The company director jailed for recklessly endangering a roofer, who fell to his death, over-relied on the diligence of workers and skimped on safety controls, the Queensland Office of Industrial Relations has revealed.
> Three PCBUs charged with four category 2 breaches; > More WHS inspectors exposed to violence, this time in NSW; and > Guarding set-up breached Australian Standard and OHS Act.
An employer has committed to spending more than $500,000 on promoting truck safety and developing mental health tools, after a contractor suffered fatal head injuries cleaning a vehicle outside the designated area.
An employer that neglected to tell contractors that a structure they were scheduled to work on had failed an inspection, resulting in a roof collapsing under a worker, has failed to overturn its OHS penalty.
New WHS and workers' comp standards have commenced or been postponed in three jurisdictions, while two jurisdictions have issued confined space alerts after three deaths and an electric shock.
A company that failed to routinely check whether contractors were adequately communicating its safety procedures to their workers has been convicted and fined, after a worker was struck by a reversing forklift.
A PCBU did not breach the WHS Act in failing to warn an expert contractor that wire mesh on a roof didn't comply with Australian Standards, because the contractor was aware of this and didn't rely on the mesh for fall prevention, a judge has found.
A union official's high Fair Work fine (and second personal payment order) is more modest than it might have been, with the Federal Court agreeing that at the time of his offences, it was unclear whether he needed a permit to enter a site at the request of a health and safety representative.
A PCBU's failure to show a worker the material safety data sheet (MSDS) for a hazardous chemical caused him to suffer serious burns because he didn't know what to do when it spilt on him, a court has found. Meanwhile, a PCBU has been fined after scaffolding assembled by an untrained subcontractor collapsed.
An experienced worker was killed after he and a supervisor came up with an alternative work plan that was "contrary to established principles of workplace risk management", and made the outcomes of that morning's safety meeting obsolete, a coronial inquest has found.
