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.
A recent $436,000 injury damages case shows how important it is for employers to proactively look for and deal with signs of worker distress, employment and WHS lawyer Donna Trembath says in this Q&A with OHS Alert.
