We’ve covered the practical side of consultation previously, but in this video and post, we looked at some of the legislation behind work health and safety consultation, and start to get into required consultation between businesses.
Check out the video below, and the transcript following.
Hi everyone, today we’re going to be talking about work health and safety consultation. My name is Michael Terry, I’m from Momentum Safety and Ergonomics and this is the five-minute safety series.
Today we’re continuing on with our series on work health and safety legislation and today we’re going to be looking at part one of a shorter series on work health and safety consultation. We’re looking at how you consult and also looking at what the legislative requirements are around that as well. When we’re talking about work health and safety consultation, we can talk about industry consultation, which is where the work health and safety regulators are consulting with industry, businesses – those sorts of things; and we can talk about workplace consultation.
Industry Consultation:
Industry consultation as we mentioned is where you have a work health and safety regulator. And remember in Australia we have multiple work health and safety regulators, one for each state and territory, as well as for the commonwealth. Each of these regulators will have their own mechanisms by which they consult with industry when bringing out such things as new codes of practices, new standards, or even new legislation.
Just as an example in Queensland, they have quite a few mechanisms by which they consult, but one of the ones that you might be aware of if you if you operate in this state, is that we have what’s called industry sector standing committees. And there’s a handful (a little bit more) committees for bigger industries like healthcare, manufacturing, construction, those sorts of industries. And each of those will have representatives from employer groups, unions, those sorts of places. And they sit down with government representatives when we’re coming up with these new standards, codes and laws.
Workplace Consultation:
Now as I mentioned workplace consultation does have a duty, or there is a duty which mandates that workplaces do consult. And there’s a couple of ways that we’re going to approach this. We’re firstly going to look at what are the duties for a workplace in relation to other businesses. And this is found in section 46 of the Work Health and Safety Act. So, let’s have a look at what it says. Section 46 duty to consult with other duty holder. And it says…
If more than one person has a duty in relation to the same matter under this act each person with the duty must so far as reasonably practical,
and that reasonably practical, is a really important point,
they must consult, cooperate and coordinate activities with all other persons who have a duty in relation to the same matter.
And you can see the penalties that apply there.
What does that really mean. It’s all just words until you actually put it into some sort of context. We can look at this in a couple of ways. (Firstly) We can look at who has a duty in relation to this matter, and for me when I’m thinking about this, there’s a few different ways of thinking about it. We can look at businesses who, for example, share the same work site. The classic example of this is either a construction work site, where you have multiple different businesses all operating under the same work area, or it might be something like a shopping centre, or something like that where you have multiple businesses or multiple tenants all operating in the same area. So there’s a couple of good examples of sort of I guess working on the same site.
Consultation between businesses:
Another example might be if you have similar workers. Businesses who share workers for example, and when we’re talking about this, we might be talking the classic example of this one – labour hire. A labour hire worker works for the labour hire company, but they actually do most of their work on another business’s premises. There’s definitely going to be shared duties in relation to the training and other health and safety aspects of this worker.
Or it might be a situation where there’s businesses who have a health and safety impact through their operations on their neighbours, for example, or other businesses in a close vicinity. You might be talking about work sites that have a high risk operation going on, and you’re fairly closely located to them or maybe you’re the business with a high risk activity going on, and you want to make sure that your activities don’t have significant impacts on those other businesses. What the Work Health and Safety Act is saying in each of these cases is that you must consult, as reasonably practical, and as appropriate with each one of these businesses.
What must we consult about then, and again this list is as long as it needs to be, but here’s a few examples of the sorts of things that you might want to share arrangements with? The classic one would be emergency procedures. If you have procedures that require emergency evacuations, for example, and it’s going to be we all gather in the same place, well I guess each of those businesses must agree with what that place actually is. It might be first aid, so there might be an opportunity to provide a combined first aid service with relation to first aid personnel, first aid kits, that sort of thing, so not each business is having a requirement to have their own first aid officer. There might be opportunities for inductions and training and those sorts of things, again, to be combined because we all have the same sorts of risks. There might be risks that are shared for example so risk assessments and risk registers might need to be considered and consulted with and agreed upon and those sorts of things.
Thanks very much for listening that was our five-minute safety talk on work health and safety consultation part 1.