The globalisation of supply chains and sending company functions offshore are among the major emerging WHS challenges identified in a blueprint for reducing serious workplace injuries and deaths.
A company's failure to follow its own safety management plans, and its desire to save costs on tradespeople and engineers, led to a horror bathroom fatality and the first conviction for reckless conduct under Australia's harmonised WHS regime.
An employer whose two-key machine system allowed workers to bypass guarding, has been fined after a worker's foot was severed. Meanwhile, a cargo handling facility has become the second of two entities to be fined over a potentially fatal forklift incident, and two companies have successfully pushed for reviews of their prohibition notices.
In a study driving home the importance of injury-prevention strategies focused on long-term outcomes, researchers have found that few workers who suffered from occupational neck and shoulder pain two decades ago have recovered from the condition.
A PCBU that failed to engage a competent person to modify equipment has been fined $200,000, after a manager was killed in an explosion, while a company that failed to implement a safety policy for lone workers has been ordered to compensate a killed worker's family.
A worker has been awarded nearly $1.4 million in damages, after a court found he injured his back undertaking a manual handling task that he had been trained to perform but was completely unnecessary.
A company and two directors have been convicted and fined $224,000, plus $30,000 in costs, for exposing a worker to a daily risk of serious injury in modified plant, in a case highlighting that an offence can occur without the manifestation of the risk.
