Browsing: Young/inexperienced workers | Page 13

A workplace's multiple safety failings, which preceded a new worker's death, and led to several safety prosecutions, included that an assumption was made that the worker was familiar with the site's practices because of his experience at a similar location, a new report on the incident shows.

• Confined-space breaches endanger apprentice, employer fined; and
  
• SWA releases RTW survey results, Qld issues fall alert.

A worker's action in throwing a heavy object at an unlicensed plant operator was not the sole cause of the machine striking and injuring the worker, an appeals court has ruled in ordering the machine's owner to pay him damages.

Employers are not required by workplace health and safety laws to "hold the hand" of experienced workers, but must take steps to ensure they have the skills to spot risks and select safe work methods, a court has found in upholding a worker's damages claim.

One of four entities charged over the death of a 17-year-old worker, in a 12-metre fall, has been fined $320,000, after a court heard its fall-prevention strategy required personnel to disconnect their harnesses when moving from one high area to another.

• Integrating WHS management within BIM; and
  
• WHS strategy to target PCBUs failing young workers.

The High Court has rejected a regulator's bid to appeal against a ruling allowing an injured worker to "combine" his impairments, and dismissed a PCBU's challenge of its $400,000 fatality fine and conviction.

A company that failed to provide a new employee with adequate PPE, or properly advise him on the flammable properties of a hazardous substance, has been handed a near-record workplace safety fine in Western Australia, after the young man suffered serious burns.

An employer has been fined $180,000, after its failure to control ignition points and flammable vapours led to three workers sustaining devastating burns with "lifelong effects" in an explosion.

A PCBU and a supervisor it engaged to act on its behalf have been fined heavily for permitting work to be performed at a site before crucial safety measures were in place - a failing that resulted in a teenager sustaining serious injuries in a fall.