Browsing: Contractors | Page 36

Separate but equally serious breaches of duty by two different companies resulted in a worker falling four metres and suffering serious injuries, a court has ruled in a negligence case.

A company that paid a "contractor" an hourly rate could be held liable for his heart attack death, with a tribunal finding the man's past business patterns and work with other companies are not determinative of whether he was a "worker" when he died.

In a study that could have widespread implications for shift work, the increased use of contractors in the mining sector has been linked to a spike in injuries associated with long working hours.

A company director failed to exercise due diligence to ensure an identified height risk was recorded in weekly risk assessment and safety observation documents, which led to a worker sustaining serious injuries, a court has found.

• PCBU charged with category 2 heat breaches after death; and
  
• Workers' comp premiums increasing in WA.

The Federal Government has, in its 2019-20 budget, committed $36 million over four years to cracking down on sham contracting and establishing a labour-hire registration scheme with WHS-compliance tests.

A court has rejected a major Defence contractor's claim that it could not have foreseen workers defying its systems of work and "common sense" at the time an employee was injured. The contractor was fined $160,000, taking the total penalties for the incident to $360,000.

A facilities management company was entitled to rely on an expert contractor to set up and service a building maintenance unit (BMU), but wasn't entitled to rely on it to push for a mandatory major inspection of the BMU, which could have prevented a serious safety incident, a court has ruled.

Workers should never under any circumstances be put in a position where they are the "first line of defence" against approaching vehicles, a coronial inquest into the death of a traffic controller has warned.

A man sleeping in a loading dock would not have been killed if a subcontractor had been inducted in and followed basic operating procedures, a regulator says. Meanwhile, an individual has been fined over a serious safety incident that could have been prevented at little cost.