Every year, the OHS team at Trades Hall hosts an educational conference for HSRs. In 2019, the theme of the conference was "Emerging Issues".
Registration for the 2020 conference will begin in the very near future, until then, here is a recap of the key content from the 2019 conference.
HSR of the Year
This year, we were thrilled to honour AMIEU member Daniel Gili as HSR of the year for this work at Diamond Valley Pork. He spoke to what makes a great HSR, how to know when to call for a ceasework, how his union helped him in difficult times and how the powers that he has as a HSR has improved the health and safety of all workers at Diamond Valley Pork.
Gendered Violence
A prominent theme of the HSR conference for 2019 was gendered violence. Throughout 2019, the Womens team at Trades Hall was researching and creating training to upskill workplaces around gendered violence.
We also heard from Lisa Heap, a labour and human rights strategist and researcher of workplace gendered violence.
Lisa discussed how our responses to gendered violence occur down the hierarchy of control - and we're asking people who have already been injured by gendered violence, and have been brave enough to speak up, before issues are addressed. Why is it why we have this kind of approach, and while being way ahead of the game, why did it take until 2017 for WorkSafe to acknowledge gendered violence as a workplace OHS issue.
Here's Lisa talking about why we haven't yet found an appropriate response to gendered violence, and how we can do better.
Union Q&A
We also hosted a Q&A, opened up to the floor. We recorded the full session, fielding questions about industrial manslaughter, mental health, gendered violence and more.