Browsing: Manual handling | Page 6

A major employer's liability for the aggravation of a worker's back injury ceased when the work-related component of her condition resolved, a tribunal has ruled in referring to a High Court judgment, and rejecting the worker's claim that looking down at work contributed to her incapacity.

A worker was injured in an "accident waiting to happen", with his employer failing to enforce safe time limits for a task applying "injurious" stress to his body, and is entitled to more than $1.1 million in damages, a judge has found.

A court has rejected a worker's claim his employer negligently provided him with faulty equipment that forced him to adopt injury-causing postures. It found his symptoms arose from the "general physical nature" of his duties, not any acts of negligence.

As more workplaces reopen under easing COVID-19 restrictions, employers have been warned to proactively tackle all hazards, and reminded of "mangle", shock" and "sever" risks. Meanwhile, a regulator has urged employers to get rid of their forklifts, where reasonably practicable, following two recent fatalities.

A PCBU that sent a new employee out on his own to perform dangerous unloading tasks, with "no structure, no procedure and no testing" of his abilities, has been fined $225,000, after the man became trapped under a stack of heavy glass panels.

Burnout is commonly associated with cognitive or mental employment demands, but it also affects those with high physical workloads, and can be exacerbated by certain kinds of off-the-job physical activities, researchers have found.

An employer negligently caused a worker's injuries by failing to properly train his co-worker on a task variation, a court has ruled in awarding the worker nearly $500,000 in damages.

A supervisor's act of telling a worker, who struggled to meet his targets, to hurry up, was not bullying, a court has found in rejecting the worker's claim for nearly $500,000 in damages.

Poor visual or lighting conditions can cause workers to adopt poor postures to see better, resulting in musculoskeletal disorders, occupational medicine experts say.

An injured worker has been awarded about $635,000 in damages, after a court found his employer's failure to identify his tasks as hazardous manual handling, in breach of safety regulations, caused his disabling musculoskeletal injury.