News
Working at a Wastewater Treatment Plant is dangerous work.
- Details
- Published on Friday, 27 January, 2012
Working at a Wastewater Treatment Plant is dangerous work.
At the beginning of December a worker at Melbourne Water was killed after he fell into a sewerage tank while performing 'routine work' collecting samples and drowned.
A week before Christmas Hunter Water told ASU members working at the Wastewater Treatment Plants that they were unilaterally cutting weekend shifts from two people down to single person shifts. This decision was made without proper consultation with workers, the ASU or the OHS committee. There have been no proper risk assessments done or new procedures put in place to ensure that there is not an accident like the one we saw recently in Melbourne.
ASU members have told Hunter Water Australia (which runs the WWT Plants for HWC) and Hunter Water Corporation that they will not be working by themselves on the weekend until their safety concerns are addressed. This means doing proper risk assessments, taking any proposals to the OHS committee and living up to their commitments that "for Hunter Water the safety of our staff is paramount. In all we do, we always want to be putting the health and safety of our staff and the community first" (from hunterwater.com.au).
The ASU has called WorkCover and asked them to assist in ensuring that member's safety concerns are met. Members have asked that the 2 person shifts remain until the proper process of protecting their safety has been completed. Hunter Water, being stubborn and unreasonable, has refused to agree to this process and is continuing to harass members to work unsafely on the weekends. The ASU will continue to meet with management to address these concerns and keep you updated.
Working at a Waste Water Treatment Plant is dangerous work. Working alone at a Waste Water Treatment Plant is unacceptably dangerous work and Hunter Water needs to put the safety of their own staff first.
See the links below for news reports on the worker who died in Melbourne:
Water Newsletter
