of radio contact for a short duration wasn’t uncommon.

For more details visit the NTSB

Boosting OHS penalties is necessary to focus attention on safety, the US OHS chief has told the US Congress.

Assistant Secretary of Labor for the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) Dr. David Michaels was testifying before the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections in the US House of Representatives on the Protecting America's Workers Act (PAWA).

PAWA amends the US federal Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970.

‘OSHA’s current penalties are not large enough to provide adequate incentives,’ Michaels said.

‘Currently, serious violations – those that pose a substantial probability of death or serious physical harm to workers – are subject to a maximum civil penalty of only $7,000.’

He supported increases in civil and criminal penalties for all violations of the US federal Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, including an ‘increase penalties for wilful or repeat violations that involve a fatality to as much as $250,000’.

He also agreed with increased jail terms. ‘Nothing focuses attention like the possibility of going to jail. Unscrupulous employers who refuse to comply with safety and health standards as an economic calculus will think again if there is a chance that they will go to jail for ignoring their responsibilities to their workers.’

Under PAWA, the burden of proof changes from ‘wilfully’ to ‘knowingly’ and employers found in violation can face up to 10 years in jail.

For more details, visit the US House Subcommittee

Demonstrating how to ride an all-terrain-vehicle (ATV) was not enough to prevent the death of a beekeeper and avoid prosecution in New Zealand.

The beekeeper had been given a demonstration in riding an ATV by his employer and a bee farmer before he began servicing hives on August 19, 2008.

The beekeeper had no pervious experience in riding an ATV.

Later on August 19, the ATV was found overturned on the side of the road near the entrance to the bee farm.

The beekeeper was taken to hospital but died from head injuries – he hadn’t been wearing a helmet.

Masterton honey-production company PA and SC Steens Limited admitted the charge of failing to take all practicable steps to ensure the safety of an employee under the New Zealand Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992.

The company was fined $78,000 and ordered to pay reparation of $60,000 to the bee keeper’s family in the Masterton District Court.

Department of Labour Workplace Central Regional Manager Brett Murray said: ‘The lesson from this case is that farmers and other employers who use ATVs must ensure that their employees wear an approved ATV helmet and are properly trained in ATV use.’

In New Zealand, four people have died in ATV incidents so far this financial year. Six people died in ATV incidents in 2008/09.

For more details, visit the New Zealand Dept of Labour

UK directors have paid the price after a contractor fell and sustained a brain injury on a residential refurbishment.

Self-employed contractor Trevor Dawson from Ravensthorpe, West Yorkshire, was painting student accommodation in Ashenhurst Student Village in Newsom when it appears he fell from a ladder on August 15, 2007.

Dawson sustained a brain injury in the fall and was unable to recall any details of the incident. No witnesses were able to confirm the incident.

The UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigated the incident and found Liversedge Decorating Contractors Ltd and principal contractor Foster Turn-Key Contracts Ltd had failed to ensure the work was adequately planned and supervised, and appropriate equipment was used.

Liversedge Directors, Paul Daniel of Smithy Carr Lane, Brighouse, and Clive Dewhirst of Mountain Road, Thornhill, Dewsbury, were prosecuted in Huddersfield Magistrates' Court for breaching the Work at Height Regulations 2005. They pleaded guilty and were fined £1,000 each.

Liversedge Decorating Contractors Ltd of Mountain Road, Thornhill, Dewsbury, was prosecuted for the same breach. It pleaded guilty and was fined £2,000.

Foster Turn-Key Contractors of Plover Road, Lindley, Huddersfield, was prosecuted for breaching the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007. It pleaded guilty and was fined £2,000.

‘The ladder Trevor Dawson used, which we believe may have caused or contributed to his fall, was simply not suitable for the work he was doing. It was a domestic step ladder which should not have been allowed on the site,’ said HSE Inspector David Stewart. ‘In this situation, a tower scaffold would have been much more appropriate.’

For more details, visit the HSE

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Nominations now open to the 2010 NSCA / GIO National Safety Awards of Excellence

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For all your temporary OHS staffing needs, talk to the NSCA about OHS Outsource

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Are you seeking OHS professionals for your workforce, but don't need a full time staff member? Then why not consider the benefits of NSCA OHS Outsource.

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Visit the NSCA team at Safety In Action 2010

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Visit the NSCA team at Safety In Action from 20-22 April at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre and find out more about our extensive range of OHS&E resources, management systems, consulting and safety training available.

Ask us how our new labour hire service, OHS Outsource can help your business.

To find out more call 1800 655 510 or email natsafe@nsca.org.au

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State OHS Coordinator - Driving a Safety Culture - Contract

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