An international consulting firm, a marine research organisation and two workers won top safety prizes at last night’s fifth Annual Safe Work Australia (SWA) Awards ceremony.

GHD South Australia, Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), Nicola Featherstone and Glyn Williams were among the 36 finalists vying for honours in the SWA Awards.

The awards were announced yesterday on World Day for Health and Safety at Work, and International Workers Memorial Day.

As reported in the last e-bulletin, world day for safety and international memorial day focus attention on the high work-related injury and death toll.

ABS data said 689,500 Australians experienced a work-related injury in 2005–06, while SWA said 453 people died from work-related traumatic injuries during 2006–07, and 2,603 people died from work-related illness or injury in 2005–06.

Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard, in a pre-recorded speech to the awards ceremony, said world day for safety was ‘a sobering reminder of the absolute necessity to promote safe work practices so we can reduce the number of deaths and injuries at work’.

Praising the Awards finalists, Gillard said they had made a positive difference to OHS. ‘I know putting safety at the top of your agenda is not always easy, but you would be the first to acknowledge that the results are very rewarding.’

GHD South Australia won the private sector award for Best Workplace Health and Safety Management System, while AIMS won the public sector award for the same category.

Nicola Featherstone, a research officer at the University of Adelaide, and Glyn Williams, a safety and risk management practitioner at Southern Cross Care SA, won awards for Best Individual Contribution to Workplace Health and Safety.

Phyl Hilton, a toolmaker at Toyota, was highly commended for his individual contribution to safety.

Australian Air Express won Best Solution to an Identified Workplace Health and Safety Issue, while Frook Pty Ltd and Fosters Coonawarra Vineyard were highly commended for their solution.

IFE Forklifts won Best Workplace Health and Safety Practices in a Small Business, while Woodrising Farm and Joondalup Lotteries House Inc were highly commended for their practices.

For more details visit SWA

Almost one-third of CEOs and board directors don’t believe OHS should be on board-meeting agendas reveals a new business survey.

Twenty-eight percent of CEOs and board directors didn’t believe OHS should be an agenda item for board meetings, and a further 5 per cent were unsure if OHS should be an agenda item at such meetings, said ‘The Business of Safety’ survey.

The results were surprising, indicating ‘that OHS is a low level priority for many organisations’, added the survey, which was conducted jointly by the Australian Institute of Management (AIM) (Victoria and Tasmania) and Safety Institute of Australia (SIA).

Some 18 per cent of CEOs and board directors also said OHS wasn’t an integral part of corporate governance within their organisations. And a further 5 per cent said they were unsure if OHS was integral to corporate governance.

Interestingly, the survey also found across all positions, 25 per cent of respondents said poor leadership impeded efforts to meet or exceed OHS performance targets.

However, only 7 per cent of CEOs and board directors believed poor leadership impeded OHS, while a greater proportion of senior managers (17 per cent) and middle mangers (22 per cent) believed poor leadership was a problem.

CEO and board directors represented 4 per cent of the 2,815 responses to the survey, while senior and middle managers represented 20 per cent and 22 per cent of the responses respectively; 69 per cent of respondents were from Victoria.

For the full survey results, visit AIM

The new national registry for collecting and analysing mesothelioma data will be launched in Sydney tomorrow.

The Australian Mesothelioma Registry (AMR) replaces the Australian Mesothelioma Register.

AMR will collect data on new cases of mesothelioma from the state and territory cancer registries and information on past exposures to asbestos from mesothelioma patients.

The notification of new cases and the collection of past exposure information will begin in July.

A consortium led by the Cancer Institute of NSW will run AMR. The Cancer Institute will manage the project, while the Monash Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health will collect data on past exposures, and other consortium members will provide scientific and medical advice.

Safe Work Australia (SWA) awarded the consortium the registry contract for three years earlier this year.

AMR will be launched at the Asbestos Diseases Research Institute, Bernie Banton Centre, in Sydney tomorrow.

For more details, visit SWA

Extending the offshore safety authority’s role to overseeing non safety aspects of offshore facilities is still on the cards, but concerns have been raised about establishing a separate national offshore regulator.

Federal Government Senators support the extension of the National Offshore Petroleum Safety Authority’s (NOPSA) oversight role, according to the Senate Committee report on the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2010 [Provisions].

The amendment bill had been referred to a Senate Committee inquiry in February, which reported on the bill last week.

Under the bill, NOPSA’s functions are extended to include oversight of the non-safety structural integrity of offshore pipelines, wells and well-related equipment.

The explanatory memorandum of the bill said ‘strengthening’ NOPSA’s functions to cover non-safety structural integrity was necessary to ensure NOPSA’s complete oversight of safety.

Coalition Senators didn’t mention NOPSA in their dissenting Senate Committee report. Instead, they argued against the establishment of the separate National Offshore Petroleum Regulator (NOPR). The Government, however, supports NOPR.

In arguing against NOPR, the Coalition’s dissenting report said: ‘The introduction of NOPR, without due understanding of the intricacies of the Western Australian petroleum resources industry, would not bode well for the market as a whole.’

Coalition Senators said they would not be supporting the introduction of NOPR.

For more details on the bill, visit Parliament of Australia

The federal Government is seeking to extend mandatory ship reporting to the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park following the grounding of the Shen Neng 1.

The new reporting rules, requiring ships to regularly report their location and route to authorities, are expected to start in July next year.

Before the rules are given the green light, however, they will need the approval of the International Maritime Organization (IMO).

‘This process of ratification is required by the fact that around 55 per cent of the proposed new coverage area is beyond Australia’s territorial waters,’ said Anthony Albanese, Federal Transport Minister.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) and Maritime Safety Queensland (MSQ) will begin rolling out infrastructure necessary for tracking ships while IMO approval is being sought.

Meanwhile, Albanese has also initiated a review of the offences under the Protection of the Sea (Prevention of Pollution from Ships) Act 1983 and the Navigation Act 1912.

Albanese wants to increase penalties for ships that engage in ‘unsafe and irresponsible actions at sea, particularly near environmentally sensitive marine ecosystems’.

For more details, visit AMSA

Prevention and remembering workers who have been injured or lost their lives at work are the focus of this week’s World Day for Safety and Health at Work, and International Workers Memorial Day.

The theme of this year’s World Day for Safety is ‘Emerging risks and new patterns of prevention in a changing world of work’, while the theme for International Workers Memorial Day is ‘Remember the dead – Fight for the living’, as reported in the last e-Bulletin.

The International Labour Organization’s (ILO) latest workplace injury and fatality figures (2003) show that each year, worldwide 337 million people are injured in accidents that resulted in more than four days off work, 358,000 people die in work-related accidents, and 1.95 million people die from work-related diseases.

The ILO, which organises World Day for Safety, said emerging risks included, for example, nanotechnology, biotechnology, higher workloads, work intensification, migration for work, and the informal economy.

For more details, visit the ILO and Irish Congress of Trade Unions

Almost 18 per cent of New Zealand workers are bullied, and laissez-faire leadership is part of the problem, reveals recent New Zealand research.

Some 17.8 per cent of workers reported being consistently bullied over the past six months, said the study ‘Understanding Stress and Bullying in New Zealand Workplaces’.

Healthcare, education, hospitality and travel sector workers participated in the Massey University study.

Bullied workers identified acts of bullying to include ‘someone withholding information that affects your performance’; ‘being ordered to work below your level of competence’ and ‘being exposed to an unmanageable workload’.

The workers who were bullied described the leadership and support in their workplace as ‘lower levels of constructive leadership, higher levels of laissez-faire leadership, lower levels of colleague and supervisor support, less organisational support, and less effective organisational strategies than those who had not been bullied’.

The health and education sector workers reported higher levels of bullying than those in travel and hospitality.

For the full study, visit Massey University

A managing director in the UK has been banned from directing any company for five years and fined after workers were exposed to chemicals and fall risks.

‘Workers at Transtore (UK) Ltd in Stratford-upon-Avon were exposed to lead and other harmful chemicals while paint was sprayed at the plant without the correct safety measures in place,’ the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said.

‘Workers were also put at risk of falls from height with no safety equipment provided.’

The HSE prosecuted Transtore (UK) Ltd managing director Brian Nixon in the Stratford-upon-Avon Magistrates’ Court for breaching the UK OHS Act after investigating a complaint from an employee.

Nixon of Evesham, Worcestershire, was banned for five years as a company director and fined £17,000.

The company, Transtore (UK) Ltd, based at Long Marston Storage, Campden Road, Stratford-upon-Avon, was also prosected and fined £70,000 (including costs of £27,507) and is now in administration.

‘Mr Nixon deliberately flouted health and safety laws and paid scant regard to the safety of his employees. I agree with what the District Judge said in court about it being a lamentable situation and it was very fortunate that there were no injuries before we carried out our investigation,’ HSE Inspector Peter Snelgrove said.

For more details, visit the HSE

Employers who repeatedly fail to meet their OHS obligations will be targeted under a new inspection program that starts next month in the US.

The new Severe Violator Enforcement Program (SVEP) will target employers who are recalcitrant or indifferent to their obligations under the US Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act.

SVEP will replace the current Enhanced Enforcement Program (EEP).

‘It [SVEP] will include a more intense examination of an employer's practices for systemic problems that would trigger additional mandatory inspections,’ said Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Dr David Michaels.

Under SVEP enforcement actions, employers will be subject to mandatory follow-up inspections, increased company/corporate awareness of OSHA enforcement, corporate-wide agreements – where appropriate – enhanced settlement provisions, and federal court enforcement under Section 11(b) of the OSH Act.

Employers who have more than one worksite may also be subject to inspections of their other worksites to determine if hazards are present.

‘When there are reasonable grounds to believe that compliance problems identified in the initial inspection may be indicative of a broader pattern of non-compliance, OSHA will inspect related worksites of the same employer,’ the OSHA SVEP instruction said.

For more details visit, OSHA

Queensland

Top

New South Wales / ACT

Top

Victoria

Top

South Australia

Top

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

Top

Major
Sponsor

ProSafe 2010 – Advanced Process Safety Control & Systems

Top

24th - 25th May Melbourne

The complexity and rapid evolvement in our society puts a pressure and demand on process industries to update their safety concerns on an ongoing basis. Vigilant re-validation and assessment of your current safety system performance and compliance are crucial to help to achieve sustainable and controlled process safety regime, for long term operational and profitability enhancement.

Followed by the great success of ProSafe 2009, ProSafe 2010 aims to continue highlighting the current and future challenges faced across industries and with modern trends and methods of PSM. This conference will promote contemporary management and guidelines to proactively endorse areas such as safety control, monitoring, people management, safety and leadership and modern accident/incident investigation.

The delegates will learn “how to” approaches of integration, adaption and optimisation of business strategies where people, technology and workplace environment collide. Participants will learn from practical solutions and best practices from successful industry leaders, furthermore gain valuable knowledge through workshop interaction and networking.

For more information, please click here.

* All NSCA members are entitled to a discount of 10% when registering with Ms. Esther. Please contact Ms. Esther for details and quote EN - NSCA during registration. *

For further details & brochures, contact:
Ms. Esther Wong
Tel No: +603 2723 6736
Fax No: +612 9223 2352

Power up your OHS&E career with a Diploma of Environmental Sustainability

Top

This Diploma of Environmental Sustainability aims to give students the skills and knowledge to identify environmental issues, conduct environmental audits and advise management on recommendations to improve environmental performance. It comprises of 8 units and can be completed via distance education or blended learning, which is a combination of workshops with course assessments completed post workshop days.

Training is conducted over a period of 9 days, consisting of a 4 day block and a 5 day block with a 3 month gap in between. Students have a maximum of 2 years to complete the course. Onsite learning is also available on application.

To find out about location times and dates, please click here.

Brisbane Safety Connect

Top

Put your career advert here

Top