Know your rights – health and safety

01 Apr Know your rights – health and safety

Each month, we will be featuring different legal minimum working rights – this month we’re focusing on the Health and Safety changes coming up in April! 

Health and safety? Yaaaaaaaawn, right? Well…sometimes it can feel like that but, guys, it’s super important that you and your colleagues are safe at work!

On Monday, changes to the Health and Safety laws (Health and Safety at Work Act 2015) come into effect. They basically have all the bosses and CEOs shitting themselves about the liabilities they will have under the changes. This is a welcome change – bosses should be made to care about the health and wellbeing of their employees. But what are some of the nuts and bolts of these changes? Well, we’re going to have stab at giving you a brief rundown!

The changes have come about because the appalling workplace deaths in the Pike River mine in 2010 and are based on Australia health and safety laws which increase liabilities and responsibilities for everyone in the work chain. This includes people who are contracted to work in a certain area – so there’s no skipping out on ensuring people are safe by not technically employing them.

Under the Act corporate entities are referred to as PCBUs, because acronyms are totally helpful. This stands for Persons Conducting a Business or Undertaking. Actually…we prefer the acronym now. Anyway, a PCBU means “a person conducting a business or undertaking whether the person conducts a business or undertaking alone or with others and whether or not the business or undertaking is conducted for profit or gain” (so the law covers volunteers, too). PCBU’s are generally speaking businesses in the form of an incorporated company (meaning formed into a legal entity) but can be individual people where the organisation is unincorporated.

To cut a long story short, however, the new laws are basically aimed at making sure that good health and safety is the responsibility of everyone – but especially those who can “reasonably influence and manage” these systems (basically the higher ups). PCBUs have to make sure that as far is “reasonably practicable” they protect the health and safety of both workers and any others involved in the work (recipients of care, for example). This applies to workers themselves – so you need to know that, while the law is mostly aimed at bosses etc, you as a worker have responsibilities to others you work with, too.

Under the Act, huge fines can be imposed for breaches of these responsibilities. The maximum fine that can be imposed on a PCBU is for reckless conduct (exposing someone to the risk of death or serious injury/illness) and is a whopping $3 million – or a casual $600,000 and up to five years imprisonment. Eek! No wonder the bosses are shitting themselves. All they need to do though is look out for the health and safety of everyone who works with and for them. It’s pretty simple, pretty important and can literally save lives.

There’s a whole bunch more we could ramble about and we encourage you to read up on the Act to know what your rights and responsibilities will be.

Some light reading: the Act and the Worksafe website.

All aboard the safety train!