08:57 am, Sunday 18 July, 2010

Small businesses in Braeside can expect a visit from WorkSafe Inspectors starting tomorrow.

The intensive Braeside inspection is part of WorkSafe Victoria’s Safer Work Zones campaign and will run from July 19 to 23.

The campaign is expected to focus on basic safety issues encountered by small businesses. Special attention will be given to employers’ return-to-work obligations to its employees.

“We’ve been running this campaign for nearly a decade – yet we’re still seeing the same safety lapses. This is a chance for small businesses in Braeside to get ahead on safety before inspectors come knocking,” WorkSafe Victoria’s Strategic Programs Director Trevor Martin said.

“Before inspectors arrive, we want employers and supervisors to sit down with their staff and address some basic safety issues – what are the hazards in your workplace? How are you managing risks from slips and trips, falls from height, and machinery? Do you have first aid facilities? Has your electrical equipment been tagged and tested?”

“Workplaces also need to remember their return-to-work obligations – you need to have an ‘If you are injured at work’ poster displayed at all times. If you have an injured worker who is off work for 20 days or more, a return-to-work plan is a must.”

Mr Martin added that 26 people died across the state in the last twelve months because of workplace safety breaches.

“At the very least, these deaths must serve as a reminder to employers and workers that health and safety is very serious – complacency and simple mistakes are killing people needlessly.”

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08:33 am, Wednesday 14 July, 2010

Companies must prioritise worker safety, a trade union says.

The call was made by Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) after two serious workplace accidents took place in Queensland’s Central Highlands region in a span of one week.

A part of the Broadmeadow Mine near Moranbah, south-west of Mackay, was shut down for around three hours on July 4 when a machinery crushed a contractor’s foot.

On July 6, a shuttle car crash had led to serious injuries to two workers at the North Goonyella mine.

According to CFMEU spokesman Steve Smyth, workers must not be coerced into risking their safety.

“Guys will say ‘I want to have a break’ and [companies will] say ‘no, we’ll continue working for a little bit longer,’” Mr Smyth said.

“From the other end is where there’ll be procedures in place and they’ll be saying to the guys ‘look, can we quicken this up’, not actually directly telling our guys to take a short cut.”

Mr Smyth puts emphasis in the importance of safety.

“It’s a concern when we have one incident, let alone a series of incidents,” he said.

“From our perspective, we just want to hope that pressures aren’t being put on people in the work place to put production before safety and we just re-emphasise to all the guys if it’s not safe, don’t do the job.”

A spokesman for the company operating the Broadmeadow mine said they are conducting their own investigation on the incident.

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01:27 pm, Tuesday 13 July, 2010

WorkSafe is letting the farming sector know that the safety watchdog is undertaking a year-long crackdown on workplace safety.

Seven fatalities have been recorded in farms across the state in 2010.

According to executive director Cath Bowtell, WorkSafe inspectors will check on Victorian farms starting this month.

Ms Bowtell said they will focus on the usual causes of fatalities and injuries.

“Making sure that you’ve got a roll-over bar on your tractor, that people are using a helmet when they’re driving a quad bike, that people are storing their chemicals correctly, that they’re maintaining their equipment, that they’re using their equipment properly,” she said.

“That’s the sort of work that our inspectors are going to go out and talk to farmers about.”

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07:18 pm, Friday 25 June, 2010

The Adelaide Industrial Magistrates Court has found a munitions company and its chief operating officer guilty of failing to maintain a safe workplace following a worksite explosion.

The defendants were on trial over a 2006 blast at its factory in Gladstone in the mid-north of South Australia.

The blast killed three workers and injured two others.

According to the court, the company’s equipment were not adequately maintained, in violation of the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

“All I can say is we waited four years, we’ve now found out that it was totally preventable. What more can I say?” the father of a victim said.

The defendants’ lawyer thinks the magistrate sided with the Government and SafeWork SA.

“The magistrate has simply accepted what we regard as nonsense theory put up by the Premier’s Department,” he said after the hearing.

The court is expected to give the ruling on the penalty next month.

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06:24 pm, Saturday 19 June, 2010

The Perth Magistrates Court has fined the owners of a restaurant on Tuesday after failing to respond to an Improvement Notice issued by WorkSafe inspectors.

The two partners of a William Street restaurant pleaded guilty to failing to provide and maintain a safe workplace. They were each fined $3,000.

WorkSafe inspectors visited the restaurant in September 2006. During the inspection, they noticed an unguarded electric planetary dough mixer.

The inspectors issued an Improvement Notice, which required the business to either install a guard on the equipment to prevent its moving parts to come into contact with workers’ body parts or to dispose it altogether.

Inspectors returned to the defendants’ premises in November 2007, and they saw the dough mixer was still being used without any changes made to the machine. One owner had signed the September 2006 compliance slip and said the mixer would no longer be used.

According to WorkSafe WA Commissioner Nina Lyhne, the incident shows failure to comply with notices issued by the safety body has adverse consequences.

“The restaurant owners – being the employers – declared that they had complied with the Improvement Notice and stopped using the unguarded mixer,” she said.

“When inspectors returned the following year, the mixer was on the bench in the kitchen and it was evident that there was no guard on it, so further enforcement action was taken – namely the prosecution of the owners for failing to provide and maintain a safe workplace.

“This case should serve as a reminder to all employers that WorkSafe notices are not issued lightly and that failure to comply with their requirements can and does lead to more serious consequences.”

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05:38 pm, Saturday 19 June, 2010

WorkSafe will conduct a free workshop in Preston on July 6, which will focus on safety improvements during maintenance and non-production work.

According to WorkSafe, around one in workers in the manufacturing industry is involved plant maintenance, installation and repair. However, 60% of machinery and equipment-related workplace injury claims come from these workers.

WorkSafe says the number of injuries that happen during machinery installation, maintenance and repair is a concern to the safety body.

As part of preventing these injuries, WorkSafe will be turning its sight on maintenance and non-production tasks in 2010-11.

In connection with this goal, WorkSafe is holding the workshop to discuss worker supervision, preparation for maintenance tasks, contractor safety, and working alone.

The workshop will be held on July 6, from 8.30am to 3pm, at Darebin Arts & Entertainment Centre.

The solutions seminar is aimed at all manufacturing players, including employers, production and maintenance managers, supervisors, health and safety representatives, and workers.

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05:34 pm, Saturday 5 June, 2010

The Brisbane Industrial Magistrates Court has fined a mining company following a workplace incident at its Paget site.

The company pleaded guilty to having failed to ensure workplace safety under section 24(1) of the Workplace Health and Safety Act 1995. It was fined $50,000 by the Court on March 18.

The Court was told a teenage worker suffered hip and stomach injuries after getting pinned between mining equipment on 19 August 2008.

Workplace Health and Safety Queensland investigated the incident, and found the company had not conducted a risk assessment or stated work procedure for the equipment’s storage and dispatch.

In imposing the fine, Industrial Magistrate Bronwyn Springer considered the firm’s timely plea, its cooperation with the investigation and its subsequent implementation of corrective measures.

Magistrate Springer also ordered the company to pay $3,000 investigation costs and $56.20 court costs.

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03:28 pm, Monday 24 May, 2010

A recycling company has been fined $50,000 last week over an industrial accident involving a 15-year-old employee.

The Midland Magistrates Court found the company guilty to failing to provide a safe workplace and causing serious harm to a worker.

The incident took place at the Midland company’s worksite in September 2006, where the young worker was using a baling machine.

The machine works by placing plastic product through the input door into a large metal box. The machine’s hydraulic ram then compresses and bales the product, where it comes out through the output door.

The hydraulic ram will not run unless the input door is closed. However, the ram will still eject bales when the output door is open.

Another door at the side of the equipment can be opened, allowing workers to strap bales. The ram can operate while the side door is open, and it cannot be fully closed until the bale is ejected through the output door.

The company’s workers had been trained to close the side door as far as possible after strapping the bale. Once the bale was ejected, the workers were instructed to close the door fully before retracting the ram.

On the day of the accident, another worker was at the output door extracting a completed bale.

The worker who was injured was situated by the open side door while the ram was retracted.

As the ram retracted past the side door, the young man’s right foot was crushed between the ram and the edge of the metal box’s.

As a result, the worker had to undergo surgery to have his two middle toes amputated.

According to WorkSafe WA Commissioner Nina Lyhne, the case shows the dangers of having inadequately guarded machinery and not implementing safe work practices.

“Anyone in control of a workplace containing machinery with hazardous moving parts needs to ensure that those moving parts are safely guarded,” Ms Lyhne said.

“Guarding of the moving parts of machinery is still one of the easiest and most obvious means of minimising the risk of injury to machinery operators, and I strongly urge employers in workplaces with machinery to ensure that it is safe to operate.

“It is also up to the employer to ensure that workers observe the safe work practices that are in place. However in this case, it would have been better to ensure that the machine was safe to operate in the first place.

“After this incident, the machine was fitted with an interlock switch – similar to those on the input and output doors – to prevent the ram from retracting when the side door was open but still allowing it to move forward to eject a bale.

“This modification only cost around $1700, and could have prevented the worker from losing two toes if it had been done earlier.”

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06:53 pm, Sunday 11 April, 2010

A leading supplier to the construction industry has been fined over a workplace accident in 2007, which caused serious leg injuries to a worker.

The manufacturing firm pleaded guilty to breaching section 19(1) of the Occupational Health Safety and Welfare Act 1986 in failing to provide a safe system of work and to maintain plant in a safe condition.

In 2007, a male worker was removing picks from an excavator bucket in a Linwood Quarry.

He used a steel sledgehammer for the task, but it caused shards of metal to splinter from the pick, penetrating his leg.

SafeWork SA said the company had not provided its employee the proper tool for the job.

The firm had also not undertaken proper risk identification analysis for the work, nor did it prepare an adequate work method statement.

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05:36 pm, Wednesday 10 March, 2010

For failing to install a $5,000 guard for meat shredder, a company and its director have been fined $75,000 when a worker’s hand was caught in the machine.

The Broadmeadows Magistrates’ Court convicted and fined D R & J Fabbris Pty Ltd (trading as Fabbris Smallgoods) yesterday over a 2008 incident at the company’s Campbellfield factory.

Magistrate Ann Collins convicted and fined $50,000 the meat manufacturing company for failing to provide safe plant and failing to provide training, information and instruction to employees.

The worker was trained on the factory’s larger shredder, which had an interlocking guard. However, the worker was required to work on a smaller shredder, which was unguarded, when the accident took place.

The shredder became blocked with meat when the employee tried to get the meat off by pushing it with his hand, without turning the machine off. As a result, the shredder’s blades caught his hand.

The accident cost the middle three fingers of the worker, which were removed to the knuckle. He also suffered damaged nerves, constant pain, and restricted movement of his thumb.

WorkSafe Victoria’s Acting Health and Safety Director Stan Krpan said amputations were a major source of serious workplace injuries – with many reported in the manufacturing industry each year.

Fabbris Smallgoods’s director, Dino Fabbris, was separately convicted and fined $25,000 for failing to have the shredder guarded – despite working on the factory floor daily and taking managerial responsibility for the company’s two factories.

Mr Krpan said company directors have a responsibility over their workers’ health and safety.

“In this case, we have a director who was aware that the unguarded shredder was a hazard, and did nothing about it. This has resulted in prosecution for the company, and the loss of livelihood for a worker,” he said.

“This is a reminder to directors – especially those assuming a hands-on role in their company – that it’s their responsibility to step up to the mark and make decisions on health and safety for their company.”

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