Among those attending the Summit are Chair of the National Occupational Health and Safety Commission, Professor Dennis Else, AWU National Secretary Bill Shorten, Member for Lyons, Dick Adams, Executive Director of the Tasmanian Minerals’ Council, Terry Long and Sydney academic Kathryn Heiler.
The one-day Summit will be held on Wednesday 11, June 2003 at the Hadleys Hotel in Murray Street, Hobart.
The Summit follows a comprehensive AWU Tasmanian Branch report released last month which found seven Tasmanian miners were killed in five years - a 350 per cent rise in the death toll - because of the industry’s failure to fix systemic problems despite repeated union warnings.
The systemic problems identified in the report include:
· A rise in the number of individual contracts and Australian Workplace Agreements
· Self regulation of occupational health and safety
· A fall in the number of well-qualified inspectors
· Poor consultation and participation processes across the industry
A second report commissioned by the Tasmanian Government last year called The Struggle for Time also highlighted some of the problems in metalliferous mining particularly excessive working hours in the Tasmanian industry. The work hours, up to 72 hours a week, were adversely impacting on occupational health and safety and the industry had few, if any, measures in place to manage the effects of fatigue and other hazards created by the 12-hour rosters.
WHAT: Mining OHS: Fatigue & Families: A systemic Crisis – An AWU Forum
WHEN: Wednesday 11th June, starts 10am – 4pm
WHERE: Hadleys Hotel, 34 Murray St, Hobart
National Secretary: Paul Howes