Browsing: Work at heights | Page 7

• Judge's WHS referral triggers government action; and
  
• Power tool causes four serious injuries in five weeks.

A PCBU that failed to properly assess the risks posed by its new work system and equipment has been handed a pre-discount fine of $240,000, after a worker fell and was impaled by a steel bar.

• Employer fined $390k over fatality and site-preservation breaches; and
  
• Vehicle "blind spots" increased prior to workplace death.

A PCBU has been handed a pre-discount fine of $540,000, following the death of a subcontracted site manager in a 19-metre fall, with a court finding it failed to enforce both its, and the subcontractor's, safe work method statements.

A major employer has been handed a pre-discount WHS fine of $800,000, after a worker was electrocuted just nine weeks after a similar incident that "should have been a significant wake-up call".

An employer that was effectively forced, by a judge's erroneous ruling on a fatality, to plead guilty to breaching regulations for high-risk work, has been fined $420,000 after a retrial, saving it $430,000 in penalties.

A judge has rebuked a PCBU for claiming a WHS regulator should have done more to educate operators like it in an emerging sector, finding the PCBU "clearly" failed to keep abreast of its safety duties, and fining it $180,000 over a four-metre fall.

An employer has been fined $360,000 after a worker fell nine metres from a roof and sustained severe injuries, in a case that compelled the sentencing judge to repeat his warning about an industry's workplace health and safety "carnage".

One of three PCBUs charged over a double fall - an incident that has already attracted $800,000 in fines - has escaped a reckless conduct conviction, in a ruling on its duty to labourers it referred to another company.

• PCBU risks higher WHS fine with court challenge; and
  
• PTSD and cancer amendments take effect in WA.