The Fair Work Commission has ordered a workplace bully to refrain from commenting on his victim's clothes or appearance, as well as imposing a condition on the victim, in its first substantive anti-bullying order.
Employers need to contact employees who work alone or in remote locations at the start of, during and at the end of shifts, as a number of recent safety tragedies have shown, says WorkSafe WA director Joe Attard.
An employer that told a worker to "stop wearing a skirt", when he complained about his arduous manual handling tasks, has been found liable for the man's serious back injury.
Employers in the minerals industry are being encouraged to train supervisors and managers to identify mental ill health and resist "macho" cultures, while the Western Australian Government has injected $500,000 into the Men's Shed movement.
Rio Tinto's safety performance in 2013 was "disappointing", its latest sustainability report shows, but the global mining and metals company explains how one site transformed its safety performance, and what it's doing to reduce exposure to noise.
The Fair Work Commission has examined the pros and cons of using saliva and urine tests to detect drugs in workers, in finding it would be unreasonable for an employer to conduct confirmatory urine tests on workers who return non-negative results in oral tests.
An employer that could have "easily and inexpensively" prevented a van explosion - which killed a worker - has unsuccessfully appealed against the size of its OHS fine.
