Browsing: Coronavirus, COVID-19 | Page 19

In a timely development, given Australia's easing pandemic restrictions, a study of more than 20,000 workers has found that deficient workplace COVID-19 control measures reduce individuals' infection prevention behaviours, increasing the spread of the disease.

Australian workers are suffering significant stress from enforcing COVID-19 rules for customers, and their managers must adopt a zero-tolerance approach to customer abuse with the busy Christmas period approaching, new research has highlighted.

A Bill that scraps presumptive compensation for workers with COVID-19, and passed the NSW Lower House yesterday, will make it "next to impossible" for coronavirus victims to obtain benefits, the Greens have warned. But industry groups claim there are "multiple tools" to help claimants establish a work-COVID link.

Australian researchers have found pandemic-era working arrangements are helping workers manage the work impacts of a serious health condition that affects many women and costs billions of dollars in lost productivity.

• Presumptive COVID provision to be axed from work injury Act; and
  
• Silica Regulations commence, licences mandatory in 12 months.

A commission has rejected a union's bid to block a BHP COVID-19 vaccine mandate pending a ruling on whether the company met its WHS consultation requirements. Meanwhile, the NSW Supreme Court has dismissed claims that vaccine orders for workers defy a United Nations covenant.

COVID-driven telework arrangements, which are likely to become permanent practices, are creating new psychosocial risks arising from "intense virtual team collaboration", and must be managed, according to a major study by Europe's peak work safety body.

A flight attendant has lost her claim that a national airline forced her to resign through its "combative" conduct in refusing to medically exempt her from its face-mask mandate for the COVID-19 pandemic.

As more workplaces reopen under easing COVID-19 restrictions, employers have been warned to proactively tackle all hazards, and reminded of "mangle", shock" and "sever" risks. Meanwhile, a regulator has urged employers to get rid of their forklifts, where reasonably practicable, following two recent fatalities.

Presumptive workers' comp protections for COVID-19 do not apply to vaccine injuries and such claims will be assessed on a case-by-case basis, a regulator has advised. Meanwhile, a recruitment company has won a major work safety award in Western Australia for empowering all personnel to report and resolve hazards.