Public Sector Wages

ACTU acts on health and safety

On 13 and 14 May 2003, the Australia Council of Trade Unions convened a seminar in Sydney on occupational health and safety, including the impacts of changes in the labour market and work organisation.

It was attended by representatives of over twenty unions and labour councils from around Australia, and addressed by many of Australia's leading researchers on workplace change and on health and safety. At the conclusion of the seminar, the following resolutions were adopted.

General Resolution

Finding, developing and supporting union health and safety representatives is vital to building union organisation and to improving health and safety in workplaces.

Active, effective and informed union health and safety representatives mean safer and healthier workplaces. Along with delegates, union health and safety representatives build union membership and involvement.

The seminar recognises the need to increase the number of health and safety representatives in workplaces, and to raise the level of support for them from the union movement.

Health and safety representatives are often isolated and left to act alone in their workplace, which makes it difficult for them to be effective.

Consistent with the ACTU Future Strategies document, this seminar recommends that the union movement:
(a) recognise health and safety representatives as union activists;
(b) ensure that workers and unions conduct elections of health and safety representatives;
(c) conduct audits of health and safety representative networks to identify:
(i) the ratio of representatives to workers;
(ii) workplaces that do not have a representative; and
(iii) training requirements for representatives;
(d) develop union forums for health and safety representatives;
(e) ensure involvement of health and safety representatives in enterprise bargaining, as health and safety is integral to working conditions (eg. hours, breaks, workloads, work organisation);
(f) ensure joint workplace meetings between union delegates and health and safety representatives;
(g) ensure support by union organisers for health and safety representatives, as well as for union delegates;
(h) incorporate health and safety into union strategies for organising and recruitment;
(i) organise workplace meetings on health and safety; and
(j) ensure active workplace involvement in national health and safety campaigns

In recognition of health and safety problems arising from the current industrial relations climate, including the Cole Royal Commission, the 1996 Workplace Relations Act, and the changing nature of work and the labor market, trade unions need to campaign for:
(a) health and safety representation for workers currently without representation;
(b) pilot programs and legislative change for regional or roving health and safety representatives.

Trades and Labor Councils and affiliates need to participate in developing a common agenda for legislation, standards and codes of practice, and other activity from Commonwealth, state and territory health and safety agencies.

Effective union action requires a comprehensive framework of health and safety laws, which should include - but not be limited to - union right of entry, mandatory consultative arrangements, union-initiated prosecutions, corporate accountability, and provisional improvement notices.

Participants in this seminar encourage the ACTU to conduct similar seminars on an annual basis, and to incorporate occupational health and safety in future ACTU organising conferences.

Participants in this seminar will report its outcomes to unions, and work to have these outcomes implemented as a basis for future organising.

Resolution on the Cole Royal Commission

This seminar condemns the Cole Royal Commission for:
(a) its attacks on workers based on spurious allegations of misuse of health and safety laws;
(b) ignoring the real health and safety issues in the building and construction industry; and
(c) its recommendations that would create a health and safety structure in the industry that would reduce protection for workers, and increase the likelihood of industrial confrontation.

© 2001 Community & Public Sector Union - State Public Services Federation (CPSU-SPSF) - National Office

http://www.cpsu-spsf.asn.au/latest_news/public_sector_wages/20030516_health.html
Last Modified: 15 Nov 2005