Workplace social structures and worksite "champions" can be leveraged to protect transient or temporary staff like contract or labour-hire workers, who are more vulnerable to health and safety hazards than permanent workers, researchers say.
A PCBU that exposed a visiting pest controller to the risk of death or serious injury from a fall through a trapdoor has been convicted and fined, in a long-running case that challenged the validity of all WHS prosecutions over a three-year period.
A Commonwealth agency breached the WHS Act in over-relying on contracted helicopter pilots to assess the safety of landing sites in Antarctica, in the lead up to a pilot's death from hypothermia, a court has found. The helicopter company was found not guilty of breaching the Act.
An employer found to have demonstrated "indifference" to the health and safety of workers affected by its undertaking has failed to overturn a damages ruling in favour of a retail giant.
Do you belong to a "Safety First", "Business as Usual" or "Vulnerable" company? If the answer is one of the latter categories, there's likely to be a "vast disconnect" between your managers' commitment to WHS and what happens on the ground, and you're less likely to utilise leading indicators of safety performance, according to a new report.
A principal contractor and a subcontractor have been fined a total of nearly $300,000 after a worker was seriously injured, with a court ruling the former wasn't entitled to rely on the latter to implement agreed safety measures.
An employer has been fined $650,000 after a worker died in a 12-metre fall from a platform that was completely unsuitable for purpose, making the fall almost inevitable. Meanwhile, a head contractor has entered a $175,000 safety undertaking after a worker was impaled on an obviously hazardous bar.
There has been little political will to harmonise Australia's workers' comp schemes over the last two decades, but the emergence of the gig economy and a major report on the future of work could force governments to revisit the issue, or at least expand access to workers' compensation.
Three employers including a repeat offender have been charged with safety breaches, after the deaths of a confined space worker and a backpacker. The latest development in the backpacker's case coincides with two Federal Court rulings on the employment status of workers at the site where she was killed.
A supervisor directed a subcontractor to perform a task that resulted in the contractor breaching its own safe work method statement and seriously injured a worker, a judge has found. He ordered the supervisor's company to pay $145,000 in fines and costs over a risk it later eliminated with a $792 investment.
