Browsing: Duty holders | Page 83

• Vaccine mandate satisfies safety consultation duties; and
  
• FIFO workers directed to get the COVID jab in WA.

With public health restrictions set to ease in NSW and Victoria under COVID-19 vaccine rules, and recent regulatory action and a workers' comp ruling highlighting obligations around infections, employers need to determine whether to mandate or just encourage workforce vaccinations, a senior employment lawyer says.

• Safety laws breached through absence of anti-bullying policies;
  
• Word Safety Congress coming to Sydney; and
  
• WHS toolkit for labour-hire arrangements released.

Failings by Victoria's Department of Health put its hotel quarantine employees and security guards at risk of serious illness or death through contracting COVID-19 from returned travellers or contaminated surfaces, a regulator has alleged in charging the Department with 58 breaches of the State OHS Act.

Federal parliamentarians and parliamentary workplace staff will be better protected from s-xual assault, harassment, bullying and other WHS risks through a new complaints mechanism, being established under a legislative instrument.

• WHS regulator issues more COVID notices, releases compliance checklist; and
  
• "Declining" crane and scaffolding compliance found by FSC.

The Federal, state and territory governments have been told to enact greater oversight of the WHS duty to provide resources for workers exposed to heat, and urgently review regulatory frameworks to ensure workers are protected against emerging risks from climate change.

• Mandatory COVID vaccine rule applied to another industry; and
  
• Plant warning issued in format first for WHS regulator.

The Victorian Government has claimed it has witnessed "appalling" levels of non-compliance with workplace safety regulations made for the COVID-19 pandemic in the construction industry, in shutting down the sector for two weeks.

The struggle of workers to "decode" written communications, which are prolific in remote-work set-ups, is triggering a hunter-gatherer survival mechanism and perceptions of being bullied, a senior WHS researcher says.