Browsing: Young/inexperienced workers

The Victorian Government has claimed it has witnessed "appalling" levels of non-compliance with workplace safety regulations made for the COVID-19 pandemic in the construction industry, in shutting down the sector for two weeks.

Employers should do everything they can to encourage COVID-19 jabs because having fully vaccinated workers is "priceless", especially in the construction industry, which faces particular challenges to remaining COVID-safe and mentally healthy, an HR specialist says.

An employer that failed to re-induct or provide refresher training to a worker, when he was transferred to a different department, has been fined for safety breaches, after the man was struck by a 2.3-tonne load in a forklift incident.

The Department of Defence has been handed a record WHS fine of $1 million, over the second of two similar fatal training incidents resulting in the prosecution of the PCBU.

An employer that allowed an informal work practice to develop, where unqualified personnel performed hot work, has been fined $180,000, after a drum exploded and caused serious injuries.

A famous Australian bootmaker has designed new tools and committed to adopting AS/NZS 45001:2018, with regular compliance audits, under an enforceable undertaking, after a worker with no experience with a new material had a finger amputated.

A man has been convicted of two category-1 WHS breaches - the first reckless conduct convictions recorded in his jurisdiction. After he was sentenced, a regulator slammed his workplace's stoic culture and the inaction of witnesses to a teenage worker's serious burns.

The $200,000-plus fine imposed on Uber in NSW, for failing to report serious safety incidents to a regulator, is a "slap on the wrist" that won't prevent fatalities and highlights the need for Federal controls, a union claims.

A workplace fatality, which led to a $250,000 WHS fine, occurred in circumstances where the contrast between the instructions provided to workers with limited English and what supervisors allowed to occur gave rise "to an understandable level of confusion about what was, and was not, permitted", an inquest has found.

A PCBU accused of breaching WHS provisions on the "authorisation of work", has avoided prosecution by entering a low-spend enforceable undertaking.