Welcome to WorkComp Risk Management

   More than 3,500 Victorian backyard handymen and tradesmen, blinkered to the importance of proper eye protection, are risking blindness and suffering serious eye damage each year.

   The home DIY boom has seen metal fragments lodged in eyes become one of the common presentations at the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital, with grinding, drilling and welding causing most injuries. And a quarter of those fronting to the emergency department have been injured in the same way before, a new study from the Centre for Eye Research Australia has revealed. Many are having their eyeballs needled to remove “rust rings,” which can lead to infection and scarring when metal fragments react with tears to rust.

   The study analysed 100 consecutive patients presenting with metal fragments in their cornea in 2009. Almost half reported wearing safety glasses.

   A man was seriously injured when he was crushed by more than a tonne of plaster. Paramedics were called to a unit development in Bay Street, Port Melbourne.

   WorkSafe spokesman Michael Birt said a delivery driver, aged in his 70s, was crushed when a load of plasterboard came off his truck while it was being unloaded. He said the man was hit by two packs of plasterboard, with each sheet measuring about 3x1 metres.

   Paramedic Andrew burns said the man was in severe pain after several sheets of plaster fell on him. The injured man was taken to The Alfred hospital with injuries to his chest, abdomen and pelvis. He was in a serious but stable condition.

   The first company in Victoria to be convicted and fined for recklessly endangering a worker has lost an appeal against its sentence.

   In 2010, Orbit Drilling Pty Ltd pleaded guilty and was convicted and fined $750,000 over the death of 21-year-old Bradley Alford at Clonbinane.

   Company director Martin Smith was also fined $120,000 after he admitted the firm had breached its duty of care towards its employees.

   Mr Alford was crushed to death on December 9, 2006, when he lost control of the Mack truck he was driving on a steep slope and it became airborne, bounced several times and overturned. He was thrown from the cabin as the truck rolled and was killed on impact.

  He had been working for the company – which performed drilling work for mining company Agincourt – for just over a week and had completed only 11 hours of driving lessons.

    According to expert evidence in the case, a qualified and properly-trained driver, driving a properly-maintained Mack truck, would have been capable  if performing this task. But, Mr Alford was untrained, and the truck was unroadworthy because its brakes were defective.

   Nearly 60,000 Victorian businesses are the big winners in this week’s State Budget, pocketing a WorkCover premium cut of about 10 per cent. Six out of 10 businesses will score an average premium cut of three per cent.

   A man in his 30s has been killed in a forklift accident at Preston, in Melbourne’s north. Police say the man was unloading a scissor and forklift when he has been crushed between the two pieces of machinery. The man was discovered dead at the factory in Chifley Drive.

   Police and WorkSafe investigators will prepare a report for the coroner. WorkSafe Victoria spokesman Michael Birt says it’s the fifth work place death this year. “Work safe has investigators and inspectors heading to the site in Preston,” he said. “They’ll be talking to a wide range of people looking at the systems of work and trying to understand exactly what’s happened.”

WorkSafe says it is lucky no one was killed when scaffolding tumbled onto a busy Prahran street three years ago. Three people were injured when the scaffolding collapsed onto Commercial Road after being altered and overloaded with bricks.
The construction company, Asian Pacific Building Corporation, has been fined $170,000 over the incident.
WorkSafe director Allan Beacom says it could have been much worse. “There was public involved, there was a tram, there was a bus going by, and the fact that the collapse happened at smoko time when most of the workers were not on the scaffold, is just sheer luck,” he said. “We could be standing here today discussing a multiple fatality.” Mr Beacom says the $170,000 fine is significant, and reflects the seriousness of the offence.

A truck driver who continued to receive compensation benefits for a workplace injury but took up work elsewhere has been ordered to repay almost $27,000 and perform 100 hours of unpaid community work.

In the Sunshine Magistrates’ Court, Nathan Higgins, of Melton, pleaded guilty to one charge of fraudulently obtaining payments and three charges of providing false or misleading information. Mr Higgins was a self employed truck driver when he suffered a workplace injury to his left hand in January 2009. Despite continuing to receive compensation payments for his injury and stating he was unfit to work or could only work on modified duties, Mr Higgins took up a job as a bus driver from August 2009 to July 2010.

A young plumber was badly burned when a faulty gas bottle erupted in flames less than two months after a 25- year-old tradesman died in a huge gas blast.

Troy Taliana, 22, believes he is lucky to be alive and the accident has raised questions about WorkSafe after it emerged the safety watchdog did not issue a warning about the defective gas bottle, although it had been recalled by its manufacturer.

Mr Taliana was installing a solar hot water service at a new housing estate in Lalor on February 9 when he had his brush with death. “I screwed the head on to the bottle and it burst into flames in my hands,” he said. Mr Taliana spent two weeks in The Alfred hospital’s burns unit. His mother Judy, who helps run the plumbing business, was furious to discover that although the MAP gas cylinders manufactured by Worthington were first recalled in January, WorkSafe had not issued an alert.

      A secret review of Victoria’s WorkCover and transport accident compensation systems is under way and the State Government is refusing to make public any details of the inquiry. Despite no public announcement of the review, the Government confirmed it had asked the Essential Services Commission to conduct a root and branch inquiry into the Victorian WorkCover Authority (which also operates as WorkSafe) and the Transport Accident Commission. But it refused to release details, drawing fire from the business community. A Government spokesman said the inquiry was in line with the Coalition’s 2010 election policy to improve the “efficiency and transparency” of the organisations. Asked why the inquiry’s terms of reference had not been made public, the spokesman said: “This is a government request for internal advice, not a comprehensive public review.”

The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) is to consider charges against an air-conditioning company after an employee fell from a faulty ladder while working on a Southbank development site. Coroner Kim Parkinson referred the case to the DPP after finding that the ladder on which Keith Dickman had been working was defective and unstable from modifications and irregular replacement parts.

Ms Parkinson also found that a statement about safe work practices was “inadequate and incomplete,” in that it did not identify the risk of fall from ladders and that the employer, All staff Air-conditioning Pty Ltd, failed to supervise adequately the wearing of safety equipment. Mr Dickman, 56, was installing air-conditioning ducting on the eighth level of a development at Freshwater Place when he fell off the ladder. As he fell, he tried to grab the ceiling grid, but it flicked him in the face and injured him. Ms Parkinson heard in the inquest that one of the ladder’s feet was damaged, and folding braces were faulty and deteriorated. She was critical of the company’s statement on safe work practices, describing it as “limited and superficial” and failed to “identify the most basic of risk factors in the work being performed.”