Health and Safety changes

[denysjones]

I'm not sure which board this really belongs on but we'll put it here for starters as there are a lot of potentially affected bodies in the preservationfield. However I can imagine flying clubs etc could well be covered as well.

There is a draft new H&S bill around which will replace the existing Health and Safety legislation but the significant thing that leads me to post it here is that it extends the scope of compliance to cover volunteers and hence the bodies they belong to to compliance. Most importantly is that it then exposes office holders of societies to fines in the event of non-compliances and requires organisations to maintain H&S programmes, registers, meetings etc.

It mimics Australian legislation which has led to a significant number of organisations over there giving up operations totally or having to merge to create larger entities with the finances to ensure they can meet the compliance costs. In many cases people are not prepared to hold office due to the personal financial risk exposure from doing so.

I've seen comments to date that suggest that the draft is conflicting in different places about volunteers (because such a status is explicitly removed) being involved or not and it is suggested that if it passes as is then someone will cop a significant test case to clarify it all. Typical of the times is that it removes the simple definition "employer" and instead has "PCBU for Persons Carrying out Business or Undertaking" as a broad catch-all.

If you belong to a volunteer based organisation make sure your committee/officers are across this and encourage them to make submissions or lobby MPs by the end of May when submissions close.


see www.business.govt.nz/worksafe/about/reform/landing-page-contents/reform-bill-update-sept-2014-pdf

[htbrst]

Submissions are closed already I think - I had intended to work on one but ran out of time.

It's a bit of a time-bomb for many businesses and societies, and we probably wont know the full effect for a few years until they run through some initial prosecutions.

[denysjones]

There's good coverage in this newsletter of the Federation of Motoring Clubs of NZ

www.fomc.org.nz/WheelTorque115-low_res.pdf

[eieio]

And here we go again ...more unproductive idiots .Productivity is actually what pays the bills or am I mistaken ?
drowning in more bullshit

[aeromedia]

My prediction is people will just give up on being involved in a lot of groups. Who needs the grief? Sad, but increasing fact of life.

[Ian Warren]

One off museums affected is course Wigram, even only to clean the aircraft require scaffold, I do know one who volunteered his time a few years back, cleaning ole No.21 the Andover, be worth a chat to him and find out how he cleaned the tail.

[ErrolC]

Some possible dial-back reported here:
www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/68843439/pike-river-health-and-safety-law-changes-set-to-be-watered-down

Health and safety law changes prompted by the Pike River tragedy are set to be watered down in the face of a possible revolt by back bench Government MPs, with small businesses given an exemption from some provisions.

Prime Minister John Key on Monday said a select committee considering the bill would report back this week and ministers were keen to ensure a balance between safety and workability.
...
Changes from the Government side are tipped to assuage the concerns of farmers about their responsibility for people on their land and to address worries about the rules covering volunteers.