Victorian employer fined $120K over death as horror week gets worse

WorkSafe Victoria has slammed a high-risk-industry employer - which has been fined over a workplace fatality - for failing to provide employees with the "highest possible" safety standards. Also in this article, a bad week for Victorian workplaces has gotten worse with three deaths.

Forestry employer Carter Holt Harvey Woodproducts Australia Pty Ltd (now part of BSG Holdings Pty Ltd) was on Tuesday fined $120,000 in the Magistrates Court over a January 2008 incident in which a 35-year-old worker was killed by a falling hoist.

The 1.5-tonne hoist was being used to stack timber into packs, when it became jammed by a piece of wood. When the worker dislodged the wood with a sledge hammer, the hoist fell and crushed her.

"We'd expect a company which is part of a major player in the forestry industry to be leading the way on health and safety; clearly this wasn't the case," WorkSafe head of health and safety Ian Forsyth said following Magistrate Fiona Hayes's decision.

"Timber milling is high-risk work, so employers need to be providing the highest possible level of protection for their workers."

Bad week gets worse
The decision (which is not available online) comes as WorkSafe Victoria investigates three workplace fatalities in separate incidents in the State in the space of a week.

As reported by OHS Alert last week, Forsyth declared that it was lucky no one was killed following four serious workplace accidents in four days.

Unfortunately, the meatworks employee whose head and upper body were crushed when the hydraulics of the "knocking box" he was cleaning were activated has since died of his injuries.

Several days later an electrician died from electric-shock injuries sustained while repairing a switchboard. And on Wednesday, an excavator operator was killed when his vehicle was swamped in a sand quarry collapse.

"In these three incidents, and in the workplace fatality [above], people went to work with the expectation of getting home safely at the end of the day," Forsyth said.

"Employers must take more action to understand and control safety risks in their own workplaces. As an absolute basic requirement, employers should be training and supervising workers, and taking all practicable steps to prevent safety incidents from happening."

WorkSafe spokesperson Michael Birt told OHS Alert that the Victorian workplace-fatality rate typically increased in the lead up to Christmas.
He said that during this busy period employers must take the time to ensure work is performed safely, ensure proper procedures are in place, and communicate with employees.

Birt noted that most people only hear about high-profile incidents in which workers are killed. But in addition to these, about 70 Victorian workers sustain life-threatening injuries every year, and nearly 29,000 workers' compensation claims are made.

The latter have a considerable human and commercial cost, he said, adding that employers that invest heavily in safety reap "enormous benefits".

Spending money on OHS not only reduces incidents and subsequent compensation and ongoing medical costs, but significantly reduces absences and establishes the organisation as an employer of choice, he said.