Year in review, 2025: Occupational Health and Safety: training and advocacy
In 2025 we doubled down on OHS, training new Health and Safety Representatives (HSRs), supporting them on the job, and advocating for stronger laws – because too many employers still underestimate the risks in our schools.
Training
We delivered five-day initial HSR courses and regular refreshers. Content covered hazard identification, risk control, incident reporting, consultation rights and practical role-plays of unsafe scenarios. As always, participants left with up-to-date knowledge of legislation, techniques and tools to make workplaces safer.
Support network
Too often, HSRs are isolated at their schools. Once they are trained, many find they know more about OHS than their employers, and they get sidelined by threatened or defensive school leadership and/or employers. This year, to improve support for HSRs, the union set up a new network which meets once a term to discuss solutions, share ideas and offer solidarity for the important people who take on these crucial roles.
Penalties that actually drive compliance. to strengthen access and enforcement for HSRs and WorkSafe. The Review will issue interim and final reports, with the Government’s response, under the Minister for WorkSafe and the TAC.
Law reform and submissions
Our approach combines practical support for Reps with advocacy that ensures decision-makers understand how the rules operate in schools. Training will always be an important facet of our support. However, the union must also advocate for better laws, and offer our members’ input into crucial changes to the administration of worker welfare.
This year, we contributed members’ insights to Victoria’s Independent Review of Employee Representatives, examining whether HSR and ARREO powers, functions and supports remain fit-for-purpose. We argued for:
Stronger practical powers (entry, employee discussions, document inspection), and
Penalties that actually drive compliance.
Psychosocial safety
New regulations commencing in December 2025, while not as expansive as hoped, clarify that hazard identification must include risks to mental wellbeing. We’re supporting HSRs – and helping employers – to identify, assess and control psychosocial hazards.
Many schools still resist inspections, treating OHS as ‘physical only,’ even though the Act requires cooperative safety management between employers and HSRs. To make that real, the IEU is lodging targeted submissions on the OHS Act 2004 to strengthen access and enforcement for HSRs and WorkSafe.
Our commitment
Our OHS work is highly personal and practical, empowering individuals to work in schools. However, we must also ensure decision makers are fully informed of the realities of how their regulations are operating in schools.
We will keep training HSRs, sustaining the HSR network, and pushing for clearer, enforceable rules, combining hands-on support with policy change to lift safety culture across every IEU workplace.
