Browsing: Industrial/employment issues | Page 13

Unsafe job demands are the most common psychosocial hazards in Australian workplaces, and employers must explore multiple measures to safeguard against the risk to a reasonably practicable extent, a Comcare director says.

A PCBU has been ordered to pay nearly $700,000 in fines and costs over the death of a superintendent, but it could have been much worse for the business, which initially faced a maximum penalty of $35 million under a string of reckless-conduct charges.

A commission has rejected a worker's claim that her superior expected her to work up to 60 hours a week and bullied her through excessive work requirements.

A union investigating suspected violence- and workload-related WHS contraventions failed to comply with requirements of the WHS Act and Regulation when it sought employee records while exercising its entry rights, a commissioner has found.

A PCBU has been handed a pre-discount fine of $400,000 for failing to provide an apprentice, who fell four metres at the home of the PCBU's director, with adequate supervision, a fall protection system, or any working at heights training.

Special protections for first responders with post-traumatic stress disorder are among the "urgent worker safety measures", in the Federal Government's Closing Loopholes Bill, which two crossbench senators are attempting to fast-track through four separate pieces of legislation.

PCBUs could be handed WHS fines of up to $100,000 in civil penalty cases launched by affected parties like workers, deceased workers' families and unions, under proposed reforms that have reached the consultation phase in South Australia.

The Federal Court has highlighted the important WHS function of escorting entry permit holders around sites, in handing penalties to a union and one of its officials for right-of-entry breaches.

Workers taking prescription medicinal cannabis for medical conditions are protected by anti-discrimination laws, but critical health and safety matters can sideline those protections, industrial and employment lawyers say.

• One regulator charges another with recklessness after suicide;
  
• Host fined $350k over fatal impalement of labour-hire worker; and
  
• New national dangerous goods Code taking effect in Vic.