For an absence from work to count as an "authorised recess", there must be an expectation by the employer that the worker will return to work, a court has found in a case involving a worker who was injured driving to his doctor.
Employers should consider including, in their first-aid kits, asthma-relieving inhalers and spacers and epinephrine auto-injectors (EpiPens) for the treatment of anaphylaxis, according to a draft Compliance Code mirroring national WHS amendments.
> Directors' WHS breaches injured boy on amusement device; > Mobile phone distraction fines increase by 150% next week; and > Worker killed by inadvertent crane operation.
A management company accused of breaching work safety laws, in failing to instruct retail staff not to walk near mobile plant, has spent $130,000 overhauling its loading dock policies and committed nearly $200,000 to other rectifications under an enforceable undertaking.
A company and its director have been fined a total of $175,000 for dangerous goods offences uncovered by police investigating a burglary. Meanwhile, the ACTU has issued heat and smoke alerts and called for WHS laws that "deal with the reality of climate change".
Employers must implement and enforce safe systems of work for seemingly straightforward tasks like stacking materials, a fatality and a $400,000 fine have shown. Meanwhile, regulators have issued alerts after workers were killed in telehandler and hoist incidents.
Two companies and an engineer who allegedly failed to ensure a worksite was supervised in his absence have been charged over a fatal crane incident, while an employer has been fined $110,000 after a worker was nearly struck by a falling object - weighing two tonnes.
Workers' comp claims agents have taken steps to conceal rather than eliminate unethical practices identified in a damning 2016 report, the Victorian Ombudsman has found. The five agents cherry-pick evidence to reject complex claims and intrusively surveil injured workers "without a shred of evidence to justify it", she found.
