Browsing: Workplace safety | Page 1

• WHS ministers agree to harmonised exposure limits;
  
• Access to dust damages improved in WA;
  
• RTW body officially established in Vic; and
  
• Workers to be protected by new slow-down rules in SA.

Reporting a safety incident is as important as the incident itself, a commission has reaffirmed in ordering the reinstatement of a worker sacked for failing to report an allegedly unsafe driving incident. His failure to report was mitigated by the fact that his supervisor witnessed and recorded the event, the commission found.

The new International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) guide to safety reporting and evaluation, with its increased focus on recognising and measuring "all the good that a business does", will improve safety culture through to the "boots on the ground ", according to the convenor of the working group that led its development.

Employers will be explicitly required to add "critical controls", as defined in international guidelines, to their safety management systems, under legislative amendments aimed at "facilitating the growth in high-reliability organisational (HRO) behaviour" in the resources sector.

A PCBU has been fined $450,000 for WHS breaches involving a worker being hit by a forklift, in a case that saw a director cleared of due diligence breaches.

• New injury definitions to trigger litigation in Vic; and
  
• WHS barrister announced as IRC President in restored NSW regime.

An appeals court has confirmed that a step's defective non-slip strip, which was missed by safety inspections, remained in place through the negligence of two companies and caused a worker to fall, entitling him to more than $1 million in damages.

The Fair Work Commission has declined to make orders in a rare decision from its stop-s-xual-harassment jurisdiction, but hinted that sending "vile" text messages to colleagues could attract such an order.

A company accused of failing to reassess risk controls, following "material deviations" from earlier assessments, has avoided prosecution by committing more than $1 million to safety initiatives, including a trial of autonomous inspection vehicles.

A commission has cautioned that society's "significantly raised" bar for what constitutes consent for physical interactions is "even higher" in work-related environments, in upholding the summary dismissal of a worker for inappropriately touching a colleague.