The jailing of an operations manager, the passage of right-to-disconnect laws and significant WHS and workers' compensation amendments were among the highlights of the first quarter of 2024. This major report covers all jurisdictions and looks at everything you need to know from the start of the year.
An appeals commission has upheld a decision in favour of a worker who suffered a psychological injury from her employer's initial communications on a COVID-19 vaccine mandate. It rejected the employer's reasonable disciplinary action defence on the basis that the worker was injured before this action occurred.
An employer has been found liable for a worker's Achilles injury and ordered to pay him damages, after it negligently failed to change the flat battery on a piece of powered mobile plant.
An employer's work system that required workers to step up onto a platform up to 80 times a day would have involved a breach of duty if an employee had been able to prove the system caused his injuries, a court has found in a case with a seizure and a fall.
An injured worker has proved that medicinal cannabis is a reasonable treatment his employer should pay for, even though it has not improved his functionality.
A court has granted a worker leave to pursue damages for long COVID resulting from a work-related infection, rejecting submissions that her various symptoms needed to be assessed separately and none of them were serious.
Workers' compensation authorities are expected to adjust their activities to increase their focus on psychological injuries and target fraud, after a major audit found a lot of money has gone towards internal improvements, but not enough attention has been paid to return-to-work outcomes.
A full supreme court has ruled on who bears the onus of proving whether an injury was caused by reasonable management action, in a case involving a performance-managed worker forced to record all his movements in a spreadsheet.
