Is your employer taking steps to keep you secure?
If you work in a setting where a great deal of physical labour is required, you have to take the proper precautions to be safe. No matter how cautious you are, though, you can’t do it alone. It’s essential that employers do everything in their power to help make the worksite safe and secure for their workers. If they don’t take the necessary precautions, and anything goes wrong, there could be major consequences to deal with.
Sometimes, employers are even killed in incidents where their working conditions are unsafe. Even when they’re not, the fallout from an injury can still be fairly serious. Companies should put in their due diligence to avoid such problems if at all possible.
Tragic work injury incident takes place in Sydney
When employers don’t take steps to protect their people’s safety, the results can be catastrophic. The Sydney Morning Herald recently reported on one such example, in which a man working on a barge near the Barangaroo construction site in central Sydney was killed. He was standing on the barge when he was crushed by a large piece of steel.
Brian Parker of NSW’s Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union argued that more could have been done to protect the worker.
“One header beam was attached to the crane, so it’s got chains which lift it, and that has hit another header beam that wasn’t secured,” Mr Parker told Fairfax Media. “So it was sitting in the air on two pylons. That has then fallen over and crushed the worker.”
What are the employer’s obligations?
Even when workplace injuries aren’t fatal, they can still be disastrous for employers. When an incident happens, companies must be ready to respond. According to the NSW Insurance Regulatory Authority, they’re obligated to have insurance for such incidents and document their procedures clearly.
When an injury happens, insurance companies must be notified within 48 hours. Beyond that, there must also be a clear procedure for getting the person medical treatments, helping them return to work and compensating them fairly.
Find a lawyer you can trust
Resolving cases of workplace injury like this is often challenging, and it’s not something you want to do without first getting a skilled lawyer on your side. Luckily, at Marshall and Gibson Lawyers, we have a staff loaded with them.
Our team has extensive experience with handling workplace injuries and resolving disputes. Work with us, and you can have the piece of mind of knowing your case is in good hands.
Call us today on 1800 675 417 or send us an email for your free, no obligation case evaluation by one of our expert compensation lawyers.