Browsing: Coronavirus, COVID-19 | Page 41

• NSW launches COVID-19 work guidance, addresses misconceptions;
  
• PCBUs warned after worker killed by damaged gate;
  
• Revamped WHS regulator to focus on climate change and violence; and
  
• ACTU applauds Vic's broader workplace death definition.

• COVID-19 and silica updates from NSW, Vic, WA and SWA;
  
• Manslaughter laws come with broader definition of workplace death; and
  
• Inventory overhauled for new risk-based chemical safety system.

The velocity of the COVID-19 outbreak has demonstrated that current risk management approaches are too slow and rigid to deal with major disruptive events, according to a safety and risk management expert.

An employer's travel survey of employees was a lawful and reasonable part of its efforts to control the risks posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and comply with its WHS duties, a commission has ruled in upholding the dismissal of a worker who refused to complete the survey.

A coalition of organisations, including the Australian Institute of Occupational Hygienists and the ACTU, has called for the Federal Government to establish a register of approved respirators, and developed a guide to buying face masks to protect workers from COVID-19 and other substances.

Australia's recovery from COVID-19 has the earmarks of an industrial safety disaster, but also presents an unprecedented opportunity for WHS professionals to become a trusted voice in their organisations going forward, a leading safety lawyer says.

New laws accelerating workers' access to COVID-19-related compensation and easing constraints on damages claims have been flagged for Western Australia. The State has also revised the start date for its mobile phone distraction crackdown, and called for comments on an anti-violence Code for workplaces.

Preventing a resurgence of COVID-19 transmissions, as economic activity picks up, hinges on the introduction of a "pandemic regulation" requiring employers to implement higher order WHS controls for the risks posed by the pandemic, an inquiry has heard.

For workplace health and safety professionals, there will never be a more important time in their careers than helping Australia emerge successfully from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Governor-General told the National Health and Safety Conference today.

Australia's COVID-19 transmission rate is currently low, but having an employee with viral symptoms attend work still poses a significant psychological risk to other workers, according to a leading occupational physician and past president of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Occupational Medicine.