Browsing: Fatalities | Page 11

A PCBU breached its WHS duties by failing to alert an industrial complex's owners corporation or strata manager to the dangers posed by a damaged gate, which ultimately fell and killed a worker, a court has found in convicting and fining the PCBU $375,000.

A PCBU that responded to a WHS regulator's notice by implementing safety devices, but later removed them, has been fined $100,000 over an amputation incident. The same regulator has issued an alert after a similar incident that killed a worker.

A PCBU with "significant" WHS systems has been fined $525,000 over a fatality, involving its failure to implement a specific documented system of work for a task a worker was performing when he was killed.

• Platform used by public collapses, employer fined; and
  
• No-go zones urged for National Farm Safety Week.

In an extremely rare development, a judge has found the WHS offences of a reckless PCBU and a "worker" deserved the highest available penalties, totalling $3.15 million. They were charged over the grisly death of a man who was dragged into a woodchipper, and whose disappearance went unnoticed because the PCBU's systems were "so haphazard".

A court has affirmed that lump sum death benefits must be paid to the wife of a killed worker, rejecting the employer's claim the couple had been separated for two years and she was no longer dependent on his income.

PCBUs have been reminded of their WHS duties to children, after one entity was fined over a drowning death and another over a forklift joyride. Meanwhile, the ACT has launched a campaign against workplace violence, and reminded employers of the new WHS duty to report "actual or suspected" incidents of workplace s-xual assault.

An employer is liable for a fatal heart attack a worker suffered in a hotel gym on an overseas work trip, because its WHS and fitness-for-work policy implicitly encouraged him to exercise to counter stress and fatigue, a tribunal has confirmed on remittal.

A high school operator has been handed a pre-discount WHS fine of $700,000 over the drowning death of a student on a camping trip, with a tribunal finding no risk assessment was completed for the dangerous rock fishing activity that led to the incident.

• More duty holders plead guilty to White Island breaches; and
  
• Carbon monoxide warning issued after forklift incident.