Browsing: WHS decisions (VIC) | Page 8

A tribunal has highlighted the proactive safety duties of employers and slammed a company director and a manager for their responses to a worker's complaint about a colleague staring at her breasts.

A major clothing retailer had a system for lightening trolleys but failed to enforce it, negligently allowing workers to choose their own method of loading and unloading them while under pressure to meet quotas, a superior court has found.

A psychologically injured worker has been awarded $1.73 million in damages, after a court rejected evidence from his former employer about events at a hotel during a work trip, which led to his dismissal.

Two businesses have been fined a total of $800,000 over separate but alarmingly similar fatalities involving the handling of heavy materials in confined spaces. A regulator has explained how to prevent such incidents, including through consultation processes.

An employer has been convicted and fined for eight workplace safety breaches, including hindering an investigation by hiding tools after an apprentice was shot in the head by a nail gun. Meanwhile, a major survey has found unsanitary amenities are common at worksites.

An employer might have provided workers with safety stools to help them reach high objects, but the pace of the work and the scarceness of the stools meant they couldn't be used practically, a court has found in awarding a worker more than $800,000 in damages for a manual handling injury.

• Employer fined $300k over poor maintenance and fatality; and
  
• Assault-related workers' comp claims increasing.

Workers do not need to exhibit obvious signs of distress or vulnerability for the risk of psychological injury to be foreseeable and enliven the duty to take measures, an appeals court has found in a workload case examining an important High Court judgment.

• Major WHS reforms and new s-xual assault duties pass in ACT; and
  
• Workplace fire risk increased by poor administrative controls.

Employers have been reminded of their legislative duty to take all reasonably practicable steps to identify all asbestos-containing materials in their workplaces, and pointed to a recent safety prosecution that shows the application of the law extends beyond the demolition and construction industries.