An employer has been fined $360,000 after a worker fell nine metres from a roof and sustained severe injuries, in a case that compelled the sentencing judge to repeat his warning about an industry's workplace health and safety "carnage".
Qantas has failed in its second attempt to stay proceedings, which include alternative charges, involving its alleged discriminatory conduct against an elected health and safety representative in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
One of three PCBUs charged over a double fall - an incident that has already attracted $800,000 in fines - has escaped a reckless conduct conviction, in a ruling on its duty to labourers it referred to another company.
A PCBU whose "deficient" work systems led to a transformer exploding, and causing serious oil burns to a nearby worker, has been handed a pre-discount penalty of $600,000.
In a unique case, the Ambulance Service of NSW has been fined nearly $200,000 for category-3 WHS breaches, after its auditing processes failed to reveal that a worker was tampering with vials of the opioid fentanyl for personal use.
WHS fines relating to a confined-space fatality have surpassed $1 million, after the sentencing of a PCBU over failures to enforce coherent plant isolation procedures and causing the death of a worker, as well as serious injuries to two others attempting to rescue him.
A company has failed to overturn a $2 million-plus damages ruling examining the "transfer of employment". It unsuccessfully contended it was not vicariously liable for a labour-hire worker's negligence that caused a crush injury to a fellow employee.
A commission full bench has affirmed an earlier ruling revoking a WHS regulator's improvement notice issued to a site's principal contractor after a fatal fall.
A PCBU that pleaded guilty, after an employee suffered a fatal electric shock, to failing to mandate the use of locks and tags in electrical work, has been found guilty of further charges, including failing to provide adequate supervision and training on the use of volt sticks and power isolation.
A senior judge has described the ongoing spate of injuries and deaths in the roofing industry as "carnage", adding that the vast majority of incidents could have been avoided by using simple "well-known and effective safety precepts".
