A mobile crane hire company has been charged with two category-2 WHS breaches, which allegedly occurred after a union unlawfully attempted to shut down the relevant workplace for safety reasons.
Australia's "only validated psychosocial risk assessment survey" has been relaunched on a free digital platform, under an initiative jointly funded by the country's workplace health and safety regulators.
A company and its director have been convicted and fined, and issued WHS project and training orders, over the electrocution of an unsupervised apprentice, in a unique case, while two employers and a director have been charged over a switchboard shock.
A full Federal Court has upheld a union's high-range penalty for pressuring WHS inspectors to shut down a site unnecessarily, while the Fair Work Commission has suspended and revoked the entry permits of union officials involved in the incident.
A PCBU has unsuccessfully contended its fatality-related WHS charges should be dismissed for being "ambiguous" and "prolix". A superior court found the particulars of the charges clearly accused the PCBU of failing to ensure workers complied with safety rules for confined spaces, and creating the risk of almost certain death to any worker who fell because of that failure.
> GHS 7 webinar covers new rules on gases and eye irritants; > Work buildings included in high-risk cladding ban in Vic; and > Alerts on entanglement death and access duties issued in NT.
In this major report, OHS Alert examines all the must-know work health and safety, workers' compensation and work-related COVID-19 developments from the fourth quarter of 2020, with highlights including a series of important legislative changes and near-record WHS fines.
OHS Alert is taking a break for a few weeks, and we're leaving you with a list of our most popular articles from the last 12 months - a list dominated by our leading stories on managing the work-related risks of COVID-19, and high-profile court cases.
> Families call for nationwide industrial manslaughter laws; > Agencies directed to identify and assess asbestos in WA; and > Asbestos found in imported forklifts and gas cylinders.
