A Victorian employer breached the State OHS Act in failing to ensure a worker operating a mobile order picker wore a safety harness and held the necessary high-risk work licence, the Werribee Magistrates Court has found.

In October 2018, the Global Freight and Logistics (Aust) Pty Ltd employee fell four metres from the order picker and suffered a fractured pelvis after manually lifting two of the machine's safety rails and reaching for a product on a shelf at the employer's Truganina warehouse.

After an ex-parte application, the employer was found guilty of breaching section 21 ("Duties of employers to employees") of the Act, and fined $35,000, without conviction, plus $1,891 in costs.

The Court found that due to poor record-keeping practices, Global Freight was not aware that the worker wasn't licensed to operate the order picker and failed to ensure employees knew the safety requirements for operating the machine.

It found it had been reasonably practicable for the employer to: create a safe operating procedure for the order picker; and create a safe system of work that ensured only qualified employees used the machine, and required operators to wear a safety harness with a retractable lanyard.

This serves as a reminder of the need for Organisations to ensure record keeping across all mandatory OHS requirements is maintained diligently. Proactive reviews of licenses, and safety processes is often seen as a ‘nice to have’ but remains a core responsibility of all employers

AB Phillips People Risk Solutions specialise in audits and gap analyses to ensure you are actively managing work health safety risks in your business.

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