Occupational Health and Safety Challenges Among Small and Medium Sized Enterprise Contractors in South Africa

2018 ◽  
pp. 68-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nokulunga Mashwama ◽  
Clinton Aigbavboa ◽  
Wellignton Thwala
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Occupational Health ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Occupational Health And Safety

Drawing the Line between Dismissal for Alcoholism (Incapacity) and Dismissal for Drunkenness (Misconduct). Are the Boni Mores Compromised?

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
pp. 57-63
Author(s):  
Thandekile Phulu
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Occupational Health ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Occupational Health And Safety ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
Labour Practice ◽  
The Republic

In South Africa employees are protected by various pieces of legislation. Section 23 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa 1996 provides for a right to fair labour practice. In its preamble the Labour Relations Act 66 of 1995 (hereafter referred to as the LRA) states that the purpose of the Act is to advance economic development, social justice, labour peace and democratisation of the workplace. The LRA also states that one of its objectives is to give effect to and regulate the fundamental rights conferred by section 27 of the Constitution. The Occupational Health and Safety Act as amended by the Occupational Health and Safety Amendment Act 181 of 1993 provides for the health and safety of persons at work and for the health and safety of persons in connection with the use of plant and machinery. The LRA provides for dismissal for incapacity and dismissals for misconduct. It also differentiates between the two. The LRA provides for both substantive and procedural fairness when dismissing an employee for incapacity and misconduct. This paper will examine the rationale behind differentiating between dismissal for drunkenness and dismissal for alcoholism.

Nudging for Prevention in Occupational Health and Safety in South Africa Using Fiscal Policies

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-188
Author(s):  
Pieter de Jager ◽  
David Rees ◽  
Sophia Kisting ◽  
Spo Kgalamono ◽  
Mpume Ndaba ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Primary Prevention ◽  
Occupational Health ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Occupational Exposures ◽  
Occupational Health And Safety ◽  
Face Validity ◽  
Fiscal Policies ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Policy Interventions

Currently, in some countries occupational health and safety policy and practice have a bias toward secondary prevention and workers’ compensation rather than primary prevention. Particularly, in emerging economies, research has not adequately contributed to effective interventions and improvements in workers’ health. This article, using South Africa as a case study, describes a methodology for identifying candidate fiscal policy interventions and describes the policy interventions selected for occupational health and safety. It is argued that fiscal policies are well placed to deal with complex intersectoral health problems and to focus efforts on primary prevention. A major challenge is the lack of empirical evidence to support the effectiveness of fiscal policies in improving workers’ health. A second challenge is the underprioritization of occupational health and safety partly due to the relatively small burden of disease attributed to occupational exposures. Both challenges can and should be overcome by (i) conducting policy-relevant research to fill the empirical gaps and (ii) reconceptualizing, both for policy and research purposes, the role of work as a determinant of population health. Fiscal policies to prevent exposure to hazards at work have face validity and are thus appealing, not as a replacement for other efforts to improve health, but as part of a comprehensive effort toward prevention.

scholarly journals Empowering Health Workers to Protect their Own Health: A Study of Enabling Factors and Barriers to Implementing HealthWISE in Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (12) ◽  
pp. 4519
Author(s):  
Elizabeth S. Wilcox ◽  
Ida Tsitsi Chimedza ◽  
Simphiwe Mabhele ◽  
Paulo Romao ◽  
Jerry M. Spiegel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Occupational Health ◽  
Health Workers ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Occupational Health And Safety ◽  
World Health ◽  
Successful Implementation ◽  
Enabling Factors ◽  
Parihs Framework

Ways to address the increasing global health workforce shortage include improving the occupational health and safety of health workers, particularly those in high-risk, low-resource settings. The World Health Organization and International Labour Organization designed HealthWISE, a quality improvement tool to help health workers identify workplace hazards to find and apply low-cost solutions. However, its implementation had never been systematically evaluated. We, therefore, studied the implementation of HealthWISE in seven hospitals in three countries: Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. Through a multiple-case study and thematic analysis of data collected primarily from focus group discussions and questionnaires, we examined the enabling factors and barriers to the implementation of HealthWISE by applying the integrated Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services (i-PARiHS) framework. Enabling factors included the willingness of workers to engage in the implementation, diverse teams that championed the process, and supportive senior leadership. Barriers included lack of clarity about how to use HealthWISE, insufficient funds, stretched human resources, older buildings, and lack of incident reporting infrastructure. Overall, successful implementation of HealthWISE required dedicated local team members who helped facilitate the process by adapting HealthWISE to the workers’ occupational health and safety (OHS) knowledge and skill levels and the cultures and needs of their hospitals, cutting across all constructs of the i-PARiHS framework.

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