Browsing: Fatalities

A development company that disregarded a Code of Practice and its own procedures, apparently to save two hours of work, has been fined for safety breaches.

An employer has been convicted and fined $360,000, after its failure to address a safety risk forced a worker to improvise and lean over a six-metre-deep trench, resulting in his fatal fall.

Elevating work platforms have been linked to hundreds of workplace injuries and a string of fatalities, with incidents resulting from structural failures, collisions and poor ventilation, Safe Work Australia has warned in releasing new guidance on the hazardous equipment.

A company has been ordered to pay a worker more than $1.5 million in damages, after he suffered permanent brain damage from inhaling carbon monoxide in a work vehicle, just one day after another driver was found dead in the car.

• Major safety Bill passes without photograph amendments; and
  
• SWA and regulator tackle deadly risk with WHS guide and alert.

An employer has been ordered to pay death benefits to the dependents of a "subcontractor", whose death led to the WHS prosecutions of multiple parties and $620,000 in fines.

• WHS incidents behind manslaughter prosecutions revealed;
  
• Recently prosecuted employer charged after falling-object death; and
  
• Another state mandates COVID vaccines for health workers.

• More duty holders charged with industrial manslaughter; and
  
• Respect@Work Bill passes without "positive" duties.

The Department of Defence has been handed a record WHS fine of $1 million, over the second of two similar fatal training incidents resulting in the prosecution of the PCBU.

A PCBU faces a maximum, record-shattering WHS penalty of up to $35 million, while its chief operating officer could be jailed for five years, after they were charged with a total of 14 reckless conduct breaches relating to a fatality.