Browsing: WHS decisions (VIC) | Page 3

• Safety fine quadrupled after expert submission on dust; and
  
• New WHS clauses and Codes being enforced in ACT.

Two employers have been sentenced for safety breaches resulting in life-changing amputations, including one company that failed to comply with an authorisation requiring only certain personnel to work near overhead powerlines.

A tribunal has applied a 14-fold increase to the damages awarded to a worker who was psychologically injured by her manager making "vulgar" remarks about her body, and making "repeated physical contact" with her.

A Victorian company that pleaded guilty to recklessly endangering an apprentice, while he was being supervised by the company director, has been fined $2.1 million - a penalty that is more than double the State's previous record safety fine for a single offence.

A company that was prosecuted, over a high-profile fatality, for breaching its safety duties as a supplier of plant, has unsuccessfully argued that its $400,000 penalty was excessive because it had no control over the location of workers when the incident occurred.

An appeals court has declined to create a "new category of duty" for employers, in overturning a psychologically injured worker's $1.4 million damages award for being subjected to a "sham" dismissal.

Two related companies, and a director who s-xually harassed teenage employees, have been fined a total of $290,000 for workplace safety breaches, with their failings including the absence of a specific reporting process in their online bullying and harassment policy.

• Employers fined over crane and public-road fatalities; and
  
• "World leading" workers' comp laws pass in Tas.

Court Services Victoria (CSV) has been convicted and ordered to pay nearly $400,000 in penalties, in relation to a toxic workplace culture that contributed to the suicide death of a lawyer and to other workers taking stress leave.

• One regulator charges another with recklessness after suicide;
  
• Host fined $350k over fatal impalement of labour-hire worker; and
  
• New national dangerous goods Code taking effect in Vic.