A recent $180,000 fatality fine has sent a stark reminder of the need to provide extra attention and training to young workers, especially during the "silly season", a regulator says. Meanwhile, an employer has been fined after a truck with a defective alarm rolled backwards and killed a man.
An employer breached its duty of care for a worker in failing to repair a leaky appliance or maintain a system for keeping the area around it dry, exposing him to a foreseeable risk of slipping, a court has found.
An employer has defeated a worker's damages claim, with a court finding that extra training or improved safety systems would not have prevented the man from performing the minor repairs that caused his injury.
Three Queensland employers have been fined a total of more than $500,000, after a cyclist was killed by a crane's unsecured stabiliser arm, a worker was fatally crushed against a stabiliser leg, and an inexperienced worker died in a quad bike crash.
Unions have called for reckless managers to be jailed for worker fatalities, and for offshore safety laws to be strengthened, after a major employer was handed a "paltry" fatality fine, and an investigation into an offshore death found the workplace wasn't covered by Australian OHS laws.
An appeal court has upheld a damages award for a worker who slipped on a grape, after finding her employer was aware of the risk and failed to use mats to control it.
A judge has found that it would be unjust and unreasonable for an employer to continue varying a worker's roster for safety reasons - relating to a domestic violence incident - because it hadn't developed a safety plan in consultation with the man.
A major employer that took adverse action against an injured worker, before demonstrating a "disturbing level of recalcitrance" in a string of proceedings on the matter, has been fined and ordered to compensate the worker.