Business NSW has welcomed the NSW Government’s decision to freeze workers compensation premiums and thereby provide some financial respite to businesses that are suffering due to the COVID-19 crisis. Employers were increasingly concerned about a proposed 4 per cent increase in workers compensation premiums that would have taken effect from 1 July 2020 and the impact it would have on jobs. “The NSW Government’s decision to freeze workers’ compensation premiums is a victory for common sense,” said Stephen Cartwright, CEO of Business NSW. “It will help to avoid an additional financial burden on businesses at a time when they are struggling to keep afloat.” “Business NSW has been a vocal advocate for reducing the financial burden on business and has strongly opposed any hikes in premiums.” “This welcomed decision will cover 350,000 businesses who employ 3.2 million people and will avoid $325 million in additional costs for businesses across the state.” “A recent Business NSW survey found that one in four businesses would have employed fewer employees or given fewer hours if premiums had been allowed to increase by the proposed 4 per cent.” “The NSW Government’s support for business during the COVID-19 crisis, by freezing and reducing a host of costs on business, has been outstanding.” “We look forward to ongoing discussions with government on what other steps can be taken to ensure that our business communities get through this pandemic intact and that they are ready to go when our lives return to some sort of normality,” said Mr Cartwright.
Legislation affecting workers compensation arrangements in four jurisdictions has been introduced, passed and implemented. ACT: Red Tape Reduction Legislation Amendment Bill 2016 Cth: Parliamentary Entitlements Amendment (Injury Compensation Scheme) Act 2016 NSW: Workers Compensation Amendment (Latest Index Number) Regulation 2016 NSW: Workers Compensation (Weekly Payments Indexation) Amendment Order 2016 Vic: Treasury and Finance Legislation Amendment Bill 2016
A city-based PCBU will employ a WHS coordinator to service regions lacking safety expertise, and develop an app that ensures hired equipment matches proposed jobs, in a record $1.8 million-plus undertaking prompted by a crane fall. Construction company AW Edwards Pty Ltd said it recognised that its sites in regional areas that were presently managed from Sydney would benefit from a dedicated WHS resource after the incident in Taree, NSW. In May 2017, the 50-tonne hydraulic crane tipped over at the Manning Base Hospital carpark redevelopment project, where AW Edwards was principal contractor. The crane came to rest on scaffolding and two rear outriggers, with all four wheels off the ground.
Zenergy Safety, Health & Wellbeing hosted 100 senior executives to a CEO’s Forum where a panel of CEO’s and Executive leaders discussed what safety leadership looks like in their business and why they believed it formed an essential component of their organisational strategy. Panel: Paul Scurrah – CEO, DP World Cathal O’Rourke – Managing Director, Laing O’Rourke Andrew Penca – Managing Director, Cummins Tim Reardon – Secretary, Transport for NSW Mick McCormack – CEO, APA Group Safety is your responsibility Each leader had a different strategy that they were applying through their business, they were all at different stages of their safety journey and all had unique industry / business circumstances that they had to negotiate. Nevertheless it was very clear right from the start that they all genuinely cared for their staff. It was absolute. All peak leaders felt a personal obligation of the safety and wellbeing of their staff rests foremost on their shoulders. There was a personal commitment from all the leaders around this and their actions within the business clearly reinforced this view. A meticulous understanding of your business The second common theme was that they all knew their business intimately. And I mean intimately. They all knew what was actually happening on site and what was the real feedback coming from the front line employees first hand. So often I hear of executives running their business when they very rarely set foot in the area that their business actually operates. ALL our peak leaders were highly active in getting out to the business and genuinely engaged with their workforce. All the leaders agreed that it’s very difficult to guide a business when you are only looking at the reporting statistics as you can never be sure if you are over reacting in one way or another. All leaders had clear expectations for not only themselves but the senior leadership team to get out there and see what happens on site with their own eyes at every opportunity. We have been overwhelmed with the attendance and feedback from the event, with some senior leaders mentioning that it was the best event that they had ever attended. Ultimately our goal is to not only highlight key thought leaders in the industry but to consciously promote and raise skills across a wider platform as we genuinely believe that safety should not be viewed as a competitive advantage. On behalf of Zenergy and the Safety Institute of Australia we would once again like to thank the panel speakers for dedicating their time on Friday morning to share their strategy with us.
The worker was employed by a state utility as powerline worker. Based at Port Pirie, his job involved both office and field-based tasks. He was required to be on a one-in-four week standby roster to attend call-out work outside of normal hours, and was provided with a work vehicle to be housed at his property. On the afternoon of 6 September 2019, he received a text message requesting him to attend a job at Jamestown along with other workers on the standby crew.
Former Sydney Rooster Anthony Minichiello, former Bulldog Andrew Ryan and former coach Matt Elliott are part of the Change Room program, helping severely injured people get back to work. Factory worker Dave Henricks hit rock bottom after he slipped and injured himself four years ago. “I became a recluse and just sat at home, I would have a conversation with my family and would start crying and I didn’t know why,” he said. Dave Hendricks stands inside the Sydney Olympic stadium – ABC News: Chloe Hart “I suffered anxiety and depression, so it really dragged me down a long way.” He’s since quit his factory job to start his own business. “Without having gone through this program I don’t think I would be where I am today,” said Mr Henricks, who has returned to support this year’s group of injured workers.
A former McDonald’s employee who broke her leg climbing onto the restaurant’s roof for a pre-shift smoke has won the right to compensation.
A worker has has failed to establish a sufficient link between a fall from a ladder and a dusty site, while another employee failed to prove a prior compensable injury caused a subsequent slip injury. Dusty site not cause of fall The plaintiff fell from a ladder while working at a building site. He claimed he slipped because of dust on the ladder that should have been cleared from the building site. He sued the head contractor for failing to keep the site sufficiently dust-free. However, both the NSW District Court and the Court of Appeal found the plaintiff had failed to show the connection between the incident and the dust at the site. Glazier seriously injured Mr M, a glazier, was seriously injured when he fell at work at a construction site in Sydney in December 2011. He had been installing the window of an office partition as part of the refurbishment of the fourth floor of the building when he fell. In the NSW District Court there were a series of conflicts in the testimonial and documentary evidence. While the court assessed his damages at $721,611 if negligence was established, it found that Mr M had failed to establish causation, and therefore made no award. Appeal rejected The NSW Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal and found the cause of the accident was not explained: “It was not sufficient for Mr M merely to disprove some other explanation for the accident (such as silicone, or misjudging a step). Building sites are dusty. As it was put during the trial, the site was ‘not a hospital’. Questions of the amount of dust were important if Mr M were to discharge his burden of proving that the quantity of dust on the ladder was causally connected with his accident. “We do not accept Mr M’s submissions based on common sense. Common sense cannot, in a case such as this, discharge the onus borne by Mr M.” … It cannot be said that ‘common knowledge’ provides an answer to the question of whether a person wearing work boots is more likely to slip on the step of a ladder if there is an (unidentified) amount of dust on the step than if there is not. Workers on building sites, including painters patching walls, who constantly have to use dusty ladders in the course of their work, do so without slipping… “For those reasons, we would dismiss the appeal.” Costs Mr M was ordered to pay 80 per cent of the contractor’s costs of the appeal, not 100 per cent, as the defendant had extended the range of argument on appeal. M v Sheldon Commercial Interiors Pty Ltd [2016] NSWCA 77 (15 April 2016) Slip unrelated to compensable foot injury Meanwhile, in a NSW workers compensation matter, a worker failed to prove that a compensable foot injury led to a slip injury. There was inconsistency in the evidence and this told against the worker: “I… note that Mr C said in his statement that his ‘foot suddenly went under me’. Mr C said he did not trip but that his foot bucked under him as his foot was still weak after recently coming off crutches. Mr C does not in his statement refer to feeling a ‘spasm of pain and lost his balance’ as recorded by Dr D.” The court noted that “there also appears to be some inconsistency with the circumstances of how the event occurred as recorded in the reports of the respondent’s independent medical examiners”. Another doctor made a report recording the history of the event as follows: “While recuperating at home he slipped and fell and in attempting to break his fall he reached out with his right upper limb and sustained a full thickness rupture of the right biceps tendon.” C v Smith Bros Trade & Transport Terminal Pty Ltd [2016] NSWWCC 81 (29 March 2016) The bottom line: Although it is perhaps stating the obvious, there must be a change of causation established to successfully pursue a compensation claim. This article was originally posted on Workplace OHS a part of NSW Business Chamber – Australian Business Consulting and Solutions has a dedicated team of WHS/OHS experts who can assist you with your specific WHS/OHS issues and problems.
An employee who waited nearly a month to report a work injury to his employer has been denied compensation. He had been required to provide notice as soon as practicable after the injury occurred. [ Full text of this case: Kelp Industries Pty Ltd v K [2016] TASWRCT 2 (6 January 2016) ] Kelp Industries Pty Ltd disputed liability to compensate Mr K, an operator at its kelp factory, on the basis that he failed to provide formal notice of his lower back injury as soon as practicable after it occurred. Relevantly, the company made an application under s81A of the Workers Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988 (Tas) for a ‘reasonably arguable case determination’ by the Workers Rehabilitation and Compensation Tribunal of Tasmania. The application was handled by Commissioner Chandler. It was the company’s evidence that:
By Bonnie Christian An influx of inexperienced mine workers is partly to blame for increased workplace fatalities in the West Australian resources industry, according to a State Government mine safety inspector. The number of workplace deaths at mine sites has gradually increased from none in 2012, to three in 2013 and 2014, and to four so far in 2015. Speaking at a Mine Safety Roadshow event which began in Geraldton yesterday, Department of Mines and Petroleum (DMP) regional inspector Doug Barclay said it was a concerning trend. “We’ve had a number of fatalities from people being caught between moving equipment or having heavy loads fall on them,” he said. “The use of elevating platforms in the workplace is another area of concern with a fatality from an operator who was pinned between an elevating basket of the machine. Read Full Story < Click Here >
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The annual Zenergy Leaders Forum is one of the premier events on the senior health, safety & sustainability calendar in Australia. This is a non-ticketed invitation only event hosted by Zenergy. Attendee numbers at the Zenergy forum are 150 and will include executive, people and culture directors, CEO, COO and directors of health & safety and HSE personnel. The topic for this year is “Integrated Psychosocial Risk Management”. All of the event information is below and reach out to your account manager at Zenergy for further details.
This article has been reproduced with permission from OHS Alert, and the original version appears at www.ohsalert.com.au . A commission has cautioned that society's "significantly raised" bar for what constitutes consent for physical interactions is "even higher" in work-related environments, in upholding the summary dismissal of a worker for inappropriately touching a colleague. In Perth, Fair Work Commission Deputy President Melanie Binet said that regardless of the intention of the worker, who claimed he was simply moving his female colleague "out of the way", his conduct was a valid reason for dismissal. Workers should be "on notice" of the increased scrutiny of behaviours, given the extensive social discourse and media coverage on sexual harassment issues, she said. "This is particularly so in the mining industry in Western Australia where a parliamentary inquiry [see related article ] focused community attention on the odious frequency of sexual harassment and assault of women in the mining industry." The Deputy President added that recent amendments to the Commonwealth Fair Work Act 2009 that specifically identify sexual harassment as a valid reason for dismissal (see related article ) "reflect a societal recognition that sexual harassment has no place in the workplace in the same way as violence or theft don't". The worker was an Alcoa of Australia Ltd advanced mechanical tradesperson when he was sacked for inappropriately touching the colleague in an office at Alcoa's Pinjarra Alumina Refinery in September last year. The worker claimed he turned his back to the colleague to squeeze between her and a desk to go to speak to another person and his hands made contact with her lower torso. Afterwards, the colleague's partner entered the office and found her visibly distressed. He confronted the worker, accusing him of grabbing the colleague's buttocks and squeezing it. The issue was escalated, and the worker was summarily dismissed after an investigation concluded he sexually harassed the colleague by making "unwelcomed and socially inappropriate physical contact". Alcoa found the worker breached codes and policies that he had been trained on, which stated that harassment was not determined by the intent of the person who engaged in the conduct but by the impact on the recipient. The worker admitted touching the colleague but claimed this only occurred because the room was crowded. He said he did not intend to behave in a sexual manner and apologised to the colleague as soon as he found out she was upset. He claimed unfair dismissal and sought reinstatement in the FWC. Deputy President Binet found the worker's accounts of the incident were inconsistent, with the parts of the colleague's body that he touched changing in his various statements. She accepted the colleague's evidence that the worker groped her in an "intimate sexual location" and his conduct caused immediate and ongoing effects to her health and wellbeing. The worker could have waited until there was space for him to pass between the desks, requested the colleague to move from the gap or gently touched her arm to get her attention, the Deputy President said. "There was simply no justification for him to turn his back then have his hands at [the colleague's] buttocks level, touch her buttocks and consciously push her out of his way," she said. "I am not convinced that [his] conduct was intended to be entirely without a sexual nature," she concluded. She stressed that even if she was wrong on this point, this type of unwelcome touching could objectively be seen as being capable of making recipients feel offended, humiliated or intimidated. The Deputy President also slammed the worker's representatives for choosing "to follow a well-worn but discredited path of blaming the victim" by accusing the colleague of inviting the "accidental" contact by standing in the narrow walkway. "Women should be able to attend their workplaces without fear of being touched inappropriately," she said in dismissing the worker's case. "It is a sad inditement of the positive work that has been undertaken by employers, unions and regulatory bodies in the mining industry that young women like [the colleague] are still frightened to report incidents of harassment for fear of being ostracised."
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