While watching Maddocks’ recent webinar on the Right-to-Disconnect for its local council clients, I was reminded of a comment from one of Maddocks’ competitors, Steve Bell, of Herbert Smith Freehills in a seminar earlier this year (paraphrased): “This is less a right to disconnect as a right to refuse to respond”. The webinar summarised three …
Zagi cried. I cried, and the conference delegates cried. Zagi Kozarov‘s presentation at the Psych Health and Safety Conference was confronting, disturbing, and a highlight. Occupational health and safety (OHS) conferences often hear from survivors of physical work injuries and, usually, wives of deceased workers, but Kozarov spoke of the injustice she faced from her …
In December, Australian law firm Maddocks launched its 2023 Year in Review. Two items were directly relevant to occupational health and safety (OHS) – Sexual Harassment and Psychosocial Safety – both addressed by Catherine Dunlop. The size of the challenge ahead on both these topics was shown by the Australian Financial Review on December 7, …
Recently Maddocks law firm partner Catherine Dunlop spoke on the Lawyers Weekly Show podcast about psychosocial risks in the workplace. Although the podcast aims at legal practices, Dunlop’s comments and advice seem to apply to many white-collar jobs and professions. Dunlop said that the discussion about psychosocial hazards at work has matured since the sexual …
The Australian government has failed to follow through on its early promises to provide a framework for employers to prevent and reduce sexual harassment in their workplaces. This failure is being interpreted as revealing something about employers’ attitudes to occupational health and safety (OHS) and their own legislative duties. Employers (and other groups on non-OHS …
As you could guess from some recent blog posts, the Criterion Conference called “Improving Integrated Approaches to Workplace Mental Health” conducted with the support of the Australian Institute of Health and Safety, was well worth attending as many of the speakers were excellent. What was missing was a strong voice of advocacy on behalf of …
In relation to the release, last week, of the Brady Review SafetyAtWorkBlog wondered: “It is worth asking whether a reliance on Administrative Controls could be interpreted as a level of negligence that could spark an Industrial Manslaughter prosecution.” A seminar hosted by law firm Maddocks this week offered an opportunity to pose this as a …
