Category Archive for : ‘News’

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

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

RSRT orders employers to pay safe rates

The Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal has issued a remuneration order affecting supermarket chains and other employers, and noted it has received no evidence disputing the link between low driver pay and poor safety outcomes.

The Transport Workers Union welcomed the order, saying it will ensure drivers are paid for waiting and queuing time, while loading and unloading vehicles, and while cleaning, inspecting, servicing and repairing their trucks and trailers.

It also ensures retailers and manufacturers that use transport operators are held to account for pressures placed

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

Employers fined over amputations and other injuries

A number of NSW employers have been fined for dangerously modifying plant, failing to instruct employees to read operating manuals and other safety breaches, following a series of severe injuries, including two amputations.In the first case, Waycon Bulk Pty Ltd was fined $195,000 for breaching ss32 and 38 of the State WHS Act, in failing to ensure the safety of a worker and failing to notify SafeWork NSW that he was injured.In April 2013, the worker was leaning across a wood splitting machine to

Sick leave increasing as bullying declines

The amount of sick leave taken by NSW public sector employees has risen by 7.9 per cent in the last five years, suggesting employers need to introduce strategies for the ageing workforce and disengaged employees, a new report has found.

It also found workplace bullying in the public sector decreased between 2012 and 2014.

The Public Service Commission’s (PSC’s) State of the NSW Public Sector Report 2015, released last week, says the upward trend in sick leave “raises concerns about the health of the workforce and the

Coroner Safety Warning

A coroner has again been forced to warn that working under vehicles and other machines that aren’t properly supported “can and will lead to death”, after conducting his third investigation into such a fatality this year.

“That it is necessary for the warning to be repeated for a third time in less than a year is a cause for genuine concern,” Tasmanian Coroner Simon Cooper said.

In August 2013, a Launceston mechanic was performing a routine service on a 700kg motor mower alone when it fell on him and pinned