This major OHS Alert report reviews all the need-to-know workplace health and safety and workers' comp developments from the past few months, including the passage of game-changing Respect@Work laws, numerous WHS amendments, COVID rulings, a state-first workplace manslaughter charge, and a record-smashing reckless conduct fine.
An analysis of a manufacturing disaster that killed five workers has shown how "human factors can contribute to a sequence of events that lead to a major incident", and what employers can do to curb this.
Two companies, including one that failed to implement a mandatory rescue plan for excavation work, have been fined a total of $720,000, plus $35,000 in costs, in relation to the drowning of a worker in a trench.
Employers will face increasing pressure to comply with their WHS notification duties around s-xual assault and harassment, under legislative and policy changes recommended by a major PricewaterhouseCoopers review, which found some companies engage in "opportunistic and deliberate breaches" of the obligations.
An employer that allowed an unlicensed teenage worker to operate a forklift, and then failed to inform a safety regulator that seven of the worker's fingers had been amputated, has been handed a high-level safety penalty.