Browsing: Work at heights | Page 52

An employer has been convicted and fined a record $1 million for WHS offences in NSW, after its director knowingly let a subcontractor work near live high-voltage powerlines to avoid delaying a construction project.

An employer whose safety system focused "too much" on the work being performed, and not enough on workplace conditions and Australian Standards, has been fined $135,000.

An employer wasn't negligent and didn't breach its duty of care to a worker who injured his back while retrieving tools from an elevated work platform, a court has ruled.

Standards Australia has stressed that it isn't a government department and Australian Standards "are, of themselves, considered to be voluntary documents", after receiving a series of enquiries relating to fall-arrest systems and anchor points.

An injured worker has been granted permission, on appeal, to sue a ladder manufacturer, which owned the company that engaged him to perform height work.

A principal contractor previously convicted and fined over a worker's three-metre fall, has been ordered to pay 40 per cent of the man's common law damages for failing to "retain and exercise a supervisory power".

A Queensland council has been fined $170,000 for failing to implement a safe system for reversing plant, after a fatality, while a UK worker has been jailed for focusing on her mobile phone instead of a vulnerable client, who died.

An employer has entered an enforceable undertaking worth nearly $1 million after a worker was killed between an elevated work platform and a concrete slab, while regulatory action taken against two major companies after the incident has been withdrawn.

Two employers have been fined a total of $240,000 after an elderly woman was killed and a young worker died in a forklift incident. Meanwhile, Victoria's weekend death toll has increased, after a painter died in hospital from his injuries.

A commission has found that one of a worker's breaches of a "life saving rule" wasn't a valid reason for his dismissal because of the "vagueness" surrounding a height-safety policy.