Browsing: Labour hire workers

A PCBU's $504,000 enforceable undertaking has provided valuable insight into the wide range of workplace issues that attract the attention of WHS inspectors, including where staff smoke their cigarettes.

A superior court has awarded $1.35 million in damages to an injured labour-hire worker, after finding the head scaffolding contractor at the site where the injury occurred was negligent in failing to provide an exclusion zone or establish a safe system of work.

A judge has revealed her reasons for imposing a high-level penalty on an employer when she re-sentenced it after quashing its gross negligence conviction. She rejected the company's claim it had believed certain labour-hire workers provided to its site were well trained and fully inducted in safety issues.

An employer that overturned its gross negligence conviction, relating to a labour-hire worker's full-arm amputation in an unguarded pinch point of a machine, has been fined $230,000 under amended charges.

• New safety consultation and labour-hire laws commence in Vic;
  
• Consolidated electricity safety laws introduced in Tas; and
  
• Workers' comp changes proposed by Tas.

• New industrial manslaughter laws to follow SA election; and
  
• Large-scale COVID testing announced for WA FIFO workers.

• WHS improvements agreed to for parliamentary workplaces; and
  
• "Unfit" labour provider surfaces in another company.

A WHS regulator has rejected a PCBU's bid to enter an enforceable undertaking in lieu of prosecution, after considering the significant impact its alleged offences had on a worker, and its "poor compliance history".

An employer's amputation-related gross negligence conviction has been downgraded to a general safety duty charge, in a judgment examining the "actual knowledge" of the defendant and a finding of "wilful blindness".

Labour-hire companies can face sanctions for forcing workers or job applicants to pay for mandatory personal protective equipment, while hosts can be held liable as accessories to certain breaches, a regulator has warned.