Page 626 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 30 March 2021
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What I find most startling about this quote is that I could have written this 20 years ago when I worked in hospitality. This attitude needs to change. Workplaces need to improve. I don’t want to see another generation of young people entering this industry only to be harassed, exploited and beaten down; to become hardened and angry, like myself and so many other are, from the poor treatment we ourselves and our fellow co-workers receive.
Many reports have exposed a multitude of law firms where excessive work hours are culturalised as normal and lead to subsequent incidents of burnout and other psychosocial trauma. Workplaces where workloads reach excesses of 60 and 70 hours a week are not safe workplaces.
Psychosocial injuries account for approximately 30 per cent of the cost of all Comcare claims. Sexual harassment, bullying and other psychosocial risks at work, and their mitigation, are not areas of workplace safety which are particularly well defined, regulated or enforced.
Our work health and safety legislative framework in the ACT is based on the model WHS Act and its regulations. These are harmonised in uniform in every state and territory, except Victoria. The model act and its associated regulations put the primary onus of work health and safety on the person conducting a business or undertaking. They must take all reasonable steps, in consultation with the workers and health and safety representatives elected in working groups, to reduce risks to health and safety in their workplace.
The model regulations provide for some reasonably specific risk mitigation rules for all sorts of hazards: confined spaces, demolition work and many, many others. The regulations are 529 pages long. Not one section deals with psychosocial health. That is why the motion on the notice paper calls on the government to amend the notification section of the ACT WHS Act to include psychosocial hazards, develop regulations under the act that incorporate psychosocial hazards and develop a code of practice. These changes will better enable a proactive and preventive approach in workplaces to create a prevention-based work environment.
Development of guidelines to address gender-based violence, including sexual harassment in the workplace, as part of the code of practice, will additionally aid the creation and prevention of focused workplaces as opposed to reactive workplaces. This will keep the territory’s WHS framework in line with the intent of the model act, while also providing a mechanism to begin to really deal with these issues in ACT workplaces.
It is important to codify these changes in law as opposed to waiting for cultural change or encouraging employers to implement them of their own volition. Employee assistance programs, nap rooms and yoga classes to deal with the stresses of excessive workloads are not reasonable risk mitigation measures if workloads are still excessive. Waiting for meaningful change to come from employers has broadly never worked for work health and safety, and probably never will. It has always been the work of union members and legislatures which have moved safety standards in the right direction.
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