Browsing: WHS decisions (NSW) | Page 66

Employers must conduct periodic inspections and have preventative maintenance systems in place for cranes, the NSW Industrial Court has advised, in fining an employer and its director over serious workplace injuries.

A NSW company director has been fined $30,000, after a 15-year-old apprentice labourer suffered horrific injuries, and later died in hospital, when he became entangled in an unguarded machine.

The director of a NSW company - which was fined $600,000 following the second storage-related fatality in a decade at its warehouses - has been fined $27,000, after the Industrial Court found he failed to act on a known hazard.

A NSW construction site manager has been convicted and fined $12,000 for failing to enforce a safety plan, after a worker fell nearly four metres through an unsecured penetration.

In what is believed to be the first judicial decision involving the model WHS Act, the NSW IRC has upheld an employer's application to have an improvement notice stayed, but rejected its claim that it was not a PCBU when a contractor received an electric shock.

Employers have a responsibility to anticipate and eliminate unsafe short cuts that workers "will persistently search for", a NSW judge has said, after a worker's fingers and thumb were amputated in an unguarded machine.

Employers must train workers in safely carrying out tasks with phosphoric acid and other hazardous substances, the NSW Industrial Court has stressed, after an apprentice suffered chemical burns to his face.

Employers must conduct "fresh" risk assessments when implementing or changing work tasks, the NSW Industrial Court has found, after a worker suffered burns to 18 per cent of his body in an explosion.

A NSW employer that failed to provide proper PPE has been fined $80,000, after a worker suffered permanent lung injuries and a heart attack after inhaling cement powder.

Workers must be properly instructed on their role in maintenance work conducted by third parties, the NSW Industrial Court has found in convicting a director and an employer, and fining another employer $220,000, over a runaway-truck death.