An employer that required employees to access a machine by moving under it and opening heavy doors that swung down has been convicted and fined $200,000, after the doors fell and struck a worker, causing permanent brain injuries. Another employer has been fined for contraventions that included leaving keys in forklifts, facilitating unauthorised use.
A PCBU previously prosecuted over a fatality, and a facilities manager who failed to manage the entrapment hazard posed by a disused stairwell, where a visitor died, have been fined for WHS contraventions in Queensland.
Successfully implementing safety technologies like artificial intelligence surveillance requires employers to overcome the mistrust of workers who believe it will be misused by managers, Australia Post's safety and wellbeing general manager says of his organisation's experience.
Importers, manufacturers, logistics service providers and many others types of companies, as well as their officers, have a duty to ensure containers are transported safely on Australian roads and to prevent rollover incidents, the risk of which is increasing with the surge in consumer-driven freight activity, a senior transport lawyer says.
Company executives must ensure systems are in place to deal with non-compliance with safety requirements and those systems are properly monitored, a regulator has stressed after an employer was handed a record recklessness fine relating to the deaths of four police officers.
A PCBU has been fined $450,000 after a worker sustained serious injuries in an area of its site depicted as a "safe zone", 12 months after an almost identical incident occurred.
Two employers have been sentenced for safety breaches resulting in life-changing amputations, including one company that failed to comply with an authorisation requiring only certain personnel to work near overhead powerlines.
A company that was prosecuted, over a high-profile fatality, for breaching its safety duties as a supplier of plant, has unsuccessfully argued that its $400,000 penalty was excessive because it had no control over the location of workers when the incident occurred.
