A cost-saving measure and a supervisor's complacency contributed to a worker dying in a six-metre fall, while the lack of regulatory action in such cases could be encouraging poor safety cultures, a coronial inquest has found.
A coroner has condemned an employer's actions in demoting a worker struggling with mental illness, instead of seeking to accommodate her condition as required by its procedures and anti-discrimination laws, in an inquest into the worker's suicide.
Multi-nation research has found that managers who actively avoid talking to workers with depression about mental health issues encourage avoidance behaviour and absenteeism.
An appeals court has confirmed that a principal contractor is 40 per cent liable for a worker's fall through a roof, in a long-running case involving multiple safety prosecutions and damages claims.
A reasonable person in a major employer's position would have foreseen that workers would adopt timesaving and dangerous methods of performing a repetitive task, an appeals court has ruled in upholding a $1 million damages award.
An employer could have complied with its duty of care to an assaulted worker, and avoided a $600,000 injury damages bill, by simply separating the worker and his assailant after being warned of the "ticking time bomb" situation, a court has found.
A worker sacked for defying a reasonable safety requirement for confined spaces has succeeded in his bid for reinstatement, with a commission finding his supervisor "let go" of an identical breach earlier on the same day.
A supervisor's actions in providing personal support and coaching to a worker on a performance management plan, and encouraging him to access an EAP, have helped defeat the psychologically injured worker's stop-bullying application.
A sacked worker has unsuccessfully argued that failing a workplace alcohol test was mitigated by his lack of direct duties on that day. Meanwhile, a judge has upheld the dismissal of a supervisor who tried to scare a subordinate through a Facebook post.
