Employers trapped by ineffective "intergenerational" workplace safety investigations should flip their objectives and not be "so concerned with the why", an investigations expert says.
A business partner has successfully applied to commit $380,000 to WHS initiatives to avoid being prosecuted over the death of a worker in an exclusion zone that wasn't physically marked.
The fine imposed on an employer that failed to fully implement a mandatory safety measure, because it ran out of the required materials, has been increased more than five-fold on appeal, with a judge stressing penalties must be significant enough to dissuade others from "cutting corners".
Employers must apply the hierarchy of controls to the hazards associated with height work, which starts with not performing any such work where reasonably practicable, a regulator has advised in launching a major blitz.
A coronial inquest into a young worker's death in a forklift crash has found his employer didn't have any written safety policies or enforce critical WHS rules, before appearing to defy WHS caselaw by concluding the business was not obligated to instruct the worker to wear his seatbelt or not perform unloading work on slopes.
A PCBU should have ensured the safety procedures in its paper systems were put into practice and checked and maintained, to prevent a worker being pinned between a wall and a crane load, a court has found.
A company has been convicted and fined $1.3 million in Victoria's first finalised workplace manslaughter case. Its director was also charged with manslaughter, but pleaded guilty to a less serious offence.
A major study traversing the past four years has revealed that students are the most frequent perpetrators of digital harassment of Australia's university staff, and senior managers in the sector are not doing enough to safeguard workers' psychological health.
