Violent Workcover Ad

I have just sent off a complaint to the Advertising Standards
Council of Australia via the internet - what a wonderful
invention - about an ad a friend and I saw in a cinema
last Friday. We saw a workcover ad showing a young
woman new to the job serving in a bread shop.

We could hear her thoughts as she served
customers: “Now, which is the sesame loaf?

Where ARE those rolls?

Will I slice this loaf?

Now how do I do that exactly?…”

You can guess the rest. You catch a glimpse of her
boss apparently reading a short distance away but
does she ask him for help? No, she doesn’t because it is
going to be HER FAULT isn’t it?

She is going to get her hand caught in the slicer
because she was too scared to ask for help!!

We even saw a severed finger joint lying on the bench.

The violent details were totally unnecessary - the terrible
screams were more than enough to convey what happened.

What message was Workcover trying to convey? That it will
be entirely your fault if you are injured at work? Your fault
and NOTHING to do with your workplace, the supervisor,
any safety training that should be undertaken…?

I really objected to the “blame the victim” message in this ad.
It is hardly conducive to good work safety practices. And it
was not a case of the young woman refusing to wear protective
equipment or breaching some other rule of safety directly -
her only “fault” was LACK OF CONFIDENCE!!!

Talk about blame the victim. Is Workcover hoping to shift
more blame on to workers and save payments?

Life after Sixty