Browsing: Contractors

An employer has been ordered to pay death benefits to the dependents of a "subcontractor", whose death led to the WHS prosecutions of multiple parties and $620,000 in fines.

• Rapid antigen tests key to workplace safety and reopening: ACCI; and
  
• Mass breaches and speeding targeted by safety regulator.

• Dingo attack prompts workplace safety prosecution; and
  
• COVID vaccines mandated in major WA sector.

Regulatory strategies aimed at curbing drug use, speeding and driving while fatigued in the heavy vehicle sector are doing little to address the systemic causes of this behaviour, highlighting the urgent need for an independent body empowered to eliminate unsafe economic practices, a Senate inquiry has found.

A European holiday worker, whose heat stroke death in Queensland resulted in two WHS prosecutions, was neither acclimatised to the area nor provided with adequate opportunities to escape from the sun, a coroner has found.

An employer has been fined $450,000, over an injury-causing fall, in one of the first cases finalised under Western Australia's toughened penalty regime, while a business with a poor communication system has been fined heavily over a fatal forklift incident.

An employer should have insisted on using its proposed safety controls after a principal contractor rejected a quote covering the measures, a court has found in convicting the employer over an incident where three workers fell.

• WHS manslaughter Bill passes, provides more enforcement "avenues"; and
  
• COVID vaccine mandate lacked WHS consultation: union.

All workers including contractors will be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to enter SPC sites, under a safety scheme involving paid leave, the packaged fruit manufacturer has announced in an Australian first.

A PCBU on Sydney's WestConnex road project has been fined for failing to communicate critical safety information on the high-risk tests it conducted, causing a worker from another work group to be struck and injured by pressurised water.