Lack of refresher training leads to pinning and prosecution

An employer that failed to re-induct or provide refresher training to a worker, when he was transferred to a different department, has been fined for safety breaches, after the man was struck by a 2.3-tonne load in a forklift incident.


NSW District Court Judge David Russell convicted and fined Crawfords Freightlines Pty Ltd $90,000, after a 25 per cent discount for its plea of guilty to breaching sections 19 and 32 of the State WHS Act.


He found Crawfords should have implemented a safe work method for placing cardboard between bundles of aluminium billets being loaded into shipping containers, “whereby no more than one person at a time was inside any shipping containers in which a forklift was in operation”.


In September 2018, the worker was taping cardboard between billets, to prevent the billets from rubbing together, when the load from a forklift entering the shipping container he was in fell and pinned him against the wall.


Judge Russell heard the worker was assigned to the “alloy department” three days before he was struck.


He heard the worker undertook training in Crawfords’ standard operating procedures (SOPs) for operating forklift trucks, and for unloading and packing aluminium, when he was first employed at the company’s Sandgate site six months earlier.


The latter was not applicable to the work he performed when he first started, and when he was moved to the alloy department he was not re-inducted, retrained or provided with any refresher training on this SOP or on loading and packing aluminium generally, he heard. In any event, neither SOP specifically dealt with placing cardboard between bundles of aluminium billets.


The SOP for unloading and packing aluminium did prohibit personnel from being inside a container while it was being loaded, except when disconnecting slings or straps, but there was “no specific prohibition against workers remaining inside a shipping container when placing cardboard between aluminium billets, while forklift trucks were also being operated inside the same container”, Judge Russell noted.


He also found Crawfords had a job cycle observation system for assessing adherence to SOPs, but no formal process for tracking whether its compliance team, supervisors or leading hands were applying it.


Judge Russell said Crawfords’ failure to train the worker in a safe method for placing cardboard within the shipping container gave rise to a high likelihood of him being struck by a falling load while standing near a forklift.


He said there would not have been a significant burden or cost involved in ensuring the worker’s safety, as the employer did promptly after the incident.

Its responses included changing its system of work to require forklift operators to work alone packing billets into shipping containers, and to position and tape the cardboard against the billets while the forklift was not in operation, he heard.


Judge Russell took into account the fact that both the injured worker and the forklift driver involved in the incident were ticketed and trained in the employer’s general prohibition against workers being inside shipping containers when forklifts were operating.


“I find that the level of culpability of Crawfords is in the lower half of the mid-range,” he said in finding the appropriate pre-discount fine was $120,000.


SafeWork NSW v Crawfords Freightlines Pty Ltd [2021] NSWDC 442 (27 August 2021)

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