The Disharmony of WHS

(c) https://www.worksafe.qld.gov.au/injury-prevention-safety/health-and-wellbeing-at-work

I wrote the start of this blog in November 2012, but it has never been posted… until now. I was the WHS officer for a transport company, but I was not the HSR – Health Safety Representative, who are elected by workers. I attended monthly WHSQ Transport Industry meetings with people from all different companies, all who worked similar to me – as a WHS officer. I was also the trainer, the Rehabilitation & Return to Work Co-ordinator, the Fire Safety adviser, an audit person qualified with RABQSA, and I had my Graduate Diploma of Occupational Health & Safety (university Level 8) – more than anyone I knew of in the company where I worked. I felt the way as this blog said in 2012, and I still feel the same way. This is what I wrote in 2012:

Workplace health and safety seems to be a subject that brings out the passion in many people. Perhaps it’s the nature of the beast – the connection to life and, possibly, death – that makes us want to do our best and be our best and encourage everyone else to be the same, but that, it would appear, is where the trouble starts. No-one seems able to agree on “best practice” in WHS, least of all the legislators. Never mind harmonisation, there are a whole raft of other issues that we argue about as a professional group which need resolution before the harmonisation pipe dream will ever even look like coming to fruition.

 

Rote learning or reasoned discussion?

Professional or practitioner - what’s the difference and why do we differentiate?

Human error or system error?

Common sense or commonality of understanding?

What are the best or worst audit tools?

Can you ever achieve zero harm?

What do we want in a professional organisation?

Education or training?

If lag indicators are so useless why do we use them?

Can an employer ever be not responsible under duty of care?

Even if s/he has taken all reasonably practicable steps?

WHS practitioner or trainer-counsellor-medic-ergonomist-investigator-presenter-negotiator?

 

No two workplaces are the same, even in the same industry. No two industries are the same. Yet the rules and regulations apply to a 10-person muffler repair shop exactly the same as to a 100-person delivery company or a 1,000 person mine site. 

 

There is no distinction in the legislation for size, or for the financial ability of the employer to have the best WHS employees or consultants.

 

There is no distinction in the legislation between the owner/manager of a small suburban produce store who works 7 days a week running his own business and provides employment to half a dozen people, or the CEO of a national company who manages a publicly owned company which employs 5,000.

I didn’t finish this blog in 2012, and a few months later I had my stroke and I forgot about it. When I was looking through my PC files today I found this. For me, WHS is still definitely the same as it was back in 2012. Management often paid lip service to WHS, evidenced as in my own workplace, by the number of times the State Manager and others didn’t attend scheduled WHS meetings. I still have copies of some of the reports I wrote, which were ignored. I was extremely disheartened by the lack of responsibility shown by senior management to issues that caused a furore, and I am certain that this is shown in many other companies, albeit small or large.

I can’t work in WHS now (my memory fades daily and I get too tired), but if you know anyone who is in WHS, whether or not they are actually working during COVID-19, talk to them. Find out how they work. Find out what they do. Have they ever been working on the harmonisation pipe dream and will it ever even look like coming to fruition? What have they been doing?

I’d really like to know.

 

Fantasy and life

Pleasure

Book Review: The Museum of Forgotten Memories

Title:               The Museum of Forgotten Memories

Author:           Anstey Harris

Written:          2020

Publisher:      Simon & Schuster

The cover of this book said “Gripped me utterly... Superb”, Kate Furnivall. I agree with this. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, and I had a deep emotional agreement with Leo. He was, in the novel, born with Downs. I had worked in Taupo (New Zealand)’s IHC a few years ago where a young man died from his Downs. I also had an uncle, many years ago, who was epileptic and died during his seizure. I could relate to Cate a lot. If you’ve ever been to a museum and found it so full of information and history, then this tale is certainly about that, but it’s also about Cate and Leo and surviving after husband and father.

Cate and Leo are the family of Richard Lyons-Morris (pronounced Lee-on Morris: they used to get upset when people called them Lions Morris). That was why Leo, their son, was named Leo – people should pronounce his surname correctly. Except Richard didn’t like his surname, just used Morris.

Richard had what could be called a DNA problem – he became very depressed, lost a lot of weight, and killed himself. Just as his own father had done. Cate found out a lot of history about Richard from the woman who looked after the museum, Araminta Buchan – not particularly good at the start; Araminta was, Cate felt, stuck up with herself.

After Richard had died Cate and Leo were left homeless – or would have been, if they weren’t given a home at Richard’s family museum. It was supposed to be for a “real descendant”, and that was Leo, even though the Trust didn’t think he was “real” because of his Downs. Cate, and eventually Araminta, supported Leo and kept them there.

At the start Cate didn’t really like the museum, but, because it was her home now, she helped Araminta to get it ready to re-open. Unfortunately there were some protestors that same day who threw paint around in the diorama, covering the glass and the floor. Later that same night a fire burns inside, not caused by protestors yet almost as devastating. Curtis, a new friend of Leo’s, calls out many neighbours who come and help lift things out of the library and the diorama and other areas of the museum, but Cate burns herself, quite seriously. Many volunteers come and help them to clean and get everything back inside, where it needs to be.

Araminta Buchan tells Cate stories of the family and how she fits in. Her job is to keep this museum running, her admiration of the person who started it, Colonel Hugo Lyons-Morris, and her love of other people in the family. Why?

Cate’s love tales include Richard, Simon and Patch. Read the excellent novel and feel sad, feel happy, feel involved with Cate and her son, Leo. It’s a wonderful novel by Anstey Harris.

 

Book Review: The Good Turn

Title:               The Good Turn

Author:           Dervla McTiernan

Written:          2020

Publisher:      HarperCollins

Dervla McTiernan is Irish, but now lives in Australia. This book is her third novel, and all are written in Galway, in Ireland. The Good Turn is about police corruption and an investigation into that which causes too many more crimes and death.

Cormac Reilly is a detective sergeant running a serious crime investigation team in Galway, but his team has been stripped down to a skeleton team as Murphy, the Commissioner for the area, is running a drug crime team. Reilly is informed of a 12-year-old child who was abducted and he calls Murphy for more men, but Murphy turns him down. Reilly is left with Peter Foster, a new detective, Mulcair, a young and inexperienced garda, and Deidre Russell, the only woman, treated as the police receptionist. Foster is sent to an interview of a young boy, Fred, who is home sick. He says he had seen the abduction from his bedroom window – and, more importantly, he had taken a video of it.

Foster reports back to Reilly, and is sent back out to look around the area for anyone who might know the abductor. One name crops up, and Foster tries to find him. He is informed that the vehicle in Fred’s video is seen heading out of town, and he knows that, without other officers, he has to follow it. He rings the station and speaks to Russell and find that Reilly is at the house where the girl lives, and can’t be spoken to. He knows he needs more men, he knows he needs a helicopter, but he knows that he can’t order it: he would have to wait for Reilly.

Frustrated, he follows the vehicle down a non-road, towards the lake. He has to stop his own car, and walks the rest of the way. He sees the vehicle and sees the person who was driving it. He calls to him to stop the vehicle, but the driver drives towards him, forcing him backwards towards the lake. He fires, three times. That man is now dead – and no young girl.

Back at the station Reilly says the girl is at hospital and isn’t talking. His office is overtaken by Inspector Reynolds, with no explanation at all. Reilly is dumped and Foster is sent to Roundstone in the country to work with his father – something he never wanted to do. His father is a garda, but doesn’t think Peter is any good. Foster visits his grandmother, Maggie, and meets another woman, Anna Tilly, who was staying there with her daughter. She is looking after Maggie. Foster finds out of a couple of murders in Roundstone, investigates them and finds more clues. What would he do? What would he tell Reilly? And what would happen to Murphy and Foster’s father?

McTiernan wrote very well. Readers who enjoy detective and crime novels need to read this.