Browsing: Workplace safety representatives | Page 4

In this Q&A with OHS Alert, leading WHS lawyer John Makris warns that the practice of unlawfully leveraging safety issues for industrial purposes occurs across multiple sectors, and outlines 10 factors for employers to consider when determining whether WHS entry rights are being exercised properly.

A Federal judge has found that selecting a worker for redundancy, after he raised multiple safety concerns, constituted unlawful adverse action, with his employer failing to prove his termination was due to poor performance and not his exercise of workplace rights.

The NSW Government has declined to act on a recommendation from a parliamentary dust inquiry to proactively increase the number of elected health and safety representatives in a hazardous industry, and highlighted the technical difficulties of tightening workplace exposure thresholds.

A workplace health and safety committee member sacked for smoking cannabis the night before a shift has been denied permission to further pursue his unfair dismissal claim, with a Fair Work Commission full bench rejecting his argument around not been impaired while at work.

• Sick leave restored under Qld's new COVID arrangements;
  
• WHS review targeting HSR provisions in Qld;
  
• "Injured" worker jailed over secret gig economy work; and
  
• Data-matching tools catching injury fraudsters.

A company that punished one of its health and safety representatives, for repeatedly raising safety concerns with a health and safety regulator, has been found guilty of and sentenced for OHS discrimination.

The Fair Work Commission has upheld the dismissal of a long-time Australia Post employee who breached mask rules and ignored multiple reasonable directions not to return to a client's workplace, after complaints he was spreading COVID-19 conspiracy theories.

Trade unions have been reminded of their traditional role of seeking to enhance WHS laws, perceived as insufficient, through political and parliamentary processes, with a judge handing record workplace coercion fines to a union and three officials.

Two union organisers who intentionally obstructed work over safety concerns - including the location of toilets - were in breach of the Fair Work Act, the Federal Circuit and Family Court has ruled, finding none of their imminent-risk concerns were valid.

A NSW WHS Bill enabling nationwide criminal record checks of safety representatives has passed Parliament without amendment, despite warnings that the new laws place "no limits" on a minister's powers to veto an elected representative.