IRIA

Upon Google Glass’s arrival in Australia one workplace health and safety firm decided to test the glasses in cities around the country.

Google Glasses balance right on the face and nose just like regular glasses. Instead of a lens they have a tiny computer and heads up display right attached to their arm. The Google Glasses feature an Internet Connection, 5MP state of the art camera, and 16GB storage space. They can accept verbal commands as well as phone app and built-in touchpad commands.

The Safety Culture Australia firm was the frist confirmed company in Australia to get their hands on a pair. The company was swamped everytime they used them in public and they were shown to be safe to use while driving.

The Safety Culture Australia managing director Luke Anear mentioned that the company obtained a pair of the Google Glasses through Google’s developer program when it available last year.

Mr Anear said the glasses had also proven safe to use in everyday life in spite of widespread privacy concerns. The company is also using Google’s gadget to develop hands-free health and safety apps.

Daily Gadgetry May 30, 2013

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Three major industrial accidents; more than 100 deaths.

Most tragically a fire at the poultry processing plant in Dehui, Jilin province killed at least 119 people on Monday. The other two accidents were a fire at a grain depot in Heilongjiang province on Friday and an explosion at a petrochemical plant in Dalian, Liaoning province on Sunday, which inflicted heavy economic losses.

The accidents happened within a week of each other and bring home the harsh reality that China has much to do to improve workplace safety.

Although the causes are yet to be determined, the ignoring of workplace safety rules contributed to the high death toll. According to Monday’s survivors, some of the exits at the slaughterhouse remained locked when workers tried to escape.

While extending our condolences to families of those that died, we urge the relevant government departments to investigate the accidents promptly and publicize the causes, and if any irregularities are discovered, those responsible must be held accountable in accordance with law.

In April, the Jilin authorities carried out a province-wide work-safety check that lasted one month. It is discomforting and thought provoking that the check-up still failed to prevent Monday’s accident.

Although the number of deaths as a result of workplace accidents has been on the decline in the past decade, as the authorities have strengthened implementation of workplace safety standards in mines and industrial enterprises, people die every day in accidents at work nationwide.

Since it is a matter of life and death, the nation must draw the necessary lessons from these accidents, the regulators must do a better job in plugging potential loopholes, and the management must more faithfully implement the work-safety rules.

The public should also be invited to supervise workplace safety. Social networking tools, such as micro blogs, can play a constructive role in pressuring management to improve their workplace safety.

10:10, June 04, 2013 China Daily

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ASBESTOS has been discovered at three national broadband network (NBN) work sites in Queensland.

The hazardous material was water-blasted on to the faces of workers at an underground Telstra pit in Brisbane, and asbestos dust at a Mackay site was left unattended for five days, the Queensland government says.

State Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie says federal Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten needs to take responsibility, following the discoveries by Queensland’s Workplace Health and Safety agency.

“This is an absolute botched debacle again by a federal government,” Mr Bleijie told reporters in Brisbane on Monday.

“We saw it with the home insulation debacle we had a few years ago.

“I’m concerned about the workers in Queensland who may be unprotected and may not have the necessary training to deal with asbestos issues.”

In a breach discovered in early March, asbestos was water-blasted onto the faces of two workers at Carseldine in Brisbane’s north.

In Mackay, in central Queensland, asbestos dust was left for five days after a concrete pipe was cut in April.

Asbestos was also left on a nearby footpath, and workers wore the wrong masks.

Two weeks ago, two workers were found to have used respirators wrongly at a Banyo site, in northern Brisbane.

The breaches occurred as underground Telstra pits were widened to install NBN cables, but Mr Bleijie was unable to say if work had been suspended at the sites by contractor Silcar.

“We have no option now but to look at all the sites of the NBN across Queensland.”

Herald Sun – June 3, 2013

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A safety passport has been introduced in the Ghanaian occupational health and safety market by Sheq Foundation an NGO in occupational health and safety based in Ghana and operating in the West African sub Region. The passport is in the long term intended to be a required license in order to be able to operate in any industry across the sub region.

The launching took place on Monday 29th April 2013, in Accra to mark world day of safety at the workplace which falls on 28th April every year. The World Day for Safety and Health at Work is celebrated every year to promote the prevention of occupational accidents and diseases globally.

It is an awareness-raising campaign intended to focus international attention on emerging trends in the field of occupational safety and health and on the magnitude of work-related injuries, diseases and fatalities worldwide.

Speaking at the launch Richard Adu Darko the Executive Secretary of SHEQ FOUNDATION expatiated on the idea of the safety Passport, he made it clear that it has been established in response to the needs identified within the industry and has undertaken to develop and extend the safety passport culture across all interested sectors such as mining, manufacturing, oil and gas and construction.

The Foundation has developed a module to be studied called the SHEQ PASSPORT BOOK; upon completion of the book study an assessment is undertaken in groups after which a passport in the form of an ID is issued to suggest that one has undertaken basic training and understanding in Occupational safety and Health in order to be able to understand basic safety rules in any industry.

He noted that this is not an academic qualification, and it is not intended to replace any certification in safety but to enhance the understanding of safety at the work place.

According to him civil society has to work beyond rhetoric in order to be able to reduce the occurrence of workplace accidents through the breach of basic safety procedures.

He urged Industry and Government to embrace the concept of Safety passport to make a positive enhancement of health and safety standards at all levels among workers in the participating sector.

Ghana Web

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Last year, I spoke with a 40-year-old woman working in a Bangladesh leather tannery in the Hazaribagh neighborhood of Dhaka. The Hazaribagh tanneries, which export hundreds of millions of dollars in leather for luxury clothes, shoes and boots around the world, spew noxious pollutants into surrounding communities. They can also make their workers very ill.

Much tannery work involves measuring and mixing chemicals, adding chemicals to hides in drums, or hauling hides saturated in chemicals out of pits. Fungal infections, scabies, hives, and contact dermatitis are common. Others suffer from respiratory illnesses and chest pains.

Asked what she thought of the possibility that Hazaribagh’s tanneries might eventually move out of the city, the woman told me, “It would be very good…They could start garment factories. This would be cleaner work with a better salary.”

Last week, a deadly fire tore through a garment factory in Dhaka, killing eight workers. This followed the collapse of the Rana Plaza building on more than 1,000 workers, which made it the deadliest ever catastrophe in the history of the garment industry. Last November, a garment factory fire killed more than 100 people. So the tannery worker’s assessment sounds like a sick joke. But the truth is it was a realistic assessment of the deplorable health and safety conditions in Bangladesh.

Indeed, the current spotlight on the tragic mass casualties in Rana Plaza obscures a bigger reality: hundreds of Bangladeshi workers die every year with hardly anyone noticing.

Tannery workers die in ones and twos, often in electrocutions and boiler explosions. I spoke to tannery workers who had broken arms, or who had lost fingers or hands following serious accidents in machines. Many workers said their tannery did not supply any protective equipment. I met girls and boys, some as young as 11, in some tanneries. They work 12 or even 14 hours a day. Despite a law against children doing dangerous work, they told us that they handle skins in pits full of chemicals and water, cut hides with razor blades, or work with dangerous machinery without training or supervision. Studies of occupational cancers among tannery workers in other countries show that Hazaribagh’s employees are right to be terrified of long-term exposure to chemicals.

Tanneries and garment factories are not the only deadly industries in Bangladesh. Non-profit groups monitoring workplace safety say that in an average year, more than a hundred workers will be killed by electrocutions, falling from heights, or crushed by machinery while working in building construction. Despite introducing new regulations to govern the ship-breaking industry in 2011, 15 workers died in accidents in Chittagong yards in 2012. Similar numbers die in rice mills each year. These are only the deaths in accidents – no-one tracks deaths by occupational diseases.

The Bangladeshi government, retailers and consumers have an urgent responsibility to search for reforms in the rubble of Rana Plaza. They should start with a serious inspection regime. The number of workplace inspectors is woefully inadequate: in June 2012, the Inspection Department had just 18 inspectors to monitor an estimated 100,000 factories in and around Dhaka. But it’s not simply a case of more inspectors – they can hardly do their work if they continue to be cozy with industry. A deputy chief inspector with the Inspection Department told me: “We always try to maintain good relations with management. Usually we give advance notice [of an inspection]. Sometimes we send a letter, sometimes we phone if the number is available.” Although the law allows for imprisonment for those responsible for violating workplace health and safety provisions, when violations are found the common penalty is a fine of around $13. Other senior officials have told us they believe the lack of worker protections and hostility to unions stem from some parliamentarians’ financial stakes in garment factories.

Strong and independent labor groups in Bangladesh operate in a pervasively hostile environment. The torture and murder of labor rights activist Aminul Islam a year ago remains unsolved. Over a dozen labor rights leaders currently face criminal charges on a variety of spurious grounds. This matters. Organized labor would have had much more support in standing up to pressure from a factory owner to go back into a building whose walls had cracked.

Foreign companies that source from Bangladesh have a responsibility to ensure that the rights of workers throughout their supply chains are respected. Bangladesh’s tragedies have laid bare the fundamental shortcomings of the “social audits” many retailers use to monitor conditions at the factories that produce their goods. At the least, retailers who rely on these audits need to do more to ensure that they are rigorous, transparent and truly independent. Too often, none of those things are true.

CNN.com Blogs

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New Zealand Oil & Gas chairman Peter Griffiths has thrown his support behind legislative moves to make directors liable if the companies they govern fail to meet health and safety obligations.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and the Institute of Directors yesterday released health and safety governance guidelines for directors outlining best practice and advice for company boards.

Mr Griffiths, a veteran employee, manager and director in the high-risk energy sector, told a business audience in Wellington yesterday that company boards should not wait until a health and safety failure before making changes and needed to take workplace safety seriously at a governance level.

“That’s an enormous price to pay for a bit of learning.”

Mr Griffiths said he supports “legislative change that brings criminal liability to people who don’t follow safety guidelines”.

Health and safety issues came to the fore after several explosions at the Pike River Coal mine on the West Coast in late 2010 killed 29 men. In April, the company was convicted of nine charges for breaching the Health and Safety Employment Act, with sentencing set down for early July in the Greymouth District Court.

NZOG held a 29.4 percent stake in Pike River Coal and had provided it with funding in the lead-up to the explosions. Mr Griffiths has been a director of NZOG since December 2009 and was appointed chairman last year.

Corporate manslaughter

Labour Minister Simon Bridges told Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report today he is “seriously considering” an extension to include companies in corporate manslaughter as part of the government’s response to the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety report.

He said the report indicated that holding individual directors culpable for murder or manslaughter charges was more problematic and international evidence showed it was difficult to get successful prosecutions.

The taskforce report recommended directors and senior executives hold a due diligence duty equivalent to their fiduciary duties to shareholders. Corporate liability rules need to change to allow an extension of manslaughter to corporations, it said.

The MoBIE/IoD guidelines provides advice on how directors can influence health and safety performance, gives a framework for boards to play a role in health and safety, aid them in identifying risks and maintaining good monitoring of health and safety, and encourages directors to have open communication on the issue.

The National Business Review Paul McBeth | Tuesday May 21, 2013

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LABOURERS work a job up to six times more dangerous than the average worker.

This is just one of the disturbing revelations published after a Queensland Government analysis of workers’ compensation claims.

Workplace Health and Safety Queensland found labourers, machinery operators, drivers, technicians, trades workers, community and personal service workers to be most at risk of injury or harm.

This “harm index” from WHSQ considered workers’ compensation claim costs, number of workers in an industry and the kind of injuries caused.

WHSQ chief Dr Simon Blackwood said factory process workers, food process workers and labourers from mining, construction and elsewhere were represented in the most dangerous end of the scale.

Those working these jobs were more likely to be injured than firefighters, police officers or even defence force personnel.

“That means injuries to workers in those occupations were three to six times more severe than the average Queensland worker,” Dr Blackwood said.

“Labourers contributed more than 25,000 compensation claims, almost one-third of all claims finalised in 2011-12, which was the largest share of any main occupation group.”

Machinery operators and drivers made up 9504 claims of the 2011-12 financial year, with truck drivers the most at risk.

Bricklayers, carpenters and joiners in the construction industry were twice as likely to be injured on the job.

Although not the riskiest job, the most dangerous areas were in manufacturing, construction and rural industries.

Only hairdressers and ICT technicians – or IT specialists – were ranked as having the lowest level of risk to workers.

ARE YOU AT RISK?

Workplace Health and Safety Queensland ranks jobs 1-5, with five being the most dangerous.

These include:
• Construction/mining labourers
• Food process workers
• Factory process workers
• Truck drivers

Owen Jacques
14th May 2013 3:05 PM
– Caboolture News

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TELL US: Will this workplace reform work?

BOSSES will have to roster jobs around workers’ social lives and check that staff who yawn or daydream aren’t too tired to work safely.

Those proposals are contained under national laws being drawn up to fight workplace fatigue.

Employers are furious they will be turned into the “yawn police” under Safe Work Australia’s draft code of practice for workplace fatigue.

The government agency’s checklist for employers to spot worker fatigue includes headaches, daydreaming, constant yawning, low motivation and moodiness.

It has proposed that bosses “eliminate or reduce the need to work extended hours or overtime” so staff don’t get too tired.

“Safety critical” tasks – such as administering drugs, driving a truck or electrical work – should not be performed in the post-lunch “low body clock period” of 2pm to 4pm, the draft code states.

And rosters should be drawn up to accommodate workers’ social lives.

“If a worker leaves their job tired and exhausted they may be less able to enjoy out of work activities or could be a danger to themselves and others in the community,” the document says.

“Likewise, if a worker arrives at work unfit for duty due to a lack of sleep, illness or other condition, they may be less productive or could be a danger to themselves and others in the workplace.

“To avoid any potential conflicts between personal and work demands, controls include (to) consult with workers and design shift rosters that will enable workers to meet both work and personal commitments.”

The code says employers should train workers in “balancing work and personal lifestyle demands”.

The code of practice – to be finalised next year – will be admissible in court if an employer is charged with breaching workplace health and safety laws.

Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Peter Anderson said employers should not be held responsible for fatigued workers worn out from partying or family demands.

“It would require employers to delve into matters of a personal and private nature that are none of their business,” he said.

“We don’t want to be the yawn police.”

The Australian Industry Group’s representative on the Safe Work Australia board, Mark Goodsell, warned that employers might be held responsible for the fatigue of staff moonlighting in other jobs.

Any boss who pried into a worker’s partying habit would “look like a nark and invade their privacy”, he said.

“People can lie to you and say they weren’t doing anything on the weekend to make them tired,” he said.

“They’ve got no obligation to tell you what they’re doing at home.

“But there is a legal implication that if an employer is accused of breaking the law, the fact you weren’t following the code can be used against you.”

Even unions have criticised the code, with the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union complaining the fatigue checklist is “not very helpful”.

“How would a workplace assess such things as `reduced immune system function’ or `hallucinations’ and `headaches’?” it told Safe Work Australia in a submission.

And the ACTU suggested that high-risk tasks be minimised between 2am and 6am – not the the 2pm to 4pm suggested in the code.

Safe Work Australia said it was revising the code to address concerns – but would not give details of any changes.

“Changes aim to reflect recent research findings and outcomes of case law,” a spokeswoman said.

———-

FYI Checklist: Safe Work Australia’s guide to worker fatigue

> Headaches and/or dizziness

> Wandering thoughts, daydreaming, lack of concentration

> Blurred vision or difficulty keeping eyes open

> Constant yawning, a drowsy relaxed feeling or falling asleep at work

> Moodiness such as irritability

> Short term memory problems

> Low motivation

> Hallucinations

> Impaired decision-making and judgment

> Slow reflexes and responses

> Reduced immune system function

> Increased errors

> Extended sleep during days off work

> Falling asleep for a few seconds without realising

> Drifting in and out of traffic lanes

Source: Safe Work Australia draft code of practice on workplace fatigue

THE AUSTRALIAN

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There’s been a call for tougher laws for negligent employers to help reduce the incidence of workplace deaths.

The call follows the opening of a national memorial in Canberra to victims of workplace deaths attended by Griffith woman Kay Catanzariti.

Her 21 year old son Ben was killed on a worksite in Canberra last July when a concrete pouring boom fell on him.

“That’s all changed now. Our lives are broken now. Hearing a spoon drop on the tiles, that crack of a boom, a 39 foot boom collapsing on my son,” said Kay Catanzarati.

At the memorial loved ones will have a place to mourn the thousands of workers who died on the job.

Authorities say there are about 300 workplace deaths every year in Australia and 46 have died on the job so far this year.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions has called for the tougher laws, assistant secretary Michael Borowick says changes to the law could help.

“There’s a strong case for the introduction of industrial manslaughter legislation to be used in those very, in the worst case scenarios,” said Michael Borowick.

The Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten says the big priority for workplace safety in the short term is to get anti-bullying laws passed.

Posted Mon Apr 29, 2013 9:04am AEST ABC News

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WASHINGTON — The staggering death toll continues to rise — not in Boston, but in the small town of West, Texas.

Buried by the extraordinary developments in the marathon bombing case, the confirmed deaths of at least 14 people and the injuries of 200 more have been all but lost in the breaking terrorism news. But about 1,800 miles from Boston, rescuers and investigators are sorting through the wreckage of the devastating industrial disaster.

Officials still can’t say definitively what led to the explosion at the West Fertilizer Company facility on Wednesday, which destroyed nearby neighborhoods, at least three rescue trucks and one firetruck. Occupational health experts, however, are pointing to at least one contributing factor: the inadequacy of U.S. workplace safety laws and their enforcement.

“The nation’s number one resource is its workers,” said Keith Wrightson, safety expert at Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group. “But the agency that’s charged with protecting them is not given the resources to do it. I think it’s worrisome for the nation.”

As has been reported, the fertilizer plant hadn’t been inspected by the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) since 1985, when the company was fined $30. It isn’t clear yet why exactly the workplace went nearly three decades without further inspections from OSHA, but none of the possibilities is encouraging.

The fertilizer facility may have been exempt from some forms of OSHA scrutiny, owing to the fact that it’s a small employer. Due to a rider that has been attached by Congress to agency funding for years, OSHA can’t perform certain inspections of workplaces that have 10 or fewer employees and whose industries have low injury rates. Lawmakers reason that small businesses shouldn’t have to shoulder the same costs of compliance as larger ones.

As of Friday night, the Labor Department was still trying to determine whether the West Fertilizer plant actually deserved a small-business exemption. (So far, the majority of confirmed dead were firefighters and first responders, not employees.)

Safety advocates like to point out that smaller worksites aren’t necessarily less dangerous worksites. In fact, small companies would have fewer resources to invest in worker safety and, due to more limited government oversight, even less incentive.

Furthermore, the average industry injury rates that can exempt a company from inspections aren’t a great indicator of a workplace’s likelihood for disaster, said Tom O’Connor, executive director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, a federation of non-profit groups. The injury rates may not even be accurate, he added.

“This use of the average injury rates is extremely problematic, for a lot of reasons, one of which is obvious from the [Texas] plant explosion. Rates of ‘routine’ injuries at a facility have little or no correlation to a plant’s potential for catastrophic accidents,” O’Connor said in an email. “This has been seen time and again, and many safety advocates argue that using these injury rates to target inspections makes no sense for this reason.

It’s still possible the company didn’t deserve an exemption from routine OSHA inspections. But even if that’s the case, the worksite may have enjoyed a de facto exemption thanks to the low funding devoted to OSHA and its inspections. While the agency’s budget has increased modestly under the Obama administration, it still isn’t adequate in the eyes of safety experts, many of whom weren’t surprised at all that the fertilizer facility hadn’t been inspected in 28 years.

According to the AFL-CIO, which analyzes OSHA data in its annual “Death on the Job” report, it would take the agency 137 years to inspect all the worksites in Texas with the resources it currently has.

“Even if they were … non-exempt, OSHA has to target its inspections,” explained Seminario. “They have to have a rational basis for doing this, based on injury rates or other hazards.”

OSHA already has developed a targeted inspection program for chemical facilities, but the one in the Texas blast doesn’t appear to have been part of it. It may not have been included in the “national emphasis program” because of the way the company apparently categorized itself with the Environmental Protection Agency. OSHA has done 549 inspections under the program since 2009, according to the Labor Department, but there are about 10,000 such facilities across the country.

Investigators have descended on West, Texas, to assess the company’s role in the disaster, which raises another common gripe with workplace safety law: the relatively paltry fines that OSHA is equipped to levy. The maximum fine for a serious violation is $7,000, the same as it was in 1991.

Given the scope of the tragedy, experts assume OSHA will rack up every possible violation it can uncover, possibly pushing a tab into the millions of dollars.

“OSHA will bang them up,” Wrightson said. “They’re going to find every little thing they can … The ironic thing is you never see fines [that] big unless it’s got national attention.”

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