Browsing: WHS decisions (NSW) | Page 10

A company and its sole director, who failed to take specific steps to protect workers from falling, have received significantly reduced fines, because of the director's inexperience and the company's limited capacity to pay penalties.

A PCBU has been handed a pre-discount WHS fine of $600,000, after a worker suffered fatal head injuries in an incident involving an unsafely modified work box and a forklift operated by an inexperienced apprentice.

In the latest of a long list of anti-vax disputes determined by Australian tribunals, a worker has unsuccessfully claimed that she delayed complying with a COVID-19 vaccination direction because she was concerned, as a lactating mother, for the health and safety of herself and her baby.

The mother of a young worker impaled on a steel rod has been awarded more than $200,000 for post-traumatic stress linked to the incident, while her son has been awarded $520,000, and two negligent companies have been ordered to foot most of the bill.

A police officer who was forced to medically retire has lost his unfair dismissal application, with a commission finding his case focused on various grievances instead of his actual fitness for work.

A principal contractor has been convicted and fined over an incident where two workers were injured in a fall from an excavator bucket - an event that has already attracted a high-level WHS penalty and elicited an industry-wide warning from a judge.

• Safety regulator warns unsafe individuals after worker fined $30k; and
  
• Mobile-phone loophole closed by Qld safety amendments.

A judge has referred one of his WHS rulings to a government minister, to highlight the prevalence of deaths and serious injuries from height work, and possibly inform legislative change.

Labour providers cannot rely on other companies to ensure the health and safety of their workers, a judge has stressed in fining a PCBU over two incidents (including a fatality) that occurred just weeks apart.

A commission has rejected a union's bid to bin a major employer's COVID-19 vaccine mandate, underscoring that under WHS legislation, a "reasonable" direction does not need to be one preferred by or in the best interests of all parties.