An employer is being forced to re-defend its training and safety systems, and to prove it was entitled to rely on a worker to identify safety hazards that required him to seek help, under a retrial ordered in relation to an unrestrained load falling out of a trailer.
The fact that an employer was capable of charging clients for a worker's travel time was one of five "connections" establishing a link between the worker's injury-causing journey and his employment, a judge has ruled.
In this major must-read report, OHS Alert examines all the key workplace health and safety and workers' compensation developments from the second quarter of 2023, including a wide range of actual and proposed WHS amendments, a string of high-profile safety prosecutions, and concerns around surging burnout rates.
PCBUs have been reminded of their WHS duties to children, after one entity was fined over a drowning death and another over a forklift joyride. Meanwhile, the ACT has launched a campaign against workplace violence, and reminded employers of the new WHS duty to report "actual or suspected" incidents of workplace s-xual assault.
An employer is liable for a fatal heart attack a worker suffered in a hotel gym on an overseas work trip, because its WHS and fitness-for-work policy implicitly encouraged him to exercise to counter stress and fatigue, a tribunal has confirmed on remittal.
A high school operator has been handed a pre-discount WHS fine of $700,000 over the drowning death of a student on a camping trip, with a tribunal finding no risk assessment was completed for the dangerous rock fishing activity that led to the incident.
A court has stressed the importance of employers instilling a "safety consciousness" in young workers, in sentencing a PCBU whose safety breaches brought "shock, trauma, ongoing pain and disfigurement" to a teenage worker in an instant.
A tribunal has ruled a severe workplace injury caused a worker's attempt to end his own life and the main contributor was not, as the employer claimed, his personality disorder and relationship issues.