Printing Industries Association of Australia (Printing Industries) is launching a national project to reduce workplace injury risks and make OHS compliance easier for its members.
The project is targeting musculoskeletal injuries which are responsible for a significant percentage of industry workers compensation claims.
Printing companies, doctors, specialists and rehabilitation providers will have access to a range of printed and electronic web based resources created specifically for printing company employee jobs and production environments.
Associated risk levels have been identified and catalogued and presented with print, picture and video resources illustrating how to minimise risk and where injury has occurred, to assist with assessing how employees can make a safe and timely return to work.
Each of the key production areas of prepress, printing, finishing and warehousing/despatch have customised resources covering employment tasks in the offset, digital, letterpress, web-fed, label and screen printing sectors.
Similar resources will be available for the plate and screen making prepress areas and for guillotine/folder operators, stitcher/binders and bench hands in finishing departments.
The resources include a Job Dictionary; Functional Pre-employment criteria; videos illustrating how various workplace tasks are performed; machine assessments identifying and prioritising high risk tasks; and action plans to minimise musculoskeletal injury in specific machine operating or task environments.
Sector areas of the Job Dictionary summarise the different employment roles under various conditions describing the tasks involved and identifying the physical demand levels including any high risk demands.
For example an offset printer working with a print assistant would undertake press preparation tasks such as ink profile setting, plate loading, make-ready, print run monitoring, press wash-up and maintenance. These tasks would be different for an offset printer without an assistant.
The same preparation and tasks for a letterpress printer or screen printer would also differ and hence are individually described in the dictionary.
As a result medical and rehabilitation professionals will be better able to diagnose the cause of injuries, more accurately plan rehabilitation and schedule the early and safe return to work of injured workers.
The Job Dictionaries will also be useful for job matching pre-employment testing and for identifying high risk jobs and illustrating how to minimise those risks.
Bill HealeyPrinting Industries CEO Bill Healey said the project began in 2009 following a major financial commitment from the Association’s workers compensation partner, Employers Mutual, to develop national resource to help members reduce injury risk and where injury had occurred, assist the safe and timely return to work of employees.
“Pilot research in South Australia showed that sprains and strains account for 38 per cent of time lost claims and 37.9 per cent of total printing industry claims. Muscle tendon and soft tissue disorders account for a further 14 per cent of injuries,” he said.
“Most of these injuries were caused from muscular stress while lifting or handling in the workplace.”
Mr Healey said sprains, strains, muscle and tendon injury cost the WorkCover Corporation of South Australia more than $80,000 annually and another $110,457 for spinal vertebrae and intervertebral disc injuries.
“Extrapolate that across every state and territory in Australia and you can appreciate the workers compensation cost, which ultimately must be paid for by our industry, in addition to the individual business expense of downtime, replacement labour, retraining and other costs.”
Mr Healey praised the work of Printing Industries Employee Relations staff, and in particular Janette Pearce from Printing Industries South Australian office who has co-ordinated the project from its inception and was now finalising a national program of free training courses.
“I encourage all members to enrol their responsible staff for OHS, workers compensation and recruitment in the free training courses that will be running in eight cities around Australia from mid September through October.
“Prevention and management of musculoskeletal injuries in the printing industry is good for business,” he said.
Information is available from any Printing Industries office or by contacting janettep@printnet.com.au
Musculoskeletal injury project training dates
Companies wishing to have their staff trained free of charge in the use of the new Printing Industries musculoskeletal injury prevention resources can send up to four employees to the day-long sessions.
Training will be held in the following cities during September and October:
Adelaide: Tuesday, 20 September 2011
Sydney: Tuesday, 27 September 2011
Newcastle: Thursday, 29 September 2011
Melbourne: Thursday, 6 October 2011
Brisbane: Wednesday, 12 October 2011
Perth: Wednesday, 19 October 2011
Canberra: Tuesday, 25 October 2011
Darwin: Friday, 28 October 2011
The fully catered sessions will generally run from 9am to 4pm. All attendees will receive the Job Dictionaries and access to the web based resources including photographic libraries and videos.
To register your interest in this program, please contact Janette Pearce via email at: janettep@printnet.com.au or your local Printing Industries office.
PIIA
www.printnet.com.au
