Excessive prescription of opioid medication is doubling the risk of long-term disability among injured workers, and highlights the need for workers' compensation schemes to take urgent action, says a leading occupational health researcher.
A line manager unreasonably contributed to a worker's psychiatric injury by describing a complaint against him as a "serious" allegation of "harassment" in the first minutes of the very first meeting on the issue, an appeals commission has confirmed.
The injuries sustained by a worker when he fell at a public pool, after receiving medical advice to swim to relieve a work-related back condition, did not arise in the course of his employment, a court has ruled in a novel case.
A supervisor who decided a worker was hard to manage and "needed to be dealt with", traumatised and psychologically injured her by intimidating her during a counselling meeting, the Federal Court has confirmed on appeal.
> New laws protect safety of contractors and gig economy workers; > Safety Regs with WHS clauses released, WorkSafe Vic boss resigns; and > SRC and disability discrimination instruments introduced.
An injured worker has been granted permission to pursue damages in a jurisdiction with far more generous common law rights than the state his employer contended he "usually" worked in.
A worker bore the onus of proving his work-related knee injuries caused him to fall at home and dislocate his shoulder, but he failed to discharge his burden of proof, with his inconsistent memory of events suggesting he made them up, a judge has found.
An appeals court has rejected a major employer's claim that an injured worker's previous overtime payments ceased to form part of his compensation when that compensation was stepped down after 13 weeks of incapacity.
A worker has been sentenced to nine months' jail and ordered to repay $113,000 for illegally altering certificates of capacity, and other workers' comp breaches.
