Health and Safety standards at risk OHS Report Canberra 16th November 2009
Unions have a proud history of campaigning for and implementing at work health and safety prevention practices.
Public policy is strengthened with unions with principles to place ‘health and safety of workers as a priority before profits, property and management prerogative’.
ACTU and union submissions (just released) on DPM Gillard’s national OHS ‘harmonisation’ process – the draft model Safety bill – reveal how these principles have been trashed.
In detailed merit, evidence-based arguments, unions show how the draft Model Safety bill severely waters-down existing legal obligations on the worse performing employers.
(See submissions Safe Work Australia http://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/swa/ModelLegislation/Public+Comment/ExposureDraftoftheModelOHSActandKeyAdministrativeRegulations.htm )
Unionists were entitled to rely upon the integrity of repeated COAG assurances of no watering down. The ACTU believes National OHS laws should not result in a compromise or reduction of protections or standards for workers in any existing State jurisdiction. http://www.rightsatwork.com.au/ohscampaign
Corporate lawyers for those employers injuring, maiming, causing ill-health and for some employees killing for profit, have a myriad of new legal loop-holes Nationally for not complying with existing States’ based OHS Acts.
These State OHS laws have stood the test of 25 years, supported by employers and unions. State Liberal Premiers did not politically water them down.
There are hundreds of details that the unions expose. Here are a few (see earlier post).
Take victims like Bernie Banton. The draft Model denies his union or his labour lawyers the right to prosecute his companies’ breaches, like Hardies.
Elected worker health and safety reps like Bernie Banton will have existing rights and powers to implement prevention programmes and stop unsafe work reduced.
Bernie Banton’s union organiser will have so many legal loopholes to follow that proper right of entry is denied, with health and safety organisers denied response to imminent risks.
Loopholes abound such as “so far as is reasonably practicable†on employers’ duty to consult on OHS.
The model Act is on ‘Safety’, with Health downgraded. So rather than protect the future health of workers with workplace risks eliminated, the future is still Bernie Banton’s workplace where Directors cover up health risks and can kill in the pursuit of profits.
DPM Gillard cites increased penalties for OHS breaches, but powerful and wealthy corporates can still easily pay such fines.
Bernie Banton would be enraged that there is no attempt to put behind bars and gaol directors responsible for deaths at work. Read Matt Peacock’s Killer Company James Hardie Exposed.
The impact at law of the onus of proof proposed favours the corporation or government, which has enormous legal resources. The draft Model reverses the rule that the employer who has the responsibility for a healthy and safe workplace bears the onus. It is a retrograde step. Compliance against employers in breach has to be strengthened, not weakened.
It completely removes the long held union rights for to protect OHS interests of their members.
This Model Act does not attempt to strike a balance between an employer’s and worker’s rights and obligations. It does not protect or improve workers’ rights. It even champions employer rights to the detriment of good workplace OHS for employees.
The many details of the draft Model are put together so bad it is like an OHS version of parts of WorkChoices!
This ‘harmonisation’ of the Australia’s State based OHS laws was started by the Howard government whose spin was to cut red tape for national corporations, but not to develop improved OHS to protect workers. ‘Harmonisation’ was the lowest common denominator second-rate health and safety changes.
It is a disgrace that DPM Gillard accepts 2nd rate OHS at the National level. State Labor leaders are not challenging the watering down of their own State OHS provisions because they are being threatened financially they would not get Federal funds unless they complied.
Despite many employers, academics, and OHS specialists supporting the unions’ case for strengthened national OHS laws, the DPM stays still.
Stronger OHS laws are needed the more so with the capitalist crisis. Its pressure on job security and rising unemployment is shown in a Victorian Trades Hall Council survey: 77% of survey respondents said that the global crisis has been causing deterioration in OHS standards. Companies are taking short cuts in order to reduce costs. They are skimping on OHS.
In this capital accumulation upturn, the drive for the exploitation of workers’ labour-power increases in the pursuit of profit recovery at the expense of OHS standards.
Wise counsel is for the DPM to not proceed to a 2nd-rate agreement at COAG in December 2009.
It is prudent to say No to Second-Rate OHS.
We can remain with existing State systems until ‘best practice’ standards nationally are developed with union agreement in 2010.
The Labor government is however liable to thump this Model through.
Right to strike
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