Criminology Research Council grant ; (21/85)
This study investigated the workings of Victoria's new Occupational Health and Safety Act 1985 during the earliest years of its operation. The project was principally funded by the Victoria Law Foundation and the Victorian Department of Labour, with the Council providing the remainder of the funding necessary to complete the research successfully.
Although the study did not set out to evaluate effectiveness in any formal sense, it did attempt to identify early problems in the implementation of this new legislation. To do this it utilised a variety of research methods. Files pertaining to 4,290 registered premises were examined and relevant data extracted for statistical analysis; questionnaires were administered to approximately 320 health and safety representatives and to the registered operators of 900 sets of premises; and 125 formal interviews were conducted. In addition to a period of approximately two years during which two research workers were employed at the Department of Labour, thereby being in constant contact with department personnel, a considerable amount of time was also spent in participant observation. Apart from visits to the different regions of Victoria for purposes of formal interviewing, some 56 days were spent in the regions, either in the field or in regional offices. Around 90 hours were spent at health and safety representative training sessions and 90 court cases were attended.
Some of the main conclusions and recommendations, however, concerned the crisis of information collection confronting the Department, a crisis of enforcement agency morale arising out of the mode of change, and the risk that smaller workplaces might become relatively neglected under the auspices of new data-driven, risk management oriented procedures. The system of health and safety representatives with appropriate powers was found, by all accounts, to be operating relatively well and without the consequence, predicted by some, of industrial relations chaos. More training for managers and supervisors was, however, found to be a frequently recognised need. The project called for the imposition of higher penalties for violation and for the deployment of fines for the furtherance of occupational health and safety programs and research. Above all, it recommended a realistic and graduated enforcement response which would restore a sense of professional discretion to inspectors, make the exercise of that discretion accountable, and in the extreme case, utilise a charge of industrial manslaughter as an integral part of the occupational health and safety regime in Victoria.