Browsing: Young/inexperienced workers

A litany of failures in the way a business approached a high-risk job led to the death of a trainee, a judge has ruled in convicting and fining an individual with the duties of a PCBU $60,000.

A coronial inquiry into the death of a recently immigrated worker has highlighted the very real dangers faced by inexperienced workers and posed by power tools, particularly tools with unsafe modifications or faults.

A judge has revealed her reasons for imposing a high-level penalty on an employer when she re-sentenced it after quashing its gross negligence conviction. She rejected the company's claim it had believed certain labour-hire workers provided to its site were well trained and fully inducted in safety issues.

A manager's comments about a subordinate's body shape, even without intended s-xual innuendo, constituted s-xual harassment and caused the subordinate's post-traumatic stress disorder, a tribunal has found in awarding her damages.

A PCBU that was fined $400,000 over an apprentice's death, and unsuccessfully sought to overturn its conviction in the High Court, has been handed a record-long ban from tendering for Commonwealth-funded work.

• Step up safety with increasing demands, say regulators;
  
• Employers urged to utilise WHS tool for young workers; and
  
• Waivers don't reduce WHS duties to children.

A company has been fined after a workplace health and safety inspector observed two of its apprentices performing electrical work on their own. Meanwhile, Western Australia's average workers' comp premium rate has been increased for the second year in a row.

In a case where "parallel" duty holders were charged over a worker's death, a PCBU has been found guilty of breaching WHS laws in relying on training and signage rather than engineering measures to control risks arising from new equipment with an unusual design.

Workers who are children face unique health and safety challenges at work, but their employers' policies and processes are often not age-appropriate and block them from reporting issues or engaging with safety, the director of a children's organisation says.

An employer has been fined for workplace management and control breaches, after a heavy object fell 160 metres from a 58-storey development in the heart of Melbourne. Meanwhile, a regulator has outlined safety control measures for hydraulic equipment, after an apprentice was killed.