New workplace death and disease data - indicate catastrophic problem
New statistics show that workplace deaths, diseases and injuries amount to a catastrophic problem, says Joe Riordan, chairman of the National Occupational Health and Safety Commission (Worksafe Australia).
"There can be no true harmony in the workplace where workers every day face health and safety hazards," he told a Western Australian convention at Busselton, near Bunbury, today.
Mr Riordan was addressing the Industrial Relations Society of Western Australia on the need for law to achieve or maintain order in the workplace.
Health and safety at the workplace was a very old and well established common law right which had been enjoyed by employees for centuries.
Obviously that right has not always been honoured and this represented a breach of the employment contract.
Mr Riordan warned that those who failed to provide a safe working environment did not afford workers the dignity and respect to which they were entitled.
Mr Riordan quoted the following Worksafe statistics:
- More than 500 people die in workplace accident every year.
- Up to 2,200 die as a result of disease contracted from exposure to hazardous substances, mostly involving cancer.
- A maximum 650,000 workers are likely to suffer injuries and contract disease at work and almost two-thirds are forced to take time off as a result.
- At any one time 115,000 workers cannot work at full capacity.
- About 200,000 have to permanently reduce their working hours or change jobs.
- The same number are prevented from working altogether.
- An estimated 285, 000 people over 65 suffer from work-related health problems.
Said Mr Riordan: "These figures have emerged as a result of a vast improvement in the collection and publication of more reliable statistics. Statistics now available are far more robust than the estimates of yesteryear which, in many cases, were based on material published by workers' compensation tribunals and authorities."
13 October 1995
Page last updated: 15/07/2008