Inadequate guarding and lack of roll-over protection contribute to more than a third of work-related fatalities associated with unsafe plant or equipment design, a new Safe Work Australia report has found.
Plant designers, suppliers and users are being reminded, in light of an excavator death, that they are obligated under safety laws to provide fit-for-purpose equipment and manage risks according to the hierarchy of controls.
Two John Holland entities have been fined $180,000 each for failing to train a vehicle operator or ensure the vehicle had adequate brakes, after a worker was fatally struck by the vehicle.
An employer that denied a truck driver procedural fairness when it sacked him for repeatedly speeding was a large enough company to have developed proper policies for dismissing employees, the Fair Work Commission has found.
An employer that failed to assign a spotter for a hazardous task has been convicted of OHS breaches, with the NSW District Court yesterday rejecting its claim that a worker's injury wasn't foreseeable because a similar incident had never occurred.
In contrast to two recent cases involving workers who were sacked for swearing, the Fair Work Commission has ruled that a worker who verbally abused a colleague following a forklift near-miss was unfairly dismissed.
