Don't Bargain on Safety

Over the past 20 years, significant gains have been made in workplace safety.  Death and injury rates have declined in virtually all industries and safety is now a core workplace value.  The key has been co-operation among employers, workers and regulators in developing a work safe culture and supportive regulations.

This, however, is being threatened by the increased use of Occupation Health and Safety (OH&S) regulation as an industrial tool by unions.

While the Australian Constitution is mute on the jurisdictional responsibility for OH&S, the States have largely assumed legislative responsibility for it.  This has been driven by the rational desire to adopt laws that better meet local needs and differences.

Since the 1980s, the States have, through a tripartite process including ACTU, peak employer bodies and governments, adopted a national approach to OH&S based on the principals of "duty of care", outcomes-based regulations, and codes of practice.  While this process put in place a needed degree of national uniformity and a basically sound system, it also brought the OH&S regulation more firmly under the influence of the industrial relations system.

This has lead to an increased use of OH&S as an industrial tool, with unions manufacturing or exaggerating safety issues for bargaining chips.

Safety issues not only provide a legal smokescreen to stop or disrupt work, but also strike a chord with the general public.  A firm with an unsafe workplace faces a damaged reputation.  Making claims that a firm's workplace is hazardous can therefore be a powerful threat.

The problem is that the using safety as an industrial tool drives a wedge between employees and employers on safety issues in terms of trust, responsibility and standards.  Unfortunately, the misuse of OH&S legislation for industrial purposes is becoming more pronounced.

Across the country, unions are demanding more stringent OH&S legislation, including larger fines for employers, mandatory imprisonment of management for safety breaks and greater union control over OH&S legislation.  While union demands are couched in terms of pursuing workplace safety, it is clear that they seek the change to bolster their industrial muscle.

State Labor Governments are increasingly acceding to their demands.  Three years ago the Bracks Government tried to introduce the Corporate Manslaughter Bill.  Amongst other things this would have resulted in senior managers being personally and criminally liable for breaches of safety standards in remote workplaces that resulted in death.  The NSW Government has recently introduced a bill -- The Workplace Fatalities Bill -- that would mean imprisonment of managers as a result of a workplace fatality, even if there were no breach of workplace standards.

While the Bracks Government does not plan to re-introduce the manslaughter bill that was blocked in the upper house, it is planning to quadruple fines for companies which breach standards;  give unions right of entry even to non-union workplaces, and extend the duty of care liabilities to designers, manufacturers, landlords, and others.

These changes will not only pull OH&S more into the adversarial industrial relations system, but send the wrong signal to workers that safety is someone else's responsibility.  A safe workplace is one where everyone is wary of possible mishaps.

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