The new laws are currently undergoing public consultation and are to be in place across the country by December 2011. But according to the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), this once-in-a-generation opportunity to lift safety levels could actually end up undermining standards.

According to ACTU's ‘Don't Risk Second Rate Safety' campaign, the following are the five key areas that need to be addressed with the draft legislation as it currently stands.

Giving workers a say

Worker involvement in occupational health and safety (OHS), via their union, has been shown to improve workplace safety. ACTU wants employees to have the right to be consulted by their employer over all work-related matters that affect health and safety, a right it wants enshrined in all new state and territory laws.

Making employers responsible

ACTU wants an unqualified obligation on employers to provide a safe and healthy workplace, and wants the onus placed on employers to prove they did not break the law when something goes wrong. It also wants laws toughened so that employers are legally required to find and fix problems, suggesting that as employers pay only 3 per cent of the cost of workplace death, injury and illness, there should be tough penalties on employers who break the law.

Empowering health and safety representatives

Under current laws, in most states employers must consult workers about health and safety issues in the workplace. The proposed laws state that employers would only have to consult if it was "reasonably necessary", and only with workers who were "directly affected". Unions are concerned that this loose language could be abused, as health and safety issues affecting one group of employees may well impact on others in another part of the organisation.

Unions also want to ensure that there is no reduction to the rights, powers and protections of health and safety representatives.

Respecting the role of unions

Research shows that unionised workplaces in Australia are three times more likely to have an OHS committee and are twice as likely to have done an OHS audit. International studies also confirm that there are reduced injuries where there are unionised health and safety representatives. ACTU is calling for laws that make it easier, not harder for unions to monitor and deal with health and safety at work.

The right to take court action

Trade unions have been able to prosecute breaches of workplace health and safety law in NSW since the 1940s. ACTU wants the right to prosecute to become a national standard, claiming that although union prosecutions have been used sparingly, they have improved workplace health and safety. If the proposed laws are introduced, unions will lose that power.

To find out more, visit the ACTU website www.actu.asn.au, click on Campaigns, and then Health and Safety.

[Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 32 No7, October 2009, p22]