Measures for preventing workplace fatigue range from providing appropriate staffing levels to digitally locking out workers, according to WHS lawyers, who warn the issue is dangerously overlooked in many organisations, and highlight a safety prosecution that reads like a "how-to" guide to tackling fatigue.
A company charged with safety breaches, after a subcontractor who didn't realise he was working at height dropped a tool 40 metres down a shaft onto another worker, has committed to spending more than $240,000 on safety undertakings.
A PCBU has been handed a pre-discount fine of $600,000 for its "wholly inadequate" safety systems, which involved directing two inexperienced workers to perform a high-risk chemicals task, and left them with serious burns from an explosion.
Two companies have been ordered to pay a total of more than $1.2 million in damages to a worker who slipped and fell 10 metres from an access ladder that didn't comply with Australian Standards.
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.
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.
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 company manager has been fined $60,000 for neglect, in the last of a series of safety cases involving a teenager's death, a high-level corporate penalty and a former Olympic boxer who was recently jailed for more than a decade in New Zealand.
