Category Archive for : ‘General’

Employer Negligently Expose

A worker has been refused $290,000 in damages for a back injury, but a supreme court judge found her employer did negligently expose her and others to a building’s unsafe access point.

Queensland Supreme Court Justice Catherine Holmes said it would have been easy for the employer to ensure employees were familiar with the workplace’s safer access points and layout.

In August 2013, the Sunshine Coast Independent Living Service Inc (SCILS) disability support worker was awarded workers’ compensation after obtaining a medical certificate for severe work-related back pain.

She subsequently sued

Employer found liable for racist comments

A commission has found an employer vicariously liable for two workers’ racist comments, and stressed that a company’s anti-discrimination policies must be “communicated effectively” to staff.

Northern Territory Anti-Discrimination Commissioner Simon Rice awarded the victim of the comments $12,000.

He noted that there was no evidence of the victim sustaining a psychological injury, suggesting the compensation order would have been much higher if she had been injured.

In February 2014, the Centreprise Resource Group Pty Ltd technical support and administration officer, employed under an Indigenous wage subsidy program,

Do active design workplaces improve health and safety?

An Australian study has found employees who work in a new “active design building” spend less time sitting and have less lower back pain, but are more concerned by noise levels.

Researchers from the University of Sydney found that while the employees believed the new building was “more stimulating” than their previous workplaces, productivity remained mostly unchanged.

“Active design is a new concept that includes levels of environmental design, workplace culture and policy,” the researchers said.

“It addresses features of the built environment that can support

Slip in home bathroom was work-related

A manager who injured his back at home while he was “hurrying” to answer his work phone has been awarded workers’ compensation, with a commission finding he satisfied the test established by the High Court motel sex case.

Queensland IRC Deputy President Daniel O’Connor found the manager had been on call and his actions at the time of the incident were encouraged by his employer.

At about 10pm on 21 March 2013, the Blenners Transport Pty Ltd fleet service manager sustained a disc protrusion in his lower

Gossip constitutes bullying under Fair Work Act

Spreading “misinformation or ill-will” against a worker constitutes bullying under the Fair Work Act, a commissioner has found in advising a company to develop policies on how workers in neighbouring businesses should treat each other.

FW Commissioner Danny Cloghan also found that telling a worker to “‘get fucked’… departs from normal social interaction in the workplace and [falls] within the definition of bullying if repetitive”.

However, he dismissed an application for a stop-bullying order – made by a worker who allegedly received such abuse – because

10 ‘Pattern’ Causes of Workplace Disasters

Renowned OHS academic Professor Michael Quinlan has identified 10 “pattern causes” that repeatedly recur in workplace disasters – and worker behaviour isn’t one of them.

The evidence doesn’t support the notion that worker behaviour or unsafe acts are a “predominant or pattern cause” of mining disasters, oil-rig explosions, factory fires, airplane crashes and other fatal work incidents, Quinlan says in his new book, Ten Pathways to Death and Disaster: Learning from Fatal Incidents in Mines and Other High Hazard Workplaces.

Prior to the New Zealand Pike River

Pub injury occurred in course of employment

A FIFO worker who was assaulted at a mining-camp tavern was injured in an interval in an overall period of work and is entitled to compensation, a Federal Court full bench has found in upholding his appeal.

Justices Robert Buchanan, Neil McKerracher and Anna Katzmann found an AAT decision against the worker paid “insufficient attention to the general nature, terms and circumstances of the employment”, and gave “too much prominence” to the circumstances of the occasion giving rise to the injury.

In March 2014, the BIS

Don’t forget injured workers payments over Christmas, regulator warns

Employers that fail to ensure injured workers receive all their compensation payments over the Christmas break could be fined thousands of dollars, WorkCover WA has warned.

The regulator said that every Christmas period it received a spike in complaints from “financially distressed injured workers faced with missed weekly compensation payments”.

In Western Australia, unlawfully discontinuing weekly payments is an offence under the State Workers’ Compensation and Injury Management Act 1981, and employers can be fined $2000 for each missed payment, it said.

“If you are

Employer fined $285k over fatal explosion

A Victorian employer has been fined $285,000 for failing to provide employees with vented cabinets to safely transport highly-flammable gas cylinders, after a worker died when his work van exploded.

The County Court also found the employer failed to train its workers in how to safely store and transport the cylinders.

In December 2011, the 25-year-old Cool Dynamics Refrigeration (CDR) mechanic was entering his employer-provided van at his home when the vehicle exploded, damaging neighbouring houses and sending parts of the van onto nearby roofs.

The worker died

“Sheer quantity” of work biggest cause of stress

Employers are being urged to “take the moral choice” of reducing job demands or at least increasing resources, after a national survey of school principals showed the “sheer quantity” of work is their greatest source of stress.

The Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety and Wellbeing Survey 2015, overseen by former principal and Australian Catholic University associate professor Philip Riley, has reported annually since 2011, with about 40 per cent of Australia’s 10,000 principals and assistant or deputy principals participating overall, and 20 to 25