Pike River campaigners 'bloody angry' about planned workplace safety law

Pike River campaigners Sonya Rockhouse (left) and Anna Osborne will attend a rally at Parliament next week against the Health and Safety at Work Amendment Bill.

Photo: RNZ / Anneke Smith

Two of the country's best known workplace safety advocates are heading to Wellington in the hopes of persuading politicians to reject legislation they say risks a workplace disaster.

Pike River campaigners Anna Osborne and Sonya Rockhouse will be joined by the Council of Trade Unions at a rally at parliament next week against the Health and Safety at Work Amendment Bill.

The Education and Workforce Select Committee has returned its final report on the bill, which proposes a radical shake up of New Zealand's health and safety laws.

The proposed changes would remove worker protections and risk another tragedy, and left her "bloody angry", Anna Osborne said.

"We've tried so hard to get our message out there, of what it's like to lose loved ones in the workplace, and I don't know why Brooke van Velden is so hell-bent on weakening those laws that we actually managed to strengthen."

Osborne was hopeful NZ First would vote against the bill, but said they had not had a commitment yet from Winston Peters.

"But in my heart of hearts, I believe he feels like are we on to something.

"We should be looking at making sure that - no matter what size your business is - everyone understands critical risk and that no one should be exempt from not having to worry about that in the workplace."

The proposed reforms felt like a betrayal of the men lost at Pike River, Osborne said.

"I don't want them to die in vain.

"We lost so much on the 19th of November 2010. It's too late for us now, but it's not too late for people today - and from here on out - to let people know that we're not going to go away. We want to keep fighting to make sure people are safe in the workplace, we don't want the legislation watered down."

The select committee noted the bill would create a Henry VIII power, allowing secondary legislation to amend primary legislation, and permitting legislative changes to skirt parliamentary scrutiny.

The Green and Labour parties opposed the bill.

Their differing view, recorded in the select committee report, said the range of organisations and businesses that opposed the bill - or raised significant concerns about it - demonstrated its failings.

The fact those failings had not been resolved, leaving "fundamentally flawed legislation" to be reported back to the house was "an indictment on the process", they said, and made the select committee appear to be "simply a rubber stamp for this government."

'A dog's breakfast' of a bill

Institute of Safety Management spokesperson Mike Cosman said the select committee had merely tinkered around the edges, even making some parts of the bill more complicated, defeating the stated purpose of trying to make it simple for businesses to understand.

The institute wanted to see the whole bill scrapped.

"From our point of view, it's such a dog's breakfast that it really needs to be stopped in its tracks. I think it's beyond being amended by the House, the select committee have failed to make meaningful amendments - the time has come to pull the plug on it."

The bill contained numerous examples of changes that would see the country - which already had a far higher workplace fatality rate than countries like the United Kingdom and Australia - go backwards on safety, Colson said.

One example was the reintroduction of "a notion we did away with in 2012, which was that for work at height above three metres, you have to take precautions, but below three metres you don't - gravity doesn't work that simply".

"With the Canterbury [earthquake] rebuild, we learned you need to manage lower fall risks as well as high fall risk because people die falling less than three metres," Cosman said.

Figures obtained from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment showed 97 percent of New Zealand companies could fall under the definition of a small business, qualifying them to meet more relaxed standards, Colson said.

Under the bill, small businesses are only required to manage risks defined as "critical", while larger companies must manage all risks, prioritising critical risks.

But small businesses had a 24 percent higher injury rate than large firms, and carving them out made no sense, he said.

The bill added a new definition of critical risk, enumerating hazards which could lead to death, serious injury, notifiable incidents or occupational disease.

"At a basic level workers would no longer have to be provided with safety boots or gloves as hand and foot injuries are not classed as critical. That's ridiculous," said Cosman.

A promise to reform workplace safety laws and regulations formed part of National's coalition agreement with ACT.

The bill, introduced by Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden in February, would reverse many of the changes brought in by the 2015 Health and Safety at Work Act, which was passed in response to the Pike River tragedy, which killed 29 workers in November 2010.

In March, a [www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/586766/confusing-proposed-health-and-safety-law-changes-will-not-make-workers-safer-experts-say business leader's forum warned] the select committee that the proposed changes would introduce a two-tier system - one for small businesses and another for large.

At the time, Business Leaders' Health and Safety Forum's chair Sheridan Broadbent told the committee the bill was out of step with global good practice, and the forum believed it would increase ACC costs and lower productivity.

But lobby group BusinessNZ told the committee the bill "right -sizes" health and safety duties for small businesses.

Chief executive Katherine Rich told the committee the current law was too complex, creating uncertainty and fear about getting it wrong.

RNZ has approached van Velden and NZ First leader Winston Peters for comment.

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