Browsing: WHS decisions (NSW) | Page 45

An employer has been convicted and fined a record $1 million for WHS offences in NSW, after its director knowingly let a subcontractor work near live high-voltage powerlines to avoid delaying a construction project.

An employer whose safety system focused "too much" on the work being performed, and not enough on workplace conditions and Australian Standards, has been fined $135,000.

Engaging a "competent person" to assess electrical safety and install protection devices for a roof space might not have prevented a labourer's electric shock, but isolating and de-energising the space would have, a court has ruled in finding two employers guilty of WHS breaches.

A judge has reiterated the vulnerability of work experience students and fined a company $250,000, after a 17-year-old student's hand was crushed in a machine.

Ensuring employees who prepare risk assessments have the necessary expertise is one of five important lessons from a recent inquiry into the death of a man at a festival, according to a health, safety and security lawyer.

A coronial inquest into the death of a worker in an overhead-crane incident has made three recommendations for safely operating cranes.

Elected health and safety representatives do not have an "overarching" right to decide which training course to attend under the model WHS Act, as claimed by a union and a misleading SafeWork NSW guide, a commission has ruled.

The NSW Court of Appeal has quashed a world-first ruling (and $5 million damages award) that a worker's post-traumatic stress disorder was a "bodily injury" and compensable under international law.

An employer that adopted an ambiguous exclusion-zone policy, and never enforced it, has been ordered to pay more than $300,000 in WHS fines and costs.

A major employer has been ordered to pay a record $850,000 in fines and costs, after it failed to implement measures that would have prevented an intoxicated contractor from causing an "extremely dangerous" chemical spill, which injured two workers.