Presented by Safety Institute of Australia
(Victoria Division) Inc
Organiser: Australian Exhibitions & Conferences Pty Ltd, 2/267 Collins Street, Melbourne VIC 3000
Unions must up the ante on safety says Professor
One of the authors of a five year research program into Australia's occupational health and safety
inspectorates says greater union influence is essential to workplace safety.
The University of NSW's Professor Michael Quinlan spoke out today ahead of his April 2 address to the
Safety In Action Conference in Melbourne about the findings of his study with Richard Johnstone.
"…unions haven't pursued safety as much as they should have and I don't see employers moaning
about that particularly," Professor Quinlan said in a Safety Institute of Australia podcast.
"Having said that, I think we should be very careful to remember from history, that in fact it is unions
that played a very significant part in campaigns which brought about health and safety legislation in the
first place, workers’ compensation legislation in the first place and the reforms of health and safety
legislation,."
In response to remarks that unions might be abusing OHS-related powers to deal with an industrial
relations agenda, the Professor said "…there's been an ongoing argument for a long time that health
and safety should be quarantined from industrial relations.
"That is never going to be possible because..you can have an issue like staffing levels in a workplace,
you can have an issue about work organisation, about the use of contractors. Those sorts of issues are
going to…have health and safety aspects, they're going to have job security aspects to that issue,
they're going to have other industrial relations issues, so the idea that you can run health and safety as
an entirely separate agenda to industrial relations, I think is intellectually and factually flawed."
"In practice, you don't find a health and safety rep in a workplace where there's no union. As many
incidents will demonstrate…where you don't have effective worker and union input, you have serious
problems with health and safety."
Provided that unions and inspectorates were adequately resourced, Professor Quinlan said criticisms
that Australian OHS legislation modelled on Robens principles was too soft were largely unjustified.
"My impression from going on workplace visits and dealing with inspectors, looking at employers and
others in those situations, is that it's ironic that we're getting this sort of criticism,” he said. "In all
honesty, the legislation we've got today is the best we've ever had so anyone who wants to criticise it
and the enforcement and other activities that goes with it, I'd want to see some hard evidence of the
problems and more importantly, I'd like to see a convincing alternative."
"I'm not saying there aren't problems…but overall the shift has been, in my view, a positive one with
some important caveats about the need for essential infrastructure such as having a union movement
strong enough to be able to have effective representation and interest in health and safety on the
ground. But that would apply under any legislative regime and maintaining a sufficiently resourced and
well-trained inspectorate.
Professor Quinlan said that while better trained than ever before, inspectorates "…still don't have
enough resources to do the job…".
Professor Quinlan will present his keynote address to the Safety In Action Conference, which runs from
March 31 to April 2 in 2009 at the Melbourne Convention Centre and also marks the 60th anniversary of
Presented by Safety Institute of Australia
(Victoria Division) Inc
Organiser: Australian Exhibitions & Conferences Pty Ltd, 2/267 Collins Street, Melbourne VIC 3000
host, the Safety Institute of Australia. The full interview with Professor Quinlan plus video footage from
be held concurrently at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre.
#ENDS#
Media: Marian Macdonald, Firefly Marketing, ph (03) 9736 4334, mob (0421) 530 944,
marianm@fireflymarketing.com.au
NEWS 
