Worksafe Victoria:ohs Laws And Work Place Safety

This article presents a brief overview of what is happening with Occupational health

& Safety in Victoria Australia as well as the changes to the work health and safety act by the federal Government. These change will effect most businesses and how they currently view and comply with OH&S laws.

Worksafe Victoria: OHS Laws and Work Place Safety

Concerns over work place health & safety are a fact of life and encompass a number of situations. Defining and managing for work place safety is a far reaching goal and the federal Government introduced the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 to clarify and update previous laws concerning work place safety.

What is workplace safety?

Workplace safety concerns how businesses work in preventing injury and illness to employees, contractors and volunteers in the workplace, arguably an organisations most valuable asset. The scope of programs regarding workplace health and safety range from ensuring equipment and premises are maintained, organising work processes to reduce fatigue, occupational stress and workplace violence, as well as procedures for safe material handling and storage, employee welfare while on the job, and proper supervision to employees.

Worksafe Victoria (aka WorkSafe Vic,) similar to Worksafe Australia, is the public name of the Victorian Workcover Authority, the state of Victoria's statutory authority regarding workplace safety. While the name of the group has changed over the years the overarching goals remain the same, overseeing OHS laws and their implementation to increase workplace health & safety.

What is the OHS Legislation?

The Occupational Health and Safety Act of 2004 was an update to the similarly named act of 1985 passed in order to set out key principles, duties and rights in relation to occupational health and safety within the state of Victoria and the rest of the country. To effectively administrate OHS legislation requires that Work Safe Vic provides clear, accessible advice and guidance about what constitutes compliance with the Act and Regulations. This aim can be achieved through Compliance Codes, official Work Safe Positions and non-statutory guidance, collectively known as the "OHS compliance framework."

The regulations are broad and by necessity not every term in the legislation is defined or explained in exact detail. This gives the rules some flexibility when sometimes new circumstances arise such as growth in non-standard forms of employment like casual labour hire, contract work, or completely new industries and new technologies which could introduce new hazards and risks.

Such innovations and changes could potentially have an impact on the reach of the law and the ability of Work safe Vic to effectively manage such changes. Authority is provided to Work Safe Vic to make decisions about how it will interpret items referred to in legislation, or act on a certain issue, to ensure clarity. In circumstances like these Work Safe will develop a policy. These policies serve as statements of what WorkSafe understands the rules to mean, or what Work Safe will do in certain situations regarding workplace health & safety.

by:Greg Lipple

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