Safety regulators are more likely than ever to ask PCBUs for evidence of their consultation processes, and to view minutes from committee meetings, a workplace health and safety lawyer has warned.
Queensland's WHS Amendment Bill has passed through Parliament, with the Bill's architect - the Attorney-General - repeating his seemingly incongruous boast that work injury rates are falling under the current laws. Meanwhile, Safe Work Australia is keeping tight-lipped on its position on the Queensland changes.
An employer has been found guilty of breaching Queensland's mirror WHS Act in a case, according to a leading safety lawyer, that demonstrates how important it is for companies to challenge questionable prohibition or improvement notices.
Fines for halting construction work for "dubious" safety reasons could increase, while foreign firms could be granted provisional accreditation to bypass the FSC's "onerous" safety requirements, under recommendations contained in a new Productivity Commission report.
New Zealand's new workplace bullying prevention guide is superior to Australia's for a number of reasons, including that it recognises "institutional bullying", which helps employers determine if their culture is creating the problem, an OHS consultant says.
The Fair Work Commission has found that it can consider work incidents that occurred before January when determining applications for stop-bullying orders, and rejected an employer's claim that bullying was legally "neutral" before the new anti-bullying provisions took effect.
The Federal Government's termination of Safe Work Australia member grants will diminish the ability of unions and employer groups to improve workplace safety, a Labor Senator has warned. Meanwhile, the Coalition's plan to amend the new anti-bullying laws has been omitted from it first tranche of Fair Work changes, introduced yesterday.
A high proportion of the 70-odd workers who have applied for stop-bullying orders so far claim they are being bullied by their supervisors, but the Fair Work Act's broad definition of "reasonable management action" could thwart many of these claims, according to FW Commissioner Anna Lee Cribb.
Workers who apply to the Fair Work Commission for a stop-bullying order cannot claim they were "bullied at work" prior to 1 January 2014, because the anti-bullying laws didn't apply at the time, the Australian Industry Group will argue in a test case today.
The chain of responsibility (CoR) provisions of the new national heavy vehicle safety laws could be expanded to capture employees, as well as managers who instruct consignors to order goods. Also in this article, Cootes Transport has been charged with 86 safety breaches.
