The Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union has successfully prosecuted an employer on behalf of a 22 year-old man who had his hand crushed and lost part of his finger at work in February 2008.
The man’s employer Medicraft Hil-Rom, which manufactures hospital equipment at Marrickville in NSW, has been fined $95,000 plus court costs.
NSW State Secretary of the AMWU Tim Ayres said the company was found guilty of breaching its duty of care to the worker.
“What happened to this young man was terrible. It has caused him enormous physical and emotional pain.”
“Every worker has the right to go home to their family at the end of the day alive and uninjured.”
He said an expert safety audit conducted by the company in 2006 recognised that an accident was likely to occur because the employer had removed a safety guard on the metal press machine used by the worker.
“The worst thing is that this was not an accident. It was something that had been predicted more than twelve months before. Yet the young man’s employer did nothing to prevent it happening.”
NSW WorkCover only investigated the injury because of the Union’s insistence and it did not prosecute the company involved.
“The Union mounted our own prosecution – both to achieve justice for our member and to set the record straight on the employer’s responsibility to provide a safe workplace,” said Mr Ayres.
After more than two decades of progressive reform, NSW has arguably the highest standards of OH&S legislation in the country.
Union prosecutions are a unique feature of the NSW Occupational Health and Safety Act and have been the focus of complaints by business for many years.
But Mr Ayres said they will no longer be possible under the proposal to create ‘harmonised’ federal occupational health and safety laws.
“Union prosecutions have always been an option of last resort, but there is no doubt that they have been a real reinforcement for a safe work culture – especially when WorkCover has not had the resources to mount their own prosecutions.”
He said the case demonstrates why workers in NSW cannot afford to have lower standards of OH&S legislation.
“The current process of harmonisation presents the NSW Government with a real opportunity to lead the other states and the Commonwealth toward a national standard for occupational health and safety that reflects the seriousness which workplace safety deserves.”