Auckland Law School presents an Annual Address by Adjunct Professor Mai Chen. She will give her Address this year on the topic of:
Impact of health and safety laws, policies and practices on NZ's growing culturally and linguistically diverse workforce: Lessons from overseas regulators.
Commissioned by WorkSafe, New Zealand’s primary workplace health and safety regulator, and supported by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, the Report examines how regulators in those three countries are challenged by and are working to improve the health and safety outcomes for their culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) populations, which tend to have a significantly higher rate of injury.
New Zealand’s growing superdiversity makes this Report’s findings especially relevant to employers effectively meeting the health and safety needs of the increasing number of ethnicities, cultures, and languages of their workers to ensure that employees do not suffer worse health and safety outcomes than the general population.
ACC claims data shows a significantly elevated incidence rate of work-related claims for injury and illness among Pacific peoples, and people identifying as Middle Eastern, Latin American or African, as compared to European people. While Asian people have a lower claim rate than European people, research has found that there are significant language and other barriers to accessing ACC services among Māori and Asians – so this data is unlikely to reveal the full extent of workplace injury and illness amongst CALD people in New Zealand. (Statistics NZ “Injury Statistics – work-related claims: 2017” (August 2018)).
Workers (and employers) arriving from very different health and safety cultures often have different expectations, and think and behave differently from those born in New Zealand. There is an urgent need to understand these issues, particularly as the 2018 Census is likely to show an even greater increase in New Zealand’s superdiversity.
The Superdiversity Institute’s Report researches three countries which, like New Zealand, follow the Robens model, which is a self-regulatory and flexible framework (Robens Committee Safety and Health at Work: Report of the Committee 1970-1972 (July 1972)), and who have similar levels of superdiversity. It makes 15 key recommendations based on the findings from the research and interviews necessary to redress the greater vulnerability of CALD workers to injury and illness.
Mai Chen is an Adjunct Professor in the University of Auckland Faculty of Law, the Managing Partner of Chen Palmer, Public and Employment law Specialists and a director on the BNZ Board, Chair of the People and Remuneration Committee and the Board’s Health and Safety Champion. Mai is one of New Zealand’s top experts in constitutional and administrative law, human rights, judicial review, regulatory issues, and public policy and law reform.
