A tribunal has rejected a claim that the permanent impairments in a worker's knees, caused by four months of repetitive ladder climbing and crouching, can't be combined under controversial laws because one knee injury "commenced" two years earlier.
An employer has introduced a new injury management database for identifying client sites that pose extra risks to workers, and introduced site-specific pre-employment medicals, among $782,000 worth of rectifications made after a serious incident.
Employers could be forced to overhaul incentive structures that discourage safety reporting, while WHS laws could be amended to correct an "anomaly" in the labour-hire sector, an inquiry into a methane explosion and injuries has suggested.
Allowing an untrained labour-hire employee to operate a 23-year-old press without adequate guarding, has cost a manufacturing business $200,000 in fines and legal costs and resulted in it spending more than $500,000 on factory improvements.
An employer has been found vicariously liable for a supervisor's "bit of fun" that seriously injured a labour-hire worker, and ordered to pay the worker more than $662,000 in damages.
Many employers use labour-hire workers believing this will reduce their safety obligations, but when a worker has more than one employer the safety responsibilities are shared, at all times, a senior management systems auditor has stressed.
An employer previously fined over a workplace death has been found guilty of breaching its general health and safety duties in circumstances of gross negligence, in the first case of its kind in Western Australia.
An employer unlawfully discriminated against an older worker in refusing to engage him for work in a hot environment, with its manager likening the proposed labour-hire arrangement to sending "your dad or granddad" into high-risk conditions, a court has found.
