07:30 am, Tuesday 23 September, 2008

Source: The Courier

The regional police communications centre D24 could be investigated for inadequate staffing levels and work conditions if no agreement is made between Victoria Police and its members.

Police Association secretary designate Senior Sergeant Greg Davies said a local health and safety representative contacted WorkSafe yesterday about improving conditions at the Ballarat-based centre.

The centre takes calls from the public and allocates the jobs to officers across the region.

A WorkSafe spokesman was yesterday unaware of a health and safety representative issuing an improvement notice but would know within the next two days.

Sen Sgt Davies said D24 moved to its current location in Mair St – at the time temporary premises – 10 years ago when the new police station opened in Dana St.

He said about 15 police members worked in the centre at one time and the majority came from the police station.

“They are working in a high stress situation. They answer calls from frantic people, then have to find members to go out to them,” Sen Const Davies said.

“Enough is enough, we have to do something about it.”

Sen Const Davies said the failure of the State Government to allocate funds to build a central communications complex at Mt Helen hampered the situation.

He said it would be up to three more years before funds could be allocated.

“It has been promised for a couple of years now. We can’t keep working in this situation,” he said.

Sen Const Davies said WorkSafe would only investigate the situation if Victoria Police and police members could not reach an agreement.

If WorkPlace do investigate D24′s staffing levels and work conditions, the work place could get the all clear or be issued with a prohibition notice which would stop work until the situation is resolved.

OHS News Tip: Workplace Safe Work Method Statements

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07:15 am, Tuesday 23 September, 2008

Source: The Age

Australia is ignoring a health crisis from sports injuries, with more than a million occurring each year, sports medicine experts say.

In Victoria, sport is second only to road accidents as the cause of lifelong injuries, yet it does not receive the same attention or concern as the road toll or workplace accidents.

Sports Medicine Australia’s chief executive, Gary Moorhead, said: “It’s a commonly held view among sports medicine professionals that a lot of the knee and hip replacements that people have to have later in life may well be due to sports injuries when people were young.

“The biggest problem is the injuries aren’t as serious in nature but cumulatively they are as serious and the impact is experienced much later in life — they are the sort of injuries that can keep on costing.”

The Federal Government yesterday launched new national safety guidelines for young people to prevent sport injuries, which Minister for Sport Kate Ellis said were “a substantial drain” on the health system.

Concern about sports injuries also dissuaded some parents from letting their children participate in healthy sporting activity, she said.

Sports medicine experts say half of all injuries are preventable with education. “We know when most injuries occur, which is at the start of the season when people are returning to sport or returning to sport after injury,” Mr Moorhead said.

“A lot of it is just education about the intensity at which people can train or play at particular times of the season.”

For many young people, sport puts them on the road to hospital rather than glory. Football is the biggest culprit, sending nearly 4000 to hospital each year.

The guidelines released yesterday aim to educate schools, coaches and parents on ways to reduce risks. They cover warm-up and cool-down exercises, preventing overuse injuries and improving the safety of equipment and grounds. But Mr Moorhead said greater efforts were needed to put across basic messages to prevent injuries.

OHS News Tip: Workplace Safe Work Method Statements

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07:25 am, Monday 22 September, 2008

Source: Cairns

A father died and his son is battling for his life after a crane was crushed under a cement pylon at a bridge construction site near Tully yesterday.

The father, a 55-year-old Gold Coast man, is believed to have been standing metres from the crane when its cab was smashed, trapping his son inside.

He is believed to have been hit by part of the crane’s pole-driving equipment which came loose, hurtling towards him and killing him instantly.

The son, in his 20s, was in a critical condition in Cairns Base Hospital last night battling multiple injuries to his lower body from being pinned in his seat by the cement pylon.

The two piling contractors were working for Brisbane company Seymour White as part of a team contracted by Queensland Rail to upgrade a railway bridge over the Tully River at the small town of Euramo, south of Tully.

They were working on replacing wooden posts with cement pylons at the southern approach to the bridge when the accident happened about 7.15am.

Emergency workers arrived to find the father, who is believed to have been directing his crane-driving son from several metres away, lying on the ground near the crane where his son was trapped but still conscious.

Firefighters told yesterday how the son was comforted by a good mate – who was injured by flying debris and was later treated in Tully Hospital – throughout the heart-wrenching ordeal.

“He stayed there with him, talked him through it, held his hand and held him up,” an ambulance spokesperson said of the hour-long rescue which took place just metres from where the trapped man’s father was killed.

Rescue workers needed another crane to remove the cement column which had pinned the man to the right-hand-side of the crushed crane’s control cabin.

“He was trapped by his thigh and the left-hand side of his stomach but he was still semi-conscious to conscious and was talking to us despite his obvious injuries,” Tully Fire and Rescue captain John Hopgood said.

Police had not released the father’s name last night. Shocked Euramo residents said the crew had been working in the tiny town, which is nestled beside the Bruce Highway, for several months.

“Everyone is in shock, it’s a terrible thing to happen and our thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends,” Euramo Store’s Gerry Vallianos said.

Seymour White would not comment on the incident yesterday, which is now being dealt with by Workplace, Health and Safety and which will become a matter for the Coroner’s Court.

OHS News Tip: Crane Safe Work Method Statements

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07:15 am, Monday 22 September, 2008

Source: WorkSafe Victoria

WorkSafe Victoria has just released new Compliance Codes that provide practical guidance to those who have duties or obligations under the Occupational Health and Safety Act or Regulations.

The eight Compliance Codes now available are:

• Communicating health & safety across languages
• Workplace amenities and work environment
• Confined spaces
• First aid in the workplace
• Prevention of falls in general construction
• Foundries
• Management of asbestos in workplaces
• Removal of asbestos in workplaces

WorkSafe’s Executive Director of Health and Safety, John Merritt said: “The codes were developed after extensive consultation with industry, employers, employees, governmental agencies and the community to provide greater certainty about what constitutes compliance under the OHS Act.”

“The codes include practical guidance, tools and checklists to make it easier for duty-holders to fulfil their legal obligations.”

Mr Merritt added that: “These codes will provide Victorian employers, workers and Health and Safety Representatives with certainty and assistance in meeting their responsibilities.”

Copies of the Compliance Codes are available online at worksafe.vic.gov.au or by calling the Advisory Service on 1800 136 089.

OHS News Tip: Workplace Safe Work Method Statements

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07:40 am, Friday 19 September, 2008

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

The federal government’s proposed new body to oversee work safety has too many bureaucrats and two few workers, the opposition says.

Deputy opposition leader Julie Bishop told parliament that she broadly supported the government’s push for nationally consistent workplace safety and workers’ compensation systems.

But it was hard to imagine a worse body to achieve it than Safe Work Australia.

Ms Bishop was speaking on a bill to set up Safe Work Australia as the body to end complex and costly inconsistencies in occupational health and safety and workers’ compensation laws around Australia.

It replaces the Australian Safety and Compensation Council which was set up by the previous Howard government.

The new body would have only four representatives of employers and employees, compared with six on the council, Ms Bishop said.

Safe Work Australia would be dominated by state governments and their bureaucrats who already had poor records on cooperation.

Bureaucrats would outnumber people who actually did the work.

The body’s makeup would make it easier states to undermine harmonisation for their own political gain.

Safe Work Australia was “botched policy” which could cause more problems than it solved, Ms Bishop said.

However the coalition would not oppose it in the house.

OHS News Tip: Workplace Safe Work Method Statements

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07:35 am, Friday 19 September, 2008

Fall prevention measures on construction sites have improved in regional Western Australia, according to the Department of Employment and Consumer Protection.

The announcement follows an inspection of more than 1,000 sites this year by the Department.

However, WorkSafe WA says only 35 per cent of the sites inspected were fully compliant with the law and there is room for improvement, given the construction industry has the highest number of injuries and fatalities in the workplace.

OHS News Tip: Commercial Construction Safe Work Method Statements

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07:29 am, Friday 19 September, 2008

A mining company has been fined $432,000 for the death of a worker, Northern Territory’s largest workplace accident fine.

The spraypainter fell 10m to his death from an elevated platform at the company’s refinery last year.

The court said the company’s safety checks with contractors needed improvement.

However, the fine was lessened due to the company’s co-operation with investigators.

Two safety interlocks had failed and allowed the platform’s boom lift to be placed in an unstable position and tip over.

The court found the faults would have been detected if the platform had been inspected the day before the accident, or if checks had been made according to the safety manual.

OHS News Tip: Painting Safe Work Method Statements

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07:20 am, Friday 19 September, 2008

A manufacturer which operates a gas distribution and dry ice business has been ordered to pay more than $66,600 following a major sulphur dioxide leak from its plant last year.

Surrounding residents and businesses were forced to evacuate as 473 kilos of sulphur dioxide was discharged into the atmosphere with the potential to cause harmful health risks.

The company was ordered to pay $49,840 for an environmental education program for school students in the area and $16,800 for native grassland revegetation.

Sulphur dioxide is a common pollutant to which the community is exposed every day at very low levels. Its effects can be dangerous in larger quantities.

The company said it had made several changes to prevent any recurrence, including updating its equipment and organising inspections by the Fire Brigade and Work Cover.

OHS News Tip: Chemical Handling Safe Work Method Statement

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07:10 am, Friday 19 September, 2008

Hand-packing 3000 polyethylene bottles an hour takes its toll on worker’s health and safety.

The human costs of hand-packing 60,000 bottles a day in 250ml and 500ml sizes and in five different colours was manifested in the number of workersÕ compensation claims made against the company for repetitive strain injury (RSI).

A new invention by ABB Australia, which in part replaces workers with robots, has seen job efficiency increase by some 40 per cent at Power Plastics and simultaneously improved the health conditions of its line workers.

The robotic solution replaces a manual system where two operators per shift filled plastic-lined cardboard boxes with the bottles, sealed them and placed them on pallets.

With the new automated system, bottles are now fed from two extrusion blow moulding machines (EBMs), along accumulation conveyors, from which the robot picks 8, 9 or 10 bottles using a gripper, depending on the size. The gripper uses vacuum cups to pick up a row of bottles, spaces and places them upright on a stainless steel platen.

In the next cycle, the gripper rotates 180 degrees, spaces and places the bottles upside down between each bottle in the first row. When the platen is full, the cell signals the operator, who inspects the bottles, slips a plastic bag over them, seals them and takes them to a pallet.

Whilst the whole line is not automated, human inspection time has decreased. The line, which runs 24 hours a day, initially began with six employees over three shifts. Now it is down to one worker per shift and two thirds of the company’s line staff now have other less labour-intensive jobs.

OHS News Tip: Workplace Safe Work Method Statements

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07:30 am, Thursday 18 September, 2008

Source: WorkSafe Victoria

New guidance to help make Victorian schools safer for teachers, students and school communities has been launched by WorkSafe.

WorkSafe’s Executive Director, John Merritt, said the guide, OHS in schools- a practical guide for school leaders, was designed to provide practical advice for those who have a safety role in schools.

More than 9000 work-related injuries have been reported to WorkSafe from schools over the past five years. Nearly one-third related to manual handling; slips trips and falls account for another 20%; and stress accounts for 19%.

Mr Merritt said the overwhelming majority of injuries could be prevented.

“This guide is a tool to help school leaders, teachers, school councils and health and safety representatives make their schools as safe as they can be.

“In the education environment it begins with those who set the policies and procedures and flows through to the individual workplaces and people.”

“Building simple safety measures into the daily operation of the school means that safety issues are not onerous or hard to deal with, and people with a leadership role are in the best position to use their influence to produce the best safety outcomes.”

Mr Merritt said safety failings affected more than just the person affected.

“Schools are close-knit communities. Injuries to a teacher, office worker, cleaner or parent affects more than the person directly involved.

“If they’re an employee they have to be replaced or other people’s workloads will have to be re-organised. The overall school community can be affected for an extended period.

“In cases of serious traumatic injuries, the emotional impact can be enormous especially for students.”

OHS News Tip: Safe Work Method Statements

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