Browsing: Workplace safety court and tribunal decisions | Page 13

In a case highlighting the remote-work-related WHS duties of employers and workers, the Fair Work Commission has upheld the pay sanction imposed on a teacher who drank from a cask of wine in a video meeting.

A principal contractor that failed to adhere to its own safety inspection regime, when unscheduled out-of-sequence work was carried out, has been fined $412,500 after a worker was left with devastating injuries.

Employers have been urged to identify all powerlines at their workplaces, including around entry and exit points, after a company was convicted and fined over an electrocution. Employers have also been warned about the presence of asbestos in workplace fire doors, following exposure incidents.

An employer that required employees to access a machine by moving under it and opening heavy doors that swung down has been convicted and fined $200,000, after the doors fell and struck a worker, causing permanent brain injuries. Another employer has been fined for contraventions that included leaving keys in forklifts, facilitating unauthorised use.

A PCBU previously prosecuted over a fatality, and a facilities manager who failed to manage the entrapment hazard posed by a disused stairwell, where a visitor died, have been fined for WHS contraventions in Queensland.

A worker in a senior government-funded position was not bullied when she was allegedly told to remove political LinkedIn posts, but unauthorised demands that she step down were unreasonable, a commission has found in an anti-bullying case.

• Safety fine quadrupled after expert submission on dust; and
  
• New WHS clauses and Codes being enforced in ACT.

A union official who was physically aggressive towards a site manager, while inspecting suspected safety breaches, has been fined and handed a "partial" personal payment order.

A worker who became the sole director of a company in mysterious circumstances, and played no role in its running, has been fined $120,000 for breaching his WHS due diligence duties, after a teenage apprentice fell 12 metres.

A worker was unfairly sacked, for damaging a client's Mercedes, by a decision maker who wrongly took her suggestion that certain WHS measures could have prevented the incident as an attempt to shift the blame, a commission has found.