Health and Safety Issues in New Zealand ... - Business.govt.nz

Relevance of the Health and Safety in Employment Act
The empowerment of the HSE Act in April 1993 fulfilled the vision of Robens,
enunciated in 1972 in the United Kingdom, by bringing the health and safety aspects
of all places of work under one legislative umbrella (HSE Act) and under the
supervision of one Authority (OSH).
The HSE Act has two broad principles. It encourages excellence in health and safety
management and requires compliance with minimum standards. (Section 5)
The principal duties and requirements of the HSE Act are set out as follows:
• In essence, “managers must manage”. Employers are required to ensure the
safety of employees at work by adopting a systems approach to identifying
hazards, assessing which are significant hazards, i.e. those hazards that can result
in ‘serious harm’ as defined in Schedule 1 of the HSE Act, and control these
hazards by means of an hierarchy of measures. (Section 6, Section 7)
• This hierarchy requires that employers consider eliminating the hazard, isolating
the hazard if elimination is unreasonable and impracticable, and minimising the
hazard if elimination or isolation is unreasonable or impracticable. Minimisation
itself contains an hierarchy of controls, starting with engineering controls and last
of all considering the use of personal protection. (Section 8, Section 9, Section 10)
• Included in the Act is the requirement of communication with employees
(concerning the identified hazards and the appropriate control measures), the
requirement for training and supervision, and of ongoing monitoring (of the
hazards, the control measures and the employees’ health status). (Section 11,
Section 12, Section 13)
• Standards are developed in conjunction with employers and employees or
adopted from overseas where they are applicable.
• The HSE Act contains clauses (Sections 15, 16 and 19) which apply to people
other than employers and employees who may be exposed to risk from the
places of work.
• The requirements of the HSE Act are tempered by the requirement that the
employer has to take “all practicable steps” (Section 6). The consideration of “all
practicable steps” includes what other facilities have achieved in the way of risk
control and what is accepted “best practice”.
It is the Courts that establish the parameters of the HSE Act (e.g. what constitutes
serious harm, what are “all practicable steps”, etc.) Until the Courts determine these
steps, it is OSH’s function to explore issues with employers and employees and
develop practical guidelines to address issues as they arise.
It is OSH’s view that the mortuary falls under the jurisdiction of the HSE Act, that
pathologists and mortuary technicians are at risk of suffering “serious harm”, as are
visitors to the mortuary such as medical students, and the sections of the Act dealing
with communication and monitoring are of relevance.
Health and Safety Issues in New Zealand Mortuaries 7