Criminally unsafe work places will face harsher financial penalties but the option of those found responsible for death on unsafe worksites facing court charged with " Industrial manslaughter " has been rejected in New South Wales. The bill amending the Work, Health and Safety Act has increased the penalty against a company whose safety standards result in a workplace death from $3 million to $3.4 million with further increases keeping pace with inflation.
What many safety critics were looking for was a law change to make the person responsible for a work site criminally responsible if a breach of safety standards caused a workers death. The industry is riddled with short cuts and omissions that reduce costs and consequently we are encountering a steady stream of deaths on work sites.
The legislators foresaw a problem identifying just who accepts responsibility for a work site. That could be the company owner or the foreman who actually directs operations - or both. In some cases it would be an entirely independent operator who supplies services to the site, but ultimately someone needs to be responsible for seeing that legal standards are maintained.
Facing a charge of criminal manslaughter in a court would be a very good reason not to disregard safety regulations lightly. A financial penalty is simply a "cost " and may even be partly recovered from insurance. Workers have the right to expect to return home from work after a day of earning their living and too often that ends in either hospital or the morgue.
What triggered this review was an accident on a major building site when scaffolding collapsed killing 18 year old Christopher Cassaniti and badly injuring another workmate. These and similar accidents have been proliferating across the Australian building industry.
At least this review did toughen the rules that apply and brought in a new offence of " gross negligence ". Safe Work inspectors have been given new powers to issue " Stop Work " orders on sites where they discover safety breaches and these sites will remain dormant until the breaches have been rectified.
Safety notices will also be easier to legally deliver. In the past, much time was wasted tracking down the individual responsible for a work site but now a safe work order can be delivered electronically or sent to a persons last known address - or left with a person over the age of sixteen. The era of dodging receipt of a legal safe work order has now been sharply curtailed.
At least the legislation is moving in the right direction. If accidents on building sites fail to decrease that " industrial manslaughter " option will still be waiting in the wings to be adopted.
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