Published: 6 Jun 2013
The Maritime Union of Australia today hailed the clearing of major obstacles towards the adoption of a first-ever stevedoring code of practice.
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| [Picture: Greg Fitzgibbon] |
The Maritime Union of Australia today hailed the clearing of major obstacles towards the adoption of a first-ever stevedoring code of practice.
The code will assist in creating safer workplaces and be a strong tool to prevent the deaths of wharfies such as Newcastle stevedore Greg Fitzgibbon, who died last year and whose death is the subject of a just-released investigation.
The code, entitled “Code of Practice: Managing Risks in Stevedoring”, will now go out for public comment for a period of six weeks.
Safe Work Australia agreed that there are no significant costs associated with the new code, and, thus, the code is now ready for a public comment period.
There will be no Regulatory Impact Statement to assess the cost of the code. An RIS would have presented a bureaucratic hurdle and delayed the code for months, allowing opponents to undercut its content and core mission: the safety of workers.
The comment period kicks off just as the Australian Transport Safety Bureau issued findings in the September 2012 accident on the Weaver Arrow, an incident that took the life of Fitzgibbon, a father of two.
