News

Shift workers warned against caffeine vicious circle

Workplace Health and Safety Queensland is urging shift workers to avoid the vicious circle of relying on coffee or energy drinks to keep them awake at work, and taking sedatives to help them sleep when they get home.

Paradoxically, working at night can make it difficult for workers to make healthy choices that help them cope with shift work, and it can be “very tempting to rely on an artificial ‘fix’”, the regulator says.

“Shift workers often turn to stimulants such as coffee, energy drinks or

Risk Assessments, are you due for one?

An employer has failed to convince the South Australian IRC that introducing a formal hazard identification and risk assessment process wouldn’t have prevented a worker being crushed to death in plant.

Industrial Magistrate Stephen Lieschke rejected Inco Ships Pty Ltd’s claim that its informal risk assessment and work instructions were “so well known” at the time of the incident that “no extra safety could be achieved”, and found it guilty of breaching the now-repealed State OHSW Act.

In September 2012, an Inco Ships deck mechanic was

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

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

Worker sacked for failing drug test

An employer was entitled to sack rather than warn a worker for failing a drug test because he knowingly attended work while unfit, the Fair Work Commission has found.

In Melbourne, Commissioner Julius Roe found the worker also “unreasonably sought to avoid taking responsibility for the positive methylamphetamine test”, and rejected his unfair dismissal claim.

The North West Crewing Pty Ltd deckhand failed a workplace drug test four days after attending a party in Bali in July 2015.

His employer sacked him for having levels of methylamphetamine in

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