Obscured by the announcement of a ‘road cone hotline’ were a suite of significant health and safety reforms which a collective of unions say fail to support small businesses, despite others calling it a good result of quality consultation
The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions – Te Kauae Kaimahi (NZCTU) and Civil Contractors New Zealand (CCNZ) are both criticising the Government’s focus on a new ‘road cone hotline’, when there have been far more significant changes announced by Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden.
“The Government seems to think the biggest obstacle to our poor productivity and health and safety outcomes is too many road cones,” says NZCTU President Richard Wagstaff.
“Given the massive challenge we have as a country to improve our health and safety performance, it’s astounding the Minister would target the use of road cones and expect WorkSafe to focus its scarce time and energy on creating a hotline.”
van Velden says she has had meetings across the country, where almost every time someone had raised the issue of “a sea of road-cones”.
“I am directing WorkSafe to confirm and provide guidance on instances of road cones overcompliance,” she says.
“Having WorkSafe focus on this will be a culture shift for the agency, but it signifies the broader direction this Government is taking with the health and safety system.”
CCNZ Chief Executive Alan Pollard says the hotline was a disappointing announcement and has concerns it will be unworkable and create confrontation between the public and workers on the road – who are already the target of significant public aggression and abuse.
“Public abuse is the single biggest risk to road workers across several regions of New Zealand, and I am not confident a road cone hotline will do anything more than increase aggression and risk to road workers, at public cost.
“Traffic management requirements have become more prescriptive every decade, and the risk-based approach is a step in the right direction to make sure any controls put in place – including cones – are applied correctly for the site they are set up to support.”
However, Pollard says the Government’s reforms to cut red tape are welcome, particularly the proposed adjustments to the primary purpose of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 to focus more on critical risk.
“We have seen genuine, personal contact from the Minister throughout the consultation process, which has been refreshing and engaging for our members.
“Refocusing the system toward managing critical risk and away from tick-box compliance for the sake of it are positive things. Any time getting those things right will be well spent.”
Wagstaff is less supportive, calling the reforms ideological rather than evidence-based.
“On average there is a workplace fatality every week, another 20 are killed from occupational disease, and thousands more are incapacitated by injuries. Nothing in these proposals signals an intent to improve these numbers,” he says.
A particular concern he says is around the exemption of small businesses from best practice health and safety.
“[This] makes no sense when we know that small business are riskier and need more support.
“It’s disappointing to see the Minister has ignored the widespread consensus on what New Zealand needs to do to improve its poor track record and instead has chosen to carve out small businesses from good health and safety practices.”
In her announcement, van Velden stated she was cutting through unnecessary red tape holding businesses back.
“I have travelled across the country meeting with businesses, employers, and workers about how the current system works for them and what they want to see in this reform that will make their work safer. What I have been hearing consistently is that small, low-risk businesses are not sure which risks to focus on and struggle to meet the costs of compliance.”
She says there will be a carve-out for these businesses from general Health and Safety at Work Act requirements, who will only have to manage critical risks and provide basic facilities to ensure worker welfare.
Cabinet has also agreed to:
- Reduce tick-box health and safety activities that do not protect workers from harm by sharpening the primary purpose of the Health and Safety at Work Act to focus on critical risk,
- Address over-compliance due to overlapping health and safety duties by clarifying the boundaries between the Act and regulatory systems that already manage the same risk,
- Cut compliance costs by reducing notification requirements to the regulator to only significant workplace events (deaths, serious injury, illness and incidents).
“These changes are just the start of the Government’s reform programme,” van Velden says.
“I will be seeking Cabinet decisions in the coming months that will further improve WorkSafe and address sector-specific pain points.”
