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 tribunal has thrown out a joint bid by 145 workers to overturn their employer's vaccine mandate by claiming it involved WHS consultation flaws. The tribunal stressed that the feedback process in such circumstances enables "contribution", not "collaboration".
A case involving a "chaotic" workplace visit and suspected safety contraventions has provided a first-of-its-kind examination of whether WHS laws allow entry permit holders to consult with workers in private.
Two PCBUs have been handed pre-discount fines totalling $460,000 for their involvement in the death of a delivery driver. One of the PCBUs failed to comply with its consultation duties, which could have been satisfied through a simple email enquiry, a judge ruled.
A union's safety concerns over an employer's attempt to make pre-shift meetings more efficient by moving them nearly a kilometre underground have been deemed "speculative" by a commission, which has also issued a WHS order to the employer.
Harmonised WHS laws and their prescriptive consultation requirements have been in place in most jurisdictions for more than a decade, but there have been few duty-to-consult prosecutions. According to a WHS lawyer, this could be because regulators prefer to conflate consultation failings with more serious breaches to pursue higher penalties.