A senior company executive has been found guilty of recklessness and faces jail, in the latest case involving the deaths of four police officers in a road incident caused by a drug-affected truck driver.
Employers have been urged to identify all powerlines at their workplaces, including around entry and exit points, after a company was convicted and fined over an electrocution. Employers have also been warned about the presence of asbestos in workplace fire doors, following exposure incidents.
An employer that required employees to access a machine by moving under it and opening heavy doors that swung down has been convicted and fined $200,000, after the doors fell and struck a worker, causing permanent brain injuries. Another employer has been fined for contraventions that included leaving keys in forklifts, facilitating unauthorised use.
Two employers have been sentenced for safety breaches resulting in life-changing amputations, including one company that failed to comply with an authorisation requiring only certain personnel to work near overhead powerlines.
A tribunal has applied a 14-fold increase to the damages awarded to a worker who was psychologically injured by her manager making "vulgar" remarks about her body, and making "repeated physical contact" with her.
A Victorian company that pleaded guilty to recklessly endangering an apprentice, while he was being supervised by the company director, has been fined $2.1 million - a penalty that is more than double the State's previous record safety fine for a single offence.
A company that was prosecuted, over a high-profile fatality, for breaching its safety duties as a supplier of plant, has unsuccessfully argued that its $400,000 penalty was excessive because it had no control over the location of workers when the incident occurred.
An appeals court has declined to create a "new category of duty" for employers, in overturning a psychologically injured worker's $1.4 million damages award for being subjected to a "sham" dismissal.
Two related companies, and a director who s-xually harassed teenage employees, have been fined a total of $290,000 for workplace safety breaches, with their failings including the absence of a specific reporting process in their online bullying and harassment policy.
