AUTUMN 2016
Welcome to our latest newsletter. This issue provides important information about the new Health and Safety at Work legislation which came into effect on Monday 1 st April 2016. It is likely that your business will be affected by these new Health and Safety laws and therefore we would encourage everyone to have a plan in place to mitigate any risk of harm and a process to follow in the event that harm occurs. The Employment team at Lewis’ have been busy presenting a number of Health and Safety seminars to a number of organisations within the Cambridge community. We would like to thank everyone who attended these seminars and made them a huge success.
HEALTH AND SAFETY
— An Overview
— What are your new reporting obligations?
— Who will be responsible for workplace health and safety?
— Does your business need a Health and Safety Representative?
— Spotlight On Farming
– Quad Bikes: Education or Prosecution?
— To Prosecute or not to Prosecute UP TO SPEED WITH ‘P’
— Seminar 26th May 2016 EMPLOYMENT LAW CHANGES APRIL 2016
— Parental Leave, Restricting Employees, Employment Standards, Minimum Wage Increase
HEALTH AND SAFETY – AN OVERVIEW
The purpose of the new Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (“the Act”) is to provide for a balanced framework to secure the health and safety of workers and workplaces in NZ. WorkSafe NZ was created in 2013 to be the workplace health and safety regulator. Its Government initiative was to reduce workplace fatalities by 25% by 2020. It seeks to do this by educating to create safer work places; however, it will be responsible for investigating and potentially prosecuting noncompliant businesses.
WHAT ARE YOUR NEW REPORTING OBLIGATIONS?
From 4 April 2016 notifiable events must immediately be reported to WorkSafe: – Death of a person – A notifiable injury or illness: – Requires immediate treatment for certain conditions (e.g. serious head injury, burn, amputation); – Requires admittance to hospital or medical treatment within 48 hours; – Causes infection from the work being undertaken. – A notifiable
From 4 April 2016 notifiable events must immediately be reported to WorkSafe: – Death of a person – A notifiable injury or illness: – Requires immediate treatment for certain conditions (e.g. serious head injury, burn, amputation); – Requires admittance to hospital or medical treatment within 48 hours; – Causes infection from the work being undertaken. – A notifiable
– Death of a person
– A notifiable injury or illness:
– Requires immediate treatment for certain conditions (e.g. serious head injury, burn, amputation);
– Requires admittance to hospital or medical treatment within 48 hours;
– Causes infection from the work being undertaken.
– A notifiable
– Requires immediate treatment for certain conditions (e.g. serious head injury, burn, amputation);
– Requires admittance to hospital or medical treatment within 48 hours;
– Causes infection from the work being undertaken.
– A notifiable incident:
– Requires admittance to hospital or medical treatment within 48 hours; – Causes infection from the work being undertaken. – A notifiable
– Causes infection from the work being undertaken. – A notifiable
– A notifiable incident: –
Exposes a person to a serious risk to their health and safety arising out of exposure to various situations (explosion, fire, fall from height, electric shock).
WorkSafe statistics for 2011-2016 show that there were 261 fatal work-related incidents in NZ but that these are now falling (compare 49 deaths in 2011 with 17 as at 1st April 2016). Details of deaths by industry can be found at: http://www.business.govt.nz/worksafe/resear ch/health-and-safety-data/fatalities-summary
KEY ELEMENTS OF THE ACT
- The Act creates a new duty holder who is known as a PCBU (Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking) and has a primary Duty of Care.
- PCBU’s must take reasonably practicable steps to mitigate risk of injury or death.
- Directors and CEOs will be classified as Officers and have a due diligence obligation. Officers will also be liable for workplace incidents under the new legislation.
- The Act focusses on ‘workers’ and ‘work places’ rather than employees and employers.
- A ‘work place’ is now more flexible and can vary depending on where an employee performs his or her tasks.
- The focus is now on ‘risks’ rather than ‘hazards’
YOU WILL NEED TO IDENTIFY AND MANAGE YOUR WORKPLACE RISKS.
IMPORTANT NOTE – A new concept of the Act is ‘employee participation and engagement’. Remember your employees may see risks in their employment which you, as a business owner or manager, are not aware of. Make sure you involve them in the Health and Safety planning to ensure that you are able to identify as many risks as you can. Perhaps you could turn it into a work place competition to encourage participation or have the meeting somewhere off site…
WHO WILL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR WORKPLACE HEALTH AND SAFETY?
1. The Business – The Act creates a new duty holder called a Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking (PCBU). A PCBU will usually be a business entity, such as a company, rather than an individual although it could be a person as a sole trader. The business will have the primary duty under the new law to ensure the health and safety of workers and others affected by the work it carries out. It needs to consult with other businesses where it shares a worksite or are part of a contracting or supply chain, to make sure all workers are safe and healthy
. 2. Officers – An Officer includes not only Directors but any other people who make governance decisions that can significantly affect a business. Officers have a duty of due diligence to ensure their business complies with its health and safety obligations.
3. Workers – must take reasonable care to ensure the health and safety of themselves and others, and to comply with the business’s reasonable instructions and policies.
4. Other PCBUs/People – who come to the workplace, such as visitors or customers, also have health and safety duties. Everyone needs to take responsibility for what they are able to control.
DOES YOUR BUSINESS NEED A HEALTH AND SAFETY REPRESENTATIVE?
The requirement for a business to elect a Health and Safety Representative depends on whether the business operates in a high risk industry or a low risk industry.
If your business operates in a low-risk industry and employs fewer than 20 employees you are not required under the new legislation to elect a Health and Safety representative. This position stays the same even if an employee requests a Health and Safety representative to be elected.
However, if you operate in a high risk industry and an employee requests that a Health and Safety representative be elected, you must agree, regardless of the number of employees you have.
High-Risk Industries
1. Businesses that carry the risk of a catastrophic event causing multiple fatalities; and
2. Any industry with a fatality rate greater than 25 per 100,000 workers; and
3. Any industry with a serious injury rate of more than 25 per 1000 workers.
These industries include forestry and logging, road freight transport, mining, electricity transmission and oil and gas extraction (but most types of farming will be able to claim an exemption). These include dairy, beef, poultry and deer farming whilst other types of farming (bee keeping, pig farming and some types of crop growing) will be considered high risk.
SPOTLIGHT ON FARMING
ACCORDING TO WORKSAFE NZ – 850 PEOPLE ARE INJURED EACH YEAR BY QUAD BIKES ON FARMS AND 5 ARE KILLED
QUAD BIKES – EDUCATION OR PROSECUTION?
At Lewis’ we have received feedback from our seminars that there is an issue with enforcing health and safety policies in relation to the use of quad bikes. These issues include:
- Riding at excessive speeds.
- Not wearing helmets.
- Riding dangerously.
Work Safe has indicated that prosecuting farmers for dangerous practices would not be a productive way to improve quad bike safety within the industry. Despite this, there have been a number of prosecutions where health and safety policies have not been enforced repetitively and injury has occurred even after warnings from WorkSafe have been issued. With WorkSafe’s current focus on educating farm owners and farm employees of the dangers of quad bikes, we would recommend mirroring this approach within your own business. Educating employees about the safety requirements when operating a quad bike should be your primary approach. Remember that employees all have different learning styles and therefore it may be a case of working through the safety procedures rather than telling them or providing them with a safety policy for them to read. Employees who do not appreciate the dangers of not using quad bikes carefully and responsibly are not only a risk to themselves but also risk putting farm owners at risk of liability under the new legislation.
CASE NOTE:
A farm manager rode his quad bike without a helmet into an electric fence. As a result of the accident, the farm manager fractured his skull and was left with a serious head injury. While there was a helmet available to the farm manager to wear when riding, the farm owner failed to ensure that his employees wore a helmet every time they rode a quad bike. The farm owner also failed to have processes in place to communicate quad bike hazards on the farm. The farm owner was found to have breached the Health and Safety in Employment Act and was fined $25,000.00 and ordered to pay $20,000.00 reparations.
Employee Refusal
Employers have communicated that employees don’t always wear their helmets. Under the new Act, communication with staff about health and safety is critical. An employer needs to be able to show that it took reasonably practicable steps. If the the employee refused to wear a helmet, disciplinary action should have been taken. An employer must be seen to be enforcing strict compliance with health and safety policies
TO PROSECUTE OR NOT TO PROSECUTE
One of the questions we are asked regularly is “if there is an accident at our workplace, will WorkSafe prosecute?” WorkSafe has a clear objective to prevent and reduce workplace injuries and deaths. Prosecutions are arguably one way of raising public awareness which alerts business owners to the ramifications of ignoring the new laws. That said WorkSafe will not be able to prosecute everyone. In considering whether a Prosecution is the appropriate action WorkSafe will consider its enforcement policies: Written Warnings, Negotiated Agreements (with time to rectify), Improvement Notices (requiring change over time), Prohibition Notices (stopping all activity until changes are made), Infringement Notices and on-the-spot Fines, Enforceable Undertakings and finally Prosecution. If the Inspector does make the decision to prosecute, this first must be endorsed by peer review and then the final decision is approved by WorkSafe’s legal team who will look at two main elements:
– Is there sufficient evidence to support a charge?
– Is prosecution in the public interest?
To get an idea of the kinds of cases WorkSafe will prosecute on, keep up-to-date by checking the details of recent prosecutions can be found at:
www.business.govt.nz/worksafe/news/release s/2015
FACTS ABOUT METHAMPHETAMINE
- Australia and New Zealand have one of the highest rates of methamphetamine use in the world
- Meth labs operate in all suburbs, all over New Zealand, including short-term labs in holiday accommodations and motor homes
- Methamphetamine begins to change and damage the brain from the first use and may be irreversible.
- Meth smoking is odourless. It is not uncommon for a house guest to smoke in the bathroom and the house owner be none the wiser,
- Property contamination is rarely visible. Cleaning/painting only masks the problem which seeps back to the surface over time
- Decontaminating a property can costs tens of thousands of dollars. If the property is badly contaminated, it may need to be demolished
- Tenants are being awarded compensation as a result of living in a contaminated property
IMPORTANT NOTE – Employees may also have claims against their employer under the Employment Relations Act and/or the new Health and Safety at Work Act.
LEWIS’ SEMINAR – 26TH MAY 2016
If you would like more information about the issue of ‘P’ – please refer to the invitation attached to this newsletter with details of our upcoming seminar.
EMPLOYMENT LAW CHANGES
Parental Leave
From 1 st April 2016 parental leave is extended from 16 weeks to 18 weeks. The Government wants to make it easier for parents and permanent carers to take more time off work to spend with the new addition to their family and to stay connected to the workforce. It’s planned that parental leave payments will also be extended to more workers in the future including casual and seasonal workers, those with more than one employer, those who have recently changed jobs, people who become the permanent carer of a child under the age of six, e.g. grandparents. Parents of premature babies will also receive parental leave payments for longer. We’ll keep you posted of these changes if they come into force.
Restricting Employees
An employee wanting to earn a little extra cash will now find it easier to do, regardless of any restrictive clauses in their employment agreement. Employers are now only able to prevent an employee from working a second job if they have a genuine reason to restrict and set this and the reasons for it in the employee’s employment agreement. Current clauses stating the employee needs to get permission to work elsewhere, from 1st April 2016, simply won’t be enforceable.
*Employment Standards
To help protect vulnerable workers and to make sure workplaces are fair and competitive there are planned changes to strengthen the enforcement of minimum employment standards, e.g. minimum wage and holidays entitlements. These changes include a new infringement notice regime, clearer recordkeeping requirements, and tougher sanctions for the most serious breaches, such as exploitation. Please speak to us if you are unsure about your minimum employment obligations to employees. Maximum penalties for employers will increase from $10,000 to $50,000 for an individual and from $20,000 to $100,000, or three times the financial gain, for a company. *These changes are subject to the Employment
*These changes are subject to the Employment Standards Legislation Bill being passed.
IMPORTANT NOTE: From April 1st Minimum Wage has increased to $15.25.
We hope you found the information contained in this issue valuable. If you would like further information or assistance with any other area of Employment and/or Health and Safety, please contact Senior Solicitor Emma Miles at emmam@lewislaw.co.nz or Solicitor Jennifer Robinson at jrobinson@lewislaw.co.nz
Disclaimer: The articles in this newsletter are for information purposes only and are not intended to provide comprehensive legal advice. For all your legal advice, please contact the team at Lewis’