A subcontractor has failed to convince a court that it had been entitled to rely on a principal contractor and expert companies to assess and control the risks of a hazardous stairway.
A special advisory committee has been tasked with designing more meaningful leading indicators of WHS performance, and reversing a construction industry culture where principal contractors are perceived as over-focusing on paper-based systems and blaming subcontractors for incidents.
A worker who failed to alert his supervisor to unsafe working conditions, before slipping and falling two metres, has been found contributorily negligent in his damages case against three companies.
Mine safety laws in Queensland are being amended to increase the maximum fine 15-fold to nearly $3.8 million, indexed annually, and introduce civil penalties of up to $126,150.
A targeted assessment program has found that employers in the mining sector are breaching their own fatigue management plans by allowing supervisors to work excessive hours, and failing to implement control measures consistently across sites.
A union has imposed asbestos-related work bans on the $200 million Sydney Opera House renovation project, and questioned the apparent failure of a major builder and an electrical contractor to identify the substance in their risk assessments.
An employer that sacked a manager for bullying, based on hearsay from a Workplace Health and Safety Queensland inspector, has been ordered to pay him $50,000 in compensation.
Two Department of Defence contractors face WHS fines of up to $6 million each, after a vehicle rolled and struck a worker. Meanwhile, an employer has been fined for allowing workers to smoke near dangerous goods, and other safety issues that could have been "easily fixed".
