A PCBU's feeble attempt to install edge protection after scaffolding was removed, at one of its sites, led to a worker sustaining traumatic fall injuries, and warranted a pre-discount fine of $320,000, a court has found.
WHS laws could be amended to cover the implementation of collision-avoidance technologies and improve the safety of workplace roads, with a regulator finding the technologies are often wrongly viewed as a "silver bullet".
A PCBU breached its WHS duties by failing to alert an industrial complex's owners corporation or strata manager to the dangers posed by a damaged gate, which ultimately fell and killed a worker, a court has found in convicting and fining the PCBU $375,000.
An employer has been cleared of WHS breaches relating to an incident where defective plant was left in service and caught fire, forcing workers to seek refuge and survive on stored air until they could be evacuated.
A PCBU has been convicted and fined $255,000 for exposing two "spotters" to the risk of serious injury or death, in a case highlighting that duty holders can be prosecuted and handed hefty fines where injuries have not occurred.
An employer charged with WHS breaches after a blast hurled rocks at workers inside an exclusion zone has escaped conviction, with a regulator failing to prove beyond reasonable doubt that appointing a supervisor with less than "optimal" experience was a breach of the employer's duty.
In this major must-read report, OHS Alert examines all the key workplace health and safety and workers' compensation developments from the second quarter of 2023, including a wide range of actual and proposed WHS amendments, a string of high-profile safety prosecutions, and concerns around surging burnout rates.
In an extremely rare development, a judge has found the WHS offences of a reckless PCBU and a "worker" deserved the highest available penalties, totalling $3.15 million. They were charged over the grisly death of a man who was dragged into a woodchipper, and whose disappearance went unnoticed because the PCBU's systems were "so haphazard".
PCBUs have been reminded of their WHS duties to children, after one entity was fined over a drowning death and another over a forklift joyride. Meanwhile, the ACT has launched a campaign against workplace violence, and reminded employers of the new WHS duty to report "actual or suspected" incidents of workplace s-xual assault.