Browsing: Work at heights

• WHS regulator issues more COVID notices, releases compliance checklist; and
  
• "Declining" crane and scaffolding compliance found by FSC.

An employer has been convicted and fined $360,000, after its failure to address a safety risk forced a worker to improvise and lean over a six-metre-deep trench, resulting in his fatal fall.

Elevating work platforms have been linked to hundreds of workplace injuries and a string of fatalities, with incidents resulting from structural failures, collisions and poor ventilation, Safe Work Australia has warned in releasing new guidance on the hazardous equipment.

• WHS incidents behind manslaughter prosecutions revealed;
  
• Recently prosecuted employer charged after falling-object death; and
  
• Another state mandates COVID vaccines for health workers.

A judge has found a PCBU's failure to assess the risk of workers coming within an unsafe distance of powerlines, which caused injuries "one might see in a war zone", deserved a $400,000 fine.

An employer has agreed to implement a new permit system and other enforceable undertakings after a safety inspector witnessed its excavator enter the "no go zone" of powerlines. Meanwhile, a drug trafficker has been denied a labour-hire licence in one of a recent spate of refusals.

An entry permit holder's compliance with a site's directions and requests serves its own critical safety function, the Federal Court has stressed in imposing record entry fines on a union and six officials.

Many workers who perform ground support tasks for mobile elevating work platforms have not been trained in emergency descent procedures, a WHS regulator has found in a campaign triggered by a fatality inquest. The regulator has also revealed its expectations around ladder use.

• Workplace controller convicted of 16 safety breaches;
  
• Chemical reaction leads to string of safety charges; and
  
• Regulator issues height advice after fine imposed.

An employer has been fined $450,000, over an injury-causing fall, in one of the first cases finalised under Western Australia's toughened penalty regime, while a business with a poor communication system has been fined heavily over a fatal forklift incident.