Browsing: WHS decisions (WA) | Page 13

• Crane operator breached duty to defy unsafe directions;
  
• Govt pumps funds into ABCC and workplace mental health;
  
• New WHS Regulations for diving work commencing in Tas; and
  
• NSW employers reminded of upcoming RTW requirements.

A host employer has been ordered to pay a worker nearly $270,000 in damages for manual handling injuries he sustained after it switched his task to lifting 55kg objects, without training or supervision.

Western Australia recently adopted Australia's second highest maximum work safety fines, but a major employer has been fined just $65,000 over a preventable fatality, with the State's former, notoriously lenient penalty regime continuing to apply to offences committed prior to October this year.

• Unsafe employers and supervisor fined;
  
• National risk standard and Vic safety regulations commence; and
  
• New laws underpin ACT's workers' comp self-insurance licence.

A worker has been awarded nearly $2 million in damages, after a court found his employer negligently allowed a defective alarm to be left unattended in an office, resulting in him sustaining whiplash injuries when it was accidentally activated.

A coronial inquiry has found that a single moment of inattention from a highly experienced worker led to him being dragged into a machine and dying. Meanwhile, an individual has been fined after a worker was killed on a tractor with corroded rollover protection, and an employer has been fined for confined space breaches.

A government department that received nearly 230 improvement and prohibition notices in five years, and failed to elevate a traffic-movement plan beyond the drafting phase, has been fined over a remand prisoner's truck death.

An inquest into the death of a police officer has demonstrated the challenges of ensuring workers' families are aware of and access employee assistance programs or similar health and safety services.

• Employer fails to learn from hazardous substance audit; and
  
• New hazardous substance and cladding laws made in three states.

An appeals court has confirmed that a principal contractor is 40 per cent liable for a worker's fall through a roof, in a long-running case involving multiple safety prosecutions and damages claims.