'Killing workers right now': CFMEU urges Bunnings, IKEA to stop selling engineered stone as ACT government eyes ban
www.abc.net.au
The ACT government has thrown its full support behind the push for a national ban on the use of engineered stone, and says it will implement its own prohibition if the federal government doesn't take action.

A Safe Work Australia report found engineered stone poses an ‘unacceptable risk to workers’ and should be banned.

The ACT government says its prepared to introduce its own ban if a national agreement isn’t reached.

The CFMEU is calling on retailers like Bunnings and IKEA to stop selling engineered stone products.

  • tau@aussie.zoneOPMEnglish
    2·
    10 months ago

    doesn’t that mean that they are harmful to themselves if they don’t wear the PPE or the employer is harming them if the PPE is not provided and wearing it is not enforced?

    It does, and in an ideal world you wouldn’t need such regulations because people would realise the dangers and act appropriately. The ACT gov recently changed their WHS rules around high silica content material to explicitly require wet cutting for engineered stone and dust management/PPE for stuff like concrete, that should help but actually enforcing it is difficult.

    I can see why they’d prefer an outright ban looking at silicosis as the rising public health issue that it’s becoming. You know people are going to be giving themselves a disease that’ll show up in ~10 years and require a lung transplant but it’s difficult to convince people/companies to do everything required to avoid that disease and hard to enforce correct procedures - a blanket ban on the material that’s causing most of the problems is much easier to enforce.

    • pixxelkick@lemmy.world
      1·
      10 months ago

      If we banned every material people refused to use ppe when working with to “protect themselves from themselves”, we would have literally zero materials to build anything out of.

      I’m all for legally requiring employers to enforce ppe laws, that way if a worker becomes injured due to lack of ppe, the employer is liable for “well why didn’t they have protection?” And the employer will have to demonstrate they require ppe, enforce it, and the employee was being actively stupid even when told not to.

      I’ve worked with and met tonnes of contractors, it’s usually really polarizing.

      You get half that don’t give a shit and use zero ppe.

      And then you get half that go “that shit will fuckin kill you, don’t fuck around with that stuff”

      But if the material is safe “at rest” for the consumer and only a problem when cut into, then it seems stupid as fuck to ban it.

      Molten glass will burn your skin right off while it’s being blown. Should we ban glass as a material if some idiots do glass blowing without ppe?

      Power saws will cut your entire hand off or worse, lathes will turn you into a pretzel, paper mills will turn you into a pancake, welding torches will make you go blind, almost every single material we work with is extremely lethal if people don’t use ppe and safety procedures when working with it.

      This isn’t like asbestos where it sheds dangerous particles in the consumers home whenever it gets used and vaguely bumped or bopped.