The third edition of this authoritative book has been comprehensively rewritten to take account of the recommendations of the Maxwell Review and of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004.The core legislative provisions, together with relevant court and tribunal decisions, codes of practice, and administrative practices, are analysed in detail. Relevant provisions are also located in their national and international contexts.There is also detailed consideration of the impact of Commonwealth workplace relations and OHS laws.This new edition will be essential reading for occupational health and safety professionals and legal practitioners, both in Victoria and elsewhere in Australia. It will also be of great interest to teachers and students in occupational health and safety, labour law and related law courses, human resource management, industrial relations, political science, public administration, business and economics.The text of the 2004 Act is reproduced in full, together with samples of relevant forms and notices.

There is more to law than rules, robes and precedents. Rather, law is an integral part of social practices and policies, as diverse and complex as society itself. Thinking About Law offers a comprehensive introduction to the ways in which law has been presented and represented. It explores historical, sociological, economic and philosophical perspectives on the major legal and political debates in Australia today. The contributors examine the position of Aborigines in the Australian legal system and the impact of the Mabo case; divisions of power in Australian society and law; the question of objectivity in law; the relationship between legislation and social change; judicial decision-making and other issues. Accessibly written, Thinking About Law is essential reading for students and anyone interested in understanding our legal system.

Every day, workers are injured, made ill, or killed on the job. Most often, workers experience these harms individually and in isolation. Particular occurrences rarely attract much public attention beyond, perhaps, a small paragraph in the local newspaper. Instead, these events are normalized. This membrane of normalcy, however, is ruptured from time to time, especially after a disaster. This edited collection draws together original case studies written by leading researchers in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Sweden, and the United States that examine the politics of working disasters. The essays address two fundamental questions: what gets recognized as a work disaster? And how does the state respond to one? In some instances, it seems self-evident that a disaster has occurred. For example, when a mine explodes killing tens or hundreds of workers simultaneously, the media and politicians recognize that this is not just a personal tragedy for the families of the victims, and that more troubling questions need to be asked about how this could happen. In other circumstances, however, the process that determines what gets recognized as a disaster is much more complicated. "Working Disasters" addresses the politics of recognition in case studies of the long-haul trucking industry, repetitive strain injuries, and lung disease in miners. Once it has recognized that a working disaster has occurred, the state typically goes beyond its routine responses to the daily toll of work-related deaths and injuries. Inquiries may be initiated to review the adequacy of regulatory systems and laws may be amended. Sometimes disasters produce meaningful change, but often they do not. In this text, the politics of response is considered in studies of a factory fire, the loss of an offshore oilrig, lung disease among miners, a mine explosion, and the prosecution of health and safety offences. This book will be of use to occupational health and safety activists and professionals; academics and upper-year students in: industrial relations, labour studies, labour history, law, political science, and sociology.

This book provides a theoretical background to occupational stress, and traces the early work of Hans Selye and the development of bio-physiological, psychological and then sociological models of stress. It also reports on a study of stress and ill-health in a large manufacturing organisation in Australia. It examines the effects of stress, low self-esteem and poor mastery on psychological outcomes and ill-health symptoms.

The shift from crime to governance in the sociology of law / George Pavlich and Augustine Brannigan -- The importance of being ambiguous : theorising white-collar crime / Fiona Haines and Adam Sutton -- Are occupational health and safety crimes hostage to history? : an Australian perspective / Richard Johnstone -- The continuing price of Britain's oil : business organisation, precarious employment and risk transfer mechanisms in the North Sea petroleum industry / Charles Woolfson -- Jurisprudential miscegenation : strict liability and the ambiguity of law / Arie Freiberg -- The sociology of compliance-based regulation : an intellectual history / Paul Rock -- Rethinking the symbolic-instrumental distinction : meanings and motives in American capital punishment / David Garland -- The law of subaltern discipline / George Pavlich -- A genealogy of 'fire prevention' / Pat O'Malley and Steven Hutchinson -- Young people, fire and arson as resistance / Mike Presdee -- The politics of community and the problem of the 'stranger' / Gordon Hughes -- Responding to crimes against international law / Dirk Van Zyl Smit -- Restorative justice in post-genocidal Rwanda : from community to citizenship as a basis for social justice / Augustine Brannigan -- Embedded criminology and knowledges of resistance / Reece Walters.