The following post was originally written as a newsletter article for ETNZ.
(Brought to you with much assistance from the “Health and Safety Reform Bill update – Sept 14, from the WorkSafe NZ website)
In last’s month’s newsletter I took you on a brief history tour of the background of the NZ Health and Safety Reform Bill. Following this I promised some definitions of a few of the terms likely to be in the new law – the “English lesson” if you will.
Just a reminder, the Health and Safety Reform Bill is yet to be passed by Parliament so none of this is completely concrete yet. Also, I’m not a lawyer. If you have any concerns about your legal status it would pay for you to check with your lawyer or contact WorkSafe NZ directly.
Ok, disclaimers dealt with, on with the definitions….
PCBU
This one you will hear a lot from now on. It stands for “person conducting a business or undertaking”.
Lets break this down…
1. “Person” (and this is where it gets silly to the majority of us) is not in most cases an individual person at all! In this context “person” refers to a business or entity, such as a company. The only time it might mean an actual individual person as we know it is when referring to a sole trader or self-employed person.
2. “Conducting” in a nutshell means doing.
3. “Business” means a venture where the activities are conducted towards making profit. For example a lighting hire company conducts the business of hiring lights in order to make profit.
4. “Undertaking” means a venture that is usually not commercial or profit making. For example a small amateur theatre company undertakes the job of putting on a show for the recreation of its members and entertainment of the community, not for financial gain.
So what’s the big deal about a PCBU?
Well…the term PCBU under the new law will essentially take the place of all the positions that were listed as “duty holders” in the current law, namely employers, principals, persons controlling a workplace and suppliers of plant. So with the new law you don’t have to figure out what complex relationship your business has to a worker. This means you’ll no longer have to work out whether they are an employee or contractor, who is paying them or who owns the workplace etc. in order to know what responsibilities you have to them. If they are at all affected by the work your business does, then your business as a PCBU, has the primary duty of care to ensuring their safety as far as is reasonably practicable.
Officer of a PCBU
An officer of a PCBU is anyone who “makes decisions that affect the whole, or a substantial part, of the business of the PCBU”. These are our big decision makers… “the bosses”.
Who exactly this is depends on the way each PCBU is structured and governed. So for our lighting hire company example, it will likely be the directors of the company and perhaps a business manager. For an arts festival it will likely be the board of trustees, the executive director and possibly some other senior managers. For a theatre co-op… well I’m figuring it will be everyone if the decision-making is equally shared. For a community theatre group the committee members will probably be the people making the substantial decisions.
So what are an officer’s responsibilities? Officers of a PCBU must exercise “due diligence” to ensure that the PCBU is meeting its legal obligations with regard to health and safety. Put basically, they need to really know what is going on in the business/undertaking, what the risks are and what systems are in place to make sure people are safe. They also need to make sure there are adequate resources for health and safety, and they need to monitor the health and safety systems to make sure they’re working.
Worker
A worker is anyone who carries out work for a PCBU. So this includes employees, staff, crew, contractors, interns, volunteers… anyone doing work tasks at any level of the organisation. It also includes people who are doing work for a PCBU that may be getting paid by someone else (e.g. a worker from a labour hire company, or a sub-contractor).
This is where I think the new law is a lot clearer for our industry than the old one where the primary workplace relationship is employer and employee”. What this says to me (opinion alert here!) is that it doesn’t matter who’s paying the person, we have to take responsibility for their health and safety when they are doing work for, or alongside, us.
Stay tuned for next month’s newsletter when I will tackle the issues around having multiple PCBUs in one workplace…
Cathy Knowsley – HiViz Event Management www.hivizevents.co.nz (and ETNZ committee member)
