When we go to work each day it is a reasonable expectation that we will return home alive and well. There are national work and safety laws in place that are supposed to deliver that outcome but unfortunately industrial accidents are a fact of life and every year the statistics reveal a toll of workers who died or were seriously injured doing their job.
Where their employer has been grossly negligent and this negligence has been the cause of death or injury it can set a prosecution in progress, but securing a conviction is notoriously difficult. One of the factors in play is the difficulty of identifying the individual who had the ultimate responsibility for the safety breach that caused the work accident.
Where the employer is a giant corporation many levels of management may be involved. It could be the board of directors which failed to provide the correct financial outlay to buy equipment that delivers safety, or it could be a lowly supervisor who set that equipment aside in the interest of speeding the job. It is usually possible to investigate and determine precisely why each and every accident happened, and what would have been necessary for it to have been avoided.
There are calls for the creation of uniform industrial manslaughter laws to cover all states and territories. If we are to take safety seriously, there needs to be areas of responsibility in place to ensure that a breach of standards which causes death or serious injury is treated as an act of criminal negligence with consequent legal consequences.
The business world views this approach with trepidation. They rightly claim that most building sites have an element of danger because of the nature of the work involved and it is usually worker skill to avoid injury. Working at heights has an unavoidable fall danger, despite the best working conditions and if legal responsibility rests on the shoulders of the employer it delivers an impossible onus of care. In many accident cases the cause is the worker acting irresponsibly.
Obviously, each accident needs to be investigated and the cause determined but in an overwhelming number of cases there is a clear breach of existing safety laws. In some cases where people are working unsupervised they elect to not use safety equipment provided in the interest of speed and convenience, but in others the employer is blatantly expecting work to be done in a hazardous way and should a worker object employment would cease.
Industry is also aware that safety laws are used by the unions in nit picking work delays as attempts are made to impose work conditions and pay increases, but ultimately a safe working environment is in everybody's best interests. The main gain from a common industrial manslaughter law would be to deter glaring risks to worker safety. Where the work to be performed is totally outside the relevant safety guidelines, the person who authorises that work is legally responsible for the consequences.
It is a matter for a court to delegate that responsibility.
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