Browsing: Contractors | Page 48

With employment relationships and technologies "changing quicker than ever before", workers must be trained and empowered to "think independently about risk", according to employment and safety lawyer Shae McCartney.

The Yuanda asbestos scandal is just one example of how the proposed 2014 Building Code, in the Federal Government's ABCC-restoration Bill, will undermine workplace health and safety, according to new report from a progressive research institute.

• PCBUs told to provide asbestos registers to inductees;
  
• Workers' comp changes commence in WA today; and
  
• New safety reports, guides and warnings issued in WA.

An employer could not have foreseen that a worker was at risk of being injured while using equipment designed, installed and maintained by a competent manufacturer, an appeal court has found.

• Catastrophic injury Bill passes with major amendment in Qld;
  
• New dust regulations imminent, national plan discussed; and
  
• Transitional arrangements for reach stackers end soon.

Two employers have been fined a total of $525,000, after a labour-hire worker was allowed to stand in what should have been an exclusion zone, before being fatally struck by a one-tonne falling object.

An injured worker's common law claim against a principal contractor has been rejected, after an appeal court found that none of the factors that could impose a duty of care on a principal existed in his case.

An OHSS lawyer has outlined the circumstances in which employers can rely on the safety expertise of contractors, and warned against getting the "wrong idea" about two major judgments quashing OHS convictions.

A major employer was negligent in failing to notify a contractor of faulty wiring, which prevented it from carrying out work correctly, and led to a worker receiving an electric shock, a court has found.

The wife of a man killed in a work-related car crash has been refused workers' compensation, after a tribunal found the man was a de facto company director rather than a "worker".