Browsing: Duty holders | Page 82

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.

A PCBU and a supervisor it engaged to act on its behalf have been fined heavily for permitting work to be performed at a site before crucial safety measures were in place - a failing that resulted in a teenager sustaining serious injuries in a fall.

A company that failed to comply with its legislative duty to conduct computer modelling of planned changes to a mine's ventilation system has been convicted and fined $480,000, after a worker was exposed to unsafe levels of heat and diesel fumes, and died.

A commission has ordered a large employer to compensate a worker it dropped "like a hot potato" as soon his workers' comp entitlements ceased, blasting its "disappointing and disturbing" failure to inform itself of its obligations to workers who can't work because of injury or illness.

In a busy two days in the west, the State Government has mandated COVID-19 vaccines for most workers, extended emergency safety measures for the pandemic, introduced a major IR Bill with protections for bullied and s-xually harassed workers, and established a compensation scheme for medically retired police.

Three PCBUs and a director that failed to comply with basic height and machine operation requirements have been handed penalties totalling more than $300,000, after workers sustained life-changing injuries.

• WHS discrimination charge follows COVID suspension; and
  
• Employer fined $230k for pinch point breaches.

• Employers need strategies for rapid antigen tests, says lawyer;
  
• COVID isolation rules eased in Victoria; and
  
• Regulations guide and Code released for WA's WHS transition.

An employer has been convicted and fined $450,000, after a worker performing a height task with difficult-to comply-with requirements fell more than three metres off a stack of bales, leaving him a paraplegic.

A company director, whose reckless WHS conduct involved a degree of planning and reflection, has been handed a six-month suspended jail sentence, while his business has been fined $500,000, in the second case on a work incident.